Billionaire Elon Musk issued an ultimatum to federal employees Saturday, saying in a post on his social media platform X that employees must respond to an email justifying the work they completed this week or resign.
Federal employees have already begun receiving an email asking to summarize their work, sources familiar with the matter told NBC News, though unlike Musk’s post, it does not explicitly threaten a forced resignation.
The email, sent from the Office of Personnel Management and shared with NBC News, asked employees to send approximately five bullet points listing what they accomplished this week, cc’ing their managers. The email requested that employees not send any classified information, links or attachments and said employees must respond by a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
“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,” Musk wrote.
In a letter to the Office of Personnel Management, Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, called Musk’s threat, “illegal, reckless, and yet another example of the cruel and arbitrary chaos Mr. Musk is inflicting on the people’s government and its dedicated public servants.”
“You must immediately clarify that federal employees’ nonresponse to this ill-conceived, weekend email does not constitute resignation,” the lawmakers added.
In a sign that not every Trump official is on the same page with Musk’s productivity inquiry, FBI Director Kash Patel has instructed employees to “pause any responses” to the email asking federal employees what they accomplished last week. Patel said the FBI will review the work of its own employees in accordance with its own procedures.
Employees of the State Department, the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Department and the National Security Agency were similarly told not to respond to the email. Meanwhile, officials at the Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did ask employees to respond by the Monday deadline in the email.
Ambassador Tibor P. Nagy of the State Department said in an email to employees that the department would respond on employees’ behalf and that “no employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command.”
Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, condemned Musk and the Trump administration for the email Saturday, vowing to challenge “unlawful terminations” of the union’s members and federal employees across the country.
“Once again, Elon Musk and the Trump Administration have shown their utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people,” Kelley said in a statement.
“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,” Kelley added.
A chapter representing National Treasury Employees Union members who work for the FDA’s headquarters “strongly” advised members not to respond, adding that the NTEU and its office of general counsel are “taking immediate action.”
“We work for HHS/FDA, not OPM: OPM directives that have not been formally adopted or communicated by our employer, the FDA, do not create an obligation for you to respond,” the NTEU chapter’s guidance said.
OPM spokesperson McLaurine Pinover said in a statement to NBC News that the office is requesting employees summarize their work.
“As part of the Trump Administration’s commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce, OPM is asking employees to provide a brief summary of what they did last week by the end of Monday, CC’ing their manager. Agencies will determine any next steps,” Pinover wrote.
The email comes as Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency attempt to make sweeping cuts to the federal workforce, including mass federal layoffs, the accidental firing of Department of Agriculture officials who were working on the government’s response to the bird flu, and attempts to dismantle agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Over 3 million people were employed by the federal government as of November 2024, according to Pew Research Center.
