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Elon Musk's Latest Directive for Federal Workers Is Straight Out of Office Space

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  February 22, 2025 6:30 PM

President Donald J. Trump wanted Elon Musk to get more aggressive; he did just that. The Department of Government Efficiency has been going through DC like the Golden Horde, zeroing on wasteful spending that shut down USAID—probationary government workers in the hundreds of thousands are on the chopping block. Thousands of government workers have been served and will soon be served their pink slips. Now, Musk is ordering workers to explain what they do or risk termination. And yes, you bet that the DC elite freaked out, seeking lawyers to ask if these actions were legal or not (via Politico):

All federal government employees will have to share what they’ve been working on in the last week or face dismissal, Elon Musk said Saturday. 

Musk posted on X that employees will be receiving an email “shortly” requesting to “understand what they got done last week.” A lack of response, Musk said, “will be taken as a resignation.” 

It’s unclear what legal authority, if any, Musk is relying on. 

The announcement comes only hours after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to applaud Musk on his work with the Department of Government Efficiency on reducing the size of the federal government — and pushed him to “get more aggressive.” 

Michael Fallings, an attorney specializing in federal employment law, told POLITICO the actions Musk described in the post would be illegal. 

“I don’t believe it would be legal, and I don’t think he really understands right now how he will even do what he’s threatened to do,” Fallings said, adding that he wasn’t even sure if Musk was being serious, considering the volume of his posting on social media. 

It is also unclear how government employees working with classified information would handle such an email, should it eventually be delivered.

It’s something straight out of Office Space:

Maybe it might be tweaked by Trump, but the message is clear: the cuts will continue, the layoffs of useless workers remain a priority, and there’s a popular mandate for it. Democratic voters like the work Trump and DOGE are doing; they wish he were nicer. Don’t be fooled by the fake news folks—voters like DOGE.