At this point, you sort of expect Donald Trump’s big-picture assaults on free speech, foreigners, and the rule of law. (Sometimes, as in the case of the new outright attack on US higher ed, all three are packaged in one convenient wrapper.) Although troubling and dangerous, these kinds of attacks are all at least predictably unhinged; most are drawn from the standard authoritarian playbook or its more recent “illiberal democracies” update. It’s when you look into the details, though, that one is constantly reminded: Nothing is too petty to be corrupted in Trumpworld. Not even “out of office” auto-replies. “First, they came for my OoO message…” With the US government shutting down this week due to its failure to pass a budget, most government employees are now furloughed. That means many of them set up polite “out of office” e-mail responses highlighting this fact so that those who contact them would know a reply might be some time in arriving. But some departments have pressed their employees to change these “out of office” notices to explicitly blame Democrats for the shutdown. At the Department of Education, things have apparently gone even further, with numerous employees complaining on social media that their out-of-office messages were changed, without their consent, to this: Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume. CNN talked to one Department of Education employee who “said they went into their email system twice over the last 24 hours to change the automatic message to a generic one, but it was reverted back to the message blaming Democrats.”
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