IRS employees must comply with Elon Musk’s demand for five “accomplishments” by tonight, the Treasury Department told employees in a Monday email obtained by TPM.
The leaders of several agencies dealing with law enforcement and national security issues, including the FBI, Department of Justice, and Department of Defense reportedly told workers to disregard or to hold off on responding to the DOGE message, sent from the Office of Personnel Management on Saturday and heralded on X by Elon Musk.
But in a Monday message, Treasury leadership instructed Department employees to comply. The directive includes IRS workers, who are charged with collecting tax revenue and investigating acts of fraud.
The email was signed by John W. York, who is reportedly a senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. It directed employees to reply to the OPM message by midnight Monday, and to “show the significance of the work you performed” without revealing confidential or other sensitive information.
Parts of it are also written with the same sneering tone as many other DOGE-related missives to the federal civil service.
“The OPM message reflects an effort to increase accountability by the federal workforce, just as there is in the private sector,” the email reads. “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.”
Musk had said on X over the weekend that not responding with a list of five weekly accomplishments would be interpreted as a resignation. It was a bizarre claim that was not included in the Saturday email, and that was reportedly contradicted by OPM in a Monday message to agency leaders. At the same time, President Trump said on Monday that workers who did not reply would be “sort of semi-fired.”
But the mandate that employees of the IRS, an agency that handles sensitive and important data, comply with the Musk directive suggests that it continues to be of great interest to Trump officials as the president as his advisors maraud through the executive branch. It comes as DOGE has asserted control over payments systems across the federal government, giving Musk’s team a window into the flows of money that keep the government running. The IRS provides a main route for taxpayer dollars to enter federal coffers, another potentially tantalizing target for DOGE, which started its work at the agency earlier this month.
After President Richard Nixon was found to have used the agency to target political opponents, lawmakers and executive branch officials introduced a number of reforms aimed at insulating the agency from partisan politics. But in this instance, IRS employees are being told to provide information about their work directly to an outside entity.
The IRS did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment.
