The Daily Scoop Podcast

The high-stakes dispute between Anthropic and the U.S. military led to a sweeping decision Friday by President Donald Trump to remove the AI startup’s technology from all federal agencies. Already, several agencies are taking action. The General Services Administration, Department of State, and Department of Health and Human Services immediately indicated in public statements, comments, or internal emails that they were moving to boot Anthropic. The fallout is sure to continue as agencies untangle the Claude maker from their workflows. The clash centered on the Defense Department wanting Anthropic to remove stipulations that limited the military’s use of the startup’s technology in real-world operations, DefenseScoop previously reported. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement Thursday that the company could not accede to the request “in good conscience. Madhu Gottumukkala is out as acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, with current agency executive director for cybersecurity Nick Andersen replacing him as the interim leader. News of Gottumukkala’s departure breaks one day after CyberScoop reported on widespread dismay with the agency’s performance during the first year of the Trump administration, with significant criticism aimed at Gottumukkala’s leadership on both sides of the aisle after a number of unflattering stories about his stewardship. “Madhu Gottumukkala has done a remarkable job in a thankless task of helping reform CISA back to its core statutory mission,” a Department of Homeland Security official told CyberScoop Thursday. “He tackled the woke, weaponized, and bloated bureaucracy that existed at CISA, wrangling contracts to save American taxpayer dollars.” Gottumukkala, served as chief information officer under then-South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, now secretary of DHS, before he was picked as deputy director of the agency. Sean Plankey’s nomination to serve as full-time director of CISA has stalled, leaving Gottumukkala as the acting director in his place. Gottumukkala will take on a new role at DHS, as director of strategic implementation. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security is impacting the preparation of cities hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup, according to stakeholder testimony Tuesday. Beginning Sunday, Secretary Kristi Noem halted all non-disaster-related Federal Emergency Management Agency response efforts and scaled back FEMA operations to “bare-minimum, life-saving operations only.” Host city representatives said the agency has yet to send out the $625 million investment — referred to as the FIFA World Cup Grant Program — that Congress already appropriated as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The FIFA World Cup Grant Program is meant to support security activities, including training and readiness exercises, cybersecurity defense and operational requirements associated with increased information sharing and analysis needs. With just over 100 days before the World Cup festivities begin, officials advocated for the release of funding during a House Homeland Security hearing. The Department of State announced nearly 50 indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity awards under its Evolve program aimed at IT modernization last week. In a notice posted to SAM.gov, the department said 28 contractors had received awards spanning five function categories for services related to IT management, cloud and data centers, application development, network and telecommunications, and end user support. The contract has a ceiling of $10 billion and a base period of one year plus six one-year option periods. Of all the categories, cloud and data center services and application development had the most awardees, with 14 and 13 respectively. Leidos and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) had the highest number of awards across the categories, winning four contracts each. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Cybersecurity has been getting bigger recognition as an integrated enabler in key U.S. military operations in Iran and Venezuela. That comes on the heels of the Pentagon last year introducing a new cyber mission force generation model as part of the larger Cybercom 2.0 effort. So, who better to discuss the growing prominence of cyber in the defense space than the principal cyber advisors of the various branches overseeing cyber-kinentic integration. At CyberTalks, Daily Scoop host Billy Mitchell hosted a panel with those leaders and a representative from industry to hear the latest on this emerging space. Joining him on the panel were the PCAs from each service — Ann Marie Schumann of the Department of the Navy, Wanda Jones Heath of the Department of the Air Force and Brandon Pugh of the Army — as well as Dave Galoppo, senior director for full spectrum cyber at GDIT. The Department of Energy is rapidly building out multidisciplinary teams to support the Genesis Mission as it prepares to unveil a minimum viable product later this year, according to a senior agency official. The format for the demonstration is to be determined, but progress is palpable. “We’re going to show quite a lot of results this year,” Darío Gil, DOE’s under secretary for science and director of the Genesis Mission, said in an interview with FedScoop. “We’re going to show results on our progress of building AI supercomputers … the software and the agentic framework.” The agency also plans to showcase the efforts behind the data curation used to train “next generation” AI and the results tied to the application of AI in science and engineering, he added. The Genesis Mission launched in November 2025 by way of an executive order that tasked the Energy Department with leading a national, coordinated effort to accelerate innovation and discovery with the latest advancements in AI, quantum and high-performance computing. As part of the initiative, the agency is working to build an integrated platform that draws on federal scientific datasets and expertise from public and private sectors. A demonstration of the Genesis platform’s initial capabilities is required by mid-year, according to the deadlines outlined in the presidential directive. A pullback of educational requirements for federal contracting jobs, including in technology work, moved one step closer to reality Monday. The Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act (H.R. 5235) sailed through the House and now awaits Senate consideration. The bill from Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., would ban minimum education requirements for personnel in some contracts. Introducing the bill on the House floor ahead of Monday’s vote, Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., said the legislation ensures federal contractors can “hire who they want to hire without additional red tape.” Mace, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, recounted January 2024 testimony from an IBM executive who said “federal contractors are rarely able to place an individual without a four-year degree on a technology services contract, regardless of their qualifications.” Mace said the issue goes “beyond technology and service contracts,” affecting work across the federal government. Eliminating four-year degree requirements would do away with “a paper ceiling” that blocks “talented Americans” from pursuing opportunities in the billion-dollar industry that “shapes the entire labor market,” she said. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

After a series of protests that led to a protracted evaluation period, the General Services Administration is moving forward with the Alliant 3 procurement, announcing Friday the first round of awards for the governmentwide IT services contract. GSA said in an online award notice that it received 133 proposals for the Alliant 3 Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) solicitation and selected 43 winners for the first phase. Those not chosen are still eligible for future award phases until the agency has selected all 76 recipients, per the notice. The announcement comes more than a year after the GSA issued the request for proposals for the next iteration of the GWAC award, which has no maximum dollar ceiling, due to unsuccessful bid protests from multiple vendors. The latest iteration of the vehicle is a multiple-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for a variety of IT-based services that builds upon the GSA’s Alliant and Alliant 2 GWACs. With these awards, agencies can issue task orders for services including cybersecurity, data solutions, systems engineering and cloud services, the GSA said. Longtime government contractors like Maximus, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics Information Technology, and Leidos were among the 43 phase one winners. Democratic lawmakers are once again pushing back on the Department of Homeland Security’s expansive use of surveillance technology, with more than a dozen members of a House Oversight subcommittee expressing concern in a letter to Secretary Kristi Noem over the agency’s processes for collection and analysis of cellphone data.The representatives pointed to recent reports of the agency procuring tools from Penlink, which is said to collect cellphone location data and allow customers to search for devices, and Paragon, a vendor known to enable access to a mobile device without the owner’s knowledge or consent. Without guardrails, these tools introduce risks to data privacy and civil liberties, according to the signatories of the letter, which was led by Rep. Shontel Brown of Ohio, ranking member of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation. “Location data can reveal intimate details of a person’s life, including where they live, work, worship, go to school, or seek medical care,” the lawmakers said. “DHS could use these tools to identify individuals for targeting based solely on their presence in certain locations, without a warrant or probable cause and regardless of their citizenship or residency status.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Federal Chief Information Officer Greg Barbaccia will be adding two new titles — at least temporarily — to his work in government. The General Services Administration announced Thursday that Barbaccia will join the agency as the acting director of Technology Transformation Services. He’ll be replacing Thomas Shedd, one of the few officials left at the agency who helped carry out the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s cost-cutting initiative last year. Shedd will remain at the agency as its senior advisor for fraud prevention, which the GSA said is “an area of increasing importance for the agency and the administration.” The federal CIO was also tapped as senior advisor to the GSA administrator, the agency said. In this role, advising former privacy equity executive Edward Forst, Barbaccia will focus on “emerging technologies, best practices in digital delivery, and cross-government collaboration.” The Pentagon will adhere to existing laws and regulations associated with surveillance, security and democratic processes as it fast-tracks the military’s frontier AI adoption, but it won’t permit companies supplying the technology to determine its rules for operation, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael told DefenseScoop. His comments come as the Defense Department is locked in a high-stakes dispute with Anthropic about the U.S. military’s use of the startup’s Claude AI model in real-world operations. During a meeting with a small group of reporters on the sidelines of the annual Microelectronics Commons summit Thursday, Michael provided updates on the department’s GenAI.mil rollout and pushed for the ethics-related rift between the Pentagon and Anthropic to be resolved. “I believe and hope that they will ‘cross the Rubicon’ and say, ‘This is common sense. The military has certain use cases. There are laws and regulations that govern how those use cases can be done. We’re willing to comply with them,’” he said. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Inadequate information-sharing and deficient data practices across the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense were to blame, in part, for the midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport last year, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report. NTSB found that the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization was “made aware of and had multiple opportunities to identify the risk of a midair collision between airplanes and helicopters,” yet insufficient data analysis, safety assurance systems and risk assessment processes “failed to recognize and mitigate.” While the Army was “unaware” of certain risks tied to DCA due to a nonexistent flight safety data-monitoring program for its helicopters, NTSB also found the Army had a weak safety management system that failed to consistently detect hazards. “The limited access to and use of available objective and subjective proximity data hindered industry and government stakeholders’ ability to identify hazards and mitigate risk,” NTSB said in its report. As part of NTSB’s analysis, the watchdog had 50 to 60 staff members on the investigation, who gathered 19,000 pages of evidence, Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the NTSB, testified during a Senate hearing Thursday. The collision, ultimately, was preventable, she said. After successfully launching its own internal chatbot and normalizing the use of artificial intelligence tools for translation, summarization and other diplomatically beneficial uses, the State Department is eyeing the next step in its journey with the emerging technology. “We’re going to roll out agentic AI,” State Department CIO Kelly Fletcher said Thursday during the FedScoop-produced GDIT Emerge event in Washington, D.C. “We’re going to continue to embed AI in our systems.” The State Department has been a federal leader in AI adoption, reflected in robust use case inventories and a general embrace of the technology at its highest levels. Current tech leaders remain focused on trying to “democratize access to generative AI” throughout the agency, Fletcher said. That likely means that any shift toward agentic AI won’t come with a snap of the fingers. Still, the department is currently looking to “consolidate and standardize and simplify around commodities,” she said, which could cover everything from end-user devices to help desks. “It sounds really wonky,” Fletcher added, but “the more you can make it easy for people to do their job, to reduce administrative friction, the better off you’re going to be, right? Part of that is agents. Part of that is consolidation.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Customs and Border Protection has increased deployments of surveillance technology along the northern border over the past five years despite sluggish hiring levels of IT personnel needed to monitor the tech, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office published Thursday. The staffing rate for information systems specialists has remained below target levels for half a decade but the gap has widened since 2023. CBP officials pointed to low pay, a lengthy background investigation process, a limited local applicant pool, high cost of living and minimal career advancement opportunities as drivers of attrition and the inability to fill open positions. GAO conducted the audit over a nearly two-year period, starting in April 2024 and concluding this month. In examining CBP’s northern border facilities, the watchdog found that CBP did not have a strategy to address the critical staffing gap. The Department of Health and Human Services made several changes to its IT leadership recently, including the addition of a new acting deputy chief information officer and acting deputy chief AI officer. A webpage listing leadership within the Office of the Chief Information Officer currently has David Hong as acting deputy CIO and Arman Sharma as acting deputy chief AI officer. Meanwhile, Kevin Duvall, who was previously deputy CIO and acting deputy CAIO, is no longer on the page. The apparent change-up comes amid reports of a personnel shake-up at the health agency. On Friday, CNN reported that two top aides to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were departing and new senior counselors would be installed. Those changes were related to preparations for midterm elections, per CNN. It is not clear if the IT leadership changes were for similar reasons. While there is no public indication of when Hong and Sharma began serving as acting deputies, the changes appear to have been made recently. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel — not American service members — shot down an object with a military laser earlier this week near El Paso, Texas, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. Troops with Joint Task Force – Southern Border were not authorized to shoot down drones in the area. The task force — which works hand-in-hand with federal law enforcement and serves as the primary military entity for the U.S.-Mexico border mission — trained CBP personnel on the equipment who used it during the incursion. A source familiar told DefenseScoop that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved the transfer of a military counter-drone system to CBP. Sources did not identify the specific laser system that was used. U.S. Border Patrol falls under CBP. The operation reportedly caused interagency turmoil between the Pentagon and Federal Aviation Administration, prompting the latter to issue a 10-day flight restriction that lasted only hours into Wednesday. The Internal Revenue Service moved forward this week with plans to involuntarily move employees with no direct tax experience to perform customer service and analysis duties for this year’s filing season. According to email notices obtained by FedScoop, multiple IRS employees from the agency’s IT and human capital office were informed Monday that they were assigned to a 120-day involuntary detail to the agency’s Taxpayer Services division, as either a customer service representative or a tax examiner. The detail, effective Feb. 22, could be extended beyond the four-month period, per the notice. Joseph Ziegler, the agency’s chief of internal consulting, stated in the notice that neither position will require direct engagement with taxpayers or answering phones, adding that the tax filing season is the “most important time” of the year for the agency. It is unclear how many employees were affected by the temporary reorganization, but it follows a series of shakeups and losses for the agency. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s top official rejected claims from lawmakers Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security component is building a database for protesters. The alleged detractor database has been referenced in several reports by think tanks, letters to DHS officials from lawmakers and in interviews with border czar Tom Homan. During Tuesday’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing, Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., cited a well-circulated clip of an ICE agent in Portland, Maine, telling a person videotaping that she would be added to a “nice little database.” “I can’t speak for that individual,” said Todd Lyons, who serves as acting director of ICE. “But I can assure you that there is no database that’s tracking United States citizens.” Despite Lyons’ pushback on the database claims, skepticism is persistent as stakeholders point to reports to the contrary. FedScoop reached out to DHS for clarification. Tricia McLaughlin, the agency’s assistant security for public affairs, reaffirmed that there is no database of domestic terrorists run by DHS. “We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement,” McLaughlin said in an email. “Obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime.” A recent attempt at a destructive cyberattack on Poland’s power grid has prompted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to publish a warning for U.S. critical infrastructure owners and operators. Tuesday’s alert follows a Jan. 30 report from Poland’s Computer Emergency Response Team concluded the December attack overlapped significantly with infrastructure used by a Russian government-linked hacking group, and that it targeted 30 wind and photovoltaic farms, among others. CISA said its warning was meant to “amplify” that Polish report. In particular, CISA said the attack highlighted the threats to operational technology and industrial control systems, most commonly used in the energy and manufacturing sectors. And CISA’s alert continues a recent agency focus on securing edge devices like routers or firewalls, after a binding operational directive last week to federal agencies to strip unsupported products from their systems. “The malicious cyber activity highlights the need for critical infrastructure entities with vulnerable edge devices to act now to strengthen their cybersecurity posture against cyber threat activities targeting OT and ICS,” the alert reads. CISA urged owners and operators to review the Polish report, as well as security guidance from other U.S. agencies. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Many Americans by now have received their W-2s or other important tax documents, which can only mean one thing: it’s officially tax filing season. You might be ready to submit your documents, but is the IRS itself ready? That’s a big question mark looming over the 2026 filing season after the tax agency unleashed seismic cuts to its workforce last year and has pumped the breaks on many of its efforts to modernize. Matt Bracken, editor in chief of FedScoop, has kept close watch of the IRS under the second Trump administration, chronicling the cuts made in 2025 and measuring the possible impact that could have on processing times and backlogs during this filing season. Matt joins the podcast to discuss the outlook for 2026 tax filing, how AI comes into play and much more about the tax agency’s ongoing efforts to modernize. The Defense Department announced Monday that it will incorporate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into the military’s generative AI platform that’s already being used by more than a million personnel. ChatGPT has been wildly popular in the commercial sector since it was widely released in 2022. Now the Pentagon plans to add the tech to its GenAI.mil system, which DOD leadership — including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — have been pushing hard for the department’s employees to use since it was launched in December. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force and Marine Corps have already adopted the system as their preferred generative AI platform. The Department of Energy is launching a Genesis Mission Consortium as its latest move to deepen the public-private partnerships fueling the AI platform. The initiative, announced Monday, will facilitate structured partnerships as well as working groups, which will focus on ensuring model validation and reliability, addressing data governance and compliance standards, enabling federated data sharing and accelerating research throughput via reduced operational bottlenecks. The consortium will act as a “collaborative hub” and a “single, coordinated access point” for members and resources, according to the agency. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Department of Homeland Security’s watchdog office has launched an audit of the agency’s privacy practices amid allegations that DHS and its components have used facial recognition tools and other technologies to collect data broadly and violate civil liberties.

The Office of Personnel Management finalized a new classification Thursday for career federal workers in policy-related roles that will effectively make them easier to terminate. The new “Schedule Policy/Career” creates an administrative category for nonpolitical “career” federal employees who work in roles that are defined as influencing policy. Workers added to that classification will be converted to “at-will” employees and will no longer be eligible for adverse action procedures or the ability to appeal terminations. Roughly 50,000 employees will be subject to the change, per an estimate in the final rule. Despite the administration’s assertion that the new schedule is for “accountability” and will not be subject to political loyalty tests, federal employee advocates have long argued the policy is a thinly veiled attempt to strip career employees of safeguards in an effort to replace them with workers who are politically aligned with the president. The announcement from OPM on Thursday stated that the final rule explicitly does not allow discrimination based on politics, prohibits use of the new schedule to reshape the workforce or conduct mass layoffs, and would protect whistleblowers. OPM also stated that it would take on a role to review agency actions to ensure they are compliant. A Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency order published Thursday directs federal agencies to stop using “edge devices” like firewalls and routers that their manufacturers no longer support. It’s a stab at tackling one of the most persistent and difficult-to-manage avenues of attack for hackers, a vector that has factored into some of the most consequential and most common types of exploits in recent years. New edge-device vulnerabilities surface frequently. Under the binding operational directive CISA released Thursday, federal civilian executive branch (FCEB) agencies must inventory edge devices in their systems that vendors no longer support within three months, and replace those on a dedicated list with supported devices within one year. To aid agencies in following the directive, CISA is producing a list of end-of-service edge devices. CISA developed the directive in conjunction with the Office of Management and Budget, and puts a bit more muscle behind a decade-old OMB circular on agencies phasing out unsupported technologies. Despite being called “binding operational directives,” CISA has no authority to mandate that agencies carry out the orders — although agencies have demonstrated they usually seek to follow them, and there are ways that CISA can work to ensure compliance. The private sector pays attention to CISA’s directives even though they don’t apply to companies. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee advanced several tech-related bills Wednesday, including legislation to strengthen the Technology Modernization Fund, reform federal IT procurement and pare down educational requirements for agency cybersecurity roles. The TMF, which was created by law in 2017 to fund tech modernization projects across agencies, has been the subject of much hand-wringing in govtech circles after Congress let the funding vehicle expire late last year. The Modernizing Government Technology Reform Act (H.R. 2985), however, would get the TMF back on track, reauthorizing the TMF and its governing board through 2032. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who chairs House Oversight’s Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation Subcommittee, said it was her “privilege” to work with former Rep. Gerry Connolly on the bill before he died of cancer last May, calling the late Virginia Democrat one of TMF’s “strongest supporters” and a “good-faith partner” on the bill. Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, ranking member of the cybersecurity subcommittee and co-sponsor of the TMF bill, said extending the TMF “is critical to ensuring federal agencies, many of which still rely on outdated IT systems, can modernize their infrastructure and defend against growing cyber threats.” In addition to reauthorizing the TMF, the bill would require agencies to “fully reimburse the fund” at levels that ensure it remains operational through 2032, per the bill text. The legislation also requires agencies to pay back administrative fees and create inventories of their legacy IT. The bill also included an amendment from Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., Connolly’s longtime chief of staff, that would require the Government Accountability Office to issue biannual reports on how TMF funds have been used to address legacy IT projects the watchdog deems high-priority. Improving government IT systems is also top of mind in the Federal Improvement in Technology (FIT) Procurement Act (H.R. 4123), which advanced out the committee by a 42-0 margin. The legislation would streamline the federal procurement process for small businesses and push federal contracting officers to examine larger acquisitions “where the potential for waste, fraud and abuse is high,” said House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer. The Kentucky Republican noted that the bill would increase the micro-purchase threshold from $10,000 to $25,000 and raise the simplified-acquisition threshold from $250,000 to $500,000. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Education Department’s workers union is pushing back after more than 100 technology-related employees lost their collective bargaining protections last month under an executive order citing national security and cybersecurity risks tied to their roles. About 120 employees in the agency’s Office of the Chief Information Officer and Federal Student Aid’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer were told late last month they no longer had union protections due to the nature of their positions, according to AFGE Local 252, which represents Education Department employees. The notification came nearly nine months after President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending collective bargaining rights for labor unions at various federal agencies. The order included some agencies in their entirety, along with some positions across the government that have a determined “primary function” involving intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work. While the CTO and OCIO employees work with technology that could have cybersecurity ties, AFGE Local 252 argues this does not involve intelligence work that would warrant such a ban. “The Department of Education does not engage in any intelligence, counter-intelligence, investigative, or national security work,” AFGE 252 President Rachel Gittleman told FedScoop in an interview, suggesting the move is “just a way to strip labor rights of our federal workforce.” The FSA CTO office specifically does “work on technology” and products, but not information resources management, as the order states, Gittleman explained. FSA employees primarily focus on the office’s website, income-driven repayment applications, FAFSA, and public service loan forgiveness applications. An American stealth fighter jet shot down an Iranian one-way attack drone in the Arabian Sea Tuesday after it “aggressively approached” a U.S. aircraft carrier “with unclear intent,” according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. Just hours after the shootdown, two Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ships accompanied by another unmanned aerial system — this one an Iranian Mohajer drone — approached a U.S.-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, threatening to board and seize the vessel, the statement from Centcom spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins said. The dual incidents could spell increased tensions between Washington and Tehran after President Donald Trump threatened military action against Iran over its deadly suppression of protests last month and amid broader nuclear negotiations that could begin this week. The jet, an F-35C Lightning II, launched from the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was transiting the Arabian Sea roughly 500 miles from Iran’s southern coast, Centcom said. The Centcom statement did not identify the unit the jet belongs to, but Marine Fighter Attack Squadron-314, the Black Knights, were photographed by the military operating off the Lincoln several days ago. The long-range Iranian drone — a Shahed-139 UAS known for its use in the Russia-Ukraine war and being reverse-engineered into a U.S. military one-way attack drone — “continued to fly toward the ship despite de-escalatory measures taken by U.S. forces operating in international waters,” the command said. The F-35C shot it down “in self-defense” and to protect the Lincoln and her crew, according to the statement, which said that no service members were harmed and no American equipment was damaged. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

As part of its effort to root out the waste and abuse of government resources, the Trump administration has recently placed fraud squarely in its crosshairs. With that, senior government officials and other policymakers have pointed to the need for stronger and more prevalent identity verification to combat fraud. An expert in digital identity verification, Jordan Burris, former chief of staff to the federal CIO during the first Trump administration and part of President Biden’s term and now head of public sector at Socure, joins the Daily Scoop to discuss the ongoing issues around identity fraud, the U.S.’s journey to a national digital identity verification system and why Washington has struggled so much to get identity right. The Department of Energy is piloting Grok, the generative AI tool from Elon Musk’s xAI, within its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, according to the agency’s AI use case inventory. The pilot began at the end of June 2025 and has been used to find general answers to questions, summarize information and create documents. The Grok pilot comes at a time when the Energy Department is pursuing ambitious AI goals as part of its role in leading the Trump administration’s Genesis Mission. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has repeatedly characterized the AI effort as “the Manhattan Project of our time.” Grok has been a controversial addition to the federal government’s workflows since the start, following its posting of racist and antisemitic comments last July. A group of more than 30 advocacy organizations called on the Office of Management and Budget to prohibit the use of Grok across the federal government just a month after xAI launched “Grok for Government” last summer. Grok has continued to dominate headlines in the months since. The chatbot has generated biased or misleading claims, garnering the attention of foreign governments and domestic watchdogs. The Department of Veterans Affairs has tapped former government technology leader Zack Schwartz to serve as the next principal deputy assistant secretary for the agency’s Office of Information and Technology. In this role, Schwartz will “oversee technology strategy, daily IT operations, cybersecurity, systems modernization, and service delivery across the department,” VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence wrote in a LinkedIn post Monday. Schwartz will work under Lawrence, who also serves as the agency’s acting chief information officer and assistant secretary for OIT. Schwartz joins the VA with more than a decade of government IT experience, having previously served at the Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau. These roles involved work on modernization and agency-wide transformation initiatives, Lawrence said. Schwartz announced the move on LinkedIn Sunday evening, writing that he appreciates “the many colleagues across VA who supported my transition and welcomed me into the role.” Schwartz most recently served as the chief information and technology officer at Events DC, an events hosting company, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The U.S. government wants the rest of the world to adopt its artificial intelligence cybersecurity standards, a top official with the Office of the National Cyber Director said Thursday. As part of an effort to advance American AI, the administration will be “undertaking diplomacy efforts to promote American AI cybersecurity standards and norms, establishing industry best practices for secure AI deployment and harnessing the full potential of AI tools,” said Alexandra Seymour, principal deputy assistant national cyber director for policy. Seymour’s comments at the 2026 Identity, Authentication, and the Road Ahead Policy Forum in Washington, D.C. partially reflect the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan released last summer, which said the departments of Commerce and State would “vigorously advocate for international AI governance approaches that promote innovation, reflect American values, and counter authoritarian influence,” but doesn’t explicitly mention international promotion of cybersecurity standards. Some of that effort has already materialized, with internationally oriented guides released in both May and December. The United States also isn’t the only one looking to influence international standards for AI security. AI also figures into the yet-to-be-released national cybersecurity strategy that Seymour’s office has been developing. And it dovetails with a pillar of the strategy focused on defending federal networks. Seymour said: “While AI is already helping industries enhance security and address the challenge of escalating cyberattacks, this administration will promote the rapid implementation of AI-enabled cyber defensive tools to detect, divert and deceive threat actors who continue targeting our vital systems and sectors on our federal systems. We must get our house in order. They need rapid modernization, and we’re working on policies to harden our networks, update our technologies and ensure we’re prepared for a post-quantum future.”

The U.S. government has backed out of an organization it helped found that’s aimed at improving how governments can better serve their citizens. The Open Government Partnership announced Wednesday that the U.S. had formally withdrawn its membership, adding to a growing list of organizations the administration has departed. Despite the U.S. being one of the founding nations of the organization in 2011, the General Services Administration’s head, Edward Forst, wrote to the group’s leadership this month to notify them of the decision. Per a copy of that letter published by OGP, Forst said the country’s participation in the organization “has become at best ineffective and at worst detrimental to advancing” principles outlined in the nation’s founding documents, though he didn’t cite specific documents. Forst implied that the body “seeks to erode U.S. national sovereignty” and went on to blame its “embrace of divisive ideological agendas” as a reason the nation dropped its membership. Forst wrote: “Racial identity politics, anti-police bias, LGBTQ+ advocacy, feminism, and climate alarmism have increasingly dominated OGP’s policy agenda. These divisive agendas, driven by extreme ideological cliques, have destroyed the ability of OGP to credibly operate as a voice for transparency.” That rhetoric echoes the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, from the federal government — whether through the termination of grants, positions, organizations, or data points. Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia are asking the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general to look into the agency’s broad data collection and analysis processes, according to a letter sent to the DHS IG on Thursday. The duo tasked Inspector General Joseph Cuffari with investigating the methods of data storage and use for personally identifying information, whether DHS immigration enforcement activities are based on data coming from other agencies or third parties, and where DHS collects data from, among other topics. The senators wrote in the letter: “We write to you to express our concern that the Department of Homeland Security is collecting sensitive personal data that can be used to circumvent civil liberty protections, including those guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment. This matter deserves your office’s immediate attention, and we request that your office audit DHS’ immigration procurement activities to determine whether they have led to violations of federal law and other regulations that maintain privacy and defend against unlawful searches.” Lawmakers have kept their eyes on the use of technology within the department, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in particular. In recent months, DHS has aimed to broaden its authorities by amending rules around data use and collections. Lawmakers have warned of eroding privacy protections and public trust if safeguards aren’t established. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Department of Homeland Security is actively working on 200-plus artificial intelligence use cases, a nearly 37% increase compared to July 2025, according to its latest AI inventory posted Wednesday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a driving force behind the growth. ICE added 25 AI use cases since its disclosure last summer, including to process tips, review mobile device data relevant to investigations, confirm identities of individuals via biometric data and detect intentional misidentification. Of the newly added uses at ICE, three are products from Palantir, which has been a notable — and at times controversial — technology partner for the U.S. government under the Trump administration. Quinn Anex-Ries, a senior policy analyst focused on equity and civic tech at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit technology policy organization, told FedScoop: “This inventory is coming out at a moment where there are significant, widespread questions about the legality of actions being taken by DHS and their potential infringement on the civil liberties and privacy of millions of people across the country.” Anex-Ries added: “There are some initial indications that the inventory leaves us wanting for more.” The annual inventory process stems from a 2020 executive order during the first Trump administration that was later enshrined into federal statute. The Department of Transportation is reopening a request for information that centered around the Federal Aviation Administration’s handling of unmanned aircraft systems. In this extended, two-week comment period, the FAA is seeking additional insights on aircraft location-tracking devices, detection technologies and safety standards as it looks to finalize the drone-related rules. The FAA has already received around 3,100 comments and hosted two listening sessions with relevant stakeholders, according to the extension announcement scheduled to be published Wednesday on the Federal Register. Still, the FAA wants to “ensure that it fully understands” comments surrounding its proposed policies for location-tracking, data-sharing and detection technologies. The initial inquiry was set in motion by President Donald Trump’s June executive order, called “Unleashing American Drone Dominance.” The president directed the FAA to publish a final rule that would enable drone-based Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations for commercial and public safety purposes within 240 days, which would be Feb. 1. The original RFI had a broader scope and concluded in October despite receiving two requests for an extension. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Pentagon said it consolidated policies around protecting American military facilities from drone threats after unclear guidance that left base commanders scrambling on how to respond and years of increased unmanned aerial system sightings over key Defense Department assets. Drone incursions over American military bases jumped considerably over the last several years, alarming officials, and a Pentagon watchdog report released last week said the DOD’s confused policies meant some facilities in the U.S. couldn’t adequately protect themselves. Following the release of the Defense Department Inspector General report last Tuesday, which noted dire gaps in military counter-UAS policy that limited base responses to drone threats, the Pentagon said it had already adjusted its guidelines last month in an effort to give commanders “expanded authority and flexibility needed to dominate the airspace above their installations.” Countering drones in the U.S. is complex and has been a yearslong, thorny problem for the military, especially as the tech becomes ubiquitous for both hobbyists and adversaries. Stateside drone defense means navigating a delicate balance between protecting military installations while avoiding civilian harm or infrastructure damage. But the issue is only growing, top military officials have said, and the new guidance is the latest attempt by the Pentagon to manage it. The policies, which the release said was signed on Dec. 8 by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, expanded base commanders’ defensive area around facilities, explicitly identified any unauthorized drone surveillance over installations as a threat, allowed UAS sensor data sharing between other federal agencies and authorized top service leaders to designate facilities as “covered,” a special classification that allows for drone defense. With tax filing season officially gearing up, the Treasury Department’s watchdog is warning the IRS that its workforce reductions and delays to modernization projects have left the tax agency in a precarious position. In a memo sent Monday to the IRS commissioner, Diana M. Tengesdal, deputy inspector general for audit, wrote that the agency’s cuts have brought staffing back to October 2021 levels, prior to the Inflation Reduction Act funding infusion aimed at strengthening enforcement on wealthy individuals and corporations and modernizing antiquated IT systems. The loss of personnel has led to a backsliding on previous agency priorities, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration official noted, pointing specifically to a pandemic-created backlog of tax returns awaiting processing. The tax agency had made serious strides in addressing that backlog, TIGTA found in a September 2023 report, but Trump administration staff cuts combined with the recent government shutdown have led to inventory levels that are 129% higher than pre-pandemic figures. “Inventory that is not worked during the current processing year will be carried into the 2026 Filing Season and may affect the IRS’s ability to timely process tax returns during the filing season, especially with reduced staff,” Tengesdal wrote. “This could result in delays in taxpayers receiving refunds and could result in the IRS paying interest,” she continued. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The General Services Administration has leaned into its role as a central, shared services provider for the rest of the federal government during the second Trump administration. In particular, it has taken a leadership position centralizing most federal procurement under one roof and serving as a sort of clearinghouse for federal AI efforts. With so much transformation underway, the GSA during Trump 2.0 has taken on an even brighter spotlight, fueling federal operations. Miranda Nazzaro is the FedScoop reporter covering GSA during this pivotal time, and she joins the podcast to discuss some of the agency’s top priorities, from OneGov and the TMF to eliminating woke AI, among others. The Treasury Department said Monday that it would cancel all of its contracts with Booz Allen Hamilton, linking the decision to a former employee now serving prison time for leaking tax returns. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a three-paragraph press release that the agency’s 31 contracts with Booz Allen Hamilton — worth $21 million in total obligations and $4.8 million in annual spending — would be scrapped as part of President Donald Trump’s push to “root out waste, fraud and abuse.” “Canceling these contracts is an essential step to increasing Americans’ trust in government,” Bessent said. “Booz Allen failed to implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive data, including the confidential taxpayer information it had access to through its contracts with the Internal Revenue Service.” A Booz spokesperson said in an email to FedScoop that the firm was “surprised by this announcement” — especially given Treasury’s reasoning regarding Charles Edward Littlejohn, who between 2018 and 2020 leaked the confidential tax returns and information of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers. “Booz Allen fully supported the U.S. government in its investigation, and the government expressed gratitude for our assistance, which led to Littlejohn’s prosecution,” the Booz spokesperson said. “We were surprised by this announcement and look forward to discussing this matter with Treasury.” Per the Treasury release, the IRS determined that the data breach affected roughly 406,000 taxpayers. Littlejohn, who was sentenced to five years in prison last January after pleading guilty to one count of disclosing tax return information without authorization, leaked the returns of Trump, Elon Musk and other wealthy individuals to a pair of news organizations. NASA has a new top official for artificial intelligence and data. Kevin Murphy began serving in an acting capacity in both roles Nov. 30, 2025, NASA spokesperson Jennifer Dooren confirmed to FedScoop in an email. He replaces David Salvagnini, who was the agency’s CDO for roughly two-and-a-half years, and CAIO for just over a year-and-a-half. Salvagnini was the agency’s first-ever CAIO. According to Murphy’s LinkedIn, he has been at NASA for over 17 years. He first served as a system architect at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and has held a series of data-related roles, including chief science data officer. As the agency’s lead for data science, Murphy has already worked to advance technologies — such as cloud computing, machine learning, and data platforms — for use with NASA’s scientific data, per an agency bio. He also oversees the agency’s high-end computing capability (HECC) portfolio, which deploys computing technologies to support large-scale modeling, simulation and analysis at the agency. Murphy’s designation as acting CAIO and CDO comes after Salvagnini announced his plans to leave the agency in a LinkedIn post roughly two months ago. In that post, Salvagnini said he opted into the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program. He said he began his transition Oct. 31 and would retire from federal service in the spring of 2026.