Yesterday Elon began sending emails to 2.3 million federal employees asking them to respond by Monday, 11:59 pm, with a five-bullet-point list of what they had accomplished in the past week. And then on X social media he said that failure to respond would be interpreted as a resignation.

The strong implication is that federal employees are being challenged to justify their employment. Who the bleep is expecting to review 2.3 million emails? Oh, I guess AI is supposed to take care of this. Is AI also expected to make snap judgments about future employment based on a five-bullet-point list? Let’s just say it — this is colossally stupid, and if this was Elon Musk’s idea, then Elon Musk is colossally stupid.

The heads of several agencies/departments and other sections of government are telling their people to ignore the email. Josh Marshall:

Over the course of the evening top leadership at the FBI, the State Department, the VA, the Department of the Navy (to its civilian employees) and other parts of the government have explicitly instructed employees in their departments and agencies to ignore the email. Meanwhile the DOJ seems to be instructing its employees to follow it. (And yes, FBI is sort of under DOJ and that’s kind of weird but that’s where we are.)

According to the AP, RFK the Lesser told HHS employees to comply with the email, but  “That was shortly after the acting general counsel, Sean Keveney, had instructed some not to.”

Wired is running a headline saying Elon Musk Threatens FBI Agents and Air Traffic Controllers With Forced Resignation if They Don’t Respond to an Email. To his credit, Kash Patel told his people at the FBI to not respond. Trump’s acting head of the FAA, Chris Rocheleau, has not made any comment on the email that I can find. But what would an air traffic controller write in a five-point bullet list?

1. Controlled air traffic.
2. Controlled air traffic
3. Controlled air traffic.
4. Controlled air traffic.
5. Controlled air traffic.

And is Musk seriously dumb enough to even think of laying off air traffic controllers right now? As Josh Marshall wrote, “This is all a bit comical and also manages to be a certain degree of state disintegration we’re watching in real time. But it also seems clear that Musk has gotten a bit over his skis finally.” I think he’s been over his skis for awhile. See, for example,  DOGE’s Only Public Ledger Is Riddled With Mistakes at the New York Times. In brief, Musk’s “recepts” for how much money he’s saved are a mess. He fires people, realizes they are essential, then tries to hire them back. (See Jen Psaki on this.)  He and the Lost Boys misread data and publicly announce that the U.S. sent $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza, which it didn’t, and that a large number of people aged 150 and older are getting Social Security benefits, which they aren’t. These are mistakes. An intelligent person would have double-checked the facts before going public. Not Musk

Of course, he’s relying on the MAGA base to simply accept this crap as fact, and they are unlikely to learn otherwise. But most of us are not part of the MAGA base. Based on his recent behavior, I wouldn’t trust Musk to organize a children’s birthday party and not screw it up. And Trump wouldn’t know where to start. He’d just order someone else to do it.

In other news: Trump is getting his talking points on Ukraine word for word from Putin. As we thought.