Quotes
I think everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea. We have to find out where these people are. Who are they? And we said, 'If you don't respond, we assume you're not around, and you're not getting paid anymore, too.'
President Donald Trump praised the OPM email and Elon Musk at a Monday press conference
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Pursuant to updated OPM guidance, responses to the email from sender "HR" dated Saturday, February 22, are voluntary."
Marshall shared the following quote from the purported emailIf people don’t respond, it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working,
Trump said Monday during an appearance alongside French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House
This threat is illegal, reckless, and yet another example of the cruel and arbitrary chaos Mr. Musk is inflicting on the people’s government and its dedicated public servants,
wrote Connolly, whose Virginia district includes many federal employees
Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired,
he posted to X on Saturday
To be clear, the bar is very low here,
Musk wroteWe just had a situation at Twitter where it was absurdly overstaffed,
Musk said on Fox News in 2023If you're not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and you don't care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people, turns out,
he said at the timeEntering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!"
Months later, in October 2022, Musk officially acquired Twitter in a $44 billion deal, making waves when he entered its headquarters that month carrying a bathroom sink in a video he posted to X with the captionWow I hope there is not a mass response, especially a 'reply all' response, that would jam up the email systems,
one user wrote
Flood their system with asinine answers for their asinine email,
a Redditor instructedI thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government,
Trump said
The OPM message reflects an effort to increase accountability by the federal workforce, just as there is in the private sector,
John York, a senior counselor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, wrote in one of the emailsIt’s massive whiplash all the time,
said a DOJ employee, granted anonymity to speak candidlyI don’t think they’re really against it, but it’s been limited coordination so far,
one person familiar with the dynamics said of DOGE’s incursions into HHSThat was done in a friendly manner,
he insisted, citing the need for the State Department, the FBI and other agencies that have “confidential things” to avoid respondingThe concern is that information … gives a robust data set that could be used not by people in our own government but people outside of our own government, which is why you saw national security related and adjacent departments and agencies respond forcefully,
the official saidAnd they don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon,
Trump continued
If you can't come up with five things that you did you know maybe you shouldn't be employed here so again this is an easy task,
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Fox News on Monday
Those who ignored President Trump’s executive order to return to work have now received over a month’s warning,
Musk wrote on X, the platform which he also owns