Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig fedw1-staging.medalliafederal.com. NS
Answer
fedw1-staging.medalliafederal.com. 4 NS ns-1685.awsdns-18.co.uk.
fedw1-staging.medalliafederal.com. 4 NS ns-735.awsdns-27.net.
fedw1-staging.medalliafederal.com. 4 NS ns-104.awsdns-13.com.
fedw1-staging.medalliafederal.com. 4 NS ns-1401.awsdns-47.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0