The ME Commons program is a research and development initiative that seeks to advance U.S. microelectronics technology by accelerating domestic microelectronics hardware prototyping and workforce development, the DOD said Tuesday.
The program was established in 2023 and encompasses eight regional hubs that will receive $2 billion in total funding from fiscal years 2023 through 2027. Just under $240 million was awarded last year to establish those hubs.
For 2024, the funding awards will cover 33 projects spread across six technical areas, namely quantum, secure edge computing, 5G/6G, electromagnetic warfare, commercial leap-ahead technologies and artificial intelligence. A Cross-Hub Enablement Solution award is also being funded.
Commenting on the awards, Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar, a past Wash100 Award winner, said, “These CHIPS and Science Act investments through the Microelectronics Commons will advance innovation for components that enable the most sophisticated defense systems, strengthening our national security.”
Dr. Dev Shenoy, who serves as principal director for microelectronics in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and executive director of the Microelectronics Commons, said, “These awards will also upskill America’s workforce, thus helping keep America both secure and prosperous.”
Four House lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill that seeks to enhance the ability of the Federal Acquisition Security Council, or FASC, to safeguard the federal supply chain from entities controlled or owned by a foreign adversary.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee said Tuesday the FASC Improvement Act of 2024 would move the council into the Executive Office of the President to strengthen its governing structure and authorize it to issue binding removal and exclusion orders when asked to do so by Congress.
Such orders would exclude or remove nefarious entities from the federal procurement system.
The bipartisan measure would expand FASC’s scope to include acquisition security, direct the council to proactively assess certain covered articles for risks and reallocate appropriations to set up a FASC program office within the Office of the National Cyber Director.
The legislation seeks to integrate best practices from national security exemptions, second-order prohibitions, case-by-case waiver processes and other governmentwide procurement prohibitions that have been made into law.
“This bipartisan bill provides the Federal Acquisition Security Council with the teeth and resources it needs to protect the federal supply chain from technology companies and products owned or controlled by a foreign adversary. We look forward to moving this bill through the Oversight Committee this week to ensure protections for the federal supply chain and agency information systems,” said Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House panel.
Comer proposed the bill with Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill.
Congressional committees dedicated to federal workforce issues were busy Wednesday, as both panels advanced bills impacting federal personnel policy via markup hearings.
On the Senate side, lawmakers on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 12-2 in favor of the Telework Transparency Act, (S. 4043) a measure introduced last spring by Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, that requires that federal agencies publish their telework policies on their websites. It also requires agencies to establish automated systems to track employees’ use of telework and its impact on federal building occupancy rates and agency performance.
And the lawmakers voted 9-5 to advance the Dismantling Outdated Obstacles and Barriers to Individual Employment—or DOOBIE—Act (S. 4711), another measure sponsored by Peters, who chairs the panel. The bill would codify changes recently implemented by the Biden administration to federal hiring and security clearance policies that clarify that past marijuana consumption cannot be sole reason for denial of a federal security clearance or federal job application.
Though no lawmakers discussed either bill at the hearing itself prior to the votes, Peters said in a statement he would continue to work to ensure that federal law is updated to align with the recent policy change.
“The federal government must adapt its hiring practices to reflect the evolving legal and social landscape of our nation,” Peters said. “My bill takes a crucial step by aligning federal policy with existing agency guidance, ensuring that past marijuana use alone doesn’t automatically disqualify talented individuals from public service. This approach will expand our talent pool and create a fairer, more inclusive hiring process.”
Party Lines in the House
The atmosphere was less subdued in the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, as lawmakers jousted over measures governing federal sector labor relations and the federal government’s annual survey measuring employee engagement and morale.
First, the panel considered the Manager Attitudes and Notions According to Government Employee Responses—or MANAGER—Act (H.R. 9593). Introduced by Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, the measure requires the Office of Personnel Management to devote a section of the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to questions specific to federal managers.
“Each year, the Office of Personnel Management administers a government-wide survey of agency employees, the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey,” said committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. “While that survey is completed by all federal employees, there are no specific questions for supervisors, so the unique views of managers is unaccounted for.”
As a matter of fact, while the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey in recent years has indeed been a census, managers are consistently overrepresented in results, as many frontline federal employees work in the field or in jobs where they do not have regular access to a computer, such as Transportation Security Administration screeners. Last year, the survey had an overall response rate of 39%, and 22% of respondents reported to be federal supervisors, while managers make up only 14% of the federal workforce.
Democrats said that while they support better feedback channels and support for federal supervisors in theory, the bill prescribes a series of leading questions regarding managers’ ability to discipline or remove poor performers. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the committee’s ranking member, said OPM warned the committee that the questions included in the bill were not devised to produce reliable data, but that committee Republicans have thus far declined to amend the legislation.
“While we agree that surveys specific to the concerns of federal workforce managers should be conducted on a more consistent basis, it’s unclear whether the intent of the proposed legislation is to require a new managerial section to the existing Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, or to require a standalone annual survey of managers,” Raskin said. “This basic ambiguity suggests the survey was not designed with practical application in mind. Moreover, the bill prescribes specific questions that are hyper-focused on the punitive responsibilities of senior managers.”
Sessions ultimately said that he would entertain changes to the questions listed in the bill, but suggested that Democrats and the administration were merely scared that such surveys would reveal that managers are opposed to telework or other Biden administration workforce policies.
“We in fact did not go for the most negative parts of this addition of words to be added and questions to be asked; we went to the ones managers themselves have provided us,” Sessions said. “Managers across the government who say they want to make sure when they put forth the issues of managing the workforce, of listening to employees, of trying to make their business work, that they did not put themselves in jeopardy . . . There are a number of facts and factors that happened with this administration that decided to change—and then not follow—with respect to employees reporting to their work locations.”
The measure passed by a 22-18 party-line vote.
The committee also passed, this time by a 21-18 vote, the Protecting Taxpayers’ Wallets Act (H.R. 9594), introduced by Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa. The measure would require every federal agency to charge its corresponding federal employee unions for the salaries associated with union officials’ use of official time, as well as office space and other services, and it would allow agencies to unilaterally decertify a union that refuses or fails to pay.
“This remedies a longstanding injustice: taxpayers bearing the financial burden of federal employees paid to conduct union activities when they otherwise would be performing the job they were actually hired to do,” Perry said. “We’re not saying that bargaining unit activities shouldn’t occur. But that time should be compensated, because you’re not doing what you were really hired for.”
Perry cited a 2017 Government Accountability Office report that found that 346 Veterans Affairs Department employees spent 100% of their work hours on official time. During the period studied in that report—fiscal 2015—VA’s population of bargaining unit employees was 290,000 workers, according to OPM data.
Raskin blasted the bill as “simple union busting,” noting both that official time is tightly regulated to prevent internal union business being conducted on government time, as well as that the practice of offering official time saves money by resolving disputes much more cheaply than litigation.
“What they’re doing [with this bill] is they’re really challenging a central premise of labor-management law that goes back more than half a century, in both the public and private sectors,” he said. “The way private sector collective bargaining agreements work is that if there are shop stewards, who work to pursue grievances or negotiate contracts or help manage the workplace, they continue to be paid under their previous salaries. There’s nothing remotely extraordinary or strange about that at all, and so what they’re really attacking of course is the whole idea of having labor unions in the first place.”
Legislation to cover a $3 billion shortfall in veterans’ benefits through the end of the month passed the House Tuesday, three days before benefits could be disrupted.
Lawmakers passed the Veterans Benefits Continuity and Accountability Supplemental Appropriations Act by voice vote Tuesday evening, sending it to the Senate ahead of a Friday deadline to ensure the Veterans Affairs Department can process benefit payments for 7 million veterans.
House Republicans — led by Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif. — introduced the bill less than two weeks ago to help make up an extra $2.89 billion in additional costs at the Veteran Benefits Administration.
“We’re not just throwing money at the problem. This bill includes critical oversight measures to ensure that every dollar is spent appropriately, and we’re going to get answers about how the VA allowed this to happen in the first place,” said Garcia in a statement. “Our veterans deserve better than bureaucratic failures, and we owe it to them to fix this broken system.”
The supplemental funding is meant to cover the fiscal 2024 portion of a projected $15 billion shortfall expected between now and fiscal 2025. VA officials informed the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee of the shortfall in July, saying that it was tied to compensation and pension, as well as readjustment benefit costs originating out of the VBA.
VA officials also projected a potential $11.97 billion shortfall in fiscal 2025 due to rising hiring and pharmaceutical costs within the Veterans Health Administration.
The House bill would also require the VA to provide a report to relevant House and Senate committees on the status of the requested funding for fiscal 2024, 2025 and 2026 within 60 days of enactment and update them every 90 days until Sept. 30, 2026.
The VA inspector general would also examine the underlying cause of both the VBA and VHA shortfalls and report to the relevant committees within 180 days under provisions in the bill.
After the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act expanded VA benefits eligibility for veterans with 23 respiratory illnesses related to burn pits used by the military, VA began ramping up hiring efforts, including 61,000 new hires at the VHA in fiscal 2023, to be able to manage a growing influx of patients and beneficiaries.
But in January, Government Executive learned that portions of the VA network had been limiting hiring to cover budget shortfalls, with some deploying “‘cost avoidance strategies’ that included ‘strategic hiring/onboarding,’ overtime reductions, travel limitations and other efforts.”
Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., said in a statement Tuesday that it was critical that the Senate move with haste to pass the legislation.
“Funding veterans benefits is a cost of war that must always be paid—plain and simple,” he said. “The fact is, VA is providing more disability benefits to more veterans and survivors than ever before, including toxic exposure-related benefits, and that is a good thing. We have a sacred responsibility to provides veterans and their families certainty their benefit checks will arrive on time in 14 days, and I urge my Senate colleagues to put veterans first and pass this funding bill immediately.”
Gen. Charles Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, believes that the military must establish a global joint defense ecosystem to be successful in a congested logistics environment.
The 2024 Wash100 awardee expounded on his thoughts alongside logistics leaders, military logisticians and industry partners from other nations at the Worldwide Logistics Symposium held at the Defense Logistics Agency Headquarters, the Department of Defense reported Tuesday.
During his keynote address, Gen. Brown said, “We want to fight with an unfair advantage.”
“We have to act like there is a crisis without the crisis … to make the changes needed now,” Gen. Brown added.
Gen. Brown cited the need for collaboration from all allies and partner domains in today’s warfighting environment, especially globally.
“We must take an integrated approach. Efforts cannot be siloed; we need to communicate and work with each other and share effective solutions,” Gen. Brown emphasized.
“We must bring our allies and partners to the table and ensure the military services are converging as we prepare our operational plans to better balance our capability with our capacity and build consistent demands with the defense industrial base,” he stated.
Steven Morani, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for sustainment, echoed the importance of joint operational planning to organize contested logistics.
“Wars are won through logistics,” Morani said. “Those who are resilient the longest, win the war, nothing one nation can do alone.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Tuesday announced that a bipartisan task force created to investigate the July assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump will expand to include the apparent assassination attempt at the GOP presidential nominee’s Florida golf club over the weekend.
“We have a responsibility here in Congress to get down to the bottom of this, to figure out why these things are happening and what we can do about it,” Johnson said in a statement.
Johnson said he spoke with the White House and pressed for Trump to receive the same amount of protection from the Secret Service as a sitting president.
“He is under constant threat,” Johnson said of Trump.
“He’s in the midst of a heated campaign, and this is an obvious thing that has now been proven that we need to do,” Johnson said. “In the meantime, Congress is going to do everything that we can to ensure that that happens. And one of the things we’re going to do is expand the scope of the existing task force to cover the second assassination attempt.”
That task force, led by Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., Tuesday requested that the Department of Justice and FBI brief lawmakers on the possible assassination attempt by Friday.
The suspect in the Florida incident, Ryan Wesley Routh, was charged in federal court Monday with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and with obliterating the serial number on a firearm, according to court records.
Acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe said Monday that Routh did not fire his weapon.
Rowe said that since the July 13 assassination attempt, the Secret Service has “moved to increase assets to an already enhanced security posture for the former president.”
He added that President Joe Biden “made it clear that he wanted the highest levels of protection for former President Trump.”
“The Secret Service moved to sustain increases in assets and the level of protection sought, and those things were in place yesterday,” Rowe said of Sunday’s incident.
Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and X.
The requirement seeks innovative capabilities to address the novel test and evaluation, risk management and assurance challenges of gen AI and foundation model systems, according to a CDAO solicitation posted Tuesday on Tradewinds.
The solution is envisioned to support the CDAO Assessment & Assurance Division’s mission to test AI and machine learning applications across the DOD.
According to the solicitation notice, the desired capabilities should align with the DOD standards for assessing gen AI effectiveness, robustness and risks in defense use cases.
The solution should also advance the creation of a comprehensive framework for evaluation, risk management and assurance of Gen AI applications.
Notably, the government said that solutions lacking basic research and focused mostly on addressing cybersecurity issues are unlikely to address the solicitation’s requirements.
Interested parties are encouraged to submit papers outlining their expertise in gen AI testing and their ability to deliver the required solutions. Proposals with the highest potential to solve DOD problems will be shortlisted for the next phase of solicitation assessment.
Former President Donald Trump survived his second assassination attempt on Sept. 15, 2024, marking the latest chapter in a long history book. Presidential assassination attempts, whether successful or not, are fairly commonplace in American history.
Thirteen others – Andrew Jackson, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden – have had known plots or failed attempts to end their lives.
Many were subject to multiple attempts, and it is likely the public was never informed of other attempts upon them or other presidents.
Presidents symbolize the ideals of ourselves as Americans. They often act as the physical embodiment of our country, their political party and its values. When individuals are unhappy with the United States or its policies, some choose to express their opinions in violent ways. Those who choose to assassinate a president inadvertently humanize the very presidents they want to kill.
A common thread
Every presidential assassination or attempt has been made with a firearm. With the exception of Gerald Ford’s two attempted assassins, all the perpetrators have been male.
This includes Trump’s two assailants, men who were once enthralled by but seemingly grew disenchanted with aspects of modern politics.
The Secret Service thwarted an armed man hiding at a Trump golf course in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sept. 15. The Secret Service fired at the person, who fled in a car before he was apprehended and arrested.
This came just two months after Trump was wounded at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13 by a young man who attempted to kill Trump with a gunshot to the head.
Many presidential assassination attempts seem incoherent to anyone except the perpetrator.
A man named Charles Guiteau killed Garfield in 1881 because he wanted to be awarded a patronage position in government.
John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln as part of a larger plot attempting to create chaos to help reignite the “Southern cause” and support for slavery. On the same night Lincoln was killed in 1865, his secretary of state, William Seward, was attacked but survived.
At the same time, the plot was for then-Vice President Andrew Johnson to also be killed by another man, George Atzerodt, who instead got drunk and threw the knife in a gutter.
Booth and his co-conspirators hoped that these politicians’ almost simultaneous deaths would throw the Union into disarray, with an unclear path of succession. Their plan fell apart, and with Johnson alive, the nation’s clear path of presidential succession remained intact.
A near miss
Half a century later, while former President Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning for a third presidential term in 1912, he was shot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Though he was shot at almost point-blank range, Roosevelt was, in a way, saved by his poor eyesight and long-winded nature. Roosevelt had a 50-page speech folded in his pocket, as well as his steel eyeglass case. Both items slowed the bullet enough that it just entered his chest but not deeper than the muscle.
One of the closest comparisons to Trump’s two recent assassination attempts is when two women tried to kill President Gerald Ford in September 1975.
Both Trump and Ford were the targets of well-publicized assassination attempts within a short period of time, and both were targeted by individuals with logically unclear motives.
At the time, the Environmental Protection Agency was warning people about worsening smog’s effects on the environment, leading her to believe assassination was the only way to preserve the trees. Fromme dressed entirely in red, went to Sacramento where the president was visiting, aimed and fired at him within a 2-foot range.
Except the gun didn’t fire.
Bystanders heard a click, since she had not put a round in the chamber, likely because she did not know much about guns. After that first attempted shot, Secret Service intervened. Later, Fromme claimed she did not want to shoot the president.
Seventeen days later, on Sept. 22 in San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore shot at Ford from about 40 feet away and missed. Her second shot missed as well, this time because a bystander, Oliver Sipple, grabbed the gun, forcing the shot to go wide, injuring a taxi driver.
Finally, Reagan survived an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. on March 30, 1981. Hinckley was obsessed with the popular film “Taxi Driver” and, in particular, the character played by actress Jodie Foster.
He believed that if he could impress Foster, she would date him. As Reagan left the Washington Hilton hotel, Hinckley fired six shots in two seconds. One shot deflected off the car and into the president’s left side, hitting his lung. One of the funnier lines Reagan would later repeat was born that day, when he looked at doctors prepping for surgery and said, “I just hope you’re Republicans.” One doctor replied, “Today, Mr. President, we’re all Republicans.”
The best and worst of us
Throughout history, American presidents and occasionally candidates have been targeted by gunmen and other potential attackers to express their unhappiness about the government. The rationales for these assassins’ actions vary from simply chaos to delusions anointing the assassin, or would-be assassin, a heroic main character.
Presidential assassinations reflect the best and the worst of people simultaneously. The violence itself shows the worst of society, but Americans often seem at their best in the aftermath. Like Reagan’s surgeons once recognized, politics should never supplant humanity or be more valued than a person’s health and safety.
The California base’s approach on the SABER indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity contract, a first in the U.S. Space Force, aims to promote visibility and transparency, Alyson Kolding, 30th Contracting Squadron contracting officer, said in a base statement Monday.
“We also learned how to incorporate electronic processes into a regulation which has not been updated to consider the new digital landscape.,” noted Jeffrey Grelck, 30th Contracting Squadron contracting officer.
The focus of SABER, one of Vandenberg’s two major construction programs that require expeditious efforts, is on simpler building projects, Kolding added.
The SABER IDIQ contract awards, worth about $60 million, are for construction projects around Vandenberg over the next five years and supports the base’s aspiration to become a “Spaceport of the Future.”
In August 2023, the U.S. Air Force previewed its SABER contract solicitation approach in a five-year, $200 million contract designed to address engineering requirements at Eglin Air Force Base and associated facilities in Florida.
The American Federation of Government Employees added a new chapter last week when employees at a small, nonpartisan agency tasked with awarding development grants to Latin American countries voted to unionize.
According to a post from the nation’s largest federal employee union on Monday, 33 of 34 eligible employees at the Inter-American Foundation voted to unionize on Sept. 11, joining AFGE Local 2211, which represents 202 employees in the Washington, D.C., area as of June 29, a Labor Department filing shows.
The IAF formed in 1969 as an independent agency providing grassroots funding for community-led development in Latin American countries, including projects around sustainable agriculture and food security, human capital and job skills development, natural resource management and other operations.
The agency had a budget of $47 million in fiscal 2023, mostly from direct annual appropriations, but it also has received inter-agency transfers for strategic priorities and can accept donations from corporate and philanthropic partners.
District 14 Special Assistant Peter Winch, who led the IAF unionization campaign, told Government Executive that he would be meeting with the agency’s president and CEO, Sara Aviel, this week to get a sense of management’s perspective on the issues facing IAF, but workers expressed frustrations over high turnover and a recent return-to-office policy from management.
“I had a group of several IAF employees contact AFGE and we formed them into an organizing committee and they told me what the issues are,” he said. “The message I’m getting from employees is they don’t backfill. It’s not really a budget problem, they just don’t know how to stop all the turnover they have at this agency.”
Another issue that prompted employees to organize, he said, stemmed from a recent return-to-office policy from management that would require employees to be in person several more days per pay period.
“If an agency goes too far in that direction in this post-pandemic period, they have a lot of people leave,” he said. “We’d like them to look at that again and not implement that change, which I think is due by Oct. 1.”
The addition of IAF employees comes as AFGE — which 750,000 represents federal and D.C. government workers — made international gains last year, unionizing 400 employees at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, followed by another 200 workers in May at the Army Enterprise Service Desk, 2nd Signal Brigade, in Kaiserslautern, Germany and Army’s Edelweiss Lodge and Resort in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
Winch added that the challenges within IAF — who he said outsources human resources operations from service providers in the Interior Department — were similar to the workforce at another agency, the Millenium Challenge Corporation, which has since worked with the union to resolve many of its issues, with members from the local AFGE chapter helping advise IAF employees.
“It’s going really well there,” he said. “MCC was making a lot of errors in hiring and classification and so on. And they’ve really changed a lot for the good since we’ve formed a union there. And what they did was hire some people to work the HR and labor employee relations functions in-house.”
Officials from the IAF were unavailable for comment at press time.
