Musk’s Big Accomplishment This Weekend Was Apparently Throwing The Entire Federal Government Into Chaos

Look, there are different ways to manage people. You could, for instance, have regular performance reviews, set clear expectations, and provide constructive feedback. Or… you could send an email late on a Saturday to the entirety of the federal government workforce (even those outside the executive branch) demanding that everyone list five things they did last week, while simultaneously tweeting that anyone who doesn’t respond will be fired.

The latter is what happened this weekend when federal employees received this email:

What did you do last week?

Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.

Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments.

Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pmEST.

Now, you might think this is just another story about Elon Musk’s catastrophically bad management style. (And it is!) But it’s actually much, much dumber than that.

It was sent on Saturday. And Elon Musk is taking credit for it, even though the Trump administration last week stated in court that Musk has no authority other than to advise the President, and has no official role with DOGE. Even more bizarre, Musk claimed on ExTwitter that anyone who failed to reply to the email by Monday night would have that failure to respond be taken as a resignation.

There are several problems here. Well, actually there are about fifty problems here, but let’s start with the obvious ones:

1. The email doesn’t mention anything about resignations. That part came in a separate tweet, because apparently that’s how the federal government works now. (If you’re a federal employee who doesn’t obsessively follow Elon Musk on ExTwitter, I guess you just… accidentally resign? Maybe?)
2. The federal government is, how do I put this, kind of big? Some federal employees are on maternity leave. Some are on vacation. Some are in submarines deep under the ocean where checking email would literally compromise national security. (I assume Musk would count “maintaining radio silence to avoid detection by foreign adversaries” as one of your five accomplishments for the week, but who knows?)

If this all feels familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this movie before: Musk pulled exactly the same stunt when he took over Twitter, right before destroying about 80% of that company’s value. (You would think he’d recognize how badly that has gone and think that maybe a different approach is needed, but not Elon Musk!)

Furthermore, the email went to all federal employees, including many who are not a part of the executive branch. There are multiple reports of clerks and judges in the judicial branch receiving it as well. And while we’re still waiting to see the courts sort out if Musk has authority over the executive branch (he likely does not), he absolutely does not have authority over the judicial branch.

Now, you might wonder what possible justification there could be for this bizarre demand. Well! According to Musk (who, remember, suffers from the most ridiculous level of troll-fueled confirmation bias we’ve ever seen) this is just a simple test to make sure federal employees are checking their email. Because apparently the biggest problem facing the federal government is… insufficient inbox monitoring?

There are a few problems with this theory:

1. Some federal employees literally can’t check email (see: aforementioned submarine crews)
2. Some federal employees shouldn’t check email (see: anyone handling classified information on secure systems)
3. Some federal employees don’t need to check email on weekends (see: basically everyone else)

But the real kicker is what Musk’s defenders are saying.

The argument goes something like this: “Actually, this is totally normal! Companies do this all the time!” Which… no? Look, I’ve worked in and around plenty of companies, and yes, you typically have regular performance reviews. You might even have weekly check-ins with your manager. But there’s a slight difference between “scheduled performance review with your direct supervisor” and “surprise email from someone who may or may not have authority over you demanding immediate justification for your existence.” (The difference is that one is management and the other is performative chaos.)

That’s just being an asshole with too much power.

Also, because these are federal government emails, they’re subject to the Freedom of Information Act, which means reporters are already lining up to request copies of all the responses. I suspect we’ll soon have a fascinating database of federal employees explaining their jobs to… well, to no one in particular, since Musk doesn’t actually have any actual authority here.

Not surprisingly to most people, but apparently surprising to Musk, it turns out that various federal agencies have opinions about their employees sending detailed work descriptions to random email addresses. And those opinions are mostly variations on “please don’t do that.”

The FBI, for instance, whose new director Kash Patel (in theory a Musk ally, mind you) seems particularly annoyed:

Then there’s Tulsi Gabbard, the new Director of National Intelligence (and, again, typically a Musk ally), who had to explain something that really shouldn’t need explaining: “Given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, I.C. employees should not respond to the OPM email.” (Translation: “Please don’t send classified intelligence work details to a random email address, even if Elon Musk asks nicely.”)

The Defense Department, meanwhile, sent out what might be the most diplomatically worded “absolutely not” in recent memory. From their memo:

“DoD personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information. The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” Selnick wrote. “When and if required, the Department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM. For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled, ‘What did you do last week.’”

The Administrative Office of the Courts, which is run by John Roberts, sent out a mealy-mouthed email to the judicial branch recommending not responding: “this email did not originate from the judiciary or the administrative office and we suggest that no action be taken.” Roberts could have taken a stand and noted that the executive branch has no authority whatsoever here, but I guess he’ll have an opportunity to do that in court before long.

The State Department and Homeland Security both also told employees not to respond. Though CISA, which is a part of Homeland Security, first told employees to obey the email. That kind of confusion is happening elsewhere as well:

Other departments gave conflicting guidance. The Department of Health and Human Services told its employees on Sunday morning to follow the directive. An hour later, an email from the Trump-appointed acting director of the National Institutes of Health, a subordinate agency, told employees to hold off on responding. Hours later, the health department told all employees to “pause” responses to the ultimatum.

According to the AP, the situation with HHS is even more absurd, with the acting General Counsel calling the whole thing insulting:

One message on Sunday morning from the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., instructed its roughly 80,000 employees to comply. That was shortly after the acting general counsel, Sean Keveney, had instructed some not to. And by Sunday evening, agency leadership issued new instructions that employees should “pause activities” related to the request until noon on Monday.

“I’ll be candid with you. Having put in over 70 hours of work last week advancing Administration’s priorities, I was personally insulted to receive the below email,” Keveney said in an email viewed by The Associated Press that acknowledged a broad sense of “uncertainty and stress” within the agency.

Keveney laid out security concerns and pointed out some of the work done by the agency’s employees may be protected by attorney-client privilege: “I have received no assurances that there are appropriate protections in place to safeguard responses to this email.”

Look, even if you were somehow convinced this was a good idea (it’s not) and that demanding work summaries via surprise weekend email is totally normal corporate behavior (it really, really isn’t), you’d still have to marvel at the sheer incompetence of the implementation. All this is doing is generating a shit ton of confusion across the entirety of the federal government.

That doesn’t seem very useful for “efficiency.”

And then there’s Ed Martin, the US Attorney for DC (who, you might remember, we just last week discussed as spectacularly incompetent), who sent what might be the most confusing “clarification” email in federal government history:

“Let me clarify: We will comply with this OPM request whether by replying or deciding not to reply.”

Well! That certainly clears things up. (For those keeping score at home, Martin is saying they will comply by either… doing the thing or not doing the thing. Which is technically true and also technically useless.)

But wait, there’s more! Because Elon (who, remember, is supposedly just an advisor with no actual authority) didn’t take kindly to the Pentagon’s “please ignore this” memo. His response? To threaten to fire the person who wrote the Pentagon’s memo. Yes, the person with no authority is threatening to fire people at the Pentagon for not recognizing his non-existent authority. It’s like a fractal of nonsense.

Meanwhile, Musk has been gleefully mocking anyone pushing back on this demand, insisting that people are only upset because they can’t come up with five things they did last week. Which is… not the point. At all.

Let’s be clear about this (in “five bullets”):

1. Everyone can list five things they did last week
2. The issue isn’t the difficulty of the task
3. The issue is being asked to justify your existence via a pointless busywork exercise to someone with no authority over you
4. …via a weekend email
5. …that threatens termination in a separate tweet

But Musk wasn’t done yet. Because his solution to this manufactured crisis is… wait for it… to use his own proprietary AI chatbot to generate fake responses. Yes, you read that right. Musk sent Trump a screenshot of someone (possibly himself) asking Grok (his own AI) to make up fake accomplishments for such an email reply, which Trump then posted to Truth Social, which Musk then reposted to ExTwitter as proof of how “easy” this all is.

So to summarize: The person demanding accountability from federal workers is actively encouraging them to use AI bullshit generators to create fake responses. And not just any AI — his AI specifically. (Nothing says “government efficiency” quite like using a private company’s AI to generate fake work reports for that same private company’s CEO who has no actual government authority but pretends he does.)

It also suggests a disturbing comfort with using AI to generate artificial accountability rather than pursuing any kind of meaningful government oversight (in case you were one of the three rubes left in the country who still believes that’s what Musk is doing). The fact that neither Musk nor Trump seem concerned about the security implications of federal employees feeding their work details into private commercial AI systems is particularly alarming.

There are a whole host of problems with all of this, but mainly, it’s just fucking stupid.

And, as the HHS GC pointed out, it’s insulting. Many others felt the same way:

Kelley said in the letter that the union has “received numerous reports from dedicated civil servants, including those who care for our veterans and safeguard our nation, expressing frustration over the email’s tone and intent. Rather than fostering professionalism and respect for their work, this hastily written email left many feeling undervalued and intimidated.”

And even Republicans are having trouble defending this one.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, also criticized Mr. Musk’s order.

“Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform,” she wrote in a statement on social media. “The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn’t it.”

The whole thing is an exercise in dickishness for the sake of dickishness. But beyond the obvious management failures, this episode raises serious concerns about data security and privacy. The combination of FOIA-able responses, encouraged use of commercial AI systems, and the broad scope of affected agencies creates a perfect storm of potential security risks. Federal employees’ work details could be exposed in ways that compromise ongoing operations, especially in sensitive areas like national security and law enforcement. It’s yet another example of how tech-bro solutions to imagined problems often create very real security vulnerabilities.

Of course, Musk fans will cheer it on, insisting that the federal workforce deserves to be treated like shit, even as this will impact many people who actually supported Trump and Musk. The entire attitude is “if you’re not part of the inner circle, you’re worthless.”

It’s obnoxious. And it’s designed to demoralize workers on purpose. The assumption that all federal employees are a waste is such a stupid, ignorant position. But it’s clearly how Musk is treating everyone who works for the government.