Elon Musk not only thinks he’s the federal workforce’s new boss; he seems to be actively trying to be a horrible one. Over the weekend, Musk and DOGE-controlled Office of Personnel Management sent a mass email to 2.3 million federal workers asking them to justify their employment by the end of Monday. Musk suggested beforehand that anybody who didn’t respond would be fired, President Trump made that threat explicit on Monday, and Musk then doubled down. OPM backed off — informing federal agencies that responding to the email was voluntary, contradicting Trump and Musk. Here’s a rundown of the ongoing Musk email madness.
Musk’s what-did-you-do-last-week email
On Saturday, hours after President Trump praised Musk and said he should “get more aggressive,” the directive came to list “approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and CC your manager” with an end-of-Monday deadline.
It was also a threat*
Hours before OPM sent the email, Musk effectively threatened in an X post to fire anyone who didn’t reply:
Widespread chaos and confusion followed, and many agencies told staff not to respond
The weekend mass email sparked outrage from unions and widespread confusion within the federal workforce, which is already reeling from mass layoffs and other Musk and DOGE-instigated turmoil. Many agency heads quickly told workers not to respond to the email, or at least not to respond yet. The Washington Post reported on the ensuing chaos:
The State Department told employees not to answer it. Employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were told: Definitely reply. And in some parts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, staffers received instructions to draft a response but not send it yet. …
The email hit inboxes Saturday, when federal law bars some employees from working outside of their assigned shifts. Some federal workers were on leave — such as sick leave, parental leave or paid administrative leave imposed by the Trump administration — and unable to access their emails. Others, in the Defense Department, were on duty tours in remote locations, like jungles, without access to computers.
Some Justice Department supervisors told staff not to reply. Judiciary officials suggested to staff and federal judges (who also received the email even though they have lifetime tenure) that “no action be taken.” The Department of Defense told employees on Sunday to “pause any response” to the OPM email, as did the Education Department. DNI Tulsi Gabbard told intelligence-community officers not to respond, and even newly confirmed FBI director (and longtime Trump loyalist) Kash Patel told employees to hold their replies.
HHS told employees they weren’t expected to reply, and if they did they should “assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors”:
Several agencies told employees they did have to reply, including the Transportation Department, Treasury Department, GSA, and, of course, OPM.
Musk’s mass email plan was haphazard and risky
As to whether workers really could lose their jobs if they don’t reply, OPM only said in a statement that “agencies will determine any next steps.” It’s not clear what authority OPM or Musk has to fire anyone in this scenario. In a court filing last week, a White House official swore that Musk, as a senior White House adviser, “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.” But the Wall Street Journal reports that the what-did-you-do-last-week email was Musk’s plan, and he used similar tactics at Twitter after he took over the company. Furthermore, it looks like Musk’s threat contradicts DOGE-OPM policy:
It’s also not clear how federal agencies and OPM would even be able to process all the replies if they got them. The email instructed workers not to include classified information in their replies, so does that mean that anyone whose work is classified is exempt from needing to reply?
And the national security implications of the request were enormous. Per the Post:
“Even if people don’t send classified information, the aggregation of all this information in one place would become classified information, which is a national security violation,” warned one active duty military officer who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “The military cannot function without the DOD federal workforce. This is a national security issue to treat the workforce this way.” …
At the Secret Service, the OPM email prompted a flurry of texts and emails to supervisors among agents and officers about whether they were expected to reveal the sensitive and classified details of their job duties the previous week, according to two people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal communication.
Some Secret Service officials, before the agency told employees they didn’t need to respond, initially drafted a generic reply which reads like hall-of-fame CYA:
The email was clearly yet another haphazard effort, if not careless by design, by Musk and his DOGE team. The email was essentially a spam message, as this Politico report makes clear:
Michael Fallings, an attorney specializing in federal employment law, told POLITICO the actions Musk described in the post would be illegal. “I don’t believe it would be legal, and I don’t think he really understands right now how he will even do what he’s threatened to do,” Fallings said. …
[F]ederal employees across the government reacted with fury about the dictate from Musk. A Department of Justice official, granted anonymity to avoid retribution, noted that the email was labeled as coming from an “external,” server, adding they “cannot legally respond to this” because they handle classified material.
“This email looks exactly like all of the phishing email examples that federal employees see in training over and over again,” a Commerce Department employee, similarly granted anonymity, said. “I’m not responding to it.”
A federal employee told Wired that at this point, it seems like Musk and DOGE are just torturing civil servants for fun:
“They’re proving that their only goal is not efficiency but to dismantle democracy by traumatizing federal workers,” says a current federal employee who asked to remain anonymous as they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about their agency. “They see this as a video game where they level up every time they hurt or eliminate a federal worker.”
Musk and Trump doubled down on the threat
White House communications Steven Cheung posted and later deleted an X post praising the plan: “This is such a good idea and even White House staffers can list all of the great things they’ve done this week, just like everyone in the Administration should do as well.”
On Sunday morning, Musk suggested the whole thing was just a fraud-finding effort, to confirm whether or not federal employees checked their email — or were actually alive:
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.
Even if that’s true, demanding that millions of workers individually justify their existence cannot possibly be the most efficient or ethical way to accomplish that goal.
On Sunday, President Trump shared a meme making fun of federal workers who were upset by the email:
Trump went even further on Monday, calling the email “ingenious” and making Musk’s implicit threat explicit: “If you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired.” Then Musk said the same, while suggesting there would be another deadline:
*The OPM eventually said workers didn’t need to reply
The agency initially said in a statement that individual agencies would decide how to handle the responses to the email. Then on Monday, OPM told federal agencies that responding to the message was “voluntary” — seemingly contradicting Trump and Musk, though leaving the door open for a followup plan:
The email prompted a U.S. senator to call Musk a ‘dick’
Numerous Democratic lawmakers have attacked the work-explanation request. On Monday, more than 100 House Democrats sent a letter to 24 federal agencies asking them to “clarify that the federal employees at your agency are not obligated to respond to this ill-conceived email stunt and that nonresponse cannot constitute resignation.”
In one particularly fiery response over the weekend, Minnesota senator Tina Smith — who recently announced she will not run for reelection — characterized Musk as “billionaire asshole boss”:
This is the ultimate dick boss move from Musk - except he isn’t even the boss, he’s just a dick. I bet a lot of people have had an experience like this with a bad boss - there’s an email in your inbox on Saturday night saying, “Prove to me your worthiness by Monday or else.”
I’m on the side of the workers, not the billionaire asshole bosses.
This post has been updated.
More on the Musk-Trump wrecking ball
- All the Firing, Layoffs and Resignations We Know Of
- Kash Patel’s Enemies List
- ‘Big Balls’ on Top of the World
