Elon Musk gives US federal workers another chance to justify their jobs, but what’s the new deadline?

Department of Govt Efficience (DOGE) chief Elon Musk has announced another deadline for thousands of US federal workers after the expiration of his last deadline which passed on Monday.

"Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination," Musk said Monday evening on X, which he owns.

However, he has not revealed the new deadline. Nor there is no information on how many responded to the first ultimatum.


Notably, several departments have asked their employees not to respond to Musk's mail which includes departments like Justice Department, the FBI, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

At the same time, several others including the Transportation Department, the Education Department and the Department of Commerce and the National Transportation Safety Board, told their workers to comply.

Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who has been tasked by President Donald Trump to lead a radical downsizing of the federal government, seemed undeterred.

Musk's downsizing initiative, powered by his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has led to the layoff of more than 20,000 workers. The administration has separately offered buyouts to 75,000 employees.

The federal workforce numbers about 2.3 million.

Musk's slash-and-burn approach has rippled into the wider U.S. economy as well, forcing companies that do business with the government to lay off workers and defer payments to vendors.

Since taking office on January 20, Trump has frozen billions of dollars in foreign assistance and effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers some 60% of U.S. foreign assistance, stranding medicine and food in warehouses.

In some cases, the government has scrambled to rehire workers who perform critical functions like nuclear weapons oversight and bird flu response.

On Monday, a group of labor unions that have asked a federal judge to stop the mass firings updated their lawsuit to request that Musk's threatening email be ruled illegal.

At the same time, a federal judge blocked the DOGE team from accessing sensitive data maintained by the Education Department and the OPM.

Unlike Cabinet appointees and appointees to head up independent federal agencies, Musk's appointment required no approval by the U.S. Senate.