Elon Musk is as soon as once more leaving his fingerprints on official communications from the federal authorities. In an electronic mail to employees Saturday afternoon, the Workplace of Personnel Administration, which is stacked with Musk loyalists, instructed workers to ship 5 bullet factors detailing what they completed final week and cc their supervisor. “Failure to reply can be taken as a resignation,” Musk wrote on X.
The transfer comes after President Trump introduced that he desires Musk to be extra forceful. “ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE,” he wrote on Reality Social. “REMEMBER, WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE, BUT ULTIMATELY, TO MAKE GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE. MAGA!”
“Will do, Mr. President!” Musk replied in a submit on X.
The memo, which carefully resembles a observe Musk despatched to Twitter employees in June 2023, specifies that workers mustn’t embody categorised data, hyperlinks, or attachments of their responses. WIRED has confirmed that workers on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Inside Income Service, Nationwide Institutes of Well being, and Federal Aviation Administration, which all deal in categorised data, acquired related notices. The deadline to answer is Monday at 11:59pm EST.
“They’re proving that their solely objective just isn’t 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 damage or remove a federal employee.”
In current weeks, the Trump administration has laid off 1000’s of probationary workers who’ve been within the federal authorities for only one or two years. The cuts initially hit a whole lot of individuals engaged on nuclear safety in addition to veterans and Division of Agriculture workers who’re making an attempt to stave off a hen flu pandemic. The so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity has additionally successfully frozen or in any other case tried to dismantle the United States Company for Worldwide Growth and the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau.
It isn’t clear whether or not OPM has the authority to pressure federal employees to resign if they don’t reply to the e-mail. “I do not know that anyone can assess what’s authorized proper now as a result of the companies which might be alleged to act as watchdogs are being dismantled,” says Laurie Burgess, an legal professional who has represented various Twitter and SpaceX workers in labor disputes. She famous that she has instances set to be heard earlier than the Nationwide Labor Relations Board this spring and doesn’t really feel assured that the board will nonetheless exist by that deadline.
Regardless of all outward appearances that Musk is working his so-called company, the White Home says he isn’t really the DOGE administrator. Technically, Musk is a senior advisor. “Like different senior White Home advisors, Mr. Musk has no precise or formal authority to make authorities selections himself,” wrote the director of the White Home Workplace of Administration in a sworn assertion.
The topic line of the e-mail to federal employees (“What did you do final week?”) echoes a textual content that Elon Musk despatched to former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in April 2022. On the time, Musk was contemplating becoming a member of the Twitter board, however his relationship with Agrawal was beginning to fray. After the CEO reprimanded him for asking his followers in the event that they thought Twitter was dying, Musk snapped again: “What did you get performed this week? I am not becoming a member of the board. It is a waste of time. Will make a suggestion to take Twitter non-public.”
On Saturday, Musk doubled down on that years-old dispute. “Parag acquired nothing performed,” he posted on X. “Parag was fired.”
Extra reporting by Aarian Marshall and Emily Mullin.
