Musk Says Federal Workers Must Justify Their Jobs To Him by Email: ‘Failure To Respond Will Be Taken as a Resignation’
Brandon Bell/Pool via AP
Elon Musk said Saturday that every federal employee would be required to justify their employment to him by email and that those who did not comply would lose their jobs.
The Tesla CEO and the man running President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said the directive came straight from the top in a Saturday afternoon post on X.
Musk wrote, “Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The X (formerly Twitter) owner agreed with one follower who compared his targeting federal jobs with his staffing cuts when he purchased the social media platform in 2022.
An account called The Rabbit Hole shared Musk’s Saturday ultimatum and commented, “They are running the Twitter playbook on the government.”
Musk replied, “It works.”
It works https://t.co/TFkpHlJa7a
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025
Musk’s apparent ultimatum to millions of Americans came hours after Trump expressed his desire to see the billionaire become more “aggressive” in rooting out federal waste and fraud.
In an all-caps Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “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!”
Musk and DOGE have spent the last four weeks aiming to slash jobs and entire agencies. Courts have intervened as Musk has DOGE have attempted to access sensitive government payment and other software systems.
Some of the billionaire’s claims about government waste and fraud have been questioned.
