Just days after Elon Musk said “it is time” to consider impeaching federal judges who block President Donald Trump’s government reform initiatives, at least six federal judges in Texas and many more of their clerks and staff received so-called “DOGE emails” the past two days demanding that they justify their jobs by providing explanations of the work that they did last week.
The federal judges, who spoke to The Texas Lawbook on the condition that they not be identified, said the emails created “incredible unease and stress” and caused many of the clerks and staff to ask whether their positions were in danger of being eliminated.
The email came from “HR@OPM.gov,” which is the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The subject line stated, “What did you do last week?” The email told the recipients to reply with five bullet points listing their work accomplishments and to copy their supervisor.
In a statement posted on the social media platform that he owns, Musk wrote, “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The email told the judiciary members that they had until Monday at 11:59 p.m. to reply.
Last evening, the chambers of Chief Judge Jennifer Elrod of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sent an email to the federal judges in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana stating, “no need for you or your staff to respond.”
Chief Judge Elrod has not responded to a Texas Lawbook email seeking comment.
“This is a breach of protocol that is unacceptable,” former U.S. District Judge Royal Furgeson, the former dean of the UNT College of Law, told The Lawbook in an interview Sunday. “This is not an appropriate email. I can’t imagine that anyone would think this is right. This is a stunning departure from one of our country’s founding principles of separation of powers, and it needs to be resisted.”
Judge Furgeson, who served as the chair of the federal judiciary’s human resources committee, said the judiciary is incredibly well-managed and operates within strict budget restraints.
“Executive officials lack any authority to compel this type of information from individual federal judges,” said Dallas lawyer Chad Baruch, an expert on constitutional law. “The concern would be the effort to intrude on judicial authority and perhaps even attempt to intimidate members of the judicial branch.”
“It is all well and good — healthy even — for the political branches to discuss and consider the appropriate size and funding of the federal government,” Baruch said. “But that can be accomplished without trenching on principles like separation of powers and the independence of the judicial branch that have helped safeguard American freedom since the dawn of the Republic. The founders believed in those principles. And we should too.”
Four of the six federal judges who confirmed receiving the OPM email were district judges with Article III lifetime tenure. Two were bankruptcy judges who are appointed by the Fifth Circuit and serve eight-year terms.
The four district judges were appointed by three different presidents, including one by Trump.
During the past two weeks, Trump and members of the administration have blasted federal judges who ruled against them in cases related to the budget freezes for federal aid to foreign countries and the firing of several inspectors general.
“We want to weed out the corruption, and it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that.’ So maybe we have to look at the judges, because that’s very serious. I think it’s a very serious violation,” Trump said. “No judge should, frankly, be allowed to make that kind of a decision.”
The president later clarified that he would comply with court rulings as his administration appeals those decisions. None of the experts who spoke to The Lawbook is party to a challenge involving the Trump administration’s reform policies.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week, “The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where District Court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump’s basic executive authority.”
Legal experts who spoke to The Lawbook Sunday said that they worry that the Trump administration is intentionally trying to undermine confidence in the judiciary. But those same experts point out that Trump has never defied any court rulings and that they hope that the trash talk against the judiciary is just “the normal hot air BS bluster” that is often attributed to the president.