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Topics: US News, Politics, Donald Trump, Elon Musk
Rhianna Benson
Topics: US News, Politics, Donald Trump, Elon Musk
Key government officials have reportedly issued a warning to employees, instructing them not to reply to any emails sent out by Elon Musk.
As per the Washington Post, the 53-year-old sent out an ultimatum to federal workers in several departments over the weekend - including the State Department, the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Veterans Affairs Department - threatening people's jobs.
The tech boss was appointed by Donald Trump as one of his Department of Government Efficiency co-leads, after which he was accused of planning a 'hostile takeover'.
Meeting with the Republican leader in the White House earlier this month, Musk described cuts to government funding as 'common sense' measures, and insisted they are 'not draconian or radical'.
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Not only has Trump handed Musk's team the authority to access the system responsible for all government payments, but they'll also be able to access sensitive databases and private medical records.
The DOGE role will also allow Musk to circumvent conflict of interest/transparency requirements.
With that in mind, Musk seemingly started where he means to go on this week, by sending an email to several members of government staff, ordering them to comply within 48 hours or risk being let go.
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All staff received a cryptic email from an account simply titled 'HR', which contained an extremely short message.
"What did you do last week?" the subject line read, before the email said: "Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager."
Musk's latest demand also saw staff asked not to include links, attachments or classified information, and given a deadline to send over the information by 11.59pm on Monday.
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On X, Musk added: "Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.
"Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."
As we say, however, several department leads have reportedly issued warnings, instructing their staff members not to respond.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reportedly sent out a subsequent email to her workforce, citing the agency's focus on sensitive and classified work.
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It's said that staff from the Defence Department were also given a similar message, along with FBI personnel and Department of Homeland Security employees.
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In response to Musk's bizarre email, Tibor Nagy of the State Department wrote: "No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command."
Everett Kelley - the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union - also issued a statement in response, defending his workers.
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"It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life," he said.