• The good news about your Thrift Savings Plan for June: Only two funds saw month-over-month drops. As for the other funds, 13 of 14 experienced minimal growth of less than 1% from May to June. The big winner last month was the S fund, with a growth rate of 4.34%. The S fund also remains the top performing TSP account for all of 2026, increasing by more than 18%. The I, C and eight of nine L funds also continue to bring back double digit returns since January.
• The federal retirement process has gone fully digital. The Office of Personnel Management said it has officially ended paper-based retirement processing for over 95% of applications. Nearly all retirement claims will now be submitted through OPM’s online retirement application. Over the past year, more than 155,000 retirement applications have been processed through the online platform. The transition marks an end to a paper-based system that was in place for decades.
• The Postal Service is getting back into the apparel business. It’s partnering with the clothing brand The Laundry Room to release licensed sweatshirts, graphic tee shirts, baseball hats and jackets. USPS is no stranger to the fashion world. It’s done other apparel deals with Vans, Forever 21 and Ralph Lauren.
• The Office of Personnel Management and Merit Systems Protection Board want to make it easier to remove federal employees for performance or misconduct reasons. In a new 81-page proposed rule set to come out today, OPM and MSPB are jointly seeking to change the administrative procedures used to fire employees and the review of such actions before the board. The draft regulations, which are already eliciting concerns from the American Federation of Government Employees and former federal human resources executives, focus on three significant changes. One change would require more training for managers. A second would reduce the time an employee could be put on a performance improvement plan to 30 days. A third would change the MSPB review process and remove the use of Douglas Factors. Comments on the proposed rule are due by early August.
• The Office of Personnel Management plans to take a more hands-off approach to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. Agencies, rather than OPM, would be responsible for surveying their own employees, according to a proposal this week from the Trump administration. Agencies would still be required to include a set of core questions, with the option of adding agency-specific ones. OPM is seeking to revise those core questions too. It’s proposing to cut questions about workload and job satisfaction, but add ones back in about poor performers.
• The Department of Government Efficiency is in its final days, but don’t expect a final DOGE report from the White House. DOGE’s official mandate ends on the Fourth of July. But Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told House lawmakers this week that there are no plans to release a closing report on the organization’s cost cutting efforts. DOGE’s first leader, Elon Musk, said at the outset that the goal was to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. DOGE would eventually claim $215 billion in savings, a figure that’s disputed by budget experts. More than 260,000 federal employees also departed government under DOGE-led initiatives.
• The Department of Homeland Security has a new primary liaison to the business community. Brett Scott said he’ll serve as deputy assistance secretary in DHS’s Private Sector Office. Scott most recently served in the department’s Office of Legislative Affairs. He’s also previously served as a congressional staffer and as senior government affairs officer at the Transportation Department, in addition to various roles in industry. DHS’s Private Sector Office is responsible for coordinating with businesses and industry associations involved in the department’s various mission areas.
• The top healthcare official at the Department of Veterans Affairs is stepping down after less than a year on the job. Undersecretary for Health John Bartrum told staff in an email that he will resign from his position, effective July 6. In this role, he oversaw VA’s nationwide health care system, which serves more than nine million veterans. Bartrum joined the VA in the early days of the second Trump administration, and was confirmed for his current role last December. As undersecretary for health, Bartrum played a leading role in the VA’s resumed rollout of its new Electronic Health Record. The VA started deploying the new system to medical centers in April, after a three-year hiatus to address persistent outages and usability issues.
• It's a story of watchdogs watching watchdogs. On the heels of a Government Accountability Office report criticizing the panel that holds inspectors general accountable, a group of Republican congressmen are calling for new laws to strengthen that oversight. Members of the House Oversight Committee want the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency to tighten up how it runs investigations and report back on the status of multiple open cases. The lawmakers said they'll even consider revoking the council's ability to conduct oversight.
• The Defense Department is getting a drone czar. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a memo yesterday that DoD will centralize oversight of unmanned and autonomous systems under a newly created portfolio manager who reports to the deputy defense secretary. Their goal is to consolidate expertise on one of the Pentagon’s top tech priorities and streamline the process of getting new drones into the field. The department hasn't announced who will fill the position first. That announcement comes as some in Congress have floated the idea of a new combatant command to oversee daily drone use around the world.

Copyright © 2026 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.