“So fucking stupid,” one agency told Splinter upon sharing the initial email. Another at a different agency suggested that if the exercise is repeated next week, one of the bullet points could be about attending policy guidance meetings about how to respond to the previous email.
There is, obviously, no consensus opinion across the agencies on the need to actually address the OPM email. But a number of them explicitly and publicly told their employees to hold off — that includes the Department of Defense, the FBI, and others. A message from a State Department official told staff not to respond, and added that “No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command.”
But some agency leadership appears more eager to kiss the ring. EPA employees received a message on Monday, viewed by Splinter, that instructed them to answer the OPM message by the stated 11:59 pm ET deadline. “As you are drafting your bullets, please keep in mind that no sensitive, commercially sensitive, confidential, deliberative, law enforcement sensitive, or otherwise privileged or controlled unclassified information should be included,” it read. What’s left is not entirely clear.
Meanwhile employees at the Department of Health and Human Services were still in the dark as of Monday afternoon. Multiple sources at the National Institutes of Health, part of HHS, told Splinter that they had received wildly seesawing messages on Sunday — an HHS message telling them to respond to OPM, an NIH message saying don’t, another HHS messaging saying hold off but we’ll tell you what to do by noon on Monday. Noon came and went; one source said they now only expect guidance at 4 pm ET, leaving very little time in the workday to bother with the task.
OPM itself offered an update on Monday afternoon, refuting Musk’s initial claim that a non-response to OPM was tantamount to a resignation — instead, it now says answering the email is voluntary, apparently for any federal employee, raising the question of what the hell we’re even doing here. One NIH source summed up this exercise in government accountability and efficiency: “Such a waste of everyone’s time.”
GET SPLINTER RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
The Truth Hurts
