A Democratic senator went on a crude online tirade over Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) demand for all federal workers to answer a simple question about their productivity.
Tina Smith (D-Minn.) called the world’s richest man a “d–k boss” for orchestrating the email that went out to federal workers on Saturday with the subject line, “What did you do last week?”
Smith’s tirade comes as several government departments — including Kash Patel’s FBI — are instructing their employees not to respond to the message.
In a similar fashion to the types of sporadic requests Musk blasted out to his employees at Tesla and SpaceX, the Office of Personnel Management dished out the demand to federal workers — five bullet points with their accomplishments by 11:59 a.m. on Monday. It instructed them not to include any classified material.
Musk then publicly wrote on X that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation” — something that was not noted in the email blast. He was adamant that “the bar is very low here.”
“This is the ultimate d–k boss move from Musk – except he isn’t even the boss, he’s just a d—,” Smith (D-Minn.) jabbed on X.
“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 —hole bosses.”
Amid the uproar within the federal government, Musk defended the missive as a “very basic pulse check.”
“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!” he contended on X amid a firestorm.
“In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks.”
The email blast came shortly after President Trump publicly encouraged Musk to “get more aggressive,” a request that came in the midst of media reports of administration officials growing weary of the DOGE boss.
Several key Trump administration officials instructed their staffers not to reply to the Musk-directed email from OPM.
The State Department followed up with its staffing telling them that “no employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their department chain of command.”
Recently confirmed FBI director Patel told staff to “please pause any responses” to the Musk request and underscored that the bureau is in charge of personnel decisions.
Defense Department officials also sent out a counter email asking employees to refrain from responding to the OPM request.
There have been similar reports of other agencies related to national security similarly nudging staffers away from responding. OPM said that “agencies will determine next steps.”
“A large number of good responses have been received already. These are the people who should be considered for promotion,” Musk added about the ordeal.
A cacophony of top Democrats in Congress fumed at the Musk-directed email.
House Oversight Committee ranking member Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) penned a letter to acting OPM director Charles Ezell demanding he “immediately clarify that federal employees’ nonresponse to this ill-conceived, weekend email does not constitute resignation.”
Several federal union officials such as the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) openly encouraged their members not to reply to the missive, arguing that its members do not work for OPM and that the memo was seemingly sent out without coordination between agencies.
They’ve also hinted at potential litigation over the email blast.
Last week, labor unions filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration arguing that OPM lacks legal authority to oversee federal employees in other agencies and departments.
So far, Musk’s DOGE team, which works closely with OPM, claims to have saved taxpayers billions of dollars via its various cost-cutting initiatives.
The Trump administration is estimated to have fired or laid off at least 20,000 people within the past month.