Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is doubling down on an email sent to federal workers over the weekend demanding they list their accomplishments from the past week or risk losing their jobs.
Musk, who is the de facto head of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, said on his social media platform X that "the bar is very low here," insisting that it should take government employees less than five minutes to respond.
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"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 said in a statement. "In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud."
The email, which was sent by the Office of Personnel Management and has been viewed by Scripps News, states, "Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager."
The deadline to reply is Monday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time, and Musk said in a statement that "failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."
However, the Department of Defense announced Sunday that employees with that agency don't have to comply with the OPM request.
"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 Selnick, Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, said in a statement. "When and if required, the Department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM. For now, please pause any response to the OPM email."
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Meanwhile, Scripps News is aware of at least one government agency that emailed employees guidance on how to reply to the message. Overnight, Musk said a "large number of good responses have been received already. These are the people who should be considered for promotion."
Scripps News has also reached out to the White House and OPM for comment on the email, but has not received a response at the time of this publication.
Before Saturday, the Trump administration had primarily targeted probationary employees — often newly hired individuals or people who recently received a promotion — likely because it has more legal authority to terminate them.
