The ‘Muskification’ of the federal government is in full swing

In November 2022, days after Elon Musk took control of the company then called Twitter, employees received an email with the subject line: “A fork in the road.” Now he’s turned his attention to the US government, and federal workers just received a memo with the same subject line.

In November 2022, days after Elon Musk took control of the company then called Twitter, employees received an email with the subject line: “A fork in the road.” Now he’s turned his attention to the US government, and federal workers just received a memo with the same subject line. The Twitter email offered workers an ultimatum: commit to “exceptional performance” and working “extremely hardcore” or leave the company. On Tuesday, the memo to federal government employees gave them a nearly identical choice: commit to “excellence,” and being “reliable, loyal, trustworthy,” among other things, or resign and take a buyout. The strikingly similar language is perhaps the clearest sign yet that Musk — who is now a top advisor to President Donald Trump, with an office in the White House — appears to be bringing his Twitter takeover playbook to the federal government. And it’s raising questions about whether America’s government could rapidly slash staff like a tech company, and whether it will suffer the same consequences as Twitter, including the broken systems and sharp decline in value that has bedeviled the social media company following his acquisition. “The freeze in all federal spending feels eerily familiar to this former Twitter employee to when Elon took over,” Lara Cohen, who left her post after Musk’s takeover as Twitter’s global head of marketing and partners, said in a Threads post Tuesday. “They come in, get no context, turn off everything without knowing who does what… That was a social media company. This is the country and this will hurt people beyond repair.” On the campaign trail, Musk talked frequently about downsizing the federal government. And he played an integral part in the rollout of Tuesday’s federal government buyouts, an official told CNN, through his position leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). And it makes sense why Trump would be on board with such a plan, said William Klepper, a professor of management at Columbia Business School. “Trump is used to being in a reality show, right? He’s used to firing people. That’s a script that he has,” Klepper said.