Elon Musk’s Federal Worker Ultimatum Is a Brazen Power Grab

It was a day of uncertainty for federal workers, who had been given until the stroke of midnight Monday evening to justify their jobs to Elon Musk—the unelected billionaire whose own job description could use some more explanation. What constitutional authority does this shadow president—and his shady young goons—have to dismantle government agencies, access highly-sensitive data, and fire thousands of civil servants? And would employees really be terminated if they didn’t reply to a bizarre email from the Office of Personnel Management demanding they list five things they accomplished that week?

For a time, it appeared maybe not. As some agencies, including ones led by fierce MAGA loyalists like FBI Director Kash Patel, appeared to defy Musk’s ultimatum, the administration seemed to soften the DOGE demand: The OPM said responses would be “voluntary” and nonresponses would not be tantamount to a resignation, as Musk had initially threatened. But then President Donald Trump weighed in, contradicting his own administration and siding with Musk: “I thought it was great,” Trump said of Musk’s ultimatum. “If you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired,” Trump continued, suggesting that some of those who fail to answer may”not exist.”

That led Musk, buoyed by the public show of support from the president, to double-down on his demand: “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” the so-called “efficiency” czar posted on the social media platform he owns. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”

There are still some open questions here, including what it means to be “semi-fired,” as Trump suggested to reporters while hosting French President Emmanuel Macron in the Oval Office Monday; whether Musk will use AI to determine which federal employees get to keep their jobs, as NBC News reported he is planning to do; or what will come out of the legal challenges that have been leveled against Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.

But the one thing that is clear is what these people are up to: This is not some commonsense efficiency or cost-cutting project, as Trump, Musk, and their Republican defenders insist. This is brazen state capture, a coup from within, by a president acting outside the normal separation of powers and a nihilistic enforcer who derives most of his authority from his ungodly wealth.

Americans, including in Trump Country, appear increasingly concerned about Musk’s power grab, with Republican officials in districts across the nation facing constituents’ ire at town halls. “We’re seeing the administration undermine Congress,” one speaker said at an Oklahoma town hall hosted by Tulsa Representative Kevin Hern last week. But, save for some private frustration and back-channel pleading with the White House, Republicans seem unmoved by their constituents’ concerns and unwilling to do anything meaningful to check Musk: “We’re moving forward with the cuts,” Hern told reporters at the Capitol Monday.

“It’s easy to be critical,” California Republican Jay Obernolte, who was met with jeers of “no king!” at his own town hall last week, added to Politico. “But the people voted for change in November, and that’s exactly what they’re getting.”

But, of course, not even half of “the people” in America voted for Trump. Furthermore, not all who voted for a change in policy in November voted for a wholesale change in our system of government, which is what Trump and Musk are actually executing—at the expense of federal workers, the public welfare, and the democratic system more broadly. “We’ve just started,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Monday, as he repeated to the French president a suggestion his own Treasury secretary has rejected about gold maybe having been stolen from Fort Knox. “We’re doing a real job.”