‘Those were not my words:’ Out-of-office message automatically updated for furloughed Education Dept employees

‘Those were not my words:’ Out-of-office message automatically updated for furloughed Education Dept employees

Furloughed staff at the Education Department say out-of-office messages for their government email accounts have been automatically updated. The new out-of-office message blames an ongoing government shutdown on Senate Democrats who didn’t vote on a stopgap spending bill that would keep the government funded through Nov. 21. “Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing res…

Education Department employees' emails automatically changed to blame Democrats for shutdown

Five furloughed employees told NBC News they had put up nonpartisan out-of-office messages, only to see they were changed without their permission.

ED Put Political Out-of-Office Reply on Staff Emails

One legal group is preparing to challenge the Trump administration’s action in court, staffers say. Wednesday morning, as the government shutdown began, chief officers at the Department of Education distributed a standard out-of-the-office statement to all furloughed staff members and instructed them to copy and paste it into their email. So that’s what they did. But just hours later, those same nonpartisan staffers began to hear that the messag…

Even More Agencies Got That Outrageous Team Trump Shutdown Email

Even more agency heads than we initially knew sent out Donald Trump’s wildly partisan message.