Elon Musk’s demand that federal workers report what they had accomplished last week or lose their jobs is causing chaos and confusion as conflicting directives from the Office of Personnel Management and agency leaders leave employees unsure whether they need to respond or not.
Musk, who leads President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, caused widespread confusion over the weekend after demanding that employees respond via email what they did last week or lose their jobs.
OPM told agency leaders on a call on Monday afternoon that responding to the Musk email was now “voluntary” and that failing to respond would not be considered a resignation, according to a source familiar, granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
Despite this, Musk posted to social media later on Monday that employees would be given “another chance” to respond to the email, saying that “failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
OPM’s Monday afternoon directive, which functions as the government’s HR department, relays a similar message to a privacy impact assessment published Feb. 5 that said any mass email sent from a government-wide email system would “explicitly” state engaging with the email would be voluntary.
Almost simultaneously some agencies began circulating the message. The Social Security Administration told personnel that “pursuant to updated OPM guidance, responses to the email from sender ‘HR’ dated Saturday, February 22 are voluntary. Non responses are not considered a resignation,” according to an email provided to the Washington Examiner.
The Department of Health and Human Services relayed a similar message saying there is no expectation for employees to respond, but warned if they do they should “assume that what [they] write will be read by malign actors” and urged them to “tailor [their] responses appropriately.”
Adding to the uncertainty, Trump, speaking from the Oval Office on Monday afternoon called Musk’s email demanding federal workers justify their jobs “ingenious” and even repeated Musk’s warning: “If you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired.”
Trump suggested that the only exceptions to Musk’s email were coming from agency heads who want to protect sensitive information.
“Only things such as perhaps Marco at State Department, where they have very confidential things, or the FBI where they’re working on confidential things. And they don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon,” Trump said.
“They’re just saying there are some people that you don’t want to really have them tell you what they’re working on last week.”
At the same time, leaders at the departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Justice, and Energy defied Musk and told their employees not to comply with the request.
Assistant Attorney General for Administration Jolene Ann Lauria told Justice Department employees that “due to the confidential and sensitive nature of the Department’s work, DOJ employees do not need to respond to the email from OPM. If you have already responded to this email, no further action is needed,” according to an email sent to the Washington Examiner. A top State Department leader informed their workforce via email, “No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their department chain of command.”
However, leaders at the departments of Treasury, Commerce, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, the General Services Administration, NASA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Office of Management and Budget instructed their employees to comply with Musk’s request. An email to Treasury employees said, “You are directed to respond to this message before the deadline,” adding that “we expect that compliance will not be difficult or time-consuming.” In comparison, Department of Treasury employees were instructed to respond to the query, but only to respond to “your first-line supervisor at Commerce, you do not need to copy other recipients at this time.”
Other federal workers received contradictory guidance. For example, an employee who works at an agency under the Department of Health and Human Services received a message on Sunday morning in which they were told to answer the email and then later in the day was then told not to respond. Another federal worker said he never received the first message from OPM and thinks it was marked as spam. He later said he had no issue drafting the email but the frustration is with the tone of the email and the “implication none of us work.”
A separate employee at the Department of Commerce described the situation as leaving agency leadership “scrambling to address frustrations and inquiries from staff.”
“It’s frustrating to be sent an email on your weekend from a source outside your agency giving you orders written in such a bland and detached manner, leaving us all feeling undervalued and unsupported,” said a federal worker at the Department of Commerce, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “Employees are truly anxious and have been spending time fighting fires instead of actually quietly doing our jobs.”
AFGE Union President Everett Kelley called the correspondence “cruel and disrespectful.”
“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” he said in a statement.
A newly amended lawsuit challenges Musk’s request to workers to submit a list of their recent accomplishments or face forced “resignation.” The new filing in San Francisco federal court was amended on Sunday after being filed first on Wednesday by a group of unions representing federal workers against OPM and acting OPM director Charles Ezell.
“In the time it took these employees on taxpayer-funded salaries to file a frivolous lawsuit, they could have briefly recapped their accomplishments to their managers, as is common in the private sector, 100 times over,” said Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary. “The Trump administration will continue to demand the high level of dedication and excellence from public employees that the American people deserve.”
The split among top Cabinet officials when responding to Musk’s request comes days before Trump is set to hold his first Cabinet meeting of his second term at the White House on Wednesday. Public backlash to the email was evident even among members of the president’s own party.
“I think a lot of people were caught off guard by that email Musk sent this weekend. It’s insensitive and disrespectful to federal workers,” said a Senate GOP aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
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Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) also gave a forceful critique of Musk’s actions as his Department of Government Efficiency looks to slash federal spending.
“If Elon Musk truly wants to understand what federal workers accomplished over the past week, he should get to know each department and agency, and learn about the jobs he’s trying to cut,” Murkowski said in a post on X. “Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform.”
Christian Datoc contributed to this report.