Stephanie Holmes

Administrator, age 43

Stephanie Holmes is an employment attorney and consultant who previously offered courses on “non-woke” HR and redefining DEI to be more “Christian,” in a conventional conservative evangelical sense. After being an HR head at DOGE, she was detailed to the Department of the Interior, where she was named the acting Chief Human Capital Officer. At DOI, she had the CIO and other senior staff sidelined so she could be granted admin powers over a shared service that handles payroll for approximately half of the federal government. I’m sure it’s fine.

Positions

Position	Notes
DOGE	Sources The Authors Guild/American Council of Learned Societies v. National Endowment for the Humanities, doc 122-1 Court Document, 2026-02-17 Musk’s DOGE Brings in HR Consultant Focused on ‘Non-Woke’ DEI 'Aligned With Our Faith’ 404 Media, 2025-02-01 DOGE c.2/01/25 Senior Advisor for Technology and Efficiency «First reported today, likely onboarded earlier in January»
DOI	Sources FOIA response from DOI to the Nation Muckrock, 2025-04-15 AFGE, AFL-CIO v. OMB, doc 62-11 Court Document, 2025-10-17 Here are the people connected to DOGE at Interior E&E News, 2025-03-05 DOGE and other day 1 Trump appointees head for the exits at multiple agencies GovExec, 2025-07-29 The Interior Department is taking steps to implement layoffs GovExec, 2025-09-24 DOGE DOI 2/24/25-c.9/29/25 detailed Special Advisor / Acting Chief Human Capital Officer «reported on 7/29 as leaving DOI; but still at DOI in Sept; new Chief HCO appointed 9/29»

Position

Notes

DOGE

DOGE c.2/01/25 Senior Advisor for Technology and Efficiency «First reported today, likely onboarded earlier in January»

DOI

DOGE DOI 2/24/25-c.9/29/25 detailed Special Advisor / Acting Chief Human Capital Officer «reported on 7/29 as leaving DOI; but still at DOI in Sept; new Chief HCO appointed 9/29»

Systems

System	Notes
FPPS DOI	Source PEER Report Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, 2025-04-15 Federal Personnel Payroll System 3/29/25 A shared service which processes payrolls for Interior, but also DOJ, Treasury, DHS, the Air Force, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other agencies. Covers about half of federal personnel. admin access granted by Deputy Director
WRT DOI	Source The Interior Department is taking steps to implement layoffs GovExec, 2025-09-24 Workforce Reshaping Tool 8/XX/25 The AutoRIF software tool was adapted by DOGE engineer Riccardo Biasini into a web service to help automate the process of identifying staff to be laid off and conducting the operation. read-write access «Reported as using AutoRIF»

Events

Date	Event
2/01/25 DOGE	Source DOGE Staff Had Questions About the ‘Resign’ Email. Their New HR Chief Dodged Them Wired Magazine, 2025-02-01 Report Stephanie Holmes, the new head of HR at DOGE/USDS, is unable to answer questions from USDS staff about if the “Fork in the Road” retirement offer is legitimate.
2/12/25 OPM	Source Complaint for Injunctive Relief Democracy Forward, 2025-03-03 Directory In a FOIA request, Democracy Forward names DOGE staff known to be at OPM at that time. Akash Bobba, Amanda Scales, Anthony Armstrong, Austin Raynor, Brian Bjelde, Bryanne-Michelle Mlodzianowski, Charles Ezell, Christina Hanna, Edward Coristine, Gavin Kliger, Greg Hogan, Jacob Altik, Joanna Wischer, Justin Monroe, Nikhil Rajpal, Noah Peters, Riccardo Biasini, Stephanie Holmes, Stephen Duarte
2/24/25 DOI	Source PEER Report Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, 2025-04-15 Access Stephanie Holmes requests full admin access to the Federal Personnel Payroll System (FPPS) system to process actions for herself as well as DOGE members Katrine Trampe and Tyler Hassen. This is a shared service provided by DOI which handles payroll for approximately half of the federal government.
2/25/25 DOI	Source Second Production of FOIA materials from DOI to Sierra Club The Sierra Club, 2026-02-27 Action Citing concerns that there is fraud in the federal payroll, the DOGE team at the Department of the Interior meets with the Interior Business Center Team to discuss their request to receive a log audit of all employee names, positions and hire dates as well as total pay for each pay period.
2/27/25 DOI	Source PEER Report Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, 2025-04-15 Access Stephanie Holmes’ request for admin access to the FPPS system is approved Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Interior, Jarrod Agen.
3/27/25 DOI	Source PEER Report Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, 2025-04-15 Disruption After being provided with access to FPPS, Stephanie Holmes raises concerns to DOI leadership that she has not yet been granted full admin access to FPPS. The agency CIO is concerned enough about the security implications that he will only allow it if the Secretary of the Interior signs off on a memo outlining the risks. Stephanie Holmes refuses to convey the message to Secretary Burgum.
5/02/25 DOI	Source DOGE appointee sparks turf battle at Interior: 'Ignore the email from HR' Politico, 2025-05-24 Disruption Stephanie Holmes, in her role as acting chief human capital officers, sends an email ordering DOI staff to stop by May 28 from doing any detail work they were doing to cover for DOGE staffing cuts at the agency.
6/06/25 DOI	Source After His Trump Blowup, Musk May Be Out. But DOGE Is Just Getting Started. The New York Times, 2025-06-07 Directory An article in the New York Times reports that both Tyler Hassen and Stephanie Holmes are still active at the DOI. Stephanie Holmes, Tyler Hassen
7/09/25 DOI	Source Huffman, Trahan Demand Answers on DOGE’s Unchecked Access to Sensitive DOI Data Amid Growing Security Concerns Democrats on the House Committee for Natural Resources, 2025-07-09 Oversight Ranking Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee send a letter expressing concern and urging the Secretary of the Department of the Interior to immediately revoke DOGE’s access to the FPPS system that handles payroll for large parts of the US government.
9/24/25 DOI	Source The Interior Department is taking steps to implement layoffs GovExec, 2025-09-24 Disruption The Department of Interior is reportedly planning another round of layoffs for mid-October. This follows the loss of 7500 employees (nearly 11% of its workforce) already. The agency is reported to be using the AutoRIF software developed at OPM to run the process, and it is being run by Stephanie Holmes and Tyler Hassen, who did not leave the agency in August as previously reported.
11/04/25 DOI	Source Interior freezes layoff plans E&E News, 2025-11-05 Legal In a court filing, the Department of Interior reveals that it has frozen its plans to imminently layoff more employees.