In all, 70,351 employees retired in the first six months of 2025 as compared to 56,756 employees who left federal service during the first six months of 2024.

 

  • June saw the third largest number of federal employees retire in calendar year 2025. More than 13,400 feds submitted their paperwork. At the same time, the average number of days to process retirement paperwork dropped to 45, the lowest number since February and the second lowest in the last 18 months. OPM’s backlog of retirement claims stands just over 26,000, the highest level since October 2023. In all, 70,351 employees retired in the first six months of 2025 as compared to 56,756 employees who left federal service during the first six months of 2024.
  • There’s officially a new director at the Office of Personnel Management. Scott Kupor, President Trump’s pick to lead OPM, was sworn in as the agency’s permanent leader Tuesday morning. The Senate confirmed Kupor last week in a vote mostly along party lines. Now as the top official at OPM, Kupor is expected to take the reins on many of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce and overhaul the federal workforce. He’ll also be tasked with managing the administration’s more long-term workforce goals, like updating performance management standards and attempting to reform federal hiring.
  • Senate Democrats are calling for a formal probe into whether red tape hindered Homeland Security’s response to devastating floods in Texas. Senators Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have asked DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to launch an investigation. They point to a recent directive requiring the DHS Secretary to sign off on all grants over $100,000 dollars, which could’ve slowed down the deployment of personnel and resources. They also point to reduced staffing at FEMA call centers.

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  • A top State Department official is defending recent mass layoffs. Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Michael Rigas tells lawmakers terminating more than 1,300 employees last week was the most complicated reduction in force that the federal government has ever seen. He said the State Department carried out the RIF with help from the Office of Personnel Management. “Even though there were certainly people who were qualified and great patriots who were separated from service, what you can take comfort in knowing is that the people who remained actually were selected using merit systems principles to actually have ranked as higher quality,” Rigas said.
  • Despite a court order, the Trump administration is keeping agencies’ staff reduction plans concealed. The government told the Supreme Court last week that dozens of reduction-in-force actions were ready for implementation. But the administration’s lawyers refused to submit a court-ordered list of where those RIFs would take place. The federal union that’s suing the Trump administration said it’s clear the RIFs will move forward “imminently,” now that the Supreme Court has allowed those plans to continue. Already, several agencies acted quickly to terminate thousands of federal employees as part of their RIF plans.
  • House lawmakers are rejecting the Trump administration’s bid to cut funding at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The House Appropriations Committee is considering a 2026 Commerce Department spending bill that would increase funding at NIST to nearly $1.3 billion, an 11% increase for the agency. The White House’s budget request would reduce funding at NIST by $325 million next year. That’s nearly one-third of the agency’s current budget and would include cutting more than 600 jobs. But House appropriators so far have backed funding for NIST, including the targets of Trump’s cuts, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program and the agency’s lab programs.
  • The new president of the American Foreign Service Association understands what recently laid-off members are going through. John Dinkelman, a member of the Senior Foreign Service, received a reduction-in-force notice, along with more than 1,300 other State Department employees. Dinkelman recently served as a diplomat in residence at Howard University. All other diplomats in residence also received RIF notices. He also served as acting assistant secretary of state for administration and deputy assistant secretary for logistics management.
  • The Senate confirms retired Army Brigadier General Anthony Tata, a former Fox News commentator to be the next under secretary of Defense for personnel and readiness. The Senate voted 52-46 to confirm his nomination, with all Republicans in favor and all Democrats opposed. Tata previously served as a senior advisor to the defense secretary during President Donald Trump’s first term. He was appointed to that role after his nomination to become under secretary of defense for policy failed to advance after a number of inflammatory comments had surfaced, including calling former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader.”
  • The Senate’s version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act includes provisions aimed at reigning in the outsized influence that tech giants have over the cloud computing and artificial intelligence defense contracting space. The spending bill would require DoD’s inspector general to review sole-source cloud computing contracts awarded under the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability program. Based on Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) bipartisan Protecting AI and Cloud Competition Act, the legislation would require the Defense Department to develop a strategy to monitor and mitigate the risks of future mergers and acquisitions. In addition, the defense policy bill would require DoD to maintain multiple sources as soon as possible for products in critical sectors.

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