The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

Defense contractors face a new restriction. A new law now prohibits the Pentagon from contracting with companies that retain consultants lobbying for certain Chinese firms blacklisted by the department. For more, Federal News Network’s Anastasia Obis spoke with Covington’s Election and Political Law lawyer Zachary Parks.
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The Office of Personnel Management wants to make easier to remove federal employees for performance or misconduct reasons. In a new 81-page proposed rule that came out last week, OPM and the Merit Systems Protection Board are jointly seeking to change the administrative procedures used to fire employees and the review of such actions before the board. For more on the proposed changes, Federal News Network executive editor Jason Miller joins me now to discuss.
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Congress was sort of stuck in a wait and see mode once the president demanded more attention was directed at passing his election security legislation. An effort that that again was thwarted by procedural rules in the Senate. Joining me to explain how things went down and what to watch for after their brief recess next week, Bloomberg Government Deputy News Director Loren Duggan.

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A new executive order sets up a pathway for companies to share advanced artificial intelligence models with federal officials ahead of public release, giving the government earlier visibility into emerging capabilities and the risks they could pose. Joining me to explain how this is playing out is Alex Hastings, a Partner at Morgan, Lewis.
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Agentic AI systems promise faster, cheaper execution for federal agencies, but they also raise new questions about governance, accountability and trust. We talk through what has to change as these systems scale with Karim Fadel, vice president of CGI Federal.
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