To stop leaks, the Trump administration wants federal workers to sign NDAs

The Office of Personnel Management headquarters in Washington, D.C. Michael A. McCoy/For The Washington Post via hide caption toggle caption Michael A. McCoy/For The Washington Post via Stay up to date with our Up First newsletter sent every weekday morning. The Trump administration has proposed introducing a new government-wide nondisclosure agreement , or NDA, for both new employees and those already serving. Recent leaks about immigration enforcement actions and the secretive U.S. raid on Venezuela underscore the need for NDAs, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) writes in a proposed rule scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday. OPM asserts those disclosures put the lives of federal agents and members of the armed forces at risk. The document does not mention the highest-profile disclosure of the second Trump administration: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's revelation over a Signal group chat of plans for a military strike on Yemen. The roughly 2 million people who work for the federal government are already required to safeguard confidential and proprietary information obtained on the job. OPM says its proposal "does not create new substantive restrictions on employee speech or disclosure rights," but instead provides a standardized way for federal workers to acknowledge and agree to their existing obligations. But some people familiar with the inner workings of the federal government dispute that characterization. …