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Federal workers spent Monday trying to figure out how – or even whether – to respond to Elon Musk’s weekend email blast telling them to explain their work last week or risk losing their job.
A day of confusing and often contradictory guidance, left many federal workers still unclear ultimately how to handle Musk’s request. Some were told to comply, others were advised not to, and still others were awaiting instructions from their agency’s leaders until late in the day.
Speaking from the Oval Office Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump called Musk’s email demand “ingenious” and said that anyone who didn’t respond is “semi-fired or fired.”
Then, a couple hours later, Trump’s own administration directly contradicted him, when the Office of Personnel Management formally notified agencies that response was voluntary and that any failure to respond would “not equate to a resignation.”
While some agencies conveyed that message in their guidance to employees, not all did, leaving many federal workers in the dark just hours before Musk’s deadline of 11:59 p.m. Monday.
“Our chief said it was mandatory. Then OPM said it became voluntary. Then I guess Trump just told us it was mandatory again,” said one career employee with the Department of Veterans Affairs. “No one knows who is in charge and who to listen to.”
CNN spoke to federal employees across multiple agencies on Monday. All but one asked not to use their names for fear of retribution.
Some of the most high-profile federal agencies ended up bucking Musk’s demands, with the Justice Department, State Department, Pentagon, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy all telling staff not to respond to the email.
While the Commerce and Transportation departments all instructed their staffs on Monday to comply, Commerce asked employees to send the information to their supervisors.
Among the Transportation employees who need to reply are the Federal Aviation Administration’s chronically understaffed air traffic controller workforce. Many controllers are working mandatory overtime six-day weeks of ten-hour shifts.
On Saturday, their union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, denounced the move by Musk as a “distraction” to controllers during a time when the air safety system is “fragile.”
NASA, on the other hand, said it will respond on behalf of the agency, adding that workers are not required to answer OPM’s email, and that their employment will not be affected if they opt not to respond.
Ironically, employees at OPM, the agency that sent the initial email, were left in the dark about how to handle the instructions themselves until about 6 p.m. Monday evening, when they finally got guidance saying a response was voluntary but strongly encouraged, according to an email obtained by CNN.
‘Today was crazy’
The chaos began Saturday not long after a mass email from OPM landed in the inboxes of federal workers across the country. Work was disrupted in some agencies as staffers and officials sat in on hastily assembled meetings and tried to decipher a multitude of emails. Agency heads debated how to respond to Musk’s demands, several sources told CNN.
David J. Demas, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 3003, which represents 320 Federal Bureau of Prisons workers, said he received 30 phone calls on Monday from his members, who work at US Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania, asking how to respond to OPM’s email.
Some workers who were off duty wanted to know if they needed to come to the prison to reply since they don’t have access to their work email on their phones or home computers. And those who were working asked for guidance on what to include in their five bullet points.
“Today was crazy. A lot of people were coming in from being off to try to send an email, a silly email that doesn’t even make any sense to us,” said Demas, who also woke up at 3 a.m. Monday to find three text messages and 10 emails from worried members.
Just before 11 a.m. Monday, the Department of Justice sent an email to workers saying that they did not need to respond, which Demas then relayed to his colleagues.
At another government facility, officials set up a room to allow employees without computer access – including janitors – to go online to send in their accomplishments during the prior week, one federal worker told CNN.
At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one worker told CNN that they “haven’t done any of my actual duties due to the email and having to respond to those below me and trying to get clarification from those above me.”
Like at multiple other agencies, the guidance from NOAA supervisors and leaders shifted with the latest instructions coming from a high-ranking official at the Department of Commerce, who said staffers should provide the five bullet points on their work activities to their supervisors by the deadline. (NOAA is part of Commerce.)
Another Department of Veterans Affairs staffer told CNN that they had to attend multiple meetings on Monday about the directive, which interfered with doing their job.
“That’s all time taken away from patient care,” said the employee, whose leadership recommended that staffers reply to OPM’s email. “It’s totally disruptive.”
At the Department of Health and Human Services, a sprawling federal agency with thousands of workers, employees were told that if they were going to respond to the Musk email, they should refrain from being descriptive and keep answers as general as possible.
“Assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly,” read an HHS email obtained by CNN.
Some federal workers took a more sarcastic approach, at least among themselves.
At the IRS, one group of colleagues came up with activities they performed last week as a fake response to Musk’s email. The list included “fought the BS you started, kept the employees from beating up their managers, kept your equipment in a working condition without it being thrown against the damn wall, helped the employees understand that this was the new administration’s decision and not management,” and “trying to minimize the fear, confusion and anger you cause for NO REASON…DURING TAX SEASON!”
Video screens at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, DC, on Monday played a fake video of Trump kissing Musk’s toes, featuring the words “Long Live The Real King.” It was later removed and replaced with information “showcasing the wins of the Trump administration,” the agency said in a statement.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, where staffers were told to comply with Musk’s demand, but to do so without divulging certain sensitive information, some staffers bristled at the mixed message.
“Nobody has a spine,” said one EPA worker. “Because EPA is a target, they’re trying to play nice with them, thinking that might make them not subject to deeper cuts. When you appease a bully, you give them license to come after you more.”
A State Department official said that people are confused.
“On the one hand, employees want to showcase the important work they’re doing,” but there is concern about “responding from individual email accounts and not knowing where the information is going,” the official said. “I suspect all federal employees everywhere feel conflicted and deeply disturbed by the derogatory narrative coming from our government.”
In his Oval Office remarks on Monday, Trump suggested that employees who didn’t reply might not be working at all.
“We have to find out where these people are. Who are they?,” Trump said in the Oval Office while meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. “And we said, ‘If you don’t respond, we assume you’re not around, and you’re not getting paid anymore, too.’”
Musk, however, was undeterred.
On Monday evening, he posted on X, “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”