Some Washington military veterans are trying to ignore the controversial “Five Things” emails that require federal employees to create a list of weekly work products amid the Trump administration’s ongoing appetite for mass shootings and the workforce to cut back on.
The Marine Corps veteran, currently stationed overseas, currently working for the USDA, has retreated this month and received warnings and responsibilities for the slightly destructive response to emails from the Human Resources Administration.
They’re not the only ones who do that.
“Please reply to this email with about. An email from the Human Resources Bureau states in two notifications: “…Complete the above tasks each week by 11:59pm on Monday.”
Almost at the same time that the email arrived in thousands of inboxes, Trump adviser Elon Musk posted it on social media platform X. It coincides with President Donald Trump’s “direction,” and failing to respond to emails will be “deemed a resignation.”
The email warned federal employees who said they needed to return to addresses without signatures or authors to decide whether to risk termination or send confidential information. The same email arrived again on February 28th, after regular working hours on the East Coast.
“I don’t know where it’s heading or what they’re doing with it,” said Matthew Brosard, the current business president and organizer of the National Federation of Federal Employees.
Brossard said the union told employees that they feared they would decline to respond to emails if supervisors were instructed to do so. If the supervisor did not give instructions, the union instructed the employees to do as they chose.
An email from a spokesman review confirmed authenticity from a Marine Corps veteran, a US Department of Agriculture employee in Washington, shows that they took a different approach to the second Trump and Musk investigation.
I sent out the original email and sent a large number of replies to the HR department that cc’d the entire forestry area. Other employees send it to their leadership team and cc’d The entire region claims they don’t respond to OPM’s emails at all.
A Washington archaeologist, one of the two employees, wrote, “The exact situation is that U.S. Marine Corps combat veterans are stationed overseas, so they are trained to participate and not to participate,” adding that OPM’s guidance is “illegal.”
“If they haven’t got something out of it, they’re not underestimating it. Archaeologists have written to hundreds of people. “This is not about telling supervisors what I’ve done in a week. It’s about external entities that are given authority and certification through unquestionable compliance.”
Another central Washington employee wrote that their work is constantly being discussed directly with supervisors for reasons rather than computers, and that OPM guidance is a “attempt of micromanagement from afar” to threaten federal employment.
Action, a recreation management expert, has been claimed in email, creating hostile workplaces and degrades mental health. He then asked anyone reading the email to maintain the culture taught in the Marines: “honor, courage, commitment.”
More federal workers across the country are fighting weekly surveys of masks. Brosard said he saw “any kind of reaction you could imagine.” From simply responding to avoiding trouble, to a soft rebellion against blatant “entertainment.”
Others chose to respond in jargon, saying that only people from their local office would know as a way to confuse OPM’s confusion or mask teams.
Some have used artificial intelligence websites.opmreply.com“To draft emails, Brossard said. On the website, users can choose a mode based on the standard mode, the last email, or “salted” mode. This will draft a list of achievements in a rog arrogant, mean and cocky way.
The spokesman review tested the “salted” method using Park Rangers as a role. In the results, he read, “Because if we perform routine trail maintenance after a storm and keep the park safe and accessible to visitors, the wreckage will not magically maintain, and despite what people in air conditioned offices might think,” he reads, “it’s because it can’t magically maintain it.”
However, the massive response appeared to be frowned upon by supervisors in the Pacific Northwest. Forester Jungleen Buchanan, a regional for the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. Forest Service, wrote in her district on March 4 that the email was destructive to others.
“…Emails like this can be deemed to be incomplete in your position of authority or influence,” her email said. “I look forward to you all being professional and respectful in your communication.”
Buchanan then provides counseling resources to those who need it, and also emails from OPM to employees will be notified.
Other employees received an official warning to be submitted to interdisciplinary letters or to their personnel records. The letter, also obtained by the spokesman review, states that the massive amount of messages “had a negative impact on the efficiency of the service” due to the number of people who “taken time from working hours to read the email.”
“A failure or refusal to comply with the expectations/directions contained in this letter could be subject to disciplinary action by removing federal government services,” he continued.
Another email, retrieved by a spokesman review sent by the USDA this month, told the remaining employees not to send paragraphs or sentences. The next day, the Chief’s U.S. Forest Service sent a massive amount of emails instructing workers to respond directly to the OPM message.
“We appreciate everything you do and for our commitment to our mission,” the email reads.
Brossard believes the constant confusion of who is sending emails, where emails are going, and who is reading them is sending workers into tailspin. The fear surrounding unstable job security following government efficiency layoffs as the Trump administration seeks to cut federal spending is something Blossard has never witnessed, along with concerns about retaliation or punishment from the government.
Brosard began working for the federal government in 2003 and retired in 2024. He has seen multiple power transitions. And all of this “leaved out of the field on the left,” he said.
“Nothing like this has happened in my 21 years, especially in the change in management,” he said. “I went from Bush to Obama, Trump and Biden, but this didn’t happen until I got back to Trump 2.0.”
What is clear from the employee mentioned in the response to the OPM and the supervisory response to the employee is that mental health is a repeated conversation during the turbulence of the government’s workforce.
Brosard said last month of shootings, emails, lawsuits, confusion and lack of information generated somewhat of a “crisis” in the mental health of employees as employment safety is “increasingly eroding every day.”
The last email was released on February 28th, and he has not seen another email since the deadline for responses passed last week.
“People are scary,” he said. “It creates mental anguish. …There’s a lot of fear-based compliance. “You’re going to respond to this, you’re listing a job, you’re going to do this, you’re going to be fired.” A lot of things happening. That’s sad, but at some point it will become normal for federal workers. ”
