SUPERIOR NATIONAL FOREST – Employees of the U.S. Forest Service and other staff employed by the Department of Agriculture were told Monday that any response to the highly publicized email from the federal government demanding they explain what they accomplished last week at work “is voluntary and not required.”
The email, sent over the weekend from the Office of Personnel Management and shared with Paddle and Portage, asked employees to send approximately five bullet points listing what they accomplished last week. The email requested that employees not send any classified information, links or attachments and said employees must respond by a deadline of Monday (Feb. 24) at 10:59 p.m. Central Time.
Some employees who work for the Forest Service on Superior National Forest, which includes the entire Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, did respond to the email, according to sources Paddle and Portage spoke with Feb. 24. There was speculation, primarily driven by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), that not responding to the email and listing the five bullet points could result in a federal employee losing their job.
However, the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, sent out an unsigned email to employees Monday afternoon informing them that “there is no penalty for not responding to the request.” The letter from USDA was shared Monday evening in its entirety with Paddle and Portage.
Musk, meanwhile, doubled down late Monday on the missive from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) demanding that federal employees list five accomplishments from the past week that they performed while working.
“The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send! Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?” he wrote.
Later, Musk said Forest Service employees and others will likely be sent another email if they don’t respond to the one from over the weekend.
“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination,” he wrote on X. (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1894177129887404484)
If federal employees do respond to the emails, their statements are expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary, according to reports from the nation’s capital. The AI system will determine whether someone’s work is “mission-critical” or not.
The OPM email did not mention the word “resignation,” but reads: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager. Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments. Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pm EST.”
One Forest Service employee Paddle and Portage spoke with said the email looked like “spam” or junk mail.
Meanwhile, the USDA sent Paddle and Portage a response last week when we inquired how many employees have been terminated from Superior National Forest as part of ongoing efforts to shrink the size of the federal government. The response to questions about how many employees were terminated reads as follows:
“Secretary (Brooke) Rollins fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people. We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy.
As part of this effort, USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service. To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters. Released employees were probationary in status, many of whom were compensated by temporary IRA funding. It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term. Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”
Also Monday, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which oversees various aspects of the federal government, says there’s evidence DOGE and the Trump administration violated federal law in firing probationary employees, including some on Superior National Forest.
In a statement, an agent from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, said there are legal principles that guide how federal agencies hire and fire employees. The agent notes that all employees, including those still in their probationary period, should be evaluated based on individual performance. Some workers who were fired earlier this month claim they were fired unjustly and not based on their work performance, according to emails that were shared with Paddle and Portage.
