Elon Musk Clarifies Email to Federal Workers as Some Agencies Ask Staff Not to Respond

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md., on Feb. 20, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk, said on Feb. 23 that an email to federal employees asking them to report their accomplishments over the past week is designed to root out fraud from people who aren’t working.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers were given about 48 hours to provide a response to the email. The deadline to reply is listed as 11:59 p.m. local time on Feb. 24, although the email did not include the same warning that Musk had issued in a separate post on social media platform X.

“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk wrote in a Feb. 22 post on X.

Musk wrote in a post on the morning of Feb. 23, “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!” Musk, an adviser to President Donald Trump, was reacting to a post about his email.

“In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks,” Musk said. “In other words, there is outright fraud.”

Earlier on Feb. 23, Musk said that workers who provide “good responses” may receive promotions.

McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson at the Office of Personnel Management, confirmed Musk’s directive and said that individual agencies will “determine any next steps.”

Meanwhile, in a message to employees on the night of Feb. 22, federal court officials instructed recipients not to respond after some had received the email.

“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,” judiciary officials wrote.

Some federal agencies also told their 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 at the State Department.

The Epoch Times reached out to the State Department on Feb. 23 for more information.

Since the start of the Trump administration on Jan. 20, thousands of government employees have been laid off at a multitude of agencies, while others have opted to leave under a buyout from the Trump administration. Those layoffs, in part, occurred as DOGE, created by Trump via executive order, is attempting to root out fraud and waste.

Some union leaders were critical of the email to federal workers to provide details on what they did over the past week.

American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) President Everett Kelley said that the new email-based directive is an example of Trump and Musk’s “utter disdain” for the federal workforce and signaled that his union would challenge the order.

“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 said in a statement on Feb. 22. “AFGE will challenge any unlawful terminations of our members and federal employees across the country.”

Dozens of lawsuits have already been filed against the Trump administration, DOGE, and Musk over their efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce or to eliminate certain programs. Several judges have sided with the administration in recent days, however, including a ruling issued by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan last week that declined to immediately block DOGE from accessing government data.

The Epoch Times contacted the Office of Personnel Management for comment on Feb. 23.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.