WASHINGTON: Confusion and chaos loom as hundreds of thousands of federal employees begin their workweek Monday facing a deadline from President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting chief, Elon Musk, to explain their recent accomplishments or risk losing their jobs.
Musk’s team sent an email to hundreds of thousands of federal employees Saturday giving them roughly 48 hours to report five specific things they had accomplished last week.
In a separate message on X, Musk said any employee who failed to respond by the deadline – set in the email as 11:59 pm EST Monday – would lose their job.
Musk’s unusual demand has faced resistance from several key US agencies led by the president’s loyalists — including the FBI, State Department, Homeland Security and the Pentagon — which instructed their employees over the weekend not to comply.
Lawmakers in both parties said Musk’s mandate may be illegal, while unions are threatening to sue.
Axed from jobs not easily found outside government, thousands of federal workers caught in President Trump’s cost-cutting efforts now face a difficult search for work.
“If you’re doing, say, vegetation sampling and prescribed fire as your main work, there aren’t many jobs,” says Eric Anderson, 48, of Chicago, who was fired Feb. 14 from his job as a biological science technician at Indiana Dunes National Park.
All the years of work Anderson put in — the master’s degree, the urban forestry classes, the wildfire deployments — seemed to disappear in a single email dismissing him.
He’s hoping there’s a chance he’s called back, but if he isn’t, he’s not sure what he’ll do next. He was so consumed with his firing that he broke a molar from grinding his teeth. But he knows he’s caught in something larger than himself, as the new administration unfurls its chaotic cost-cutting agenda.
Meanwhile, at an annual gathering of conservative activists, the signature red “Make America Great Again” hats popularised by Trump were interspersed with a noticeable number of the black “Dark MAGA” hats made popular by Musk.
It was just one sign of Musk’s emerging influence and how the world’s wealthiest man — who once backed Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden — has become a conservative power centre in his own right due to his connections to Trump.
Speakers at CPAC frequently brought up DOGE, playfully named after a meme coin with the face of a Shiba Inu dog popularised by Musk in 2021. They variously referred to him as a “white knight,” a “hero of free speech,” and according to one of his harshest critics, Steve Bannon, “Superman”. (AGENCIES)
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