Elon Musk sent an email to millions of federal employees this weekend asking them to list five accomplishments from the past week while threatening them with termination if they failed to respond by midnight on Monday.
The message is reportedly causing enormous confusion and uncertainty in the workforce, especially among employees in fields like national security, law enforcement, the judiciary and healthcare, where privacy and data security are part of the job. It also raises new questions about the legality of Musk’s efforts and the potential political repercussions from President Trump’s and DOGE’s ongoing effort to radically reduce the federal workforce. The Musk email arrived soon after the president on social media encouraged Musk to be “more aggressive.”
With Trump’s approval, some federal agencies – including the FBI and the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security – have told their employees to ignore Musk’s request and to direct any questions to their supervisors within the chain of command. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers, has asked the administration to rescind the request entirely.
Defending his work, Musk said it was a simple effort to make sure federal employees were really working.
“This was basically a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email,” Musk said. “This mess will get sorted out this week. Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality. They don’t get it yet, but they will.”
Musk also said the “reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud.”
Trump backed Musk when asked about the situation Monday, saying the email was “pretty ingenious.” He also said somewhat confusingly that anyone who failed to respond to the email is “semi-fired, or fired.”
Trump also made it clear that he shares Musk’s clear disdain for federal employees. The president posted a picture on his social media platform showing a tired-looking SpongeBob Squarepants looking at a list titled “Got Done Last Week.” The list contains five items, including “Cried about Trump,” “Cried about Elon,” and “Made it into the office for once.”