Elon Musk not only thinks he’s the federal workforce’s new boss, he seems to be actively trying to be a horrible one. On Saturday afternoon, hours after President Trump praised Musk and said he should “get more aggressive,” the Musk and DOGE-controlled Office of Personnel Management sent a mass email to 2.3 million federal employees asking them to list “approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and CC your manager”:
And Musk effectively threatened in an X post to fire anyone who didn’t reply by the end of Monday:
The weekend mass email immediately prompted confusion and chaos within the federal workforce, which is already reeling from mass layoffs and other Musk and DOGE-instigated turmoil. By Saturday night, federal employee unions and numerous agency heads were telling workers not to respond to the email, or at least not to respond yet.
As to whether workers really could lose their jobs if they don’t reply, OPM only said in a statement that “agencies will determine any next steps.” It’s also not clear how OPM and the agencies would even be able to process all the replies if they got them.
Even newly confirmed FBI director (and longtime Trump loyalist) Kash Patel told employees to hold their replies (and all national security agencies may do the same).
It was yet another haphazard effort, if not careless by design, by Musk and his DOGE team. Sources told the Washington Post that “although the email was only intended for the executive branch, it also went to at least some judiciary employees, including at least one judge and some law clerks.” It was essentially a spam message as this Politico report makes clear:
Michael Fallings, an attorney specializing in federal employment law, told POLITICO the actions Musk described in the post would be illegal. “I don’t believe it would be legal, and I don’t think he really understands right now how he will even do what he’s threatened to do,” Fallings said. …
[F]ederal employees across the government reacted with fury about the dictate from Musk. A Department of Justice official, granted anonymity to avoid retribution, noted that the email was labeled as coming from an “external,” server, adding they “cannot legally respond to this” because they handle classified material.
“This email looks exactly like all of the phishing email examples that federal employees see in training over and over again,” a Commerce Department employee, similarly granted anonymity, said. “I’m not responding to it.”
A federal employee told Wired that it felt like Musk and DOGE are now just torturing civil servants for fun:
“They’re proving that their only goal is not efficiency but to dismantle democracy by traumatizing federal workers,” says a current federal employee who asked to remain anonymous as they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about their agency. “They see this as a video game where they level up every time they hurt or eliminate a federal worker.”
Numerous Democratic lawmakers are attacking the work explanation request, too. In one particularly fiery response, Minnesota senator Tina Smith — who recently announced she will not run for reelection — characterized Musk as “billionaire asshole boss”:
This is the ultimate dick boss move from Musk - except he isn’t even the boss, he’s just a dick. I bet a lot of people have had an experience like this with a bad boss - there’s an email in your inbox on Saturday night saying, “Prove to me your worthiness by Monday or else.”
I’m on the side of the workers, not the billionaire asshole bosses.
This post has been updated.
More on the Musk-Trump wrecking ball
- Kash Patel’s Enemies List
- ‘Big Balls’ on Top of the World
- The Media Is Now Part of Trump’s War Against the Deep State
