DOGE and the Federal Workforce

I was really gratified by the positive response to my blog post on Friday discussing the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency which, it should be noted, is not actually a department and not officially named the Department of Government Efficiency. It is also not officially led by Shadow President Elon Musk. But DOGE exists in a world that requires the suspension of disbelief. Today I will look at one aspect of DOGE's attempt to establish a shadow government.

Beginning almost immediately after the inauguration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump, cadres of young people — one less than a year out of high school — who are loyal to Shadow President Elon Musk moved quickly to seize control of much of the U.S. government. Working under the auspices of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), their first targets were the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration (GSA). It soon became clear that one of the first steps of Musk's plan was to establish direct control over the government's workforce.

To understand Musk's intentions at OPM, one need only review his management of Twitter. After he purchased the social media network, which he subsequently renamed "X", one of Musk’s first moves was to send an email to all X employees giving them 24 hours to agree to continue working at the company under "hardcore" conditions. Anyone who did not respond would be considered to have resigned and given 3 months’ severance. Musk titled his email, "A Fork in the Road". To achieve this kind of control over the federal workforce, Musk needed to be able to communicate to the entire government easily. Therefore, one of the first efforts by the DOGE team at OPM was to set up their own email server capable of sending email to the entire government workforce. Later dubbed the Government-Wide Email System (GWES), most federal employees learned of this system when a cryptic test email was sent to them. After years of security awareness training teaching them to watch for phishing attempts, many employees appropriately reported the email as spam. Not long after this, however, a much more serious email was sent from the server. This one encouraged federal employees to submit their resignations. If they accepted the offer, they would be able to immediately stop working, but continue receiving their salaries until September 30. All they had to do was reply to the email with the word "resign" in the body. The subject line of the email was, "Fork in the Road". The federal government was getting the X treatment.

While Trump has been attempting to run the government by issuing executive orders, Musk has been doing his part by sending emails. This is an autocratic form of rule that forgoes deliberation and sidelines other branches of government. Neither Trump nor Musk appears to have the slightest concern for the rule of law, and both are more than willing to ignore rules and regulations that should govern their conduct. Even the email server that DOGE installed ignores the requirements of the E-Government Act of 2002. The server presents a significant security risk and does not adhere to any of the government's normal security requirements. It is likely that the server was not even legally procured. Musk, especially, has been acting completely outside the bounds of any legal authority. In court filings, the U.S. Government has said that Musk has no decision-making authority and is only an advisor to the President. The filing claimed that Musk has no connection to DOGE at all. Yet, Musk clearly has de facto control of the agency.

On February 11, Trump and Musk held a joint press conference in the Oval Office. There were two aspects of this event that stood out to me. The first was how clearly Trump has accepted his role as figurehead. He sat at his desk looking bored and occasionally bobbing his head while Musk — with his son X frequently balanced on his shoulders — did most of the talking. The second thing that caught my attention was when Musk outlined his view of how government should work. Musk spoke about a feedback loop from the people to the government, saying that if there were not that sort of feedback loop, there would be rule by bureaucracy and, if the bureaucracy was in charge, democracy would have no meaning. It is a little hard to understand what Musk meant by this, but I believe what he means is that the people should state their preference and that preference should immediately be reflected in governmental policies. Musk believes that the bureaucracy is preventing this feedback loop from functioning. This is consistent with the MAGA perspective that the "deep state" stymied much of Trump's agenda during his first term. However, the perspective ignores much of how our system of democracy is supposed to work.

The U.S. system of democracy is based on three coequal branches of government. Voters demonstrate their preferences through elections of representatives and the President. The elected representatives pass legislation, the executive branch implements that legislation, and the judicial branch decides whether or not the other two branches are acting constitutionally. Trump and Musk want to replace the legislative role with Trump's Executive Orders and ignore the judicial branch altogether. They want a system of government in which public opinion — as defined by them and frequently influenced by them — is implemented by decree. Their vision eliminates the checks and balances of our system, something that the Republican-led Congress seems to be willing to accept.

This highlights the role of DOGE's email server. For the first time, communications are going directly to all federal employees, bypassing department secretaries, agency heads, and everyone else in the chain of command. What might once have taken weeks or months to convey to the entire federal workforce can now be done within a few hours. This kind of efficiency is attractive to autocrats and, therefore, something that Trump and Musk obviously favor. Federal workers are no longer viewed as employees of a department or agency, but rather employees of OPM and working at the behest of Musk and DOGE.

One downside to this sort of efficient governance is that it leaves lots of room for error. One of the benefits of deliberative processes is that mistakes can be identified and corrected. Without that process, not surprisingly, errors have been made. The Fork offer had to be repeatedly revised because some parts simply were not legal. During reductions in force that soon followed, essential personnel were repeatedly let go, only to result in the government desperately trying to rehire them. The poor vetting of information fed to the DOGE email server is demonstrated by the fact that even as recently as this weekend, the server was sending emails to staff of the Judiciary branch, including judges, who are far outside the purview of DOGE. The tech sector has the motto, "move fast and break things". This attitude simply doesn't work when it comes to government. But neither Trump nor Musk seem concerned about the mistakes. During their joint press conference, Musk acknowledged that DOGE has made errors, but brushed them off. It is likely only a matter of time until something major is broken, and DOGE's incompetence will be harder to hide.

DOGE has been very active in downsizing the federal workforce. In addition to the Fork in the Road offer, DOGE has ordered the firing of employees who are on probation. New federal employees serve a probationary period for their first year, and during that time, they can be fired very easily. However, experienced employees who have recently been promoted are also on probation. DOGE targeted employees who are on probation simply because they could be fired easily and not due to any performance issues that they may have had. DOGE also ordered the removal of any employee involved in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. In some cases, this swept up employees who had simply attended a lecture, some of them during the first Trump administration. While these job cuts have been justified due to a need for greater government efficiency, this sort of indiscriminate firing demonstrates that efficiency and effectiveness are often at odds.

Over the weekend, another email was sent from the DOGE email server. This one required federal employees to respond by midnight today with a report on what they had accomplished the previous week. In a tweet on Saturday, Musk wrote that anyone who failed to respond to the email would be considered to have resigned. This was a surprising communication from someone who the White House contends has no role in DOGE. However, it was another nod to Musk's tactics at X and another action that is completely against normal government procedure. Indeed, Musk's threat did not even make it into the email that was eventually sent. The OPM email was another demonstration that OPM, effectively DOGE, is exerting direct control over the workforce. Several Department Secretaries and other officials instructed their employees not to respond to the email. This suggests that there may be some resistance to Musk's plan to establish direct control of federal employees. It will be interesting to see how these battles pan out.

DOGE's actions, probably intentionally, have induced fear in many employees. The concern about being fired has encouraged many of them to go along with DOGE initiatives, whether legal or not. This is all part and parcel of autocratic rule. Our democracy is largely being replaced by a system that operates on the basis of Trump decrees signaled through executive orders and implemented through Musk's emails. The spectre of job dismissal is used to intimidate employees into cooperation. This is not at all what our founding fathers had in mind for our system of government. As mentioned above, there is some budding pushback from cabinet secretaries, and the Judicial branch has shown that it is not completely cowed by Trump and his MAGA followers. Even Trump-appointed judges have ruled against Musk's actions. The reaction of some Republican Senators and Members of Congress has been to threaten those judges with impeachment. This suggests that these Republicans in Congress are quite happy to see their own roles marginalized and checks and balances replaced by Trump's autocratic rule.