A defiant threat by Elon Musk warning that federal employees will be given "a second chance" to respond to his email asking them to justify their jobs or risk termination is likely to spark another round of confusion across the U.S. government on Tuesday.
Musk’s warning came after Trump administration officials told federal workers they did not have to respond to his weekend email that demanded they summarize their accomplishments of the past week. Failure to reply would be considered a resignation, Musk said.
But while some federal agencies such as the U.S. Treasury Department told their workers to comply with the request, others like the Pentagon did not. As Musk’s Monday midnight deadline approached, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management ultimately told agencies their workers could ignore the email.
Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who has been tasked by President Donald Trump to lead a radical downsizing of the federal government, seemed undeterred.
"Subject to the discretion of the president, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination," he wrote on X, the social media site he owns.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Musk’s remarks.
Musk’s actions and the pushback he saw from federal agencies cracked open new fissures within Trump’s nascent administration and raised questions about the limits of Musk’s authority.
Even after OPM’s guidance, which urged employees not to share classified or sensitive information in responding to Musk, some agency officials still nudged their employees to answer the email.
A senior manager at the General Services Administration, which manages federal buildings, told employees that the agency was still encouraging workers to respond even though it was voluntary, according to a GSA source.
Similarly, the acting director of OPM itself sent an email to the agency's staff that said responding with bullet points was voluntary "but strongly encouraged."
Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Services advised employees that if they chose to reply, they should keep their responses general in nature and they should refrain from identifying specific drugs or contracts they are working on, according to an email reviewed by Reuters.
“Assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly,” the email said.
Musk's downsizing initiative, powered by his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has led to the layoff of more than 20,000 workers. The administration has separately offered buyouts to 75,000 employees.
The federal workforce numbers about 2.3 million.
Musk's slash-and-burn approach has rippled into the wider U.S. economy as well, forcing companies that do business with the government to lay off workers and defer payments to vendors.
Since taking office on January 20, Trump has frozen billions of dollars in foreign assistance and effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers some 60% of U.S. foreign assistance, stranding medicine and food in warehouses.
In some cases, the government has scrambled to rehire workers who perform critical functions like nuclear weapons oversight and bird flu response.
On Monday, a group of labor unions that have asked a federal judge to stop the mass firings updated their lawsuit to request that Musk's threatening email be ruled illegal.
At the same time, a federal judge blocked the DOGE team from accessing sensitive data maintained by the Education Department and the OPM.
Unlike Cabinet appointees and appointees to head up independent federal agencies, Musk's appointment required no approval by the U.S. Senate.
