The House passed its version of the 2026 defense policy bill, which includes a 3.8% pay bump for service members. House Republicans pushed the bill through largely without Democratic support after adding conservative provisions and blocking debates Democrats sought on issues like expanding the use of the military inside the country. House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith, who voted against the bill, said the GOP included “countless partisan amendments” and “silenced debate of critical issues.” The annual legislation also includes sweeping acquisition reforms aimed at changing how the Pentagon does business. The Senate is expected to pass its version of the defense bill later this week.

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The Pentagon has published the final acquisition rule implementing the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program. The rule, released in yesterday’s Federal Register will allow Defense Department procurements to include CMMC assessment requirements. The assessments are intended to ensure defense contractors are following cybersecurity standards for protecting controlled unclassified information. The Pentagon estimates 80,000 defense contractors may be required to obtain a CMMC assessment. Officials plan to phase in the requirements over a three-year period.

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Federal employees, on average, are waiting longer to see their retirement applications processed. New data from the Office of Personnel Management for August shows it takes an average of 70 days to process a claim from a retiring fed. But if retirement claims are coming to OPM in less than 60 days, those cases take, on average, 45 days to complete. At the same time, OPM received more than 9,400 retirement claims last month. OPM's backlog of retirement claims dropped by 2,000 to 24,300.

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