The Daily Scoop Podcast

Elon Musk-led xAI is pursuing a FedRAMP High Authorization as part of the company’s efforts to expand adoption of its tool Grok across federal agencies and their workflows. The company’s authorization pursuit is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a partnership first reported Monday by Fast Company and confirmed by FedScoop through a source familiar with the matter. Typically, the metaphorical rubber stamp indicates a high level of rigor and shows that a tool is ripe for the federal government’s most sensitive workloads. To meet the FedRAMP High requirements, xAI will need to adhere to more than 400 security controls, a third-party assessment and documentation reviews for its Grok Enterprise for Government tool. All in all, the process could last a couple of years, according to estimates from accounting firm Schellman. Despite the lengthy road ahead, xAI’s pursuit of the authorization is already sending signals to federal agencies that the company is serious about courting them. For some, however, Grok’s infamous reputation could precede any security standards badge it may earn. Funding has emerged as a key factor in determining whether the Department of Energy can keep pace with its ambitious Genesis Mission timeline, according to Carl Coe, the agency’s chief of staff. Speaking at AITalks on Tuesday, Coe called Genesis a massive project that needs funding to reflect that. The Genesis Mission is framed by the Trump administration as a national effort to stand up supercomputers, double the productivity of the country’s research-and-development budget and launch a platform that combines quantum, high-performance computing and AI advancements. The effort kicked off in November via an executive order. Coe, who previously served as DOE’s Department of Government Efficiency lead, said that even though the White House allocated a good amount [of funding], Energy needs a lot more. Budget season is underway with the release of the White House’s agency-level funding proposals earlier this month, offering a peek behind the curtain at what could potentially be coming DOE’s way. 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 Transportation is launching a new campaign with a focus on gamers as part of an air traffic controller hiring push, according to a Friday announcement. The agency is targeting early career professionals for the technical role as it prepares to open its annual hiring window next week. “To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. “This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller.” The hiring push aims to attract candidates with “demonstrated high cognitive functions,” multitasking skills, spatial awareness and problem solving, according to the agency. The agency said the effort is focused on reaching talented young people pursuing alternative career paths, many of whom are active in gaming, adding that “feedback from controller exit interviews reinforces this, with several controllers pointing to gaming as an influence on their ability to think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity.” The Navy plans to use underwater drones in the coming days as part of its new effort to clear Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command announced Saturday. The strait is a critical maritime chokepoint for oil exported from the Middle East, and reopening it to more shipping traffic has been a top objective of President Donald Trump amid the shaky ceasefire between the United States and Iran that began a few days ago and paused Operation Epic Fury, the military name for the American war effort against Tehran that kicked off Feb. 28. Last month, the New York Times reported that Iranian forces were using small boats to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz. On Friday, the outlet reported that the Iranians cannot locate all the mines they placed and lack the capacity to remove them, citing U.S. officials. Centcom, which is overseeing Epic Fury and other American military efforts in the Middle East, announced in a press release Saturday that its forces had begun “setting conditions” for clearing the devices, stating that the guided missile destroyers USS Frank E. Peterson (DDG 121) and USS Michael Murphy (DDG 112) “transited the Strait of Hormuz and operated in the Arabian Gulf as part of a broader mission to ensure the strait is fully clear of sea mines previously laid by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.” 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 deadline for federal agencies to implement risk management practices for high-impact AI use cases — or terminate them — has come and gone, but a handful of departments are still working to complete their requirements. FedScoop reached out to 28 federal agencies to inquire about the steps they have taken to ensure compliance within the April 3 timeframe. Some agencies fulfilled the requirements, like the Labor Department, NASA, the VA, State, GSA, and the EPA, while others reclassified use cases or still have a couple boxes to check. A few appear to have missed the deadline entirely. As outlined by an Office of Management and Budget memorandum, uses considered high-impact are required to comply with minimum risk management practices, which include pre-deployment testing, impact assessments, adverse impact monitoring, adequate human training and assessments, appropriate fail-safes that minimize harm, consistent appeal processes, and options for end users to submit feedback. The Department of Justice is asking Congress for a major boost in fiscal 2027 to the fund it uses to support IT modernization and enterprise cybersecurity, with the entire increase going directly to the agency’s zero-trust cybersecurity architecture. DOJ has requested $149 million for its Justice Information Sharing Technology fund as part of the Trump administration’s fiscal 2027 budget request. Congress appropriated $38.5 million for the program in the past two fiscal years. The primary difference between this request and the funding enacted in the most recent years prior is the $110.3 million that DOJ says it needs to support its migration to a zero-trust architecture for its unclassified and national security systems. To put that into perspective, Justice requested a more meager $11.8 million increase to the JIST fund’s topline in fiscal 2026 for “cybersecurity posture enhancement,” which it did not get. In its congressional budget justification for 2027, Justice explains that despite an industrywide shift to zero trust as the cybersecurity model of choice in response to the SolarWinds attack on federal agencies in 2020, its funding for cyber was cut by $108 million in fiscal 2024 and remained essentially flat since then. “Enacted funding levels over the past three years are below the level required to cover DOJ’s over 275,000 endpoints and approximately 160,000 users,” the budget document states, adding that “the current funding levels impact the Department’s current defenses and constrain its ability to adapt to evolving threats.” 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.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement surpassed its arrest goals in fiscal 2025 thanks to technology additions and data-sharing partnerships across the agency and federal government, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s latest annual performance report and plan. ICE more than doubled its fiscal 2025 goal with 167,651 arrests of individuals with criminal convictions or with pending criminal charges, a 106% jump from the prior year, the agency said in the report published Friday. The DHS unit has since increased the future annual target to 400,000 arrests. “This increase was achieved by strengthening partnerships with other agencies, improving data and technology for identifying cases, and focusing enforcement efforts on public safety threats,” DHS said. The agency has ramped up its technology use, embedding tools closer to core law enforcement operations. The U.S. military launched more one-way attack drones Monday against Iran, U.S. Central Command announced Tuesday, adding that “hundreds” of unmanned platforms have been involved in Operation Epic Fury in various roles to date. Tuesday’s announcement comes several weeks after Centcom noted that it had employed long-range kamikaze drones in combat for the first time during the early days of the Iran war, which President Donald Trump commenced on Feb. 28. Those platforms, known as the Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack Systems (LUCAS), were reverse-engineered and are similar to Iran’s Shahed weapons. In early March, a Centcom spokesperson told DefenseScoop that “LUCAS drones remain ready for employment.” Centcom’s post on social media platform X on Tuesday did not disclose whether the one-way drone attacks launched last night included LUCAS platforms or other systems, or how many were deployed in the assault. 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 slashing IT spending across civilian federal agencies last year, the White House’s fiscal 2027 budget calls for a return to pre-Trump levels and then some. Though the proposal from President Donald Trump is just a starting point for haggling in Congress over what will ultimately be spent, the summary document released Friday projects $75.7 billion in federal civilian IT spending, up from $67.9 billion in fiscal 2026 and $75.1 billion in fiscal 2025. It doesn’t include the Department of Defense’s IT budget request, which in fiscal 2026 was a whopping $66.1 billion on its own. Despite the upward trend for overall spending on tech, OMB’s budget request calls for a small decrease in funding for cybersecurity across all civilian agencies — falling from about $12.5 billion this year to $12.2 billion for 2027. This trend tracks with the Trump administration’s decision to cut the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s budget by $707 million. The largest IT investments are slated for the Department of Veterans Affairs ($12.2 billion), the Department of Homeland Security ($11.7 billion) and the Department of Health and Human Services ($9.5 billion). The General Services Administration is lobbying once again to rely on the transfer of unobligated appropriations from other agencies to support projects under the Technology Modernization Fund.The Trump administration included a provision in its fiscal 2027 budget justification for GSA “to collect up to $100 million in funding that would otherwise be unavailable for obligation from other agencies and bring that funding into the TMF.” The proposed funding mechanism comes after GSA included similar but broader language in its fiscal 2026 justification, calling for “both currently available funding and unobligated balances of expired discretionary funds from other agencies [to] be transferred into the TMF.” Ultimately, the appropriations laws passed by Congress for 2026 included a pair of statutes that allowed for those transfers to happen with limits — though it’s unclear how or if GSA has used the authority. It also gave the TMF a $5 million plus-up and extended the fund’s authorization through the end of fiscal 2026. 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 Office of Management and Budget is asking federal IT leaders to provide more information about what they buy and collect more data about those purchases from the private sector. A Tuesday memo mandates certain agency chief information officers both provide OMB with monthly updates on contracts that they or their subordinates approve, as well as require vendors to provide details about pricing and agency use of those services. “It’s time to put all the cards on the table,” Federal CIO Greg Barbaccia said in a video about the memo posted to LinkedIn. “At the end of the day, this is about using taxpayer’s dollars responsibly, buying smarter, and making sure the government is actually getting value from the technology it depends on.” The Trump administration has already made moves to consolidate IT contracting under the General Services Administration and, more broadly, collect and share better data about federal acquisitions. The new memo appears to bring specific actions to achieve those policies directly to CIOs. The policy, which was signed by OMB Director Russell Vought, points to a statutory requirement that CIOs in Chief Financial Officers Act agencies — a cohort of roughly two dozen larger government departments and entities — must sign off on IT contracts and agreements. One of the House’s top voices on artificial intelligence wants to put an independent federal agency in charge of ensuring the data and algorithms behind foundation models are made public. Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., co-chair of the Congressional AI Caucus, is part of a bipartisan trio behind a bill introduced last week that would require the Federal Trade Commission to establish requirements for foundation model transparency. The bill, co-sponsored by Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., calls on the FTC to work with the Commerce secretary, the Office of Science and Technology Policy director and the head of the National Institute of Standards and Technology on those requirements. The federal leaders would also seek input from standards bodies, academics, tech experts, civil rights advocates and consumers. Beyer, who has pursued graduate work in machine learning, said in a press release that consumers deserve more information about AI foundation models that are “commonly described as a ‘black box’” — meaning users aren’t privy to why a model may provide a particular response. Giving users more information, such as what the model bases it results on and how it was built, would go a long way toward changing that element of the unknown, the Virginia Democrat 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.

The Department of Health and Human Services is reshuffling its top officials for data, artificial intelligence, and technology back under its chief information officer, undoing a 2024 reorganization of those roles under the Biden administration. In a Tuesday announcement, HHS said the department’s chief AI officer, chief technology officer, and chief data officer would move from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, known as ASTP/ONC, back to the Office of the Chief Information Officer. The department is also ending the dual title of ASTP/ONC and reverting it back to just ONC. According to the press release, the reversal is aimed at reinforcing “OCIO’s statutory responsibility for enterprise IT, cybersecurity, and data operations.” The move, the department said, also enables ONC to focus on its mission of health IT policy standards and certification. HHS CIO and acting CAIO Clark Minor said in a statement included in the release that the move allows the department to “move faster on shared platforms, protect our systems more effectively, and support ONC and the operating divisions with the technology capabilities they need to innovate for patients.” The Biden-era reorganization was first announced in July 2024 and generally moved functions away from the OCIO, with a goal of clarifying and consolidating those responsibilities. The Federal Communications Commission has tapped the Food and Drug Administration’s former chief digital officer as its new IT chief, the independent agency announced Monday. Farhan Khan, who left the FDA for a private-sector role in August 2025, takes over as the FCC’s chief information officer following the retirement of Allen Hill last October. Deputy CIO Don Tweedie had been serving in the role in an acting capacity since then. At the FDA, Khan oversaw digital transformation projects for the agency, managing a $200 million budget and team of more than 400 staffers, according to the FCC’s press release. Khan began his federal career as a team lead with the Department of Justice in 2009, per his LinkedIn profile. He later served as the Department of Transportation’s director of infrastructure, the FDA’s CTO, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s IT infrastructure operations chief, and the U.S. Army’s director of architecture and integration for the senior executive service. As the FCC’s CIO, Khan — who holds a master’s degree from George Washington in information systems — will be charged with overseeing the agency’s overarching technical priorities, leading modernization efforts and securing data. 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.

Accenture Federal Services and Booz Allen Hamilton will take the lead on contracts to help the National Weather Service replace a legacy IT system and transition its weather data and resources to cloud-based technology. The two contracts, announced last week, are aimed at transferring the functions of the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) to two new tools in a move the agency says will improve availability of that data to forecasters across the nation. Among the anticipated benefits: access to the systems away from home offices and ability for forecasters to provide remote backup. As it stands, the AWIPS is an on-premises system and deployed at roughly 170 sites across the country, per a request for information the agency posted on the modernization effort last year. But that structure has drawbacks, Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service, told FedScoop via email, pointing to the fact that the current operational system is physically installed and tied to each NWS office separately, limiting employees’ ability to easily work alongside decision-makers, like local emergency operational centers.The two new cloud-based systems will change that, allowing forecasters to conduct their work — including creating and distributing forecasts and warnings — “without being tied to a specific location,” Graham said. Three years after launching a dashboard to provide agencies with a governmentwide view of the federal cybersecurity workforce, the Office of Personnel Management has stopped using the tool for its own planning, a new report found. According to the Government Accountability Office, OPM and five of the six other agencies examined by the congressional watchdog are no longer using the Cyber Workforce Dashboard, which went live in April 2023. The agencies cited “limitations” with the product, “including communications with OPM, access, functionality, and use of data,” per a GAO press release. The dashboard, which came out of a working group co-chaired by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of the National Cyber Director, was created to support agencies in cyber workforce planning, helping them make data-driven decisions for current and future requirements. Overseen by the Strategic Workforce Planning and Forecasting Methods team under OPM’s Workforce Policy and Innovation group, the dashboard tracked cyber workforce data for all 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies, as well as OMB, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Archives and Records Administration, according to the GAO. In conducting its audit from January 2025 to March 2026, the watchdog was told by OPM officials that the human capital agency was not using the dashboard for its own cyber workforce planning purposes. The other agencies audited by the GAO were the Small Business Administration, the National Science Foundation, the General Services Administration, and the departments of Justice, State and Treasury. The GSA is the only one that still uses the tool. 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.

A federal judge in California granted Anthropic’s request for a preliminary injunction Thursday, preventing implementation of President Donald Trump’s governmentwide ban on its technology and the Pentagon’s designation of the company as a supply-chain risk. In her decision, San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Rita Lin said the government’s actions appeared to be “designed to punish Anthropic” rather than protect national security. Her order blocks the defendant agencies from carrying out the ban on Anthropic’s technology and halts any Department of Defense actions to implement, apply, or enforce the company’s supply chain risk designation pending the final result of the case or further notice from the court. The ruling, for now, is a win for Anthropic and its supporters. Given the potentially wide-ranging impacts of the litigation, the company has attracted a broad coalition of backers in its legal fight — including industry competitors, federal workers, as well as legal and policy analysts. The Department of Energy is getting ready to bring on technologists from the governmentwide hiring initiative known as Tech Force, according to an IT official at the agency. Tech Force launched in December as a program trying to fill gaps across federal agencies with workers serving two-year stints. A few agencies have already made selections, the Energy Department technology leader said during a panel at the EIE Summit on Thursday in Washington D.C. Bridget Carper Arnone, deputy CIO for architecture, engineering, technology and innovation with the DOE’s OCIO, said the department hasn’t “started the actual interviews, but they’ve gone through the first level where a crossagency panel has deemed them qualified.” The Energy Department had an initial wishlist of 10 developers, she said, but budget constraints are playing a role. DOE received more than 100 applicants for the software engineering role and around 175 for the data scientist position. The other hurdle for the Energy Department is compliance considerations. Only a certified classification specialist has the authority to approve a position description. Arnone said she used Joulix, the DOE’s generative AI tool suite, to speed up the process of writing the position description and is now waiting on the specialist to classify it. 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 the Trump administration makes a bid to hire more young people in the federal government via the Tech Force, the leader of the Office of Personnel Management told lawmakers he doesn’t believe stability is the biggest draw for the next generation. Director Scott Kupor told lawmakers on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government at a Wednesday oversight hearing that he doesn’t “think young people actually think about 40-year careers. I think they think about small increments.” Kupor said that’s why the Tech Force — the administration’s program to fill federal tech vacancies with early career workers — was designed to be two years. He later stated that he doesn’t “think stability for young people is the most compelling message.” The comments arose in an exchange between Kupor and Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the ranking member of the subcommittee, about the message that OPM is sending to attract younger people to the federal government. The technology industry is heavily represented in President Donald Trump’s first list of appointees to restock a White House science and tech advisory panel. Among the 13 appointees to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) were Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Google’s Sergey Brin, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. That panel will be co-chaired by David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto czar, and Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.The PCAST has been around for decades as a way for the White House to receive feedback from scientists, engineers, technologists, and representatives from the private sector. While Trump announced the re-establishment of the council via executive order in January 2025, there hadn’t yet been details on its membership. In addition to the Wednesday list, the White House said it expects to announce more appointees “in the near future along with information about the Council’s first meeting.” 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 proposed draft contract language that would define the government’s relationship with AI service providers in a major federal acquisition program in the aftermath of the fallout between the Defense Department and Anthropic. The proposed language includes terms and conditions for government data use, defines what it means for AI to be unbiased, creates a requirement to use only “American AI,” and establishes a responsibility for contractors to enforce terms and conditions on the AI they deploy. Notably, it also includes language that echoes the very policy at issue in Anthropic’s ongoing battle with the Pentagon that led to the company’s governmentwide ban and designation as a “supply chain risk.” Under the draft, the government would be granted a “contract for any lawful Government purpose.” According to Anthropic’s legal challenge, its dispute with the Defense Department hinged on a policy that the military could make “all lawful use” of the technology. That change, Anthropic says, would have eliminated the company’s restrictions on use of its products for “lethal autonomous warfare” and mass-scale surveillance of Americans. A nonprofit advocacy group is suing the Social Security Administration to release records on an agreement DOGE made to share voter data with a non-government source, and other documents regarding the improper use of Americans’ data. In a lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Democracy Forward seeks to compel the SSA to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests linked to a “voter data agreement” revealed in a January court filing. That filing from the Department of Justice, which is part of a lawsuit by several labor groups over DOGE’s handling and exposure of personally identifiable information, detailed coordination between two members of Elon Musk’s tech collective embedded at SSA and an advocacy group seeking “evidence of voter fraud.” The DOJ said in that filing that in March 2025, a political advocacy group asked those DOGE representatives for Social Security data to analyze state voter rolls. Per the filing, the group’s “stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.” One of those DOGE members signed a “Voter Data Agreement” in his capacity as an SSA employee and sent the document back to the group on March 24, 2025. Democracy Forward, which represents the federal unions at the center of that lawsuit, immediately filed a FOIA seeking a copy of the voter data agreement, plus all emails between the parties. 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.

Amid ongoing conflicts and looming threats from peer adversaries like China, conversations around the American defense industrial base have shifted from capacity to resilience and speed. Meanwhile, software, AI and autonomy have emerged as key drivers for modern military operations, and with that, the DIB has evolved to incorporate new, non-traditional vendors that don’t see themselves as prime defense contractors. That transformation and fielding efforts to bolster it are the focus of the Pentagon’s Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, led by Hon. Michael Cadenazzi. Cadenazzi joining the Daily Scoop to discuss the new and ongoing policy efforts of his office to wrap its arms around, support and grow the modern defense supply chain, the challenges it faces, how it can keep pace with commercial innovation, and what comes next. The cost to run Direct File for the 2025 tax filing season was tens of millions of dollars less than what the IRS estimated it would be, according to a new watchdog report. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that the IRS ended up spending $16.2 million on the since-cancelled free electronic filing service in fiscal 2025 — far shy of the $61.2 million projected by the IRS. That $45 million gap appears to undercut one of Direct File opponents’ main complaints about the customer-praised digital initiative: that it was supposedly an inefficient use of government resources. However, TIGTA noted some caveats to that finding: The IRS initially “overestimated” how many people would use Direct File and how many “assistors” would be needed to support them. Just 751,000 taxpayers registered with Direct File for its limited second season; the IRS estimated that 32 million taxpayers would be eligible to use the tool, according to the Treasury watchdog. Of those who registered, 59% did not ultimately submit a tax return through the system. The Federal Aviation Administration is collecting information about the evolving operational and infrastructure needs of airports, given the increasing integration of unmanned aircraft systems. The FAA aims to catalog and inventory best practices for airport design standards and standalone facilities, called droneports, as part of the request for comment published in the Federal Register on Monday. The Department of Transportation component wants to interview representatives from equipment manufacturers, unmanned aircraft system vendors, the military and other stakeholders. After the comment period closes next month, the FAA will use responses to inform a report that will then shape operational evaluations and standard-setting tied to the integration of drones. The information-gathering effort comes amid a heightened focus on drone and counter-drone technologies. The FAA laid out plans to create an office overseeing the integration of drones and other advanced aviation technologies as part of its broader organizational overhaul beginning in January. Just days later, the FAA reopened a request for information centered around the handling of UAS and proposed policies for location-tracking, data-sharing and detection technologies. 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 Defense Department and its federal partners issued a warning Friday to drone operators, threatening to impose massive fines, imprisonment and other measures on those who illegally fly unmanned aerial systems in restricted airspace. Drone incursions over stateside military bases and other restricted areas have been widespread in recent years as commercially available systems proliferate. Just this week, the head of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command revealed that American forces recently identified and defeated a small UAS threat over a “strategic” U.S. installation. Agencies operating near the southern border have also been using weapon systems, including high-energy lasers, against suspicious drones, raising safety concerns among agencies like the FAA. Two incidents in Texas last month led to temporary airspace closures. The federal government restricts who can fly UAS over certain areas, such as military facilities and civilian airports, to protect national security and public safety. In a press release issued Friday, the DOD, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security and the FAA touted the government’s detection capabilities, declaring that Uncle Sam has a “zero-tolerance policy” for illegal drone operations and threatening rule violators with “severe consequences,” including potential fines upwards of $100,000, criminal charges, incarceration, and the confiscation of their systems. The White House registered two new government domains last week: alien.gov and aliens.gov, according to publicly available federal records. Their appearance comes about one month after President Donald Trump announced plans to direct the long-anticipated release of U.S. government records about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) and extraterrestrial beings. Those new domains were not connected to websites as of Wednesday morning. But public data managed by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reveals that both sites were registered Tuesday evening and are hosted on Cloudflare servers. Shortly after Trump’s disclosure order in February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon was keen to comply and had started actively working on the initiative. 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.

A new Office of Personnel Management hub for shared human resources services is open for business, the agency announced Tuesday. In a memo to federal agency leaders, OPM Director Scott Kupor said the HR Shared Service Center aims to “reduce fragmentation” within the government and allow agency staff to focus on their mission rather than administrative work. Per the memo, that new center provides a “comprehensive” suite of functions, such as benefits management, payroll administration, performance management, recruitment, training, and workforce planning. Using those services is voluntary for agencies and is a fee-for-service model. At least eight federal entities have already indicated they will make the transition, per the memo. Those include the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The announcement is the latest development in the Trump administration’s broader push to consolidate HR services across the government. That plan, called “Federal HR 2.0,” aims to create a single personnel management platform for the federal government as a way to save money and reduce duplicative systems. The Federal Aviation Administration is gathering information from potential private-sector partners to inform the buildout of its defenses against cyber and quantum threats, according to documents published this month. The cybersecurity-focused market survey and quantum-related request for information are targeting the systems at the core of the Department of Transportation component’s multiyear, multibillion dollar modernization initiative: the National Airspace System and Air Traffic Control. The FAA is looking for vendors that could improve its information security and operations, such as penetration testing, vulnerability evaluations and incident response coordination among other tasks. The scope of the project also includes assessing the current NAS cybersecurity posture to identify capability gaps, test emerging tech tools and recommend improvements. The DOT component is also planning to move its NAS, ATC and IT systems infrastructure to post-quantum cryptography, a concept centered around mitigating attacks from future quantum computers by adopting new encryption methods. “Without quantum‑resistant, crypto‑agile security, the NAS cannot achieve the reliability, performance, or international leadership required in the decades ahead,” the FAA said in its RFI published last week. “FAA therefore views PQC not as a compliance exercise, but as a foundational enabler of modernization — one that must be embedded into every vendor solution, every system upgrade, and every step of the Brand New Air Traffic Control System.” 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 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a strategy and guidance for use of artificial intelligence on Thursday, setting a direction for the agency’s own work and providing resources for public health officials across the country. Those documents point to a desire to promote adoption of the technology, empower the workforce to use it, and ensure the tools are governed properly. But, more uniquely, the publications encourage the use of “agentic” or “deep research” AI uses — those that can autonomously carry out specific tasks — which CDC is already tapping into. Almost 10% of CDC’s roughly 100 AI use cases were agentic tools in 2025, according to the Department of Health and Human Services’ recently reported AI use case inventory. Its share of agentic uses makes up roughly a third of such deployments across the department. As a result, the CDC’s new strategy includes specific language to leverage that technology to support public health, strengthen research and data management, and improve access to data. And simultaneously, the agency released specific guidance for state, tribal, local and territorial (STLT) public health authorities on the use of AI agents for research based on experiences from its own exploration. The White House is launching a task force aimed at eliminating fraud in federally run programs — a goal that will be pursued largely through beefed-up data-sharing processes. The executive order signed Monday by President Donald Trump is framed through the lens of various fraud cases in Minnesota involving Medicaid, a Department of Agriculture child nutrition program and Small Business Administration loan programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Investigations into the alleged fraud began under the Biden administration’s Department of Justice, but the scandal has since been wielded by the Trump White House to freeze funds and strip away benefits from residents of the Gopher State. Under Trump’s new order, the task force will be charged with developing a national strategy to combat fraud in federal benefit programs. The EO calls specifically for new measures to improve eligibility verification processes and create controls to prevent the disbursal of improper payments. The task force will also be required to “promote the facilitation of information and data sharing and coordination between State, local, tribal, and territorial governments and the Federal Government, and benefit-providing agencies and law enforcement agencies,” per the order. Interagency data-sharing would additionally be prioritized as part of an overarching enforcement push aimed at disrupting and dismantling “fraud networks and facilitators,” the EO states. 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 Army has awarded a mega contract to Anduril Industries that the U.S. military hopes will boost its ability to defeat drone threats. The Pentagon unveiled the $20 billion firm fixed-price deal Friday evening as part of its daily list of contract announcements. That announcement addressed the types of technologies involved, but was scant on details about the mission areas the capabilities would be applied toward. Under the agreement, Anduril will “consolidate current and future commercial solutions — including the proprietary, open-architecture, AI-enabled Lattice suite, integrated hardware, data, computer infrastructure, and technical support services — into a unified, mission-ready capability supporting the Army’s evolving operational and business needs. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of March 12, 2036,” according to the contract announcement. A separate news release from the Army-led Joint Interagency Task Force 401 — which is focused on strengthening the U.S. government’s drone defenses overseas and stateside — about the contract stated that the organization has “championed a groundbreaking enterprise-level agreement to provide a cutting-edge command-and-control solution through a strategic action.” Defense contractors are in the throes of becoming compliant with Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification standards. And now, in response to findings from the Government Accountability Office, a senior Pentagon official said the department plans to evaluate and define outside variables that could hinder the defense industry’s ability to comply with new standards set by the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 model. According to a study published by the GAO last Thursday, the Defense Department has done significant work to build a comprehensive strategy for implementing CMMC 2.0 cybersecurity standards. However, the report found that the department has yet to completely identify factors beyond its control that risk the program’s overall success. “CMMC planning documentation identifies processes that can help address external factors, including a program waiver process,” the report stated. “However, CMMC planning documentation does not systematically identify the external factors that could affect reaching each goal.” 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.

Staff in the upper chamber of Congress now have the go-ahead to use Senate data with three popular generative AI chatbots thanks to approval from an office that oversees the legislative body’s administrative operations. A recent notice from the Senate Sergeant at Arms’ chief information officer announced the approvals for Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, expanding on previous policies. That memo was previously reported by the New York Times and independently obtained by FedScoop. According to the document, Copilot is integrated into the Senate’s Microsoft 365 environment already, and more information about licenses for Gemini Chat and ChatGPT Enterprise will be coming within the next 30 days. Each Senate employee will be able to get one license for either Gemini or ChatGPT at no cost. Approval of the tools comes as entities across the federal government — including Congress, executive agencies, and the federal judiciary — have been navigating their own use of the growing technology to reduce administrative toil and assist staff. The Senate, for its part, previously allowed ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing AI chat in 2023 at “moderate” risk levels, but they were only for research and evaluation or use with non-sensitive data. The new approvals are less restrictive on the type of data that can be ingested, opening the door to more widespread use. The architect of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ artificial intelligence program and digital modernization strategy is leaving the agency after nearly nine years. Charles Worthington, the VA’s chief AI officer and CTO, said in a LinkedIn post Thursday that “the time is right” for him to step down from his posts. A Harvard grad, Worthington joined the federal government in 2013 as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. He parlayed that experience into a role as senior advisor to the federal CTO, where he co-created the U.S. Digital Service following the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov. After nearly three years with USDS, including as the White House tech office’s acting deputy administrator, Worthington moved on to the VA in 2017. In addition to leading the agency’s digital modernization work, he also supported its adoption of commercial cloud infrastructure, oversaw the creation of vets.gov, rebuilt va.gov and launched VA Notify, per a congressional bio and his LinkedIn profile. In addition to boosting digital services for veterans, Worthington worked in recent years to spur AI adoption across the agency. Under his watch, the VA emerged as one of the most prolific AI users in the federal government, with an inventory that’s now 367 use cases strong. Included in that tally is the agency’s VA GPT chatbot.Worthington, who also served on the Technology Modernization Fund board for four years, didn’t reveal in his LinkedIn post where he’s headed next. But he said his time with the VA “has been the most important work” of his career. 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. government agencies continued to have low compliance with a statute designed to ensure that federal websites, software, and other products are accessible for people with disabilities, according to a recent federal review. In a new report, the General Services Administration found that alignment with the accessibility statute known as Section 508 was a 1.96 on a 5-point scale, continuing a trend of lacking compliance. GSA reported that roughly half of agencies didn’t review accessibility for their most-used information and communication technology tools, and the majority of agencies don’t conduct usability testing with people who have disabilities before resources are deployed or published. The poor compliance showing follows similar findings from past GSA reviews and indicates that more work is needed to help agencies comply. As a result, GSA concluded its report with recommendations that Congress both update the statute to clarify requirements and strengthen enforcement and oversight of agency compliance. The annual report is required by statute and was prepared in consultation with the White House Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Access Board, an independent agency that establishes Section 508 standards. The report includes responses from 212 agencies, parent agencies, and other components. Its publication follows changes to the review process aimed at reducing the reporting burden on agencies. The top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is demanding a full, independent investigation into new reports of DOGE representatives improperly accessing and transferring Social Security Administration data. In a press release sent Tuesday, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said “new disclosures revealed DOGE personnel may have broken federal law and exposed Americans’ most sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers.” The release came shortly after the Washington Post reported that an SSA whistleblower said a former DOGE engineer put sensitive information from two agency databases — Numident and the Master Death File — on a thumb drive and planned to share that data with his private-sector employer. Democracy Forward, which represents several labor groups in a lawsuit against SSA over DOGE’s “unprecedented data grab,” filed a notice of factual development Tuesday in response to the Post’s reporting. The new court filing said the revelations in the article “are consistent with the substantial issues … of disclosures beyond SSA and the federal government as a whole and the ongoing risk of further disclosures of such uncontrolled data.” Peters’ press release references the Post’s story, but also highlights a January court filing from the Department of Justice that disclosed the use of an unapproved third-party server and communication between DOGE and an advocacy group seeking “evidence of voter fraud.” 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.

Anthropic’s $50 billion commitment for data-center construction projects in New York and Texas still made it on a list of investments the Trump White House said it helped secure, despite an ongoing feud between the company and the U.S. government. That tally, which was posted in a release online Sunday and emailed Monday, listed Anthropic’s commitment among dozens of other private-sector investments related to American manufacturing, energy, and AI infrastructure projects that companies have announced during President Donald Trump’s second term. Other investments on that list include those from Apple, Meta, Nvidia and Amazon. Anthropic’s inclusion comes after a disagreement between the AI company and the Pentagon over guardrails for using its technology culminated in a governmentwide ban against the company and the DOD’s determination that it’s a “supply-chain risk.” Ironically, the White House release introduces the list with a statement that companies are moving to “strengthen domestic supply chains,” among other things. FedScoop contacted spokespeople at the White House and Anthropic, but neither provided comment before publication of this story. Anthropic’s partner on the project, Fluidstack, didn’t respond to a FedScoop request for comment. The Senate on Tuesday voted to confirm Army Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd as commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the NSA, ending nearly a year of leadership uncertainty at the agencies and putting a new chief at the helm amid an ongoing war with Iran. Rudd, who previously served as deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and worked in the special operations community, was nominated in December by President Donald Trump for the dual-hat role of Cybercom and NSA boss, despite having a limited cyber background. In April 2025, the Trump administration fired Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh as head of those organizations without providing a public explanation. Since then, Cybercom and NSA have been led by Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman, who stepped in as acting director. Hartman was ultimately passed over to hold the roles on a Senate-confirmed basis. Rudd, who will pin on his fourth star following his confirmation, is entering the job as Cybercom supports U.S. military action against Iran during Operation Epic Fury. The command also played a support role in Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran last year and Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela in January, which included the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. In addition to assisting other combatant commands and the joint force, the organization is tasked with conducting so-called “hunt forward” operations on overseas networks, defending the Department of Defense Information Network (DODIN), and bolstering America’s ability to resist and respond to cyberattacks. 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.

Anthropic’s relationships with other federal contractors face irreparable harm following the Trump administration’s governmentwide ban on the company and determination that it’s a “supply-chain risk,” the Claude maker said in a lawsuit filed in a federal district court Monday. The legal challenge against the Pentagon, as well as multiple federal agencies and officials, seeks immediate and injunctive relief from President Donald Trump’s directive banning the company from government use and the Department of Defense’s designation of the company as a supply-chain risk. Among its arguments, Anthropic alleges the actions violate federal administrative procedure law, the company’s right to free speech, and are beyond existing legal authority. The lawsuit also provides new details about the ramifications for Anthropic’s work with other companies contracting with the federal government. At least one federal contractor that Anthropic has worked with to build custom applications has already “indicated that it may suspend that work or even remove Claude from existing deployments,” and others the company has worked with “are raising concerns, pausing collaborations, and considering terminating contracts,” according to the lawsuit. “Anthropic has no way to obtain redress from the government for those economic harms,” the company said. It estimated the actions by the Trump administration could jeopardize “hundreds of millions of dollars in the near term.” This one’s also related to the government’s ban of Anthropic, and the Secret Service can be added to the list of federal agencies or offices that said they won’t use the company’s Claude tool. The Department of Homeland Security component had used Anthropic’s Claude models for code generation, a focus area for many organizations, according to Secret Service CIO and Chief AI Officer Chris Kraft. “That application does have the ability to leverage Claude models … but they’re easy to change out,” Kraft said. “There’s a whole list of a bunch of different models that you can choose from, and we will follow the guidance and leverage other models.” The Secret Service joins a growing group of agencies that are phasing out Anthropic’s technology following the company’s clash with the Department of Defense in late February. Software developers at the Treasury Department had been using Claude Code, though Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that the agency is terminating use. The Office of Personnel Management, NASA, the Commerce Department, the General Services Administration and Department of Health and Human Services are untangling Anthropic from AI use cases, if they haven’t stopped using Claude already. 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.