For federal civilians, administrative processes can become weapons of exhaustion. First, there is retaliation. Then, you're buried in paperwork designed to make you give up. But those same processes can also be used to fight back, often long before a case reaches a courtroom. Our latest DoD Times (Redacted) explains how.

"Commanders are back in charge!" the Secretary trumpeted during his Inspector General system reforms briefing this past week. The thing is that commanders always were in charge. Any authority they seemingly lost was due to their own relinquishing of it, not to some boogeyman IG taking it away. In his latest briefing on 'warrior-centric' IG reforms, Secretary Hegseth demonstrates again he has a modicum of understanding of what is transpiring in the system that he hates...but that doesn’t stop him from selling his disciples on hating it as well, by citing anecdotes, half-truths, and politically-slanted fantasy. Be wary, future complainants - you too may soon also be ‘low-performing radical leftists’…

Two words can change everything: “national security.” Former FBI Special Agent Emily Fertitta describes what can happen when those words put extraordinary power beyond ordinary scrutiny, and why the people willing to speak up may be the ones most vulnerable to it.

What happens when your military command starts pushing you out before your medical board is finished? For service members caught between disability processing and administrative separation, the answer is more complicated than many realize, and the rules aren't the same across DoD/W and the Coast Guard. This week's DoD Times (Redacted) breaks down what the regulations actually say, where the protections and gaps are, and what you can do if both processes are moving at the same time.

Most people playing the BCM/NR game only know one move: file the board application and hope. "Before You File a BCMR or BCNR" breaks down a sequence that makes better sense: petition the right commander, build your evidence file, exhaust your remedies, and only then take your case to the board, before you burn a move you can't take back.

The U.S. Department of War leadership cadre has exhibited much difficulty squaring this corner: they say they want to improve the organization, but the first step to real improvement is admitting something is wrong… So, if they can’t get past Step 1, is Step 2 really happening anymore?

Two Air National Guard colonels, two very different outcomes. In 2022, the Air Force Inspector General reversed all four substantiated misconduct findings against Col. Lisa Nemeth of the California Guard, intervening unprompted. Col. Leslie Zyzda-Martin, cleared four separate times by investigators in Wisconsin, has spent years being told the Air Force has no purview over Guard matters. The disparity undercuts that claim: the same office that reached in to reverse a finding of misconduct cannot credibly say it lacks authority to examine a case where no misconduct was found at all.