Elon Musk insisted Monday he’s dead serious about the mass email he sent over the weekend to millions of federal workers even as he faces lawsuits and even pushback from government officials who are staunch loyalists of President Trump.
The billionaire presidential buddy warned government employees not to ignore his message demanding they detail with about five bullet points what they accomplished in the past week by midnight Monday, or potentially face being fired.
Musk suggested over the weekend that he was just pulling the employees’ legs, telling a venture capitalist friend on Twitter that the email was “basically a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email.”
But the Tesla and SpaceX mogul ominously posted Monday that anyone who blows off the order for feedback would be summarily canned.
“Those who do not take this email seriously will soon be furthering their career elsewhere,” Musk tweeted.
Musk, who is leading Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, sent the unprecedented email Saturday to several million employees.
It demanded that they respond by Monday night explaining some of their achievements in the past week.
Many workers said they had no idea whether to respond, especially since Musk does not hold any official role in Trump’s administration and DOGE is not an official government agency.
A group called the State Democracy Defenders Fund sued to block the email demand on behalf of unions, businesses, veterans and conservation organizations.
The suit was directed at the Office of Personnel Management and derided the threat of mass firings as “one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country.”
“No OPM rule, regulation, policy, or program has ever, in United States history, purported to require all federal workers to submit reports to OPM,” the lawsuit said in a filing in a California federal court.
There is also apparently some discord within the Trump administration about the Musk missives.
Several key U.S. government agencies led by Trump loyalists, including the Pentagon, FBI, State Department, and Homeland Security, instructed their employees over the weekend not to respond to the email.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers said Musk’s threats are wrongheaded and potentially illegal.
Musk, with Trump’s blessing, has forced thousands of government employees out of the federal workforce in the first month of Trump’s second term.
Thousands of other employees are preparing to leave the federal workforce this coming week, including probationary civilian workers at the Pentagon and all but a fraction of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) staffers.
The Trump administration last week backed down from its edict to fire about 20% of the staff at the program that provides health care to 9/11 first responders after the cuts sparked widespread bipartisan outrage.