Dem Senator Rips Musk's E-mail Ultimatum To Federal Workers In Epically NSFW X Thread

After billionaire Elon Musk sent out an ultimatum to federal workers on Saturday to email the five things they did at work last week or get fired, Minnesota Democratic Senator Tina Smith called him out in a NSFW X thread.

In an X post on Saturday, Musk previewed the email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) directing employees to provide a summary of the tasks they completed over the past week.

The message, which was sent to all federal employees later that day, asked employees to respond with “5 bullets of what you accomplished last week” and to copy their manager on the reply. The deadline for submission was Monday at 11:59 p.m. EST.

Although he posted that "failure to respond will be taken as a resignation, the email itself made no mention of that.

Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social)

Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social)bsky.app

NEW Here is the full email that Musk/OPM is sending to 2 million federal employees. Subject line: What did you do last week? Musk claimed on X that failure to reply would be considered a resignation, but that is not mentioned in the email.

Several major federal agencies — including the Pentagon, FBI, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Energy — have advised their staff not to respond to the email, often citing their existing systems for tracking employee performance.

In response to the email, many raged at Musk online, including Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, who offered a particularly apt retort:

"This is the ultimate dick boss move from Musk - except he isn’t even the boss, he’s just a dick."

In a follow-up, she went even further:

"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."

You can see her posts below.

@SenTinaSmith/X; @elonmusk/X

And in a response to another post that pointed out how Musk's own followers have been turning against him as he continues his slash-and-burn approach across all levels of government, Smith said:

"Maybe hating on dick bosses is the great unifier, the thing that brings all Americans together."

You can see her post below.

@smith.senate.gov/BlueSky

Many appreciated the energy she brought to the moment.

Everett Kelley, president of the 800,000-member American Federation of Government Employees, urged the administration in a letter Sunday to withdraw Musk’s request and issue an apology to all federal workers by day’s end.

“We believe that employees have no obligation to respond to this plainly unlawful email absent other lawful direction,” he wrote, calling Musk “unelected and unhinged.”

So far, thousands of government employees have been pushed out of the federal workforce — either through firings or by accepting a “deferred resignation” offer. While there’s no official count of total layoffs or terminations, the number of affected employees reportedly reaches into the hundreds of thousands.