Trump Administration Proposes Governmentwide NDAs For Federal Workers To Curb Leaks

The Trump administration is proposing a government-wide nondisclosure agreement for federal workers, with the Office of Personnel Management posting a draft notice to the Federal Register on Tuesday and scheduling it for publication on Wednesday.

“The Trump administration is proposing that all new and current federal employees sign non-disclosure agreements as part of its crackdown on press leaks”

CBS News

The OPM notice says the NDA would be intended to document federal employees’ “acknowledgment of, and agreement to comply with, current legal obligations to safeguard non-public, confidential, or proprietary information,” while “expressly preserving the right to make disclosures authorized by law.”

CBS News

The draft also says violations could bring civil and criminal penalties, and it cites “unauthorized disclosures” to the media, including reporting last year about OPM’s efforts to make it easier to fire government employees.

NBC News reports that the notice says agencies would have discretion whether to use the NDA, and it would be administered to newly hired employees as part of onboarding and to current federal employees.

The proposal is framed as a crackdown on leaks, with OPM asserting the NDA is needed to combat “unauthorized disclosures” to the media and to prevent “chilling candid interagency feedback” and “weakening trust within and among Federal agencies.”

The American Federation of Government Employees says it will oppose the move, with Everett Kelley calling it a continuation of OPM’s “efforts to silence federal employees.”

Kelley warned in a statement that “OPM will pressure agencies to make the NDA mandatory and then fire employees who refuse to sign it,” while also arguing that “Federal employees do not surrender their First Amendment rights when they accept federal employment.”

CNN

Mark Zaid, the Washington, D.C.-based attorney who co-founded Whistleblower Aid, told NBC News that the language in the proposed NDA “would not create any new legal obligations for federal employees,” but he said it would likely serve to “induce fear and intimidate the workforce.”

In a separate legal framing, NPR quotes Ray Limon saying the proposal “seems to be a new add-on that seems to be very, very broad in nature,” and he characterizes it as “step on the throat of the employee.”

NPR reports that Limon fears the NDA’s broad language would discourage federal employees from making lawful disclosures under the Whistleblower Protection Act, even as OPM says the proposal “does not create new substantive restrictions on employee speech or disclosure rights.”

The draft NDA would apply to “both new and existing employees,” and it would also require former employees to obtain “written permission from an authorized agency official” to speak to journalists about information the administration deems “confidential.”

“Just three months into Donald Trump’s second term, the Department of Veterans Affairs did something unusual: It required a group of employees working on the administration’s layoff plans to sign nondisclosure agreements”

MS NOW

Politico reports that if an employee violates the rule, the administration could seek legal punishment including financial restitution such as all “royalties” received from disclosing the confidential information.

The OPM draft cites recent leak examples, including disclosures to the media about a confidential U.S. operation before it occurred and the release of personal information belonging to roughly 4,500 ICE employees, which OPM communications director McLaurine Pinover said “endangered agents, troops, and operational security.”

CBS News adds that the OPM notice includes examples involving the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and it references the New York Times and Washington Post receiving unauthorized information on the U.S. raid on Venezuela this past January and delaying “publishing what they knew to avoid endangering U.S. troops.”

As the proposal moves toward a final version after the 30-day public comment period, the draft’s stated purpose is to document agreement to safeguard non-public information while preserving disclosures authorized by law, but the dispute centers on whether the NDA will function as a broad restraint on lawful communications.