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For Immediate Release
February, 22 2021, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Cheston McGuire,Phone:,202-639-6453,Email:,cheston.mcguire,@afge.or,g
Head of Largest Federal Employee Union Testifies Before House Subcommittee on 'Revitalizing the Federal Workforce'
AFGE president urges action to build trust, morale, and capacity of federal workforce following traumatic past four years.
WASHINGTON
American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley testified today before the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations at its hearing, "Revitalizing the Federal Workforce."
Below are quotable highlights from President Kelley's prepared testimony:
* Protecting the rights of federal employees is the number one way to restore trust and morale. "Weakening civil service protections and merit-based processes and procedures in the name of speed and ease is a terrible mistake. Hiring and firing federal employees requires deliberate rule-based steps for a good reason: to make sure that the federal workforce is hired and fired based solely on merit factors such as demonstrable skills and credentials."
* Rebuilding capacity in federal agencies requires restoring adequate staffing levels. "The hollowing out of federal agencies during the past administration's reign has been well-documented. Corrections officers in the federal Bureau of Prisons are forced to work enormous quantities of mandatory overtime and administrative personnel are being used excessively to supplement the Corrections workforce. The severe understaffing of federal prisons combined with the dangers of the pandemic raging through the close quarters of these institutions have created almost unbearable working conditions."
* Federal wages and salaries are too low for agencies to be competitive. "For decades think tanks and contractors and academics have written lengthy reports about obstacles to federal hiring, but when the same job in the private sector pays 20 percent to 40 percent more, we lose candidates. There is no justification for underpaying federal employees and we will continue to press the case for higher pay across-the-board."
* Undoing the Trump administration's anti-worker orders will require aggressive action from Biden administration. "The sad truth is that the previous administration introduced a toxic level of unfairness, distrust, and disrespect between management and labor in most, if not all, federal agencies. Every element of the relationship has suffered."
* The Office of Personnel Management must be strengthened. "The lack of policy consistency across the federal government threatens the merit system, and it is facilitated in part by the gradual outsourcing of OPM's core statutory functions. Efforts to strip away or contract out OPM's functions undermines the overall management of the civil service and are a dangerous substitute for full-staffing of OPM."
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union proudly representing 700,000 federal and D.C. government workers nationwide and overseas. Workers in virtually all functions of government at every federal agency depend upon AFGE for legal representation, legislative advocacy, technical expertise and informational services.
(202) 737-8700LATEST NEWS
Luigi Mangione—Accused of Murdering UnitedHealth CEO—to Invoke Psychiatric Defense in State Trial
The legal strategy—which is not an insanity defense—would be an admission that Mangione killed UnitedHealth's Brian Thompson, but did so under mitigating circumstances.
Jun 17, 2026
Luigi Mangione, who stands accused of murdering UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson in 2024, will assert a psychiatric defense in his state murder trial, the New York judge presiding over the case revealed Wednesday.
The Associated Press reported that Judge Gregory Carro of the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan said Mangione’s legal team informed him that they will argue that the 28-year-old defendant suffered from “extreme emotional disturbance" when he allegedly gunned down Thompson outside the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel just after dawn on December 4, 2024.
The defense strategy would be an admission that Mangione killed Thompson, but did so due to mitigating circumstances. The precise nature of the claimed psychiatric issue remains under seal, but it has been reported that Mangione suffered chronic back pain for years and harbored deep animosity toward the for-profit health insurance industry that dominate the US system.
Court documents indicate that Mangione's lawyers previously sought additional time to decide whether to pursue a mental health defense.
Extreme emotional disturbance is not the same as pleading guilty by reason of insanity, which would result in a convicted defendant being sent to a psychiatric facility instead of prison.
On Wednesday, Carro revealed that he had held a secret hearing on the matter earlier this month, and that the session's proceedings were sealed "to give the defense an opportunity to determine whether they were going forth" with the extreme emotional disturbance defense.
The June 3 hearing focused on the psychiatric basis for such a defense, its procedural consequences, disclosure obligations, and potential examinations.
Mangione's attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, decried Carro's decision to unseal details of the secret hearing.
“The reason why we asked for the sealing is that this defense is not available federally and Mr. Mangione is being prosecuted federally and this is prejudicial to his defense to the exact same facts,” she said.
Last year, then-US Attorney General Pam Bondi said she would seek the death penalty for Mangione at his federal trial. New York state effectively abolished capital punishment in 2004.
Mangione allegedly shot Thompson, 50, as he walked to the New York Midtown Hilton for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Police said the words “delay,” “deny,” and “depose”—a description of how insurance companies avoid paying claims—were engraved in shell casings of bullets used in the attack, which was carried out with a 3D-printed pistol. New York police also said they recovered a three-page handwritten note that expressed "some ill will toward corporate America."
Five days after the shooting, Mangione was arrested after a customer in an Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonald's recognized him and alerted authorities.
Thompson's murder exposed the depth of public rage over corporate greed and a for-profit healthcare system in which thousands of people die each year because they have no insurance, while millions more face financial hardship or bankruptcy.
Mangione is facing state charges of second-degree murder, multiple weapons violations, and possession of a fake ID. More serious charges, including first-degree murder and terrorism, have been dismissed. Mangione's New York trial is set to begin on September 8.
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'Major Escalation': Trump Prosecutor Invokes NSPM-7 While Unveiling Charges Against 15 ICE Protesters
National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, which President Donald Trump issued last year, explicitly targets left-wing protesters and beliefs.
Jun 17, 2026
Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have struggled to come up with charges that stick as they've indicted dozens of people this year for protesting President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, and observers suggested Tuesday's indictments of 15 organizers would likely fail to convince any court. But with a US attorney explicitly citing Trump's memo threatening to crack down on left-wing protesters, advocates warned the charges were a "major escalation" against First Amendment rights.
US Attorney Daniel Rosen, who was appointed by Trump for the District of Minnesota last year, noted in his announcement of the indictments that Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) last September and that "Joint Task Force Vanguard," an investigative group set up "to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt those who engage in political violence and intimidation," had worked on the case.
NSPM-7, as Common Dreams reported last year, was issued weeks after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and focuses exclusively on left-wing and "anti-fascist" activities, mandating a "national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
Around the same time, Trump issued an executive order asserting that "antifa," or the anti-fascist movement, had been designated as a "domestic terrorist organization," despite the fact that there is no centralized antifa group and that the president does not have the authority to make such a designation.
The president's directives underpinned the indictment of 15 organizers, including at least one professor and several union leaders and members, who had led direct actions and protests against federal agents during Operation Metro Surge, a crackdown by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies in Minnesota earlier this year.
Rosen said the defendants were members of two Minneapolis-based groups—Direct Action Minnesota and Black Cat Workers Collective—that were associated with "antifa" and were "violently opposed to the enforcement of federal law in our state."
🚨 Feds point to NSPM-7 as basis for charging 15 anti-ICE protesters in Minnesota, alleging ties to "Antifa".
U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen: "Last year, President Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which directed the Department of Justice to prioritize… pic.twitter.com/s3uCKCi09V
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) June 16, 2026
Twelve of the defendants were arrested on Tuesday, while one had already been in custody on other charges and two had not yet been detained.
The charges include conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, interstate stalking, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of government property.
But after examining the indictment, David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, found just one "documented, charged violence by any defendant in the actual indictment against any ICE agent's person": A defendant, William Morgan, "approached one of the agents and knocked the agent's notes out of his hand."
Bier listed the rest of the overt acts included in the 94-page indictment, which he described as a "cobbled together series of basically unrelated incidents or comments, nearly all of it not criminal with a few minor crimes, effectively all nonviolent acts of civil disobedience."
The other acts include "attending meetings," "posting on Facebook and social media about resistance to ICE," "posting flyers advertising direct actions," "conducting after-action reviews," "forming human blockades" at a building used for ICE operations in Minneapolis, and impeding ICE vehicles with sandbags, debris, and vehicles to block roads.
At the press conference Tuesday, evidence presented by Rosen included a Facebook post in which one defendant, Cameron Kennedy, said, "We need to become ungovernable."
Organizers expressed that they were "highly critical of nonviolent peaceful protest," said Rosen.
"Oh," said Bier in response on social media.
Journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News also pointed to a section of the indictment that accuses Isaac Auman Sant of engaging in conduct that "caused, attempted to cause, or would be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress to a person."
"Actual federal charges in Minnesota for hurting ICE agents' feelings," Grim said.
The defendants appeared in the US District Court for the District of Minnesota on Tuesday, where Judge John Docherty said the defendants were being released for the time being and that the conditions for a detention hearing had not been met.
A defendant named Erik Davis, a religious studies professor at Macalester College, told Docherty that according to the indictment, he was being "indicted for holding meetings.”
While the charges were denounced as outrageous by a number of observers, an attorney for one of the defendants, Bruce Nestor, told Democracy Now! that the conspiracy charge "is really an attempt to broaden the net of federal law enforcement and to expand the ability of the federal government to target our movement and to foster repression."
Federal prosecutors have charged 15 Minnesotans for conspiracy to impede or injure immigration officers in Minneapolis earlier this year during President Trump’s so-called Operation Metro Surge. The indictment has linked the defendants to anti-fascist or "antifa" groups. Trump… pic.twitter.com/5eAI1WmUrI
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) June 17, 2026
Adam Federman of Type Investigations said the administration's strategy for cracking down on those who oppose its political agenda appears to be: "Define a loose coalition of activists opposed to the government's immigration policies as Antifa, make the case that Antifa is a terrorist organization, and then prosecute them on conspiracy charges. We're going to see a lot more of this."
The indictment was announced weeks after federal prosecutors dropped all charges against four protesters who had been accused of interfering with ICE agents at a detention center in the Chicago area.
In March, the Trump administration won its first legal victory in its effort to criminalize groups that organize against its agenda when a federal jury convicted eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside ICE's Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, where one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer.
"Prairieland was exhibit A," said Federman on Tuesday. "My guess is that we will get to the end of the alphabet before this administration runs its course."
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) noted that the federal officers who fatally shot two Minneapolis protesters, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, in January have not been criminally charged.
"While the killers of Renée Good and Alex Pretti walk free, the DOJ is busy bringing bogus charges against protesters," said Omar. "The administration thinks intimidation will make us back down. They keep learning the same lesson: Minnesotans don't scare easily. We organize for our rights."
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'They Get Rich. Maine Pays the Price': Platner Campaign Takes Swing at Collins and Corporate Lobbyist Husband
The campaign highlighted findings that the lobbying firm run by Collins’ husband brought in $76 million in federal contracts while she pushed K Street-friendly legislation in the Senate.
Jun 17, 2026
Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner's campaign is taking aim at Sen. Susan Collins and her lobbyist husband, calling her long history of supporting policies that helped his firm "the biggest political scandal in Maine" in an ad released Wednesday.
It follows a report out the previous day from Zeteo revealing that Collins' husband, Tom Daffron, worked as recently as last year for a firm owned by Scott Reed, the lobbyist who leads Pine Tree Results, a billionaire-funded super political action committee (PAC) that is spending millions to support Collins' (R-Maine) campaign for reelection.
While not necessarily a violation of the law, which prohibits super PACs from coordinating with the campaigns they support, the Platner campaign described Daffron's lobbying work as “only the latest example of the blurred lines between Collins, her husband, and the Washington insider network that has surrounded her political career for decades.”
Daffron’s activity as a Washington lobbyist stretches back more than two decades, before his marriage to Collins in 2012. In 2006, Daffron became the chief operating officer of the lobbying and consulting firm Jefferson Consulting Group.
A veteran of national Republican campaigns, he also served as a consultant on Collins’ 1996, 2002, and 2008 Senate bids, and ran her leadership PAC from 2003 until 2012. As far back as 2001, the Portland Press Herald described Daffron as "a close friend [of Collins] and one of the top advisers in her ‘kitchen cabinet.'"
Platner’s ad accuses Collins of having overseen "over $76 million in taxpayer dollars to his company,” which the campaign has argued was due in part to contracting reform legislation she wrote, and which passed in 2008. That law was said to “improve the federal acquisition workforce,” an area in which Jefferson Consulting specialized.
The Platner campaign cited a 2020 article by Salon, which found that:
Between 2006 and 2016, Daffron’s firm landed more than $76 million spread across dozens of federal contracts related to acquisition and procurement, according to searches on USAspending.gov.
In 2010, Jefferson Consulting reported providing acquisitions services and support to nearly two dozen federal agencies. Certain specific provisions included with Collins’ 2007 contract reforms appear to have benefited Daffron’s firm directly, by adding new requirements for acquisition services that Jefferson specialized in.
The ad also highlights Collins' role in voting against several ethics and transparency efforts that could have impacted firms like the one run by Daffron.
One amendment she voted against in 2006 would have required members of Congress to disclose when they or their staff were discussing a possible future private-sector role while serving in government. It would also have restricted lobbyists from giving gifts to lawmakers, such as free lunch or paying for travel or tickets to events.
In 2012, Collins helped to defeat another amendment that would have targeted the so-called “political intelligence” industry that profits from acquiring insider information and passing it on to investors, corporations, and other clients.
Platner: Susan Collins has gotten 21 times wealthier just in the last 15 years. Has anybody else gotten 21 times wealthier since Susan Collins was elected to office? Does Maine have 21 times the schools and hospitals? No, we have less. Susan Collins is getting rich while we're… pic.twitter.com/ZsB2v9JyVu
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 10, 2026
Platner has attacked Collins over her husband's work in recent days, thundering before a crowd on the night of his primary victory last week that “Susan Collins has used her privilege to funnel... federal contracts to her lobbyist husband. If that’s not corruption, I don’t know what is.”
Collins has denied the accusation, saying "It’s just not true, and it’s obvious that Mr. Platner has a problem with the truth.”
Platner has also highlighted Collins' own personal net worth, which had grown from just over $205,000 in 2011 to at least $4.3 million today, when including the estimated value of her stock holdings.
"Has anybody else gotten 21 times wealthier since Susan Collins was elected to office?" Platner asked last week. "Does Maine have 21 times the schools and hospitals? No, we have less."
The ad continues to hammer on this theme of self-dealing, calling out that "Collins voted for new forever wars that gave billions to companies they invested in."
"They made millions," the ad states. "They get rich. Maine pays the price."
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