Elon Musk issued an ultimatum Monday night giving federal workers one more chance to reply to his threatening emails after multiple agency heads told their staff to ignore him.
With just hours to go before his proclaimed midnight deadline for his first ultimatum, the mercurial billionaire renewed his demand for government employees to tell him the five things they accomplished last week — or be fired.
The latest warning came shortly after the Trump administration’s Office of Personnel (OPM) — effectively the federal government's central Human Resources department — told agencies that responding to Musk’s edict was "voluntary.”
By then several agencies had already told employees to ignore the demand. The Department of Health and Human Services warned that anyone who wanted to respond should “assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly.”
Musk apparently left himself a path to back off from his latest ultimatum by saying it was "subject to the discretion of the President,” creating even more chaos and confusion for workers.
But Donald Trump did not appear inclined to block the ultimatum. He told reporters during a meeting in the Oval Office with French President Emmanuel Macron that Musk’s initial ultimatum was “genius,” and warning that employees who did not respond would be “semi-fired” or “fired.” It wasn’t clear what he meant by “semi-fired.”
The new ultimatum intensified the developing showdown between Musk and other officials in the Trump administration chosen by the president himself, like FBI Director Kash Patel, who told agents to ignore the tech billionaire.
Other major agencies including the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, as well as HHS, told their workers they could ignore Musk's initial warning.
Yet Musk insisted on Monday night that "failure to respond a second time will result in termination” of federal employees.
One longtime federal worker told CNN: "Our chief said it was mandatory. Then OPM said it became voluntary. Then I guess Trump just told us it was mandatory again. No one knows who is in charge and who to listen to.”
Another employee said: “It’s bedlam.”
Adding to the confusion, some of Musk's posts on X (formerly Twitter) over the past 48 hours appeared to suggest that the first warning email was merely a ruse or a test, describing it as "a very basic pulse check.”
"The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!" said the DOGE boss on Monday afternoon. "Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers.”
He asked his followers: "Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?"
The defiance from agencies was the first major sign of major discord between Musk and the rest of Trump's inner circle, and the first major challenge to his reign of terror over the federal government.
Trump has said that advice from agency heads who advised their staff not to comply with Musk’s dictates was “done in a friendly manner. They don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon," he reportedly said.
