Musk says all federal workers must justify job or risk dismissal

Victoria Cavaliere, Bloomberg News on Feb 22, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Elon Musk, who is heading U.S. President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the government, said all federal employees will receive an email directing them to justify their jobs.

Musk’s warning on Saturday came shortly after Trump said in a social media message that “Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him get more aggressive.”

Musk is overseeing Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. He said in a post on his social media platform X that all federal workers will get an email asking “what they got done last week” and that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

The post didn’t address a myriad of legal and pragmatic complexities, and seemed to indicate the government could simply stop paying any number of federal workers, from the postal service to penitentiaries, if an email justification of their jobs wasn’t made.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which describes itself as representing more than 800,000 workers, didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the post.

Trump created DOGE through a Jan. 20 executive order that reorganized an existing White House office, the US Digital Service, and officially tasked the team with modernizing technology across government. In early February he expanded its role to include oversight of spending and personnel cuts to transform the federal workforce, reduce the size of the government and limit hiring to essential positions.

Musk has pledged that DOGE’s cost-cutting enterprise would provide “maximum transparency” and that “all of our actions are fully public.” The department says it has saved some $55 billion in federal spending so far, but this week its website accounted only for $16.6 billion of that.

So far DOGE has fired numerous workers and sought to gain access to internal systems across several government agencies, sparking lawsuits over Trump’s legal and constitutional limits as president.

A federal judge this week denied a request from Democratic state attorneys general to temporarily block DOGE’s work. The Democrats contend that Musk is exercising power to reshape the US government that is supposed to be reserved for high-level, Senate-confirmed officials.

The department has also reversed some of its firings and cuts, including to a health program for 9/11 first responders and survivors. And the Energy Department decided to bring back nuclear energy specialists after abruptly eliminating their jobs.