After Guilfoyle dismissal, Rubio reminds diplomats to ‘avoid conflicts of interest’; The Washington Post, October 14, 2026

John Hudson, The Washington Post; After Guilfoyle dismissal, Rubio reminds diplomats to ‘avoid conflicts of interest’

[Kip Currier: It's a positive step to see Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly acknowledge the importance of all State Department staff to "avoid conflicts of interest." Much more needs to be done, however, to instill greater trust in the public, encourage maximal transparency, and hold employees accountable for ethics transgressions. Even an "appearance of impropriety" is injurious to public trust.

In my graduate courses in ethics, management and leadership, and intellectual property at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information (SCI), I underscore for students that the most important take-away is to hone their abilities to identify potential and actual ethics issues. Issues like conflicts of interest and accountability. Everyday, we see individuals -- and organizations -- in the news, as well as in our own communities, who have inadvertently or willfully made ethically concerning and/or ethically violative decisions.

With that in mind, I knew from the beginning that my Bloomsbury ethics book -- Ethics, Information, and Technology (2025) -- needed to have a robust section on Character and Professional Ethics in the initial portion of the book. The aim was to lay a firm foundation for readers to be well-grounded in character and professional ethics, as preparation for better grappling with and understanding the fundamentals and nuances of bedrock issues facing democracies and societies now: intellectual freedom and censorship, access and digital divides, freedom of expression, free and independent presses, privacy and surveillance, data autonomy, accuracy of information, misinformation and disinformation, social media ethics, ethics of AI and other emerging technologies, and more. 

Character and Professional Ethics topics examined and explained in the book include: integrity, misrepresentation, plagiarism, attribution, conflicts of interest, transparency, accountability, corruption, and trust.]

[Excerpt]

"A day after President Donald Trump fired his ambassador to Greece amid a flurry of ethics complaints, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a message to all State Department employees reminding them to “avoid conflicts of interest.” 

“It is my expectation that every member of our team must act with uncompromising personal and professional integrity,” wrote Rubio in a memo obtained by The Washington Post. “I expect employees to avoid conflicts of interest in our work, to act impartially, and to avoid using our public offices for private gain.”"

Trump administration prepares to fire worker for TV interview about SNAP; The Washington Post, November 13, 2025

Mariana Alfaro

 and 

Hannah Natanson

, The Washington Post ; Trump administration prepares to fire worker for TV interview about SNAP

"Debra D’Agostino, a federal employment lawyer, argued that Mei probably has a strong case against her dismissal. Mei’s speech was almost certainly protected under both the First Amendment and the Whistleblower Protection Act, D’Agostino said.

There have been at least two Supreme Court cases — Pickering v. Board of Education in 1968 and Department of Homeland Security v. MacLean in 2015 — in which the justices decided in favor of staffers accused by their employers of speaking out of turn, D’Agostino noted. In the first, the court ruled for a teacher who had written to a newspaper criticizing the superintendent, saying the educator had a right to speak on matters of public concern so long as she was not knowingly lying.

In the second, the court ruled for a Transportation Security Administration staffer who the government accused of revealing “sensitive security information” to a reporter. In that case, the court decided the staffer’s activity was covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act, which says federal workers can report lawbreaking or anything that poses a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety."