The Trump's administration new effort to have federal workers report their coworkers who refused to sweep out diversity, equity and inclusionpolicies may get more than it bargained for.
Federal employees were put on notice Wednesday that “adverse consequences” would follow for those who refuse to report colleagues in DEI roles. The threat was sent out to tens of thousands of government workers across federal agencies, warning that the White House would not allow any efforts to “disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language."
Workers were given a 10-day deadline to turn in their colleagues via a “special email address” if they believed they were not complying with the new order. Those who followed the directive would not risk disciplinary action.
“There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information,” the email template sent from the Office of Personnel Management to agency heads said. “However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.”
But critics of the move hatched a plan Wednesday to impede the effort: inundate the email address with spam.
"I don’t care. F--- these McCarthyite bastards," Craig Calcaterra, author of the Cup of Coffee newsletter, wrote on Bluesky. His post attached a screenshot of an email he sent to the reporting address, in which he flagged "multiple executive branch employees who were put in positions solely because of their race and/or gender despite the fact that they are wholly unqualified for their jobs and, in some cases, have criminal records."
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In the email, containing the subject line "Suspicious hire," Calcaterra named Trump, J.D. Vance, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk and aide Stephen Miller.
"I believe the general internet tradition on these kinds of things is well known," goaded Mike Masnick, founder and CEO of Floor64 and editor of the Techdirt blog, on Bluesky.
"These emails, sent across agencies, compel all federal employees to snitch on any colleague whose work might have some vague DEIA inflection. Those who refuse to snitch will be disciplined. Seems designed to put all workers who aren’t white men under a cloud of suspicion. Truly vile stuff," slammed Mark Joseph Stern, a senior writer at Slate.
In a follow-up post, Stern prodded his followers to drop the feds a line.
"Note that anyone can email the snitch line, DEIAtruth@opm.gov. So if you’ve got any, uh, thoughts or information you’d like to share about this initiative, fire off that email today!" he exclaimed.
"It would be terrible if someone flooded the snitch email with a million AI slop fake reports every day. I hope no one does that. It would be wrong," joked Jonathan V. Last, editor of The Bulwark.
"Gee, it would be a shame if suddenly that snitch email they provided got flooded with spam …" joked writer Claire Henline.