- US government faces a “Fork in the road,” just as Twitter did when Musk bought the company in 2022.
- Musk’s Twitter job cuts were partly driven by the need to save money for big debt payments.
- US government debt has also soared, leaving annual interest payments over $1 trillion.
President Donald Trump‘s administration has launched a sweeping overhaul of the federal workforce, starting with a blunt offer this week: Take a buyout and leave, or commit to a new era of in-office mandates and performance that “exceeds expectations.”
The move, detailed in an email to federal workers, follows an RTO order issued during Trump’s first week in office — a directive requiring most federal employees report to physical offices five days a week.
The parallels to Elon Musk‘s tumultuous takeover of Twitter, now X, are impossible to ignore. In 2022, the tech billionaire sent a similar email to Twitter employees asking them to commit to an “extremely hardcore” schedule or leave. The subject line was “A fork in the road” — the same one referenced by the Trump administration on Tuesday.
These are bets that aggressive workforce cuts, relentless productivity demands, and a culture of loyalty and long hours can reshape institutions. The question is whether Musk’s playbook, which left Twitter financially shaky and culturally fractured, can work for the US government.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Tuesday evening.
Similar blueprints
The US Office of Personnel Management, which is sending out the email to federal workers, vowed to reward top performers and swiftly address under-performers. That mirrors Musk’s midnight missive to Twitter staff, which demanded “exceptional performance” as the “only passing grade” and presaged job cuts that eliminated about 80% of the company’s workforce.
OPM also promised a leaner workforce, noting that while defense and security agencies may grow, most federal departments will face downsizing through layoffs, furloughs, and reclassifying roles as “at-will” employment, eroding civil-service protections that have shielded workers for decades. Federal employees must also meet heightened standards of reliability, loyalty, and trustworthiness, according to the OPM.
The blueprint echoes Elon Musk’s rapid-fire restructuring of Twitter. Soon after acquiring the platform, Musk told employees they had 40 hours to commit to an “extremely hardcore“ work environment or accept severance. More than 6,000 Twitter staff eventually left or were laid off, including engineers and content moderators. Musk also issued RTO mandates.
Risks and rising debt
The risks of Musk’s approach are well-documented. Twitter’s user growth stalled post-takeover, and its brand reputation tanked as advertisers fled after controversial policy shifts.
For Trump, the gamble is potentially riskier. Twitter had about 7,800 employees pre-Musk; the federal government employs roughly 2.3 million. Mass layoffs or attrition could destabilize everything from Social Security processing to disaster response.
Yet the administration is charging ahead, framing the overhaul as an effort to reign in government spending and control the national debt.
When Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he admitted he overpaid after being forced to close the $44 billion transaction by a judge. It was a highly leveraged deal which left the company with a lot of debt and large interest payments. That partly drove Musk’s drastic job cuts as he rushed to save money and prevent Twitter from defaulting.
By 2023, he’d cut more than 6,000 employees. He described the layoffs as “painful” and “one of the hardest things” he had to do as Twitter’s boss.
The US government has also taken on a lot of debt in recent years. While no one expects a US default any time soon, the national debt has soared from about $3.4 trillion in 1980 to more than $35 trillion in 2024. Roughly $10 trillion in debt has piled up since 2017, according to Treasury Department data.
Rising rates have increased the cost of paying interest on this massive debt load. In 2023, these annual payments topped $1 trillion, stoking concern among some economists about government spending.
This is partly what’s driving the Trump administration to try to make the US government more efficient. Trump has also pledged to pursue tax cuts, putting even more pressure on his administration to find other ways of controlling the ballooning national debt.
Trump’s efficiency drive has already caused turmoil. Some government workers said his federal grant freeze has thrown agencies into disarray, creating confusion.
When Musk eliminated thousands of Twitter jobs, some employees at the company were concerned that the social-media platform might stop working because the cuts were so deep and fast. There were some outages, but the company’s technical underpinnings have been running relatively smoothly over the past year or so.
