House adds DoD name change to NDAA | Federal News Network

• Congress is one step closer to adopting a tougher name for the Department of Defense. An amendment added to the annual defense policy bill that passed the House would formally change its title to the Department of War. The name change echoes an executive order President Donald Trump signed in September. Only Congress has the authority to legally rename a federal department. Both chambers of Congress must approve the new name for it to take effect.
• The Trump administration wants to speed up the adoption of AI for national security missions. In a June 5 national security memo, President Donald Trump directed Defense Department and intelligence community leaders to ensure the rapid onboarding of advanced AI models. Within 90 days, Trump wants a roadmap that ensures national security agencies have adequate access to advanced computing resources. And while Anthropic continues to battle the Pentagon's supply chain security ban in federal court, Trump's memo gives agencies limited waiver authority to work with AI firms that don't comply with the administration's policies.
• A House committee is authorizing an agency renovation project meant to consolidate federal office space. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is giving full financial support to an overhaul of the General Services Administration's headquarters. GSA will temporarily relocate its employees to the Office of Personnel Management’s headquarters while renovations are underway. Both OPM and GSA will move into the renovated headquarters once completed in December 2028.
• The Department of Veterans Affairs is continuing its rollout of a new, multi-billion-dollar Electronic Health Record at its healthcare facilities. The VA deployed its new EHR to four more sites in Ohio and Kentucky over the weekend. This marks the second wave of EHR go-lives under the second Trump administration. The VA said in a press release that with the latest go-lives, an additional 7,200 VA employees and 107,000 veterans have migrated to the new EHR. In April, the VA deployed the new EHR to four medical facilities in Michigan, ending a three-year “reset†period to address persistent outages and functionality problems reported by VA medical staff already using the new EHR.
• A group of Senators is pressing Susan Wiles, the White House chief of staff, about a lucrative Defense Department contract awarded to Vulcan Elements, a company linked to President Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr. After Trump began his second term, Trump Jr. joined venture capital firm 1789 Capital which gave a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements. The lawmakers say that the most lucrative DoD award to date for 1789 Capital is a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements. This is the largest loan the Defense Department's Office of Strategic Capital ever awarded and is worth twice Vulcan Elements' entire valuation. The lawmakers want Wiles to answer questions regarding these DoD contracting decisions by June 16.
• The House Armed Services Committee is pushing back against President Donald Trump's executive order that removes collective bargaining rights for Defense Department civilian personnel. The committee adopted an amendment last week to ban the Defense Department's use of fiscal 2027 funds to implement the president's executive order. Last year, Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) introduced a similar provision that was stripped from the final version of the 2026 defense policy bill. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the committee's chairman, opposed the amendment, arguing that it “unnecessarily restricts†the president’s authority to manage the workforce of national security agencies. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth terminated nearly all collective bargaining agreements across the department. Hegseth told lawmakers that he “fundamentally believes the Department of War should not be subject to collective bargaining. Full stop.â€
• A top Senate lawmaker is pushing to restore funding for a federally funded cybersecurity information sharing program. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) introduced a bill last week to fund the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. The program had provided free cyber resources and monitoring to 19,000 state and local organizations. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ended support for the program last year. Warner's bill would also expand the program to serve critical infrastructure organizations and extend threat intelligence sharing with the FBI.
• Veterans Affairs wants to bring some standardization to how it manages cloud services. The Veterans Affairs Department is seeking help to manage 757 applications across three cloud service providers at the high impact level. In a new request for information, VA is trying to identify contractors who can help streamline and modernize how VA procures, allocates and charges back cloud service provider credits, consistent with ongoing Infrastructure operations (IO) FinOps efforts. Through a cloud brokerage service, VA needs help to reduce the time it takes to onboard a new cloud application, deliver trend analysis and optimization recommendations and several other governance related objectives. Responses to the RFI are due by June 22.
• A federal watchdog is urging the Defense Department to take a close look at what it’s learned from massive cuts to its civilian workforce. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office argues that DoD hasn’t done enough to understand how losing about 10% of its civilian staff, or more than 78,000 employees, could impact military readiness. The department is legally required to assess the effects of workforce reduction initiatives. DoD agreed with the recommendation.
• The General Services Administration is warning vendors on its OASIS-plus contract about possible phishing attempts by fraudsters. GSA says the bad actors are sending OASIS-plus contractors an email from what seems to be a legitimate GSA email address and in some versions includes the email signature of current leadership seeking private information and for the vendor to click on a possible malware infected link. Phishing attempts faced by federal contractors most often include fake invoices seeking IT hardware from federal executives or similar attempts. GSA recommends verifying any communication by emailing OASISPlus@gsa.gov.

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