As a Poor-Performing Probationary Employee, Elon Musk Must Go | Opinion

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been on the job for less than two months, but the early results are nothing short of disastrous. These include a series of airplane safety incidents, cancelled appointments at the VA, long lines outside national parks, and abandoned medical research. Through it all, there is an overriding sense that the world's richest man is using his power over President Donald Trump to steal from the public coffers and enrich himself.

Musk has sought to justify his cuts to these public services by villainizing the rank-and-file public servants who keep our country afloat. Trump and Musk deride them as "lazy bureaucrats" and "the deep state," but the American people know them as food inspectors, TSA officers, Social Security workers, corrections officers, VA nurses, scientists, first responders, law enforcement officers, border patrol agents, and the men and women who support our armed forces. More than 80 percent of federal employees live outside the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region. More than 30 percent are military veterans. And they all share a dedication to serving their fellow Americans. That's why they work longer hours, for significantly lower pay, than their private sector counterparts. In his hunt for "efficiency," Musk has conveniently chosen to ignore the fact that federal employees are among the most efficient workers on the planet.

Instead, Musk has attempted to fire as many federal employees as he can, as fast as he can, without regard for the collateral damage that he is causing. In particular, he has taken aim at probationary employees—who have been in their current job for less than a year or two and are still being evaluated before their civil service appointment is finalized—and accused them, en masse, of poor performance. How ironic is it, then, that by his own criteria, Elon Musk should be the first federal employee to clear out his desk?

Let's start with Musk's own performance review methods, which are as unlawful as they are disrespectful. Recently, the DOGE-captured Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent a government-wide email asking employees to respond with a list of five things that they accomplished the previous week. On social media, Musk stated that failure to respond would be "taken as a resignation." It is illegal to use the threat of dismissal to coerce federal employees to give out protected information.

But Musk has shown little regard for the law during his tenure with DOGE. In recent weeks, federal judges have repeatedly blocked him from using his position to access and remove sensitive data and personal information owned by a variety of agencies. That's strike one. Meanwhile, Musk has failed to resolve or even disclose legitimate conflicts-of-interest arising from his oversight of agencies that are in the midst of investigating his companies, like Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter/X. Strike two.

Most disturbingly, Musk and his allies have repeatedly attempted, without any relevant authority, to impound, or withhold, funds appropriated by Congress for programs and services that they personally oppose. As numerous legal scholars have warned, allowing the world's richest man to overrule our nation's elected representatives is nothing short of a constitutional crisis. Strike three—he's out. Or at least Musk should be. If Congress does not act to defund DOGE and oust Musk, he will truly be accountable to no one.

In justifying his actions, some of Musk's powerful Big Tech allies suggest that the only way to run our country more effectively is to install an all-powerful CEO-monarch who can remake the government, entirely free of legal constraints. But even with all his power, Elon Musk can't help but demonstrate his gross incompetence. DOGE recently released a public ledger boasting of billions in cancelled government contracts. A closer inspection revealed that the figures were rife with miscalculations and overestimates. And right now, the Trump administration is scrambling to inefficiently re-hire thousands of urgently needed federal employees that DOGE has recently laid off.

These errors would be sufficient to terminate the employment of any federal worker, regardless of how many years they've devoted to public service. But Mr. Musk has been on the job for just a handful of weeks. As any federal employee can now tell you, that makes him, at least in spirit, a probationary employee who can be fired at a moment's notice.

To create a more efficient and effective federal government, the first thing we should do is fire Elon Musk and close his DOGE. If Congress does so, 2.3 million federal workers—people who actually understand what the government does—stand ready to help the administration root out waste and build a more perfect union.

Everett Kelley is the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which is the largest federal union, representing more than 800,000 federal employees.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.