Federal workers at the U.S. Treasury, which includes the IRS, received an email Monday signed by a former Heritage Foundation analyst instructing them to answer Elon Musk’s bizarre email demanding to know what they’ve been working on. The deadline for responding is midnight tonight, and workers at several agencies have been told not to respond, kicking off a showdown between the DOGE team and recently confirmed members of Donald Trump’s cabinet.
“By now you should have received an email from OPM seeking information on your accomplishments over the last week. You are directed to respond to this message before the deadline, if you are not on leave on Monday,” the email reads.
The email, which was shared with Gizmodo by a source at the IRS who wishes to remain anonymous, appears to come from a man named John W. York, a former foreign policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. The think tank created the infamous Project 2025 policy document for radically dismantling the U.S. government. But it’s not clear whether York is currently working with Musk’s DOGE or at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is currently being run by Russ Vought, another former Heritage Foundation goon.
“The OPM message reflects an effort to increase accountability by the federal workforce, just as there is in the private sector. Given the voluminous and extremely important work that Treasury staff perform on a daily basis, we expect that compliance will not be difficult or time-consuming,” the email continues.
The email says employees must respond to Musk’s email, but stresses that confidential information shouldn’t be shared, a serious concern for many of the agencies that deal in highly sensitive areas, such as the IRS.
“Your responses should be descriptive enough to show the significance of the work you performed; however, the descriptions should not reveal confidential, privileged, otherwise non-public, pre-decisional or deliberative aspects of that work, given that these responses will be sent outside Treasury,” the email said.
The email ends by telling workers that if they have questions about how to respond, they should consult their manager and thanks them “for all that you do for Treasury and for the American people.” That tone appears to contradict the extremely disrespectful attitude of Musk’s rants on X about federal workers. And it’s likely many people will have questions, given the vagueness of Musk’s email and his repeated threats that a failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.
U.S. Treasury employees may need to respond now to Musk’s email, but leaders at other agencies have told their workers to ignore it altogether, according to CNN. Decisionmakers at the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Justice have told employees to just not respond to Musk’s demands.
However, nobody knows what will happen to the workers at those agencies where superiors have been told not to respond. Musk has no official authority to fire people at other agencies, but that hasn’t stopped him from doing just that, illegally dissolving USAID and unilaterally canceling contracts at countless other federal agencies. Recently confirmed leaders like Kash Patel at the FBI and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have told people who work for them not to respond.
Musk says he’s trying to stamp out waste, fraud, and abuse but has yet to present a single example of money that was being spent fraudulently, just programs that he didn’t like. Those programs used money allocated by Congress, but Musk has taken it upon himself to become a kind of dictator, deciding across all of government what should get the ax. And other Republicans are cheering him on publicly, even if some are reportedly concerned behind the scenes.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said Monday that Musk was using “algorithms” to decide what to cut, an obvious way of saying that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
Johnson: “Elon’s cracked the code. He’s now inside these agencies. He’s created these algorithms that are constantly crawling through the data & as he told me in his office, data doesn’t lie. We’re gonna be able to get the information. We’re gonna be able to transform the way federal govt works.”
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 24, 2025 at 9:35 AM
Musk has been tweeting like crazy all weekend, sometimes sending a couple hundred tweets per day. And it’s become clear that nothing is going to stop his rampage through the government, destroying anything and everything that displeases him.
Nobody knows what will happen to the federal workers who don’t respond by midnight tonight. But it will be interesting to see whether this first power struggle between Musk and figures like Patel causes any rifts. President Trump is ostensibly the guy with the most power in this situation. But he seems content to let Musk do whatever he wants so far.
An email to the IRS seeking clarification on where John W. York is currently working did not receive a response on Monday. Gizmodo will update this post if we hear back.