Musk Says All Federal Employees Need To Explain Their Work — Or Be Let Go

All federal government employees will have to share what they’ve been working on in the last week or face dismissal, Elon Musk said Saturday.

Musk posted on X that employees will be receiving an email “shortly” requesting to “understand what they got done last week.” A lack of response, Musk said, “will be taken as a resignation.”

It’s unclear what legal authority, if any, Musk is relying on.

The response comes only hours after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to applaud Musk on his work with the Department of Government Efficiency on reducing the size of the federal government — and pushed him to “get more aggressive.”

“REMEMBER, WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE,” Trump wrote.

What appears to be a government-wide audit of every employee’s work comes after weeks of the Trump administration slashing federal agencies and firing probationary employees across the government.

After the Office of Personnel Management sent out a deferred resignation offer to federal employees — the now-famous “Fork in the Road” email — over 77,000 employees accepted offers to leave, the White House has said, cutting out 3 percent of the government workforce.

DOGE then swiftly moved to coordinate firing thousands of employees across different agencies, from the Department of Energy to the General Services Administration, in a more direct move to shrink the workforce by targeting those in a “probationary” period.

Trump got a win this week in federal court after a judge allowed Musk to continue accessing data and orchestrating mass layoffs.

The president then signed an executive order last Tuesday for agencies to work with DOGE to make “preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force.”

More firings are on the way: The Pentagon announced Friday its plans to fire 5,400 employees, and other agencies have also indicated they’re continuing to look for cuts.

Spokespeople for the White House and DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Musk’s Saturday post.

Targeting federal employees for dismissal has only been a part of Trump and Musk’s plans to remake the federal government. The pair have targeted programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

And Trump signed sweeping executive orders that look to order a review of all government regulations and bring independent agencies under control of the White House.

Congressional Republicans have been back-channeling with the Trump administration, concerned about how the cuts might affect public safety and health jobs, POLITICO reported Thursday.

Now, it’s possible that more employees are at risk of Musk’s chainsaw to the government.

One manager at the GSA, who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity, said that Musk’s move seems like a tactic into scaring people to quit.

It will work, he said.

“Legal or illegal, they are hellbent on skirting every rule and misinterpreting every regulation they can to fire people like it's a company,” the manager told POLITICO. “They are clearly panicked. They can't fire people as easily as you could at a private company, and after the probationary purge, they need new ways to sort out how.”

Danny Nguyen contributed to this report.