US government: Musk again threatens civil servants with dismissal

On Monday evening (local time) , Elon Musk once again called on US government employees via his social media platform X to list their achievements of the past week to his team. Anyone who did not do so would be fired, Musk wrote on X. On Saturday , Musk had already issued a similar ultimatum to the approximately 2.3 million civil servants in the USA by email . The deadline was originally supposed to expire on Monday at one minute before midnight. However, several agency heads had told their employees not to respond to Musk's request . These included the FBI, the Department of Defense, the State Department and the Office of the Director of US Intelligence, all of which are run by loyalists of US President Donald Trump.

The U.S. Government Personnel Office, which oversees federal government employees, also told all federal employees on Monday that they could ignore Musk's email without risking termination. Some government agencies also raised security concerns. For example, employees at the Department of Health and Human Services were told to assume that all email traffic was being read by malicious foreign actors and to formulate their responses accordingly. However, employees at the Treasury and Transportation departments and some other agencies were instructed to respond to Musk's email.

The contradictory statements have caused confusion among many civil servants. US President Trump did not help to clear things up on Monday evening either. During a press conference after the meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, Trump said that anyone who did not respond to the email was "in a way half fired". Many civil servants do not respond "because they do not exist", said Trump. Elon Musk's Office of Government Efficiency has already uncovered "hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud" because the government pays non-existent employees, said the president. However, he did not provide any evidence for his claim.