The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) provided the following template language to establish employees’ out-of-office notifications.
“Furloughed Employees: 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,” the text read.
However, multiple furloughed employees at the Department of Education report their out-of-office replies were automatically reset to mimic the language above – without their permission.
“They changed our out-of-office message… [They] did it after everyone left,” one department of education staffer told ABC News. “[I’m] so pissed,” they said.
It would be great if people could realize this applies to Democrat as an adjective and not Democrat as a noun. The Democrats literally use the word in their youth organizations (Young Democrats of America and High School Democrats of America), and I’ve seen people on the fediverse act like it’s a slur. If people could learn how sentence structure works before going off on someone for using Democrat as a noun that would be great.
“You see? The Radical Left are the real (grammar) Nazis!”