President Biden on Thursday extended a small olive branch to Republicans after condemning a large swath of the GOP as “ultra-MAGA” extremists and casting the pivotal midterms as a battle for the “soul of the nation.” The Washington Times stories: White House
Read More...Dozens of Republican lawmakers are calling for President Biden to take a cognitive test citing a spate of gaffes they say call into question the 79-year-old’s fitness for the job. The Washington Times stories: White House
Read More...System outages and patient safety concerns associated with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ new electronic health record (EHR) have led to top members of the House VA Committee calling for the agency to stop future rollouts.</p> <p>VA officials told the technology modernization subcommittee Tuesday that the VA medical center in Walla Walla, Washington, experienced EHR outages Monday and Tuesday this week.</p> <p>In light of these and <a href=”https://federalnewsnetwork.com/it-modernization/2022/04/va-looking-into-root-cause-of-ehr-outage-that-also-hit-dod-coast-guard/”>other recent outages</a>, Cerner officials told lawmakers the company is considering a technical review of the EHR to ensure the system is stable…
Read More...As some agencies start to reenter office spaces, lawmakers are raising concerns about return-to-office plans for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-Va.), ranking member on the Committee on Education and Labor, and James Comer (R-Ky.), ranking member on the Committee on Oversight and Reform, said the lag on reentry would delay the commission’s ability to efficiently review and resolve discrimination charges. “We are unaware of any plan for the commission to return the remainder of its workforce of approximately 2,000 employees to in-person service,” the authors said…
Read More...Republicans having been trying to coerce agencies to bring employees back to the office for the better part of the last year. Each of the previous bills, like Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s (R-Texas) and Sen. Roger Marshall’s (R-Kan.) bills from August that would have required agencies to return to the telework policies of Feb. 14, 2020, or the most recent one from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) that would require agencies to reinstate their telework policies used before the COVID-19 pandemic as of Dec. 19, 2019, never moved from the starting line.…
Read More...South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem sharply criticized state lawmakers for denying the introduction of her pro-life bill—a bill lawmakers fear could affect the outcome of the state’s major legal battle against Planned Parenthood. South Dakota’s House State Affairs Committee declined Wednesday to allow the governor’s draft bill, modeled after widely discussed Texas legislation banning abortions of babies with a detectable heartbeat (after as early as six weeks of gestation). State lawmakers and the South Dakota Right to Life reportedly expressed concerns that the bill is premature and could affect the…
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