# Charles Ezell **Charles "Chuck" Ezell** was the acting director of the [[OPM]], the federal government's personnel office, from the first day of the [[Second Trump Administration]] until [[Scott Kupor]] was sworn in as director in July 2025. A mid-level career official who had run OPM's data and analytics branch in Macon, Georgia, he led the agency through the first and most chaotic phase of the administration's campaign to shrink the federal workforce: the "Fork in the Road" buyout, the mass firing of probationary employees known as the [[Valentine's Day Massacre (2025)]], and the email demanding that every federal worker list five things they had done the previous week. **Why it matters:** The office Ezell led is supposed to set rules for federal employment, not decide who gets fired at other agencies. A federal judge later found that under his leadership OPM had done exactly that, directing about 25,000 probationary firings across the government and dressing them up as individual performance decisions. Ezell never faced a confirmation hearing, and when the court ordered him to testify about the firings, the government withdrew his sworn statement rather than put him on the stand. ## Background Ezell graduated from Georgia Southern University in 1996 and spent years in the private sector working on software development and large data systems, including at a global data analytics firm. He joined OPM in 2017 as an analyst in its Macon office and for roughly five years led the agency's data and analytics branch there, a job far from Washington and far from political leadership. After the 2024 election, advisers to Donald Trump contacted him about a job and, after a series of meetings, offered him the acting directorship. How he came to their attention has not been publicly explained. Before his appointment he had posted on social media praising the end of federal remote work and arguing that federal spending had grown to an unsustainable share of the economy. He has described himself in a Christian magazine interview as feeling like the biblical Joseph, raised suddenly to second in command in Egypt: "How did I end up here?" ## Acting director, January to July 2025 Ezell took charge of OPM on January 20, 2025. Within weeks the agency became the operating base for the administration's workforce cuts, working alongside [[DOGE]]. *The Wall Street Journal* reported that shortly after he started, he helped [[Elon Musk]]'s team gain access to OPM's workforce data. - **January 20.** OPM sent agencies a memo telling them to list every employee still in their [[Probationary Period]] and "promptly determine" whether each should be kept. - **January 28.** OPM's "Fork in the Road" email offered nearly every federal employee the [[Deferred Resignation Program]]. The unions' challenge to it, filed in Boston, was brought against him by name as *AFGE v. Ezell*; a federal judge ruled in February 2025 that the unions lacked standing. - **February 13–14.** OPM told agencies to fire their probationary employees, and on February 14 emailed agency personnel chiefs asking them to separate every probationer not identified as "mission-critical" by the end of the day on February 17, attaching a template termination letter. Ezell said publicly that OPM was not hiring or firing at other departments, only providing "guidance." - **February 22.** OPM emailed federal workers asking each to reply with five bullet points describing what they had done the previous week. The agency later called the request voluntary. - **March 4.** After a judge ruled OPM likely lacked the power to order the firings, the agency revised its January memo to say it was not directing agencies to take any specific action against probationary employees. ### The declaration the government withdrew In the probationary-firing lawsuit, [[OPM v. AFGE]], the government relied on a sworn declaration from Ezell about OPM's role. Judge [[William Alsup]] said he believed it was false and ordered Ezell to appear for cross-examination. The Justice Department fought the order, then withdrew the declaration instead of producing him. At a hearing on March 13, 2025, Alsup called that move "a sham" and said the government was trying to frustrate the court's search for the truth. His final ruling in September 2025 found that "OPM decided who to fire" and "OPM decided when to fire," and that the directive was unlawful. ### Leaving the post Scott Kupor, a former managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, was sworn in as OPM director in July 2025, ending Ezell's acting tenure. OPM said Ezell would stay on as a transitional senior advisor. "It has been the honor of my career to serve as Acting Director of OPM," he said in the agency's announcement. ## Connections - [[OPM]] · [[Scott Kupor]] · [[DOGE]] · [[Elon Musk]] - [[Valentine's Day Massacre (2025)]] · [[OPM v. AFGE]] · [[William Alsup]] - [[Deferred Resignation Program]] · [[Probationary Period]] · [[Reduction in Force]] - [[DOGE and Government Dismantling Timeline]] · [[How a Federal Employee Is Fired]]