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Trump Admin Pushes NDAs for All Federal Workers

HeadlineMay 27, 2026

The Trump administration is pushing a new nondisclosure agreement that would apply to all federal workers. The Office of Personnel Management posted a draft to the Federal Register on Tuesday, prohibiting employees from disclosing nonpublic, confidential or proprietary information. It would also bar them from sharing sensitive internal materials not currently available to the public. The draft goes beyond standard classified and unclassified categories of information. The new rule targets leaks to news outlets and would broaden nondisclosure agreements already in place at the Pentagon and other federal agencies. Esha Bhandari, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said, “Such broad gag orders would leave the public in the dark about how the government works, preventing the kind of informed debate that is critical to democratic accountability. The government can’t shroud itself in secrecy in a democracy.”

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