A staffing meltdown inside the Bureau of Land Management has erupted into open rebellion, with career officials defying orders from a top Interior Department official tied to Elon Musk’s notorious DOGE operation.
Stephanie Holmes, a former member of the now-absent Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and current acting chief human capital officer at the Interior Department, issued a memo ordering staff to stop temporarily filling the hundreds of vacant roles—a move workers say would cripple the agency following the DOGE-inspired mass departures.
BLM Deputy Director Michael Nedd, a 30-year veteran of the department, hit reply all, telling his staff to “ignore the email from HR,” according to multiple sources who spoke to Politico. “The work is too important,” he is reported to have said.
The BLM is responsible for managing 245 million acres of federal land in the U.S., plus all the timber, minerals, oil, and gas resources within them. It has traditionally been the arm of government conserving natural, historical, and cultural resources.
However, in April, BLM Secretary Doug Burgum handed control of the Interior to DOGE assistant Tyler Hassan, a former oil executive. Since then, approximately 2,300 employees have been made redundant and offices have been shut down across the country. At the same time, conservation focuses have been scrapped and renewed efforts for fossil fuel extraction have been made.
The latest showdown highlights the rising tensions between experienced government staff and the DOGE team, who have infiltrated numerous administrative bodies across the government. So far, the department has executed thousands of layoffs, rid the government of highly valued institutional knowledge, and scrambled to rehire some of its brazenly, and mistakenly, axed employees.
The young team, most of whom are in their early to mid-20s, have drawn outrage for gaining access to sensitive government systems and even crashing the Social Security website in a failed AI-led overhaul. One DOGE acolyte, a 19-year-old influencer known as “Big Balls,” is reportedly using Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, to implement DOGE “efficiencies.”
The current chaos presiding over the Interior Department is a direct consequence of this laissez-faire approach to government bureaucracy. With buyouts and retirements bleeding the department dry, it’s difficult to see how BLM will be able to enact Trump’s policy to accelerate fossil fuel development on public lands. Still, Burgum has defended the cuts this week, claiming the goal is to “streamline” the agency.
“We’re running out of people,” said one exhausted staffer who wasn’t buying it. “It’s a battle of HR versus [Deputy Director] Mike Nedd.”
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