Trump Takes Aim at Press Leaks With NDAs for Federal Workers (3)

Federal employees would sign nondisclosure agreements to discourage them from leaking government information to the press and the public, under a proposal from the Office of Personnel Management.

The OPM revealed a plan Tuesday to create an NDA form for federal workers. The notice cites examples of news outlets reporting on drafts of regulations and interagency discussions about new proposals, including the OPM’s own proposal to weaken job security for some and make it easier to terminate certain federal positions.

The proposal is the Trump administration’s latest effort to crack down on federal employees leaking non-public information to journalists. Federal agents searched the home of a Washington Post journalist in January while investigating a government contractor who allegedly released classified information.

Violating an NDA could result in “disciplinary action, removal, debarment, or criminal penalties,” according to the draft form.

The notice says the OPM is seeking to create a standard NDA that could be used across the federal government, but indicates that agencies would have the option whether to use it. For those that do, new hires would sign the NDA during onboarding and existing employees moving to a new position also could be asked to sign.

Federal employees already are restricted from disclosing certain kinds of information under federal laws and regulations, the OPM said. Signing an NDA wouldn’t reduce workers’ rights to make legally protected disclosures to Congress, an inspector general, or other designated official under the Whistleblower Protection Act, according to the language of the proposed form.

“In much of the private sector, employees handling sensitive business or customer information are routinely required to sign confidentiality agreements, and the federal government should not be held to a lower standard,” said OPM Director Scott Kupor in a statement.

The OPM plans to define “confidential government information” as including “information relating to internal agency operations, personnel matters, procurement processes, or any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material that is not currently publicly available,” according to the notice.

It’s doubtful the Trump administration will truly treat the adoption of NDAs as optional for federal agencies, said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

“OPM will pressure agencies to make the NDA mandatory and then fire employees who refuse to sign it,” Kelley said by email, adding that the definition of confidential information is overly broad, covering the “very material the public relies on to learn when an administration is causing harm.”

The push for wider use of NDAs is the latest in a decades-long shift toward tighter restrictions on the release of federal government information, said Dan Meyer, a partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC who represents federal employees.

Civil society groups could challenge the tighter restrictions under federal “right to know” laws, but they’re likely to face a hostile judiciary that would support President Donald Trump’s efforts to treat more information as confidential, he said.

The office previously released a proposed rule in June 2025 that calls for tying employees’ violations of nondisclosure duties more closely with their “suitability and fitness” determinations within the federal workforce.

“Our federal government has a serious silencing problem. Too many workers are afraid to report misconduct because they know the system is designed to protect the powerful instead of the people facing abuse,” advocacy group Lift Our Voices cofounders Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky said via email.