Federal employees must now be extra careful about what they tweet at work

Federal government employees have been issued strict guidelines to mind their Ps and Qs, but not their Rs and Ds, during work hours.

Anyone who works for the federal government may not "become a 'friend,' 'like,' or 'follow' the social media page of a partisan group or candidate in a partisan race" while at the office, per a new memo from the Office of Special Counsel. Outside of work hours, employees may identify their political views on Facebook in the appropriate field and even post photos of themselves with candidates for office.

For some types of employees, however, the guidelines are even more strict: No partisan political activity is allowed at any time, both on and offline. Most of these "further restricted employees work in law enforcement or intelligence agencies," the rules memo notes. Bonnie Kristian

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Update 3:32 p.m.: After this article was published, Nick Schwellenbach at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel reached out with a clarification on what exactly defines "partisan political activity":

"On their free time, [all employees] still can express their opinions on candidates, repost news articles, like a friend's political post on Facebook, etc. They just can't distribute official campaign materials."