Musk's email ultimatum leads to mixed messages: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, we take a look at how Elon Musk’s weekend email directive to federal employees sparked confusion across the government. Plus, Ohio’s own Henry J. Gomez takes stock of what Vivek Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial bid means for the state GOP establishment. 

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— Adam Wollner

Elon Musk's email ultimatum leads to mixed messages for federal workers

Federal employees started another work week receiving mixed messages from the top.  

Over the weekend, Elon Musk said on X that federal workers would receive an email asking them to report what they had accomplished last week or lose their jobs. 

The emails from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) did not mention the resignation threat, but said: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager. Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments. Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pm EST.”

President Donald Trump embraced Musk’s move, telling reporters there was “a lot of genius” in sending the email. “If you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired,” Trump said. 

But later in the day, OPM told agencies that responses to the email were in fact voluntary. 

Chaos and confusion: Prior to that, different agencies were providing different instructions on how to handle the emails.  

Some agencies — including those led by close Trump allies — told their employees to ignore the directive.

• Justice Department employees were informed Monday that they did not need to respond to the message, according to emails seen by NBC News.
• FBI Director Kash Patel instructed employees over the weekend to “pause any responses” to the email, and said his agency would do its own review. 
• Employees of the State Department, the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Department, the National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence were told not to respond to the email.
• The Department of Agriculture also sent out an unsigned email to employees informing them that any response “is voluntary and not required.”

But at other agencies, employees were told to respond or given guidance on how to do so. 

• Officials at the Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services directed employees to respond by the deadline.
• An email sent to Department of Transportation employees and obtained by NBC News also instructed them to respond to OPM’s email. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy embraced the challenge himself in a post on social media.
• Managers within the Environmental Protection Agency sent employees model responses to the email to make it easier for them.

What happens next: Responses to the email are expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary, according to three sources with knowledge of the system.

Read more →

What to know from the Trump presidency today

• Trump told reporters during a visit with French President Emmanuel Macron that the U.S. and Ukraine are “very close to a final deal” on rare earth minerals. He also said that “European troops may go into Ukraine as peacemakers” as part of a deal to end the war with Russia. 
• The U.S. voted against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. 
• Current and former FBI officials expressed shock and dismay at Trump’s selection of commentator Dan Bongino as the agency's deputy director, a position that has typically been held by a career FBI agent. 
• FBI Director Kash Patel is expected to take on another top law enforcement role as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
• A federal judge declined to issue a temporary restraining order against the White House for denying The Associated Press full access, asking for a fuller briefing before making a decision.
• The Trump administration is looking to eliminate 2,000 positions at the U.S. Agency for International Development after a federal judge ruled that the firings could move forward. 
• A federal judge blocked the Education Department and OPM from sharing personal information about plaintiffs who are part of a lawsuit against the Trump administration. 

How Vivek Ramaswamy's DOGE candidacy is disrupting the old-guard Ohio GOP

By Henry J. Gomez

CLEVELAND — Vivek Ramaswamy’s newly launched bid for Ohio governor aims to continue a recent trend in the Buckeye State — one where a right-wing Republican outsider with zero electoral experience cruises into high office on the coattails of Donald Trump. 

JD Vance, at the time best known for a bestselling memoir that Ron Howard turned into an Oscar-bait movie, was the first to do it. A Trump endorsement catapulted Vance out of a crowded and messy Senate primary three years ago, setting him on a path to the vice presidency. Car dealer Bernie Moreno repeated the formula last year, slaying Ohio’s GOP establishment in another high-stakes primary en route to unseating Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. 

Ramaswamy’s 2026 effort could be the most disruptive yet — and not just because he’s talking about promoting DOGE-like measures and merit-based teacher pay if he’s elected. It has had a rattling domino effect on Ohio’s deep but top-heavy Republican bench, once a model of unshakable stability. 

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a term-limited Republican, had long envisioned his lieutenant governor, Jon Husted, succeeding him. But Vance’s election as VP created an opening. And with Ramaswamy already making noise about a 2026 campaign for governor, many saw DeWine’s appointment of Husted to Vance’s Senate seat as a safe landing.  

But that was just one domino. Two other Republicans, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and state Treasurer Robert Sprague, were already far along in preparing their own campaigns for governor. Yost went ahead and launched first, and in an interview with NBC News last week took several swipes at Ramaswamy. Sprague, meanwhile, saw the writing on the wall, endorsed Ramaswamy and announced he would run instead for Ohio secretary of state. 

A Democrat has not been elected governor in Ohio since 2006. And since 2010, Brown is the only Democrat to win a nonjudicial statewide office. In the meantime, Republicans built a roster of ambitious officeholders who have spent the last 15 years plotting their next move.

Ramaswamy has thrown a lot of those plans in flux. A Republican who wanted to run for governor is running for secretary of state. A Republican who wanted to run for secretary of state is running for state treasurer. Term-limited Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who lost a Senate primary last year and remains one of the state’s most power-hungry Republicans, found himself with few obvious paths back to elected office and announced a run for state auditor.

One outstanding question: Will DeWine’s old-guard wing of the party make one last push to strike back and intervene — perhaps by pushing new Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel as a candidate?

Tressel, a popular former Ohio State football coach with a celebrity factor to match Ramaswamy’s high name recognition, has not ruled out running. But there are few signs — outside of a tresselforgovernor.com website that a Tressel spokesperson denied knowledge of last week — that he or anyone working on his behalf are laying the groundwork for a campaign.

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Bridget Bowman.

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