Donald Trump and Elon Musk threaten to ‘semi-fire’ workers who don’t answer email
We’re nearing the deadline that Elon Musk imposed for government workers to reply to a mass email about productivity, and the results have been predictably confusing — with even a direct statement from President Donald Trump failing to clear things up.
Government agencies have taken significantly different tacks toward the Musk-promoted email, which he announced to the public midday on February 22nd. Sent by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the message demanded all federal employees respond by the end of the 24th with “5 bullets of what you accomplished last week,” and Musk said on X that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” The email reportedly didn’t include this noteworthy detail.
But while some agencies have apparently ordered compliance, others have called the email optional or told employees to not respond. The Department of Justice, Administrative Office of the US Courts, and State Department all instructed staff to disregard the message and follow internal review processes instead, according to multiple news outlets. The Treasury Department, conversely, appears to have ordered Internal Revenue Service employees to comply.
Other agencies have issued more nebulous guidance. In an email obtained by The Verge, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson told staff that responses were “voluntary” — but he added that “I enthusiastically responded” to the message and “strongly encourage you to respond as well.”
As of this article’s publication, the White House has done little to clarify the situation. An unnamed administration official said on Monday morning that employees should defer to their agencies’ guidance, reported Politico. An OPM official further told The Washington Post that the office was “unsure what to do with the emails” and had “no plans” to analyze them. Yet more anonymous officials, however, said that workers’ reports would be “fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary or not,” per NBC News.
Meanwhile, on the same day, Trump said publicly that people who failed to respond would be “sort of semi-fired,” adding that “a lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist.” He denied that agencies were clashing with Musk by issuing conflicting guidance, saying it was “done in a friendly manner.”
Musk’s email echoed his behavior after taking over Twitter, where he demanded employees do things like print out 50 pages of their recent coding work or write a memo justifying their jobs to receive previously promised company stock. But unlike at Twitter, where he held sole unquestioned control, he’s dealing with formal chains of command and many other stakeholders here.
Still, the whole impossibly tangled situation is conducive to Musk and Trump’s goal of paralyzing the government, letting them instill fear in employees while creating an excuse to fire people as desired. (If they work on nuclear safety or bird flu, maybe they’ll get semi-rehired afterward.)
Like many moves by Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the latest action ignores existing government structures in a way that may be aimed at avoiding legal or political accountability. The email nonetheless drew an immediate challenge in court. It was included in an amended suit filed by groups including the American Federation of Government Employees, which condemned the email as “thoughtless and bullying … meant to intimidate federal employees and cause mass confusion.”
Ironically for figures who claim to be fighting bureaucratic confusion, Musk and Trump have created one of the most downright kafkaesque scenarios imaginable. We’re now looking at a government order presenting a drastic ultimatum that is never mentioned in the order, in which a response may be either mandatory or forbidden, and failing to respond may or may not get you simultaneously fired and not fired. Also, you may not actually exist.
