Elon Musk, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, said Wednesday that federal employees should expect another mass email after an initial round asked them to respond to their managers about what they had accomplished in the past week.
At the first meeting with his Cabinet, Trump invited Musk—the head of his cost-cutting program known as Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—who announced that workers should anticipate another email. He said it’s part of a bid to determine whether those workers even exist.
“We’re going to send another email,” Musk said.
Musk also said that the email, which had asked employees to list five bullet-points outlining what they did last week, was simply a “pulse check” that anyone should be able to respond to.
“What we are trying to get to the bottom of is, we think there are a number of people on the payroll who are dead, which is probably why they can’t respond ... and some people who are not real people ... fictional individuals that are collecting paychecks,” Musk said.
In the meeting, Trump again said he supports sending the emails to federal workers.
The emails, he said, are “a good idea because, you know, those people, as I said before, they’re on the bubble,” meaning they’re on the cusp of being terminated.
Over the past weekend, as the emails were being sent out, the Musk wrote on his social media platform X that “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
However, the email that was sent from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said nothing about the potential for employees to be fired for noncompliance and only asked the worker to list five things they’ve done in the past week.
The Trump administration, which has directed Musk and DOGE to work with agencies to slash costs and make the government run more efficiently, has fired thousands of workers, primarily individuals who are on probationary status, usually meaning they have been on the job for a year or less.
Explaining Musk’s comment, Trump said at an Oval Office meeting this week, “What he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’”
“And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist,” he said.
In response to Musk’s comment about resignations, Leavitt said that agency and department leaders “are responsible for their specific workforce,“ which ”is true of the hirings and firings that have taken place.”
Musk acknowledged in the Cabinet meeting that his team had made some errors in their attempts to quickly pare down the federal workforce and government programs. He named Ebola virus prevention efforts were halted while cuts were being made to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
“I think we all want Ebola prevention,” he said. “So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption. But we do need to move quickly.”
