Photograph: Will Oliver/Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures
Elon Musk not solely thinks he’s the federal workforce’s new boss, he appears to be actively attempting to be a horrible one. On Saturday afternoon, hours after President Trump praised Musk and stated he ought to “get extra aggressive,” the Musk and DOGE-controlled Workplace of Personnel Administration despatched a mass e mail to 2.3 million federal staff asking them to checklist “approx. 5 bullets of what you completed final week and CC your supervisor”:
And Musk successfully threatened in an X publish to fireplace anybody who didn’t reply by the top of Monday:
The weekend mass e mail instantly prompted confusion and chaos throughout the federal workforce, which is already reeling from mass layoffs and different Musk and DOGE-instigated turmoil. By Saturday night time, federal worker unions and quite a few company heads have been telling employees not to answer the e-mail, or a minimum of to not reply but.
Even newly confirmed FBI director (and longtime Trump loyalist) Kash Patel informed staff to carry their replies (and all nationwide safety companies could do the identical).
As as to if employees actually might lose their jobs in the event that they don’t reply, OPM solely stated in an announcement that “companies will decide any subsequent steps.” It’s additionally not clear how OPM and the companies would even have the ability to course of all of the replies in the event that they bought them. On Sunday morning, Musk urged the entire thing was only a fraud-finding effort, to substantiate whether or not or not federal staff checked their e mail — or have been really alive:
The explanation this issues is {that a} important variety of people who find themselves purported to be working for the federal government are doing so little work that they aren’t checking their e mail in any respect! In some circumstances, we consider non-existent individuals or the identities of lifeless individuals are getting used to gather paychecks. In different phrases, there may be outright fraud.
Even when that’s true, demanding that thousands and thousands of employees individually justify their existence can’t probably be probably the most environment friendly or moral solution to accomplish that purpose. And the e-mail was clearly one more haphazard effort, if not careless by design, by Musk and his DOGE staff. Sources informed the Washington Publish that “though the e-mail was solely supposed for the manager department, it additionally went to a minimum of some judiciary staff, together with a minimum of one choose and a few regulation clerks.” It was primarily a spam message as this Politico report makes clear:
Michael Fallings, an legal professional specializing in federal employment regulation, informed POLITICO the actions Musk described within the publish can be unlawful. “I don’t consider it might be authorized, and I don’t assume he actually understands proper now how he’ll even do what he’s threatened to do,” Fallings stated. …
[F]ederal staff throughout the federal government reacted with fury in regards to the dictate from Musk. A Division of Justice official, granted anonymity to keep away from retribution, famous that the e-mail was labeled as coming from an “exterior,” server, including they “can’t legally reply to this” as a result of they deal with labeled materials.
“This e mail seems precisely like the entire phishing e mail examples that federal staff see in coaching again and again,” a Commerce Division worker, equally granted anonymity, stated. “I’m not responding to it.”
A federal worker informed Wired that at this level, it felt like Musk and DOGE are simply torturing civil servants for enjoyable:
“They’re proving that their solely purpose is just not effectivity however to dismantle democracy by traumatizing federal employees,” says a present federal worker who requested to stay nameless as they aren’t licensed to talk publicly about their company. “They see this as a online game the place they degree up each time they harm or remove a federal employee.”
Quite a few Democratic lawmakers are attacking the work rationalization request, too. In a single notably fiery response, Minnesota senator Tina Smith — who not too long ago introduced she won’t run for reelection — characterised Musk as “billionaire asshole boss”:
That is the last word dick boss transfer from Musk – besides he isn’t even the boss, he’s only a dick. I guess lots of people have had an expertise like this with a nasty boss – there’s an e mail in your inbox on Saturday night time saying, “Show to me your worthiness by Monday or else.”
I’m on the facet of the employees, not the billionaire asshole bosses.
This publish has been up to date.
