The Wrap: DOGE Feels Brush-Back; Destroying Government’s Brand; Funding Freeze Ruling Likely
Welcome to The Wrap for Monday, February 24!
From the newsroom at MeriTalk, it’s the quickest read in Federal tech news. Here’s what you need to know today:
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DOGE Feels Brush-Back
For the first time since taking the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk is seeing hard resistance from Federal agencies to one of his directives. That came in the form of a social media post on Saturday ordering Federal civilian employees to provide a list of five accomplishments over the past week or face the loss of their jobs, which the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) then turned into a slightly less aggressive email with a due date of midnight tonight. By our rough count, agencies employing about 41 percent of the Federal civilian workforce – the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, State, among others – told their employees to not answer the email without further instruction from the agencies. Others instructed employees to reply to OPM, and the Department of the Interior even told its employees that the weekly reporting may become a regular thing. Predictably, Hill Democrats like House Oversight and Reform Committee ranking member Gerry Connolly, D-Va., went ballistic, but the Republican side of the aisle was also represented by the likes of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who called the email request “absurd.” Please do click through for the whole story.
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Destroying Government’s Brand
That’s how the Partnership for Public Service – a nonprofit not known for casual bomb throwing – is sizing up the Trump administration’s thus-far relentless campaign to cut the Federal work rolls. “It’s enormously disruptive for future recruiting efforts and unnecessarily so,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, during a talk with reporters on Friday. “We’re losing critical talent today, and we’re destroying the brand for the future.” In particular, he pointed to the ongoing purge of probationary Federal employees – those on the job for less than two years – and the damage that is causing to the government’s efforts to get a younger workforce in place. “There are already insufficient young people in our government – only less than 7 percent are under the age of 30,” Stier said. “We’re going to see the damage for many years to come because of the actions that are being taken now.” Jenny Mattingley, the vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service, pointed out that the firings of probationary Feds are also hitting hard in tech roles such as AI, cybersecurity, and IT. “The competition for talent in the private sector for those sorts of positions is intense, and so when you make government look less attractive, then you’re already going to lose out on those positions to the private sector,” she said.
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Funding Freeze Ruling Likely This Week
U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island heard arguments late Friday about whether to further block the Trump administration from freezing trillions of dollars in Federal grant and loan programs, and indicated he may deliver later this week a written decision on a request for a preliminary injunction by state attorneys general. Until then, the court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) against the funding freeze remains in effect. If granted, the preliminary injunction would mark the first significant and sweeping block of the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze Federal funding as the administration battles several suits filed in different courts related to the freeze – an effort that thus far has won a few TRO rulings.?Arguments at Friday’s court session featured the state plaintiffs focusing on the “irreparable harm” that would be caused by the mass funding freeze, and the Department of Justice arguing that the freeze aligns with the Constitution, which grants the president control over subordinate agencies.??
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DOGE Still Blocked From Treasury Tech
A Federal judge on Friday issued an order that extends the court's prohibition on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing U.S. Department of the Treasury payment systems. In a?64-page opinion, Judge Jeannette A. Vargas of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that “there is a realistic danger that confidential financial information will be disclosed” without the court blocking DOGE’s access to the systems. She wrote that the Treasury Department’s “rushed and ad hoc process” for granting DOGE access to the payment systems “increased the risk of exposure” of confidential information. The preliminary injunction Vargas issued on Feb. 21 prohibits anyone affiliated with DOGE or the Treasury DOGE team from accessing Federal payment systems until further notice.
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Once again, let’s “call IT a day,” but we'll bring you more tomorrow. Until then please check the MeriTalk breaking news website throughout the day for the latest on government IT people, process, and policy. And finally, please hit the news tip jar [with leads, breaking news, or simply your two cents] at [email protected].