In a move potentially setting up a major fight within the federal apparatus, the Department of Defense (DOD) has told its civilian workforce to ignore Elon Musk, the billionaire head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in his demand that all federal civilian employees respond to an email from him and explain what they have accomplished.
The memo to civilian workers as the DOD came from acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness Darin S. Selnick, who told them to respond to the demand from Musk that came through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by saying that their department will review their work, not Musk and DOGE.
Elon, as background, announced in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that all civilian federal employees would be asked what they accomplished, and if they don’t respond then they will be considered to have resigned. He said, “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.”
He later added, on that same point, “The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all! In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud.”
The email itself, which appears to have been sent out on Sunday, February 23, said, “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager. Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments. Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pmEST.”
In any case, Mr. Selnick told civilian DOD personnel to refuse to respond to the email, saying, Fox News Digital reports, “DoD personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information. The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures.”
