Musk caused alarm among federal employees over an email sent on Saturday requesting that employees summarize their work.

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.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the last week.