Elon Musk threatens to fire federal workers who don’t reply to next email

By Gregory Korte

Elon Musk said that federal workers will be given a second opportunity to respond to a government-wide email detailing what they did last week, and threatened to fire any employee who doesn’t meet his demands.

But the federal agency that sent that email said Monday that it’s up to agency leadership — not Musk — what happens to those who ignore the message.

The dueling directives extended the confusion over the “What did you do last week?” email hours before the midnight deadline to reply. Musk, the billionaire and special government employee who’s leading President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting effort known as the Department of Government Efficiency, doubled down Monday.

“Subject to the discretion of the president, they will be given another chance,” Musk said in a post on X late Monday. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”

The Office of Personnel Management, though, quickly clarified that many federal employees would be exempt, including any employee on leave Monday, those without access to email, or employees exempted by their agency head. The departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security have all granted exemptions, as has the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Another person exempted by the OPM memo: Musk himself. “At counsel’s direction, in order to comport with the Presidential Records Act, the Executive Office of the President is exempted from this exercise,” acting OPM Director Charles Ezell said in a memo to federal agencies. Musk is a senior adviser to the president in the White House.

Musk’s escalating threats come as Trump has urged him to be even more aggressive in downsizing a federal civilian workforce that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, numbered 2.4 million in January.

OPM sent an email to those employees Saturday, asking them to reply with five bullet points listing their accomplishments from the previous week.

The pushback — from inside and outside the Trump administration — also demonstrates the growing power struggle between DOGE, his upstart effort within the government that has sought to quickly cut costs and cull the federal payroll, and the Trump loyalists running federal agencies.

Musk’s efforts have drawn protests from employee unions, Democrats in Congress and even constituents in Republican-leaning districts. But the productivity report mandate marked the first significant negative reaction from within the ranks of Trump allies running the government.

An email from the Department of Health and Human Services on Monday evening told employees that they did not need to respond to the request, but if they did “assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly,” according to correspondence reviewed by Bloomberg. The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump himself defended Musk’s efforts earlier Monday, casting it as a legitimate bid to root out fraud and waste in the government.

“I thought it was great, because we have people that don’t show up to work, and nobody even knows that they work for the government,” Trump said Monday at a meeting with visiting French President Emmanuel Macron. “There was a lot of genius in sending it.”