Elon Musk is as soon as once more leaving his fingerprints on official communications from the federal authorities. In an electronic mail to workers Saturday afternoon, the Workplace of Personnel Administration, which is stacked with Musk loyalists, instructed staff to ship 5 bullet factors detailing what they achieved final week and cc their supervisor. “Failure to reply shall be taken as a resignation,” Musk wrote on X.
The transfer comes after President Trump introduced that he needs 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 post on X.
The memo, which carefully resembles a notice Musk sent to Twitter workers in June 2023, specifies that staff shouldn’t embrace categorised info, hyperlinks, or attachments of their responses. WIRED has confirmed that staff on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Inner Income Service, Nationwide Institutes of Well being, and Federal Aviation Administration, which all deal in categorised info, obtained comparable notices. The deadline to answer is Monday at 11:59pm EST.
“They’re proving that their solely objective will not be effectivity however to dismantle democracy by traumatizing federal staff,” 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 get rid of a federal employee.”
In current weeks, the Trump administration has laid off thousands of probationary staff who’ve been within the federal authorities for only one or two years. The cuts initially hit lots of of individuals engaged on nuclear safety in addition to veterans and Division of Agriculture staff who’re attempting 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 Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
It’s not clear whether or not OPM has the authority to power federal staff 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 businesses which are purported to act as watchdogs are being dismantled,” says Laurie Burgess, an lawyer who has represented a variety of Twitter and SpaceX staff 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 operating his so-called company, the White House says he isn’t truly 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 choices himself,” wrote the director of the White Home Workplace of Administration in a sworn statement.
The topic line of the e-mail to federal staff (“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 achieved this week? I am not becoming a member of the board. It is a waste of time. Will make a suggestion to take Twitter personal.”
On Saturday, Musk doubled down on that years-old dispute. “Parag bought nothing achieved,” he posted on X. “Parag was fired.”
Further reporting by Aarian Marshall and Emily Mullin.
