Insights

Washington – February 24, 2026: Law360 has named Crowell & Moring’s Government Contracts Group a Practice Group of the Year for 2025. This is the 14thyear that the Group has earned this recognition.

Washington – July 15, 2025: Crowell & Moring was honored to represent MP Materials in its landmark partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense, making DoD the company’s largest shareholder. On July 9, MP and DoD signed a multibillion-dollar package of investments and long-term commitments, providing for, among other things, construction of the company’s second domestic magnet manufacturing facility. The agreements include convertible preferred equity, warrants, loans, and price floor and offtake commitments.

Washington – June 26, 2025: Crowell & Moring has been recommended in eight practice areas in the 18th edition of the Legal 500 United States. In addition, partner Daniel Forman, co-chair of the firm’s Government Contracts Group, has been named to the Legal 500’s “Hall of Fame” for Government Contracts.

As discussed in our March 30, 2026, client alert, Déjà Vu: New Executive Order Outlines Restrictions on Contractor and Subcontractor DEI Activity, President Trump issued Executive Order 14398 (EO 14398), Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors, on March 26, 2026. The EO declared DEI activities “unethical and often illegal,” required a new mandatory contract clause for federal contracts and subcontracts, and directed the Federal Acquisition Regulatory (FAR) Council to issue an implementing deviation. That deviation has now arrived. At the same time, a coalition of higher education and government contractor associations has filed suit seeking to block the underlying executive order.

On Friday, April 10, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) has agreed to pay just over $17 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act (FCA) by failing to comply with federal anti-discrimination requirements incorporated into its federal contracts due to allegedly discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) employment practices. This resolution marks the first FCA settlement secured by the DOJ under its Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, created in May 2025, and announced by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as part of the administration’s coordinated efforts to target allegedly unlawful DEI practices. Per the agreement, the settlement is neither an admission of liability by IBM nor a concession by the United States that its claims are not well founded.

On March 31, 2026, the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), issued Memorandum M-26-10 titled, “Reinforcing Transparency, Accountability, and Oversight of Federal Technology,” (Memorandum) containing a new policy designed to reinforce oversight, transparency, and accountability across federal technology programs, increase accountability for agency chief information officers (CIOs), and enhance information sharing among government agencies.  OMB issued the policy in furtherance of several executive orders (EOs) issued by President Trump, including: EO 13833, “Enhancing the Effectiveness of Agency Chief Information Officers,” EO 14240, “Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement,” and EO 14243, “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos.”  

Crowell & Moring is pleased to announce the launch of our Government Contracts Breakfast Series. All of the sessions will be held in Northern Virginia and focus on issues most important to government contractors. Our June session is described below.

Join us for a webinar discussion of the U.S. Department of Treasury’s new final rule on the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The final rule governs the state, local, and Tribal governments’ eligible uses of the $350 billion dollars of funds available under ARPA and imposes regulatory requirements on these recipients, which are flowed down to subrecipients and contractors. Our webinar will help contractors navigate the SLFRF, and cover the following key areas:

Please join us on Wednesday, November 10 at 3 pm EST, for a follow-up presentation on the Federal Contractor Vaccine Mandate.  The Safer Federal Workforce Task Force has issued additional guidance and certain federal agencies have elaborated on their policies for implementing the new federal requirements.  Our webinar will discuss key developments that have arisen in recent weeks, challenges that contractors are facing, and common questions.  We hope you will join us.  If there are particular topics or questions you would like us to address, we encourage you to reach out to any of the presenters in advance.

Please join us for a webinar that will discuss some of the key business and legal issues that companies are navigating in connection with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and its cross-jurisdictional impacts. Topics will include supply chain disruption, labor and employment, employee mobility, commercial contracts, government contracts, health care, insurance coverage, privacy, crisis management and continuity of operations, and more. 

Click below to listen or access from one of these links:

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