A little more than half of the government’s workers—more than a million people—have responded to Elon Musk’s request to list five things they worked on last week, the White House said.
The order was sent via email to federal workers on Saturday, and Musk gave them until Monday at 11:59 p.m. to respond, saying on X that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Musk then took back his threat on Monday night and gave the staffers another chance to send in their answers.
“I can announce that we’ve had more than 1 million workers who have chosen to participate in this very simple task of, again, sending five bullet points to your direct supervisor or manager,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Leavitt also stood by Musk’s instructions, saying she herself sent along five points about what she did in the press office.
“I do five things in about 10 minutes, and all federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working and moving,” she said. “We have a country to save, and we want this federal government to be responsive to the needs of the American people.”
Check it out:
According to data from the Trump administration, 2.4 million people are working for the federal government right now, excluding active-duty military and Postal Service employees.
Musk gave his order after President Trump told the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to try to change the federal government in a “more aggressive” way.
Leavitt said the billionaire boss of SpaceX and Tesla “thought” it would be a good idea to send the email to federal workers. However, agency heads are ultimately in charge of deciding whether their workers should send their lists to DOGE.
Musk was set to attend Trump’s first meeting with his cabinet on Wednesday, but Leavitt made it clear that department secretaries are the only ones who can fire employees. The DOGE that Musk runs is not a real government agency.
After Musk’s tweet threatening to fire workers who didn’t follow his email, many agency heads told their workers right away not to follow the order, in part because they were worried about national security.
Workers were then told in an email on Monday by the Office of Personnel Management that Musk’s order was “voluntary” and that not responding would not get them fired.
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Musk then said that federal workers would be given a “second chance” to respond, but that was the last time they would be given a break.
“The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!” the world’s richest man wrote sarcastically on X. “Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers.
“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” he continued in another post. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
The emails from Musk made things confusing for federal workers, who weren’t sure if they should do what Trump’s right-hand man told them to do or what their bosses told them to do.
In the Oval Office on Monday, Trump told reporters, “I thought it was great because we have people who don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government.” Trump defended Musk’s request that federal workers send in a list of their five accomplishments.
“What he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’” the president said.
“Well, it’s somewhat voluntary, but it’s also, if you don’t answer, I guess you get fired,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“They’re not allowed to be working for us and be working for somebody else. We’re paying them a lot of money, paying them. So we’ll see if that solves the problem,” Trump added.
