Trump Breaks Ranks with Musk
After using the billionaire to intimidate his own agencies following a series of mass firings, Donald Trump and Elon Musk issue opposing directions and confusion ensues.
More major cracks are showing. On Saturday, Elon Musk posted a statement on his social media platform that revealed he had demanded federal employees to submit a list of what they did at work last week upon penalty of termination. If agency staff did not reply to Musk’s request by 11:59 pm — by submitting five bullet points detailing what they accomplished this week — employees were told that their omission would be considered an affirmative resignation and their position would be terminated.
Soon after Musk’s online ultimatum was posted, an email blast of another version of the directive was sent out to millions of federal employees, including federal judges and workers in the separate legislative arm of government, from the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM). But this mandate that was issued had two huge exceptions from the version posted by Musk: there was no discussion about a default resignation resulting from non-compliance and the Office of the President, under the Executive Branch, was exempt from the assignment.
The chaos over how to comply with the request this weekend resulted in mass confusion, with some agency leaders continuing to tell workers that they were not to comply with any of the orders due to the legal issue of disclosing sensitive or classified national security information. Moreover, personnel at OPM had no guidance on what they were supposed to do with any of the bullet point submissions that were received as a result of Musk’s demand.
Given that the Trump administration made an affirmative move to fire probationary federal employees last week with a buyout, and then completely reversed course this week to offer a deferment on those resignations, the level of disorientation among agency leadership is understandably at an all-time high.
By Monday, Donald Trump had publicly defended the decision by some of his Cabinet members to ignore Elon Musk’s weekend bullet-point homework assignment, which has only created more uncertainty for agency staff about how to proceed. “What [Elon Musk is] doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’” Trump said in the Oval Office during a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. “And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist.”
Trump also attempted to align his statements with those of Musk and dispel confusion between the conflicting statements and X posts by claiming that the real pushback to completing Musk’s email assignment was coming from agency heads, who wanted to protect sensitive information in compliance with FBI and State Department guidance.
“They don’t mean that in any way combatively, with Elon,” said Donald Trump in defense of the instruction,” They’re just saying there’s some people that you don’t want to really have them tell you what they’re working on last week.” Trump went on to dismiss the confusion by calling Musk’s assignment “ingenious” despite sending a conflicting message to all federal employees through the Monday email blast to federal employees, which purposely did not mention any formal consequences for failing to turn in the previously requested bullet-points.
Trump’s statement that denoted people could be “semi-fired” has also caused more confusion about what exactly is being demanded by Trump and/or Musk, and what the consequences for non-compliance will be. According to an agency official, top agency leaders were told by their respective Human Resources departments to adhere to the guidance they had already issued to their workforce, and to stick to the previously established timeline of “return-to-office mandates,” which already included any deadlines for mid-March.
“There’s a full revolt going on right now,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative-leaning organization. “DOGE’s stated objective was to reorganize the agencies to meet their goals, but Cabinet heads want to run their own agencies, and they are objecting to the across-the-board cuts coming from Musk’s team.” This ongoing struggle between agency heads and the Trump administration has been apparent in the pandemonium that various agency staffers have been experiencing since Trump took office and began signing executive orders like they were autographs.
Since Elon Musk began making executive decisions at DOGE, the level of conflicting guidance and overall confusion has become a prime feature of this second Trump administration. In addition to more than 200,000 federal workers at more than a dozen agencies having had their roles eliminated by the newly created DOGE agency, approximately 75,000 federal workers have accepted buyouts to date. While many groups and claimants have pursued injunctions in the Courts to stop the mass firings and to have legal restraints placed on DOGE that would limit Musk’s access to agency data, that process will be slow and ongoing and won’t provide immediate answers for federal workers who are now faced with competing orders.
The best example of this Musk-induced disorganized melee was the outrageous scene that occured at the Department of Urban Housing and Development (HUD) on Monday morning, when staff arrived to shocking and offensive graphic video playing throughout the halls of the agency on televisions installed throughout the building. An AI-generated image of Donald Trump sucking Elon Musk’s toes, with the caption “LONG LIVE THE REAL KING” played on a loop all over the building. There was no other way to turn off the image other than turning off each television one by one and the process allegedly took nearly a half an hour.
On Friday, Hampton Dellinger, who is suing the Trump administration after his forceful removal from his role leading the Office of Special Counsel, filed a request with the US Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which is supposed to be an independent agency that reviews the OMP actions. Dellinger is requesting a 45-day stay in all probationary workers' firings "across various executive branch agencies."
"Firing probationary employees without individualized cause appears contrary to a reasonable reading of the law, particularly the provisions establishing rules for reductions in force," Dellinger said in the statement. "I believe I have a responsibility to request a stay of these actions while my agency continues to investigate further the apparent violation of federal personnel laws," he added, citing a Congressional direction for watchdogs to protect government employees from prohibited personnel practices.
Dellinger also insinuated in his statement that he is considering other ways to seek legal relief for a broader group without the need for individual filings. Advocacy group Democracy Forward and the Alden Law Group have initiated a Class Action complaint on behalf of federal employees, seeking to reinstate those workers. While there are current attempts being made to stop the slew of nonsensical requests coming from the DOGE Agency, none of these suits or complaints will provide immediate relief for federal workers who are still stuck with the responsibility of completing this bizarre directive.
Now that another round of justified mass confusion has ensued, both Trump and Musk are trying to publicly walk back their statements on Monday while appearing as if they were not contradicting themselves, or each other — but, the attempt, much like everything Donald Trump does, failed. What this latest round of “Executive Tug of War” between Trump and Musk has shown us is that the fracture within the Trump administration is visible and the cracks are growing faster than Trump can issue another nonsensical directive or Elon Musk can create another presidential edict as if he were elected to office in the first place.
On Monday, Elon Musk attempted to downplay his overreach and the seriousness of the fallout of his directive on social media following Trump’s public statements about “semi-firings” and the overall questioning of his strategy. “Absurd that a 5 min email generates this level of concern!” Musk wrote on X. “Something is deeply wrong.” For once Elon Musk has issued a statement upon which we can all agree.
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter, is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and an analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
Paid subscriptions and one-time tributes embedded in each article allow me to keep publishing critical and informative work that is sometimes made available to the public — thank you. If you like this piece and want to support independent journalism further, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription or gift subscription, or donate as much as you like today.
Putin told Musk how to subjugate trump with flattery and money, and Musk rigged the election for Putin. Now he’s running roughshod over trump and mango Mussolini is cowering, terrified of this out-of-control megalomaniac.
FINALLY! Look out now, tho, then. I believe Musk helped him rig the election with Pennslyvania's election computers, maybe more swing states. So he'd be blackmailed if he split with Musk. Getting deep into the Find Out phase!