Elon Musk creates confusion in recent wave of emails to federal workers

According to the nonprofit media organization NPR, on Saturday, February 22nd, in the afternoon, Elon Musk emailed federal workers in the US government asking them to recall their previous work week or risk being fired. Musk gave notice hours earlier in a post on X, formerly Twitter, which he owns. The post stated, “Consistent with President [Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.” The post ended with the sentence “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Over the weekend, there has been much confusion among federal agencies and employees on how to approach the emails. In another article by NPR following the emails, they stated that officials at the Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Energy had told workers not to respond. Meanwhile, staff at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), reported that they were initially told to reply to the email but received two follow-up emails, one on Sunday asking staff to “pause” their responses and wait for further guidance. Then, on Monday, staff were told in a third email that “There is no HHS expectation that HHS employees respond to OPM and there is no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond.”

HHS employees who chose to respond were advised not to share the names of their colleagues. A similar situation occurred in the departments of the Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Commerce, and Interior, where staff were told to reply to the emails but were given specific instructions on how, while also being reminded not to share classified information. The OPM followed up on Monday telling agencies that they  “... should consider any appropriate actions regarding employees who fail to respond to activity/accomplishment requests.” 

NPR states in the same article that divided response among federal agencies is a clear sign of pushback by some officials to Musk’s “aggressive reshaping of the government.” The biggest divide comes from the confusion of federal workers over their department’s guidance, or lack thereof. The initial spark of confusion came from Musk’s first X post followed by the OPM email itself. One NPR interviewee, who chose to remain anonymous out of fear of termination, said, “My entire weekend had been a stress-filled ball of crazy. No one seems to know who is running the country. No one knows what we are supposed to do.”