Congress

A federal union pushes back after congressional leaders and DOGE call out teleworking

Published

2 years ago

December 10, 2024

The nation’s biggest federal union is pushing back against claims by President-elect Donald Trump’s supporters over teleworking for civil servants.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal and Washington city workers, said assertions that staffers are abusing work-from-home flexibility are serving as cover for Republican lawmakers to try to tear down the government.

The clash over telework is expected to be one of the major battles for the incoming Trump administration as conservatives push for the civil service to return to the office.

“Exaggerating the number of federal employees who telework and portraying those who do as failing to show up for work is a deliberate attempt to demean the federal workforce and justify the wholesale privatization of public-sector jobs,” AFGE said on its website.

The union added, “AFGE believes that facts matter, and that lawmakers should be guided by the facts when making decisions that affect the lives of their constituents.”

At issue is a report on telework released by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) last week, which she shared with other senators. The report is expected to bolster efforts by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an outside group led by tech mogul Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, to have federal employees back in the office five days a week.

“For years, I have been tracking down bureaucrats relaxing in bubble baths, playing golf, getting arrested, and doing just about everything besides their job,” Ernst said in a statement. “Federal employees need to return to work, but if they don’t want to, I will make their wish come true.”

In her report, the Iowa senator said 90 percent of federal employees telework, while only 6 percent report to the worksite full time. In addition, close to one-third of staffers work remotely.

“If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!” Musk said on social media last week, referring to Ernst’s report.

Those figures, however, don’t match findings from an Office of Management and Budget report that telework was not as nearly as widespread among the federal workforce as Ernst’s study implies.

OMB found 54 percent of the government’s 2.28 million civilian employees were on-site full-time due to their job requirements. Meanwhile, 46 percent were eligible to telework, while 10 percent were in remote positions.

In addition, those telework-eligible staffers spent 61.2 percent of their working hours in the office. For all federal employees, 79.4 percent of their working hours were in person, according to the report, which was released in August and required under an appropriations package passed by Congress earlier this year.

Press officials in Ernst’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.

The Biden administration also has been pushing federal employees to return to the office. They set a threshold of staffers spending 50 percent of their working hours on-site.

Some energy and environmental agencies surpassed that bar. The Department of the Interior’s telework-eligible employees spent 74.5 percent of their regular hours doing in-person work, while it was 57.1 percent for the Energy Department.

EPA did not meet that goal. Its telework-eligible staff were in the office for 35.8 percent of their working hours, according to the OMB report.

Also at stake in the telework debate is federal office space going unused. Employees worked from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, and many have not returned to the worksite.

EPA is in the process of assessing its own real estate in its sprawling downtown Washington headquarters. The agency plans to release buildings left empty once that review is done next year.

The General Services Administration is also disposing of federal offices.

The government’s landlord announced last week that it would dispose eight properties in a bid to “right-size” its holdings. That move will reduce the federal real estate portfolio by 1.5 million square feet and save more than $475 million over 10 years.

Congress

Big Ten, SEC are on the clock as new college athletics bill is circulated

Published

26 minutes ago

July 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee are making changes to their big college sports overhaul in a bid to garner support from the nation’s two most powerful athletic conferences as they look to build Republican support ahead of a potential vote on the Senate floor.

Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the ranking member, made several concessions to the Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences in the latest draft of their Protect College Sports Act. They include protections against certain legal challenges and a new $20 million pool of funds that schools can use for retaining athletes, according to three people close to the negotiations.

It’s unclear whether the changes will be good enough to win over the two conferences. A senior Commerce Committee staffer asked the conferences to schedule a call with their general counsels and staff “ASAP” to discuss the text and gave them a 9 a.m. Wednesday deadline to decide whether they support the latest version of the bill, according to an email reviewed by Blue Light News.

Two lobbyists directly engaged on the bill said Tuesday that weeks of negotiations had not meaningfully addressed a litany of concerns the SEC and the Big Ten had with earlier versions of the bill.

The conferences demanded, for instance, that a provision allowing universities to jointly negotiate their media rights make clear that schools cannot be coerced into participating. The updated text includes a provision shielding schools who do not participate in media pooling from potential litigation, according to a copy of the draft obtained by Blue Light News.

The bill, however, leaves out another key demand of the conferences: a provision clarifying that postseason tournaments and contests would be excluded from media pooling.

It also retains a prohibition on conferences with over $700 million in revenue participating in mergers and acquisitions, which would impact both power conferences along with the Atlantic Coast Conference. That threshold was brought down from an earlier $1 billion limit, but the SEC and the Big Ten had hoped to see it stripped from the bill altogether.

The new text also includes a newly added section titled the “Ignite HBCUs Sports and Media Act.”

That section, which is still in flux, deals with “extraneous topics of broadband,” per the email sent to the conferences on Tuesday. The $20 million athlete retention pool also remains subject to change “as we discuss how to align the proper incentive for spending on women’s NIL,” according to the email.

Cruz remains determined to get the bill onto the floor before the Senate heads out of town for a scheduled recess next week. But time is running short, and he and Cantwell still need to win over wary senators on both sides of the aisle.

Congress

VA secretary’s role in failed vets bill stokes new round of White House, GOP frustration

Published

40 minutes ago

July 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

White House officials and House GOP leaders are increasingly frustrated with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, after they say he undermined a major veterans measure championed by Republicans, according to five people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The bill, which would expand benefits for tens of thousands of veterans, was abruptly pulled off the House floor earlier this month after a group of Republicans privately warned they would tank it. They were concerned they would end up being blamed for cutting benefits because of the way the bill proposed paying for the increase — and said that Collins’ VA hadn’t done enough to alleviate their worries.

“A self-inflicted loss at the hands of the VA secretary,” said one White House official after the vote.

The floor meltdown cost Republicans a legislative win just before the House departed for its summer recess — and scuttled a positive campaign issue ahead of the November elections. Johnson will now have to burn precious floor time in September if he wants to make another attempt.

And it’s just the latest move by Collins that has stoked backlash on Capitol Hill and inside the White House, after he irritated lawmakers by failing to give them advance warning about several high-profile changes, including staffing cuts and management reforms at the department.

Speaker Mike Johnson was so unhappy with the VA’s handling of the situation ahead of the veterans bill vote that he called the White House to press for a clarification from the VA about how it would change its rules to pay for the benefits expansion, according to three of the people, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive legislative dynamics.

Top Republicans involved said that the VA under Collins helped fuel opposition to the bill by issuing conflicting guidance about its own plans for veterans benefits. The VA ultimately issued a new statement to POLITICO just hours before the scheduled vote in an attempt to quell resistance. But it wasn’t enough.

Inside private meetings with GOP leaders ahead of the failed vote, key House Republicans said they had spoken with Collins about their concerns and he had at least in part agreed with them, according to three other people involved in the conversations.

Administration officials pushed back on the friction. White House assistant press secretary Olivia Wales said in a statement that Collins “is doing a great job and works tirelessly to deliver for our heroic veterans.”

VA press secretary Quinn Slaven said that officials have clearly outlined support for the measure in a statement of administration policy and in public statements. “Under the leadership of President [Donald] Trump, Secretary Collins is proud to work every day to make VA benefits better, faster and easier to use than ever before,” he said in a statement.

Senior House Republicans have relayed concerns to the White House about how both Collins and Don Bergin, the VA’s assistant secretary for congressional and legislative affairs, handled the matter.

Democrats and some veterans groups have strongly opposed the measure. Money for the expansion of aid for disabled veterans would be funded by cuts in future disability claims for tinnitus and sleep apnea cases, a rule change that has been planned since the Biden administration.

But officials from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans have attacked the plan as a dangerous precedent. Supporters, including House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Mike Bost (R-Ill.), have argued the savings will be returned to the U.S. Treasury if not used for other programs.

In the lead-up to the vote, VA officials had suggested that they may not go ahead with the changes, jeopardizing about $13 billion over the next decade that was slated to pay for the measure. Just hours before the House vote was pulled, department officials clarified that the sleep apnea and tinnitus revisions will move ahead in coming months regardless of the bill’s fate.

But several GOP members still expressed concerns about the uncertainty surrounding the bill. And after a blowup between the speaker, his allies and the GOP holdouts in his ceremonial office just off the House floor, Johnson had to pull the bill from the floor.

The normally even-keeled Johnson, deeply frustrated after the failed vote, said he and Republican supporters of the measure were battling “misinformation” swirling about the legislation.

Senior Republicans were especially upset that Collins appeared to be working against them even after the VA had a seat at the table to craft the legislation.

House Republicans who spoke with Collins about the legislation said he never directly told them to vote against the bill, but he discussed their and his concerns about the legislation in a way they felt okay remaining opposed to it, according to the three other people involved in the conversations.

But anything less than 100 percent endorsement from Collins was seen as a major blow to the bill — which GOP leadership and White House officials struggled to get to the floor and whip for weeks.

It was just the latest move from Collins, a former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who helped defend Trump through his first impeachment, that has rankled Capitol Hill leaders and officials inside the White House.

His reorganization of the VA, including an initial mass layoff proposal for 80,000 more firings across a roughly 480,000-person department drew fierce opposition from bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, including from the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said he was blindsided by the move.

“We don’t need to be reading memos in the paper about 20 percent cut at the VA,” Graham said at the time.

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) also said at that time that while the massive department is “in need of reform,” efforts to downsize “must be done in a more responsible manner,” Moran, who had been in close contact with VA, Collins and White House staff about personnel issues for weeks, added that lawmakers “need information” and that the numbers need to be “justifiable.”

Collins has also triggered the anger of Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill — he agreed to testify before House appropriators in May only after lawmakers voted to withhold funding for the agency if he didn’t. A VA spokesperson at the time denied GOP lawmakers had to pressure Collins to appear.

Collins’ handling of the veterans’ bill has also shaken his relationship with some White House officials — who are tracking how many days a week Collins is in Washington versus his home state of Georgia, according to two of the people involved in the conversations.

Congress

Blanche vote could be postponed, Cornyn says

Published

3 hours ago

July 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A crucial committee vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general could be postponed, Sen. John Cornyn said Tuesday, amid a struggle over changing a settlement agreement Blanche brokered between President Donald Trump and the IRS.

Cornyn (R-Texas) said a delay in the planned Senate Judiciary Committee vote Thursday is “being discussed but hopefully … won’t be necessary” as he pushes for ironclad modifications to the IRS settlement that created a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and immunized Trump from tax audits.

“If there’s not enough votes to confirm him, then Senator Grassley might decide to postpone it. But I don’t think that’s the No. 1 goal right now,” Cornyn said, referring to Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

Cornyn said he had discussed the idea of postponement with other senators but not directly with Grassley. A spokesperson for Grassley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has also been undecided on Blanche’s nomination, have significant leverage. Due to blanket Democratic opposition, it would take only one Republican “no” to effectively kill Blanche’s nomination.

Cornyn and his staff have been talking to the Justice Department about modifying the settlement, and the senator insists he wants the changes in writing.

“They know what they need to do,” Cornyn said Tuesday about DOJ. “They just don’t want to do it.”