‘Return to Office or Else’: Elon Musk Backs Trump’s Crackdown on Federal Employees

New Delhi: Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has weighed in on the enforcement of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating federal employees to return to the office.

In a post on his social media platform X, Musk stated that government workers who have disregarded the directive have already been given sufficient notice and will now face consequences.

"Those who ignored President Trump’s executive order to return to work have now received over a month’s warning. Starting this week, those who still fail to return to office will be placed on administrative leave," Musk wrote.

According to Musk, federal employees failing to comply with the return-to-office mandate will begin facing administrative leave starting this week. His comments come amid ongoing debates about remote work policies in the federal workforce, with some employees resisting the push to return to physical offices.

‘Failing to Comply With Deadline Would Result in Termination’

Just a day after Elon Musk’s team sent an email to hundreds of thousands of federal employees demanding reports on five specific tasks completed the previous week within 48 hours, the controversy surrounding the directive has escalated.

Musk made it clear that failure to comply with the deadline—set at 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday—would result in immediate job termination.

In response, federal employees have taken legal action, arguing that the demand is unlawful. According to the Associated Press (AP), the lawsuit challenges the legitimacy of Musk’s directive.

An amended complaint, filed by unions, businesses, veterans, and conservation groups, strongly opposes the mandate, stating, “No OPM rule, regulation, policy, or program has ever, in United States history, purported to require all federal workers to submit reports to OPM.” The complaint further condemns the mass firing threat, calling it “one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country.”

Mass Exodus From The Federal Workforce

Meanwhile, thousands of government employees have already been forced out of the federal workforce — either by being fired or through a “deferred resignation″ offer — during the first month of Trump’s second term. There is no official figure available for the total firings or layoffs so far, but the Associated Press has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside of Washington.

Musk on Sunday called his latest request “a very basic pulse check.”

“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!” Musk wrote on X. “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.”

He has provided no evidence of such fraud. Separately, Musk and Trump have falsely claimed in recent days that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving Social Security payments.

Meanwhile, thousands of other employees are preparing to leave the federal workforce this coming week, including probationary civilian workers at the Pentagon and all but a fraction of U.S. Agency for International Development staffers through cuts or leave.