The administrative arm of the federal court system rebuked the Trump administration Friday for sending out an email blast to nearly the entire judiciary branch, including court employees and apparently every judge in the country.
Per emails reviewed by TPM, judiciary employees across the country received an email from a human resources account run by the Office of Personnel and Management early Friday morning. The message indicated that OPM was testing a “new distribution and response list.”
The email prompted confusion among judiciary employees, in part because they do not work for the executive branch, and in part because the message asked them to click on a link, raising concerns that it may have been a phishing attempt.
But phishing attempt it was not: The message was real, and came as part of what OPM describes on its website as an initiative to create a government-wide means of emailing every civilian federal employee. OPM is an independent agency of the executive branch that operates like the human resources office for federal employees.
Officials with the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, the agency that oversees the judicial branch workforce, quickly moved to remind both their staff and the Trump administration that they are different branches of government.
“The Administrative Office is aware that all judges and judiciary employees likely received an email from HR@opm.gov with the Subject Line ‘Email Test.’ The message is not spam or a virus, and was sent as a test of the Office of Personnel Management’s ability to communicate with all federal employees,” reads a Friday morning email from the Office of the Administrative Director to judiciary employees.
“As a reminder, the judiciary has its own governance processes for reviewing judiciary policies and practices,” the message continues. “We are in communication with OPM about the appropriate way to communicate with the judiciary in the future, and if you have not yet replied to the email, there is no need to do so. Once we receive more information about this test we will share it with you.”
A court system spokesman reiterated in a statement to TPM that it was “communicating with OPM about the appropriate way to communicate with the judiciary in the future.”
TPM reached out to OPM about the incident. An OPM spokesperson initially said that TPM’s request for comment was the first they had heard about the issue before saying that they were working to ensure that the workforce-wide email system excepted judiciary employees in the future.
The Trump administration has spent its first several days in office waging a pressure campaign on the federal workforce. In early messages, the administration told employees that they had a new obligation to inform on other workers that may surreptitiously be carrying out DEI policies, and banned external communications at several agencies.
Workers elsewhere in the federal government also received the OPM test message overnight on Friday, per messages reviewed by TPM. It’s not clear what the new system will be used for.
