Elon Musk warned that when federal workers issued further confusion and warning on Saturday to summarise the results of the week, they would be considered a resignation otherwise.
Shortly after his request he posted to X, government officials came from the Human Resources Bureau, “What did you do last week?”
The missiles hit inboxes at multiple agencies at the same time, rattling workers who had been shaking with layoffs for the last few weeks, and were unsure whether they would meet Musk's demands. His increasing pressure on federal workers came with the encouragement of President Trump, who has trumpeted how billionaires disrupt the bureaucracy.
In his post on X, Musk said employees who fail to answer the message will lose their jobs. However, the threat is not mentioned in the email itself.
“Please reply to this email about. The HR message that I went out to federal employees on Saturday afternoon said this week, what you achieved this week and five bullets from manager CC bullets.” I did. The email instructed employees to respond by midnight Monday.
The email, according to copies seen by the New York Times, received by government workers, including the Department of State, Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Personnel Management, Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Consumer Finance Protection, according to copies seen by the New York Times. Station.
Some agency leaders welcomed Musk's move. “Doge and Elon do a great job! Historic. Ed Martin, an interim lawyer in Washington, DC, whom Trump appointed to run the office permanently, wrote a message to his staff. Ta.
Rank and file workers responded differently. One of the National Institutes of Health staff, who spoke in anonymity due to fear of retaliation, said she was shocked by the message. When she found more context, she said she sent a message to her colleagues: “They are terrifying us.”
In response to Musk's request, the U.S. Government Employees Federation, the largest federal employee union, said it would challenge “illegal” firing.
“Once again, Elon Musk and the Trump administration show their total disdain for federal employees and the important services they provide to the American people,” union president Everett Kelly said. He said in a statement.
“It's cruel and rude,” he said. He never did an hour of honest public service in his life. ”
The message is likely to face legal challenges, experts said.
Sam Bagenstos, a professor of law at the University of Michigan and a former advisor to the Office of Business and Budget, said: “This is clearly designed to threaten employees. Musk, Doge and the Trump administration are acting permanently in a way that ignores civil servant rules, and they are the courts catch up and clean after them. I rely on things I can't do.
“They tell employees, 'This is too much, I can't keep doing this,'” he added.
The message questioning the worker's output reiterated the tactics Musk used to cull the workforce at a social media company. He repeatedly draws inspiration from the 2022 X acquisition as he works to reassess the federal government with so-called government efficiency. With the support of the Trump administration, Musk ordered layoffs across the federal government and effectively shut down several agencies.
“Eron does a great job, but I hope he will become more proactive,” Trump said in a post on a social media site on Saturday.
Musk quickly accepted the challenge. “All federal employees will receive an email promptly requesting a request to understand what they did last week,” Musk wrote in a social media post on Saturday. He said his actions were “consistent” with the president's demands. “A failure to respond will be considered a resignation,” he added.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding emails to federal workers.
The Human Resources Administration, which sent Musk's postponed resignation offer to employees last month on “Fork in the Road in the Road,” avoided the question.
“As part of the Trump administration's commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce, OPM will provide employees with a brief summary of what they did by the end of last Monday, and make managers CCs. We are asking for it,” he said in a statement Saturday for the agency. “The agency will decide on the next step.”
Demand has rewind many workers.
Musk has recently been on leave and has been instructed not to work as he thwarted the agency.
Musk's allies in the government have proposed using artificial intelligence to identify budget cuts, and workers from several institutions are worried that they will be evaluated by AI
This approach reflects one of the people Musk took on Twitter along with executives and employees. In April 2022, Musk was scheduled to join the board of directors of a social media company, but he argued with his then-Chief Executive Paragua Grawal over public criticism of the company. When Agrawal asked Musk not to post anything harmful about Twitter, Musk replied in a text, “What did you do this week?” He then told Agrawal that he would buy Twitter entirely.
The exchange resulted in Musk's $44 billion company buying the company and completed it in October 2022. Agrawal disputed the circumstances of his departure and appealed to Musk to retire, but Musk claimed that he had fired Agrawal immediately. payment.
Shortly after the acquisition, Musk told employees to print out the code they had recently written. When company executives raised privacy concerns, Musk instructed employees to shred the printed code.
On Saturday, Musk acknowledged the similarities. “Parag didn't do anything. He wrote in X's post about a message he was planning to send to federal workers.
Nicholas Nehamas, Maggie Harberman, Rebecca Davis O'Brien, Madeleine NGO, Mattachias Schwartz, Matthew Goldstein, Erica L. Green, Irene Sullivan, Margot Sanger Cuts, Edward Wong, Mark Walker, Kennedy Elliott and Lisa Friedman Reports of contributions.
