100 House Democrats Spring A Clever Trap On Elon Musk And Trump

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Elon Musk screwed up when he told all federal employees to respond to an email from him telling what they accomplished last week or else they would lose their jobs. Some agencies responded by telling their employees to ignore the email.

Musk is a political novice who did not understand that his email gave House Democrats a political opening.

More than 100 House Democrats seized the opportunity by sending a letter on Monday to 24 federal agencies.

The group is being led by Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who wrote:

Whether Mr. Musk understands it or not, America is a nation of laws, our government is a system of checks and balances, and federal agencies will not be reorganized by social media post. This stunt is yet another example of the cruel and arbitrary chaos Mr. Musk inflicts on the American people by carelessly ‘taking a chainsaw’ to the people’s government and the dedicated public servants who keep it running. Mr. Musk’s consistent refusal to take any amount of care before disrupting operations across the federal government imposes far greater costs than it will legitimately save.

The nature of Mr. Musk’s employment is opaque, likely unlawful, and has been cloaked in secrecy since day one of this Administration. What is clear and reflected in the cruel dismissal-threat tweet and ham-handed OPM email that followed, is that Mr. Musk lacks a basic understanding of how the federal government works. For example, the OPM email was sent to individuals who do not even work in the Executive Branch—including sitting federal judges.

Neither Musk’s tweet nor the email account for the fact that many federal workers will not be receiving this email in time to respond by the deadline as they may be away from their secure workstation, on medical leave, or away from their email for completely justifiable reasons. He also, disturbingly, appears to be unaware that many federal employees are locked out of their systems due to DOGE’s ongoing intrusion into federal information technology infrastructure.

Finally, neither Musk nor OPM has explained to the public how OPM and the agencies would even review and process potentially two million responses from across the government—which are duplicative of existing performance management procedures—without diverting resources and costing the American people money and services.