FOUR MORE YEARS OF SALTY GOSSIP: While the Dead Drop plays no political favorites, we’d be lying if we said the gossip business isn’t booming since President Trump took office in late January. Perhaps things were just too boring under former President Biden but not anymore. Our open source sleuthing tradecraft has tee’d up some pretty interesting nuggets this week.
MUSK VS. FEDERAL WORKERS: Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you already know that the Office of Personnel Management sent an email last weekend telling federal employees that they had until 11:59 PM Monday night to email a list of five things they did the week prior. That was round one. Round two was when Elon Musk weighed in to say that failure to do so would amount to an assumed resignation. Round three came as the heads of various departments told their employees that they shouldn’t feel obliged to comply. Then, round four as Musk tweeted, (cause what’s wrong with using your personal social media account to communicate this stuff anyway) “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.” Round six came later in the week when President Trump sort of said it was not ‘mandatory’ that employees respond to the OPM email – but if you don’t …you’re fired. And then, at his Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the president delivered what might be the final blow, saying federal employees who don’t respond to the email are “on the bubble.” Far be it from us to have an opinion or anything, but seems like the U.S. Government might benefit from a more efficient (and according to some Republican Senators, more compassionate) DOGE.
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