Musk initially said the request was a 'very basic pulse check,' but now says it will root out 'non-existent people or...dead people' who are collecting paychecks. Several agencies are telling employees to ignore the email for now.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently sent a controversial email to federal employees, demanding they account for their work activities from the past week by Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET. This directive emerged following a social media post by Elon Musk,

Trump claimed Monday that any agencies saying not to respond to the email were doing it "in a friendly manner."