WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration is testing a new capability that would allow officials to email the entire federal government workforce from a single email address, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said in a statement Friday.
The new capability could allow Trump to communicate directly with millions of federal workers across dozens of agencies simultaneously, with a single click of a mouse.
The White House declined to comment.
The effort aligns with the government modernization goals of the new Department of Government Efficiency, headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, and could take advantage of his team’s engineering experience as they seek to wring savings and efficiencies from government systems.
When Musk took over Twitter in 2022, he told employees in an email that they needed “to be extremely hardcore,” work “long hours at high intensity,” and that only “exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
Notably, Twitter employees also had to click “yes” on a document to confirm that they wanted to keep working at the company.
Federal workers at agencies, including the departments of state and justice, began receiving test emails from this system on Thursday and early into Friday morning.
Some employees thought the email might have been spam.
“Looks like a phishing attempt,” one federal worker told NBC News.
A Justice Department official sent a separate message saying the email should be considered trusted, but that they should use the agency’s phishing tool should they have suspicions about any other emails.
One federal worker described it as a “mandatory federal government group chat.” Another said the requirement to reply “YES” made the email “feel like something out of 1984.”
“A ‘new’ system to communicate… except that OPM has always had an emergency text and email system,” a Justice Department employee texted. “You’re supposed to email back and respond ‘yes.’ Maybe they’re testing who blindly follows orders 😭.”
