Elon Musk’s email has left hundreds of thousands of federal workers looming with chaos and confusion as they begin their working week this Monday. It seems that they are now facing a deadline from President Donald Trump’s cost-efficiency chief Elon Musk. Apparently, workers have been asked to explain their recent work and accomplishments, or they might be at risk of losing their jobs.
The billionaire’s unusual demand is facing resistance from various key US agencies led by the loyalists of the president. This includes the FBI, Homeland Security, State Department and the Pentagon, which instructed their employees not to comply with this over the weekend.
Lawmakers of both parties said that Elon Musk’s mandate might be illegal, while unions have threatened to sue.
Donald Trump, over the weekend, had called for Elon Musk and asked him to be more aggressive in his cost-cutting crusade. Musk has been asked to do so through the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. They even posted a meme on social media where they mocked federal employees who “cried about Trump and Elon”.
Elon Musk’s team sent an email to hundreds of thousands of federal workers on Saturday. He gave them around 48 hours to respond and asked them to five specific things they worked on or accomplished last week. In a different message on X, Musk said that any employee who fails to answer by the deadline (11:59 pm ET on Monday) will lose their job.
On the eve of the deadline, there was widespread confusion around Elon Musk’s message as some agencies opposed the directive, others urged their employees to implement it, and still others provided contradictory advice, as per BBC.
Nearly 80,000 employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., were told to comply in one message sent Sunday morning. That came soon after Sean Keveney, the acting general counsel, told some not to.
Additionally, by Sunday evening, agency leadership had released additional directives directing staff to “pause activities” pertaining to the request until Monday at noon.
“I’ll tell you straight. In an email seen by The Associated Press, Mr Keveney recognised a general feeling of “uncertainty and stress” within the agency, saying, “After putting in over 70 hours of work last week advancing Administration’s priorities, I was personally insulted to receive the below email.”
Lately, there has been a request from over a dozen states for a court order prohibiting the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing computer systems at seven federal agencies or firing government employees. At the same time, legal proceedings are ongoing and have been temporarily denied by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan of Washington.
In her decision, Chutkan wrote that the states “legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight.” But the judge said the states had not shown why they were entitled to an immediate restraining order.
