Tech billionaire Elon Musk seems to be having “his plate full” running the Department of Government Efficiency.
When he was appointed the head of DOGE, the Tesla and Space X owner announced cutting some $2 trillion off government spending. His latest move towards this goal includes a request to stuffers to send a five-point email explaining what they’d accomplished in the past week.
Federal staff were given until February 24 to respond to the quest. In his post on X, Musk added: “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
However, the Department of Justice advised the recipients of the email not to respond “due to the confidential and sensitive nature of the Department’s work”, a source said.
Several other agencies did the same, including The Department of Defense. FBI Director Kash Patel gave his employees similar directive.
Democratic senator Tina Smith called out Elon Musk for this request to roughly 2.4million people employed by the federal government.
Taking to X, a social media site owned by Musk, Senator Smith posted a screenshot of Musk’s email and wrote: “This is the ultimate d**k boss move from Musk – except he isn’t even the boss, he’s just a d**k.”
In a separate post she added: “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 a**hole bosses.”
Musk was quick to respond to Smith’s post, writing, “What did you get done last week?”
Smith replied: “@ElonMusk I hate to break it to you but you aren’t my boss. I answer to the people of Minnesota.
“But since you bring it up, I spent last week fighting to stop tax breaks for billionaires like you, paid for by defunding health care for moms and babies.”
According to Musk, a number of employees have responded to his email even before the deadline.
Senator Patty Murray joined Smith in calling Musk out. “Spending isn’t a ‘conspiracy’ just because Musk doesn’t know how to read //usaspending.gov,” Murray wrote on X. “A program isn’t waste just because it doesn’t help the richest man in the world. It isn’t fraud because he doesn’t like it. A law is not illegal just because he disagrees with it.”
Musk defended his act, calling it “a very basic pulse check.”
