We’re seeing the beginnings of mass noncompliance

This article is adapted from a Choose Democracy newsletter email.

The dynamics of this administrative coup are taking shape. Trump whisperer Steve Bannon has called the approach “muzzle velocity” and “flood the zone.” It has been relentless and already there are countless losses for the American people.

The aim of flood the zone is to move at such speed that it’s impossible to organize — and that resistance efforts are constantly distracted by the latest news and in constant disarray. For the first several weeks this strategy worked and was virtually unchecked and largely unchallenged. That’s been stage one: shock.

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Keya Chatterjee of Free DC has trained over 2,000 people in the last week, in just D.C. alone. In one workshop she explained that we are moving into the next stages: gathering strength and cycles of interference. People are finding each other, brand new networks like 50501 are being born and many are engaged in a whole array of interference: boisterous town halls, protests, boycotts, digital sabotage, callers to right-wing talk shows and on and on. Some of these will work, some will not.

But just last week we saw the first glimmer of what mass noncooperation can look like — and it created some new cracks in the Trump-Musk administrative coup. 

Over the weekend, unelected billionaire Elon Musk and his rogue crew told the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, to send an email to federal workers demanding they answer the question “What did you do last week?” in five bullet points.

On social media, Musk wrote, “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Interestingly, Musk had wanted the threat of termination to appear in the email OPM sent, but it somehow got cut or never made it in.

Why wasn’t it included?

It’s not because Musk didn’t want it in there. He made the threat in his tweet very clear (and later doubled-down).

It’s not because Musk knows it’s illegal. He’s broken plenty of laws and regulations.

It’s not because Musk is having a change of heart. He’s a billionaire bully.

It’s undoubtedly a sign of internal pushback beginning to take place. And that’s only because of the lawsuits, the pressure, and your calls and protests!

The media completely missed this — instead focusing on Musk’s cruelty and incompetence with headlines like, “Musk threatens workers who don’t respond.”

What happened next, though, was even more important: Within minutes of receiving Musk’s email, texts on the encrypted messaging app Signal began flying. On one channel, a worker wrote:

1. I did [classified]
2. Also [classified]
3. Also [classified]
4. Also [classified]
5. Finally [classified]

Another replied, “No! Don’t send him anything. He’s not your boss!” Across the country, thousands of courageous federal workers wrote and advised each other to refuse to reply to those emails. 

Soon the federal workers’ unions followed suit and told workers to ignore the email completely. The National Treasury Employees Union sent an advisory with a huge headline: “DO NOT RESPOND TO ELON!” The ball was rolling.

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By this point, the Department of Defense joined in and told its people to ignore the memo. Finally, even some of Trump’s inner circle — sycophants like FBI Director Kash Patel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — told their staff to not comply.

This is how noncompliance works. It’s a chain reaction of smaller to bigger dominoes — the smaller ones knock down the bigger ones and on and on until the bigger dominoes fall.

What we just saw is the largest mass noncompliance with Elon Musk (so far). The White House press secretary claimed that around one million federal workers have replied, which means that nearly 1.5 million people engaged in noncooperation.

This is the general direction we need to go. Musk says “jump” — and we all say “nope” and return to our lives.

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Notably, traditional press mostly only caught the story once Patel and Rubio joined in. The resistance starting from workers and unions went largely unnoticed and unreported — meaning Americans had little chance to see and understand how people power really works.

After humiliating headlines of impotence, Trump and Musk only know how to double-down. That means we need to prepare for more flailing, drama and horrific acts to follow.

Even as the onslaught continues, though, we have to note the cracks — if only to remind ourselves and each other that the people have the power. 

Since Musk’s failed email, federal workers are now suing Musk over his threat to fire them and 21 DOGE workers have quit in protest, saying “We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.”

This is just the beginning.