Billionaire Elon Musk is telling Republican lawmakers that he is not to blame for the firings of thousands of federal workers, including veterans, as pushes to downsize the government. Instead, he said in private talks this week that those decisions are left to the various federal agencies.

Federal employees are fast-approaching a midnight deadline to respond to Elon Musk's second email to share their accomplishments from the previous week. The post Federal workers didn’t respond to Elon Musk’s email.

Elon Musk said all federal employees will be asked to report “what they got done last week," and that failure to reply would be considered a resignation.