Elon Musk holds up a chainsaw onstage during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., February 20, 2025. / REUTERS/Nathan Howard TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY/File Photo

Federal workers faced fresh uncertainty on Feb.25 about their futures after Elon Musk gave them "another chance" to respond to his ultimatum that they justify their jobs or risk termination, contradicting guidance from some Trump administration officials that the request was voluntary.

The confusing back-and-forth has rippled through the federal bureaucracy, with some agencies such as the U.S. Treasury Department instructing workers to comply, while others such as the Pentagon have not. It has become a test of how much power Musk wields over the U.S. government's operations.

Employees across the government received an email over the weekend asking them to summarize their accomplishments of the past week by Monday. In a post on X, the social media site Musk owns, the tech billionaire asserted that failure to respond would be considered a resignation.

With the deadline approaching on Monday, the Office of Personnel Management, the government's human resources arm run by Musk aides, told workers they could ignore the email.

Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who has been tasked by President Donald Trump to lead a radical downsizing of the federal government, was undeterred.

"Subject to the discretion of the president, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination," he wrote on X late on Monday.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Musk's remarks. Prior to the new OPM guidance, Trump told reporters on Monday that workers who did not respond would be "sort of semi-fired," adding to the uncertainty.

OPM meanwhile turned its attention to senior managers in the civil service on Tuesday. Acting agency head Chris Ezel published a memo requiring poorly performing managers to be fired and directing their superiors to evaluate them in part on how well they advanced the president's goals.

MUSK TAKES AIM AT SECOND WAVE OF LAYOFFS

The head-spinning developments exposed new fissures within Trump's administration over Musk's blunt-force approach. Even some Trump loyalists, such as Kash Patel, the newly installed FBI chief, told their employees to hold off on replying.

Employees at the General Services Administration, which oversees government real estate, were still unsure how to respond to Musk's email on Tuesday after getting conflicting advice from their managers.

On Feb.24 morning, Stephen Ehikian, GSA's acting administrator, told employees to comply. Hours later, some workers received a message saying OPM's request was voluntary, but that GSA leadership was still "encouraging" workers to respond.

An employee at the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management told Reuters that some Interior officials ordered them to respond, while the bureau's leadership said it was voluntary. The employee said they felt compelled to submit a reply despite the inconsistent guidance.

The Department of Health and Human Services advised employees that if they chose to reply, they should keep their responses general and refrain from identifying specific drugs or contracts they are working on, according to an email reviewed by Reuters.

"Assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly," the email said.

The head of the Small Business Administration, Kelly Loeffler, backed Musk's email requirement in a Fox News interview on Feb.25.

EMAILS TO WORKERS

"We just want to know: Are there people there doing their jobs? And again, the bar is so low it's laughable," Loeffler said. "I look forward to making sure that we get all the responses back, and for those that we don't, we'll have decisions to make."

The acting director of OPM itself sent an email to the agency's staff that said responding with bullet points was voluntary "but strongly encouraged."

At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government's weather forecaster, a deputy on Monday instructed workers to email their supervisors with a generic list of their accomplishments, including "100 percent of the tasks and duties required of me by my position description," a source told Reuters.

Musk's downsizing initiative, executed by his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has led to the layoff of more than 20,000 workers. The administration has separately offered buyouts to 75,000 employees.

The vast majority of terminations have involved "probationary employees" who started their positions less than a year ago and enjoy fewer legal job protections than the career civil servants who make up most of the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce.

But OPM has begun firing career workers within its own agency in a rapid-fire process that sources told Reuters is intended to serve as a template for a second round of mass layoffs across the government.

OPM has moved unusually quickly to demonstrate to other agencies what can be done, one source said.

On Feb.24, a group of labor unions that have sued over the mass firings asked a judge to rule that Musk's threatening email is illegal. 

At the same time, a federal judge blocked the DOGE team from accessing sensitive data maintained by the Education Department and the OPM.