Some Washington military veterans are attempting to defy the controversial “Five Things” email requiring federal employees to make a list of their weekly work product amid mass firings and the Trump Administration’s ongoing appetite for slashing the workforce.
Marine Corps veterans previously stationed overseas, who now work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, have pushed back this month and received warnings or reprimands for their slightly subversive responses to the email from the Office of Personnel Management.
They are not the only ones to do so.
“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets describing what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” the email from the Office of Personnel Management said in two notices. “… Please complete the above task each week by Mondays at 11:59pmET.”
Around the same time the email arrived in thousands of inboxes, Trump adviser Elon Musk posted on his social media platform X that it was consistent with President Donald Trump’s “instructions” and the failure to respond to the email would be “taken as a resignation.”
The email alarmed federal employees who said they had to decide whether to risk termination or send sensitive information subject to a possible data breach back to an address with no signature or author. The same email came again on Feb. 28, at night and after regular work hours on the East Coast.
“We don’t know where it’s going or what they’re doing with it,” said Matthew Brossard, the current business representative and organizer for the National Federation of Federal Employees.
Brossard said the union told employees who were scared of ramifications from declining to reply to the email to respond if they are being directed to do so by their supervisor. If the supervisor gave no direction, the union told employees to do as they choose.
March emails obtained by The Spokesman-Review, confirmed to be authentic from Marine combat veterans who are employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the state of Washington, show they took a different approach to the second Trump and Musk inquiry.
One sent a reply en masse to the Human Resources Department that sent the original email and cc’d their entire forestry region. The other employee sent it to their leadership team and also cc’d their entire region, asserting they would not be replying to OPM’s email at all.
One of the two employees, a Washington archaeologist, wrote, “As a United States Marine Corps combat veteran stationed overseas their entire enlistment, this is the exact situation we are trained to look for and not participate in” and added the OPM instruction was “unlawful.”
“They wouldn’t be downplaying it if they weren’t getting something from it. Do not underestimate what can be done with what you think is mundane information,” the archaeologist wrote to hundreds of people. “This is not about telling my supervisor what I’ve done in a week. This is about an outside entity being given authority and accreditation through unquestioned compliance.”
The other employee, located in central Washington, wrote that their work is constantly discussed with their supervisor in person for a reason, not over a computer, and the OPM instruction is an “attempt to micromanage from afar” to threaten federal jobs.
The actions, the recreation management specialist claimed in the email, are creating a hostile workplace and degrading mental health. He then asked for whoever is reading the email to maintain the culture he was taught in the Marine Corps: “Honor, Courage and Commitment.”
More federal workers across the nation are fighting back against Musk’s weekly probing. Brossard said he’s seen “every kind of response you can imagine” — ranging from just responding to stay out of trouble, to soft defiance to blatant ‘entertainment.’”
Others chose to respond with jargon only the people in their regional office would know as a way to disorient OPM or confuse Musk’s team.
Some have even used an Artificial Intelligence website “OPMreply.com” to draft an email, Brossard said. On the website, users can choose a standard mode, a mode based on their last emails or a “salty” mode, which will draft a list of accomplishments in an arrogant, condescending and sassy manner.
The Spokesman-Review tested the “salty” method using a park ranger as a job title. Among the accomplishments, one read, “Performed routine trail maintenance and cleared debris after a storm, keeping the park safe and accessible for visitors — because, you know, the trails don’t magically maintain themselves, despite what the folks in their air-conditioned offices might think.”
Responding en masse, however, appeared to be frowned upon by some Pacific Northwest supervisors. Regional Forester for the Pacific Northwest Region in the U.S Forest Service Jacqueline Buchanan wrote to her district on March 4 that the emails were disruptive to others.
“… Emails such as these can be seen as unbecoming of your position of authority or influence,” her email said. “I am expecting you all to remain professional and respectful in your communications.”
Buchanan then offered counseling resources to those who need it and further directed employees to respond to any future “What did you do last week?” emails from OPM until further notice.
The other employee received a nondisciplinary letter, or a formal warning that is filed in one’s personnel record. The letter, also obtained by The Spokesman-Review, says the mass message “negatively impacted the efficiency of the service” because of the number of people “who took time out of their workday to read your email.”
“Your failure or refusal to adhere to the expectations/instructions contained in this letter may subject you to disciplinary action up to and including removal from the federal service,” it continued.
A separate email obtained by The Spokesman-Review sent by the USDA this month told remaining employees not to send paragraphs or sentences, only a bulleted list. The next day, the U.S. Forest Service Office of the Chief sent out a mass email directing workers to respond directly to the OPM message.
“Thanks for all you do and for your commitment to our mission,” the email reads.
The constant confusion regarding who is sending emails, where the emails are going and who is reading them is sending workers into a tailspin, Brossard believes. The fear surrounding unstable job security following the thousands of Department of Government Efficiency firings in the past month as the Trump administration attempts to slash federal spending — along with the concern of retribution or punishment from the government for speaking up — is something Brossard has never witnessed.
Brossard started working in the federal government in 2003 and retired in 2024. He has seen multiple transitions of power. And all of this, he said, “came out of left field.”
“Never in my 21 years have I had anything happen like this, especially in administration changes,” he said. “I went from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden, and none of this ever happened until we came back to Trump 2.0.”
Like employees mentioned in their responses to OPM, and what’s clear in the supervisorial responses back to the employees, is that mental health is a recurring conversation during a turbulent time in the government workforce.
Brossard said the last month of firings, emails, lawsuits, confusion and lack of information has created somewhat of a mental health “crisis” among employees because their sense of job security is “eroding more and more every day.”
Since the last email went out on Feb. 28 and the deadline to respond passed last week, however, he hasn’t seen another.
“People are scared,” he said. “It’s creating mental anguish. … There is so much fear-based compliance — ‘Respond to this or you’re listing your job, do this or you’ll be fired.’ So much is going on; it’s sad, but at some point it’s going to become normal in the federal workforce.”
