Elon Musk said US federal workers had “another chance” to justify their work or lose their jobs, as the original deadline passed Tuesday with staff at multiple federal agencies told to disregard his request.
Musk had originally given federal government employees until the end of Monday to explain their work achievements in an email.
The demand represents the latest challenge from Musk against government workers as his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) works toward gutting federal staffing and spending.
“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” Musk said Monday evening on X, which he owns.
“Failure to respond a second time will result in termination,” he added, without providing a new deadline.
The deadline came and went with much confusion among an already anxious workforce after several US federal agencies — including some led by prominent Trump loyalists — told staff to ignore the email, at least temporarily.
Referring to his original email request, Musk said it had been “utterly trivial… yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers.”
More than two million federal employees received an email on Saturday from the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) — the government’s HR department — giving them until 11:59 pm Monday to submit “approximately 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week.”
The message followed Musk’s post on X that “all federal workers” would receive the email and that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
As confusion over what to make of the threat spread, Trump had defended Musk’s Saturday message, calling it “ingenious” as it would expose whether “people are working.”
“If people don’t respond, it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working,” Trump told reporters.
Non-responders would be “sort of semi-fired” or fired, Trump added without explaining his thinking further.
Musk on Monday said Saturday’s email “was a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email.”
“This mess will get sorted out this week. A lot of people are in for a rude awakening and a strong dose of reality. They don’t get it yet, but they will,” he added on X.
