Billionaire Elon Musk issued a new order on Saturday over the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) ultimatum, which asked government employees to document in an email what they have done in the last week in terms of their work.
Newsweek has reached out to Musk via Tesla’s press email and the Department of Defense via email for comment.
Why It Matters
The order comes after Musk announced on X, formerly Twitter, last weekend that federal workers would receive “an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.” He added that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The announcement—as well as the subsequent email, which did not include the threat of termination—sent federal agencies into a tailspin as there has been a lot of back-and-forth from department leaders over how employees should handle this.
The situation has culminated in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) telling agency heads on Monday that compliance with Musk’s demand was voluntary. The Pentagon previously told employees to disregard the email. Trump’s FBI director Kash Patel also previously sent a similar message to his staff telling them not to respond.
OPM’s update came hours after President Donald Trump publicly backed Musk, calling his decree a “pretty ingenious idea,” adding that those who don’t respond by Monday’s midnight deadline are “semi-fired or fired.”
What To Know
In a post on X on Saturday, Musk announced a new order in which he reiterated Trump’s support for the email.
“The President has made it clear that this is mandatory for the executive branch. Anyone working on classified or other sensitive matters is still required to respond if they receive the email, but can simply reply that their work is sensitive,” he wrote on X.
Musk’s remarks were made in response to a post on how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued an updated guidance directing all of the Pentagon’s civilian employees to respond to the email with five bullet points detailing their previous week’s accomplishments.
According to an internal unclassified memo, obtained by DefenseScoop and authenticated by two officials Friday, it instructs the DOD’s civilian employees to reply to the email, which is slated to be delivered on March 3, within 48 hours and to “CC” their supervisors as recipients.
It follows after employees were initially told to delay responding to the “what did you do last week” email from DOGE.
This comes after confusion and alarm rippled across the federal bureaucracy after Musk’s initial email went out last Saturday, demanding workers submit a response by 11:59 p.m. ET Monday.
Concerns ran particularly deep at agencies performing sensitive and often classified work, including the U.S. intelligence community, the DOD, the State Department, the FBI and others.
The heads of government agencies also gave conflicting guidance on whether to follow Musk’s order. The Pentagon, Department of Justice, FBI, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) all instructed employees to disregard the email or said ignoring it would not result in termination.
Following the first round of emails, federal employees on Friday night began receiving another email requiring them to explain their recent accomplishments, the Associated Press reported.
The second round of emails will reportedly come from individual agencies with direct oversight of career officials, rather than the OMP which oversees federal human resources but lacks hiring and firing authority, a person with knowledge of the situation told AP.
An email received by some employees at two separate agencies from the OMP late Friday instructed employees to submit five bullet points summarizing their accomplishments and copy their manager. The email stated that weekly submissions would be required by Monday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. A version of the message viewed by the AP included guidance for employees handling classified work, directing them to simply write, “All of my activities are sensitive.”
Since his second term began, DOGE, created by Trump and led by Musk, has recommended the firing of more than 200,000 federal workers, and about 75,000 probationary federal employees have accepted buyout plans known as “deferred resignations,” per the OPM.
While mass layoffs have sparked outrage among Democratic lawmakers, unions, and members of the public, Trump has stood by DOGE and Musk’s work, expressing his approval of what he called a “force of super-geniuses.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed on Tuesday that the email was sent to ensure that federal employees were actually working their jobs and declined to comment if this was a tactic to eliminate more federal jobs. The White House also claimed Trump sent Musk an email with five things he had done.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Musk said the email was his idea after the president told him to “be more aggressive” with his cuts.
“I said, ‘Can we send out an email to everyone just saying what did you get done last week?’ The president said, ‘Yes.’ So, we did that,” Musk said.
What People Are Saying
Elon Musk wrote on X last week: “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.”
Speaking to reporters about the email at the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump said: “You know why he wanted that, by the way? I thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government. So by asking the question, ‘Tell us what you did this week,’ what he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?'”
Senator John Curtis, a Utah Republican, said on CBS News’ Face the Nation last Sunday: “If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s like, please put a dose of compassion in this. These are real people. These are real lives. These are mortgages. It’s a false narrative to say we have to cut and you have to be cruel to do it as well.”
What Happens Next?
It is still unclear if Musk and DOGE have any power to terminate employees over the email request.
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