A hot potato: Elon Musk's emails to US federal workers asking them to explain their accomplishments over the last week have, unsurprisingly, not been well-received by the agencies. The FBI, state department, Pentagon, and others have instructed employees not to reply to the messages, even though Musk said failure to respond by Monday night would be interpreted as the recipient resigning.
On Saturday, Musk tweeted that, consistent with President Trump's instructions, all federal employees would be receiving an email asking what they had done over the last week. He added that failure to respond would 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.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025
Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.
The email asked for approximately five bullet points of the employee's previous week's accomplishments without revealing classified information, with the deadline set for Monday, February 24, 11:59 pm EST. Unlike the tweet, the email did not include the threat of termination for not responding.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers at various key government agencies received the email, including those at the FBI. But its new director, Kash Patel, a staunch Trump ally, told staff to hold off from replying.
"FBI personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information," Patel wrote in a message to employees, seen by CBS News. "The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures. When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses."
Those who do not take this email seriously will soon be furthering their career elsewhere https://t.co/EFVCjnXWrl
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 24, 2025
Patel wasn't the only agency head to ignore Musk's instructions. Workers at the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Education and Commerce, as well as at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Internal Revenue Service were also told to hold off from responding pending further guidance, according to Reuters. Workers at other intelligence agencies are expected to be given the same instructions.
"To be clear – this is irregular, unexpected, and warrants further validation," wrote a senior executive at the National Centers for Environmental Information.
Ignore Elon Musk's order, State Department leaders tell staff. FBI Director Patel issued similar guidance pic.twitter.com/DLpq7Q8FfI
– Margaret Brennan (@margbrennan) February 23, 2025
The Department of Defense said it is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures.
Musk said the email was "a very basic pulse check" and that a reply should take less than five minutes to write. In a message posted to X this morning, the DOGE head wrote, "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."
Anyone with the attitude of that Pentagon official needs to look for a new job https://t.co/I9VRFXD3CG
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 23, 2025
The president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), an organization that represents 800,000 workers in the federal government, said that "Elon Musk and the Trump administration have shown their utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people."
"It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life," said AFGE president Everett Kelley.
It's estimated that hundreds of thousands of government employees have left their posts since Trump returned to the White House. Some were fired, while others departed through a "deferred resignation" offer.
Musk's no stranger to this kind of email. In November 2022, not long after his protracted battle to take over Twitter had ended, Musk emailed staff giving them an ultimatum: they could either agree to the new, extremely hardcore "Twitter 2.0," with its 40-hour-minimum weeks – they could average 60 hours or more – and intense workloads, or leave the company. Employees were given until 5 pm the next day to decide. He had also asked engineers to print out their last 30 to 60 days of code so he could review it, though he later backtracked on that part.
