S/V Sundance: re: the list that Elon asked for

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

re: the list that Elon asked for

Faith, Elon Musk recently ordered for an email to be sent to millions of federal workers with the subject like: "What did you do last week?"

In the email, employees were ordered to share five bullet points detailing what they had accomplished at work in the last week. Musk himself said "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."

Maybe you've had a micromanaging boss just like this before and you know the feeling. Maybe it made you want to just quit your job rather than having to justify your service and your career to some out-of-touch executive who doesn't understand half of what you actually do. That's exactly what they're hoping will happen, Faith.

But when I heard about this email, I wondered if Donald Trump was going to respond to Musk's email and report on what he did last week. After all, a good boss will hold himself to the same standard that he holds his employees to, right?

In order to prioritize efficiency, I've taken the liberty of writing his bullet points for him:

Purged the military of experienced and qualified senior officers, putting our national security at risk.
Promised to protect Medicaid only to backtrack less than 24 hours later by endorsing the House Republican plan to cut health care to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-rich.
Fired the experts working to end bird flu (as egg prices go WAY up). Now frantically trying to find and rehire them.
Stopped the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from helping people who get scammed by Wall Street and giant corporations.
Put your grandma's Social Security check in danger by forcing out the acting Social Security Commissioner.

I could go on, but these reports are supposed to be snappy. While Trump was up to all of this, public servants in the federal government were busy doing their jobs for the American people — everything from making sure you get your tax refund to researching breakthroughs in cancer treatments to making sure nursing homes got their payments from Medicaid.

Again this is an explicit attempt to make civil servants so sick of working for the federal government that they decide to leave or lose their jobs for refusing to follow the orders of an unelected billionaire who they do not report to. It's anti-worker. It's anti-American. And, for all intents and purposes, it's anti-efficiency.

Look: Trump and Musk are doing so much, so fast, to weaken our government institutions, make our country less safe, hurt working people, and reward the rich and powerful. They want it to be impossible to keep track of every outrageous action they take. But we are staying on it.

We will keep calling out what they're doing and making their true motives clear. And we will keep fighting back — in Congress, in the courts, and by raising our voices because our stories have power.

If making a financial contribution would make sense for you right now, can you pitch in $28 or any amount to support our fight against Trump's radical agenda?