(Headline USA) Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been given little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the last week, but many of them have signaled that they will not follow the order from billionaire Elon Musk, who’s speeding up his drive to slash the size of federal government.
Musk, who serves as President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting chief, telegraphed the extraordinary request Saturday on his social media network.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.
Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025
Shortly afterward, federal employees — including some judges, court staff and federal prison officials — received a three-line email with this instruction: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”
The deadline to reply was listed as Monday at 11:59 p.m., although the email did not include Musk’s social media threat about those who fail to respond.
Some agencies soon told employees that they did not have to comply if they received Musk’s message.
“The State Department will respond on behalf of the Department. No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command,” according to an email from Tibor Nagy, acting undersecretary for management, that was obtained by The Associated Press.
McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson at the Office of Personnel Management, confirmed Musk’s directive and said that individual agencies would “determine any next steps.”
In a message to employees on Saturday night, federal court officials instructed recipients not to respond.
“We understand that some judges and judiciary staff have received an email … directing the recipient to reply with 5 accomplishments from the prior week. Please be advised that this email did not originate from the Judiciary or the Administrative Office and we suggest that no action be taken,” officials wrote.
Judges around the country got emails from Musk’s team in late January, apparently by mistake, U.S. District Judge Randolph Daniel Moss said earlier this month. Moss said he’d also gotten a message and ignored it.
The National Weather Service leadership acknowledged some confusion in a message to its employees late Saturday as well.
“Within the last few hours, some of us — potentially all of us — received an email message titled ‘What did you do last week?’ Until such time as we can verify that the message that was received at or around 4:46pm ET is authentic, please do not respond.”
It’s unclear what will happen next. Presumably, the Trump administration will start firing non-responsive bureaucrats as soon as Monday.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
