Co-President Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is causing yet more unnecessary chaos in the federal workforce. This is after he sent an email on Saturday demanding that every federal employee in the United States send him an email listing five things they accomplished in their previous week of work, or else be unceremoniously fired.
The email has caused absolute mayhem, with already traumatized workers who have seen President Donald Trump and Musk fire their colleagues with no rhyme or reason getting mixed signals about how or even whether they should respond.
Multiple Trump Cabinet officials are directing workers not to reply, as having employees who work with classified or sensitive information send an email listing their work could be a national security risk.
For example, the Department of Defense told all of its employees to “pause any response” to Musk’s email.
“The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” Darin S. Selnick, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a statement posted on Musk’s X platform.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also instructed intelligence staffers not to reply, saying in an email obtained by The New York Times that, “Given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, IC employees should not respond to the OPM email.”
The FBI, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Health and Human Services have also told employees not to respond, according to The Washington Post, which added that even that guidance has been confusing.
From the Washington Post report:
Employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were told definitively to reply — a few hours before DHS sent a note saying the opposite. In some parts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, staffers received instructions to draft a response but not send it yet. At other agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services, employees were first given one instruction only to be emailed later to pause and watch for more guidance Monday.
But Musk—who the Trump administration ridiculously says isn’t even in charge of DOGE—is still saying that workers need to reply to the email.
“Those who do not take this email seriously will soon be furthering their career elsewhere,” Musk wrote in a post on X at 5:38 AM ET on Monday.
And Trump himself posted a meme making fun of workers who are upset that they have to send an email justifying their work, and saying that he wants Musk to get even MORE aggressive than he's already been—suggesting he is on Musk's side.
“ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE. REMEMBER, WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE, BUT ULTIMATELY, TO MAKE GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE. MAGA!” Trump wrote in an all-caps screed on Truth Social.
Aside from the chaos the email is causing, experts say the intent behind the email is asinine and unhelpful.
For example, Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers received the email. Those employees are already working 10-hour shifts, six days a week due to staff shortages, so making them use their time to write an email justifying their jobs is just busywork that won't make air traffic more safe in the wake of multiple deadly airline disasters since Trump took office.
“This weekend's mass email is an unnecessary distraction to a fragile system," the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the labor union representing air traffic controllers, said in a statement to CNN aviation and transportation correspondent Pete Muntean.
And even some GOP lawmakers are saying the email demand is stupid.
“If Elon Musk truly wants to understand what federal workers accomplished over the past week, he should get to know each department and agency, and learn about the jobs he's trying to cut,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) wrote in a post on X. “Our public servants work hard to ensure that our national security is protected; that planes land safely; that forest fires do not spread to our homes; that Social Security checks arrive on time; that research for the breakthroughs needed to cure diseases like cancer and ALS continues; and much more. Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform. The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn’t it.”
“Look, I don’t know how that’s necessarily feasible,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” of the Musk email. “Obviously, a lot of federal employees are under union contract.”
Federal employees are also speaking out.
“Sometimes you want to take things with a grain of salt, but then you're slapped in the face,” an unnamed federal employee told a local Oklahoma television station. (Oklahoma has one of the highest populations of federal employees in the country.) “I have done more than Elon Musk has done tweeting while on Air Force One with the president.”
Ultimately, Trump and Musk’s decimation of the federal workforce could have damaging impacts on the economy, according to experts, as the federal government is the largest employer in the United States.
“The economic consequences of layoffs are like a domino effect that spread across local economies to businesses that seem to have no connection whatsoever to the federal government,” Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale University Budget Lab, told CNBC, adding that these layoffs are one of the many things Trump is doing that could hurt the U.S. economy.
“This was a healthy economy coming into 2025,” Tedeschi said. “And suddenly we have a number of serious potential headwinds that are stacking up. And this is one of them.”
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