Elon Musk wants to know what federal workers are doing.
On Saturday night, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head tweeted: Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” he added.
An email then went out across federal agencies from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) with the subject line “What did you do last week”? It told employees to “reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished this week and cc your manager. Please do not send classified information, links, or attachments. Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pmEST.”
Notably, the email did not include the threat of termination for not responding.
The email has already received widespread backlash. The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing federal workers, says the message is “cruel and disrespectful” and pledged to “challenge any unlawful terminations of our members and federal employees across the country.”
“Once again, Elon Musk and the Trump administration have shown their utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people,” Everett Kelley, union president, said in a statement.
Some government agencies have already told workers not to reply. According to a letter obtained by The New York Times, FBI Director Kash Patel told employees: “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”
The State Department has reportedly provided similar guidance.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
The request also raises a myriad of questions. What about employees who are on leave without access to their emails? Or those who work a shift where they won’t see the email until after the deadline has passed? Who exactly will be sifting through the millions of emails and determining who did enough work for the week?
Meanwhile, the email’s strange syntax reads like a phishing email, prompting skepticism among some workers about opening or responding to the message. Others are encouraging non-government employees to spam the OPM email with bogus lists.
On X, Musk is defending the emails. “To be clear, the bar is very low here. An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable! Should take less than 5 mins to write,” he claims. “This email is a very basic pulse check,” he said in another tweet.
This morning, however, he’s taking a harder line and arguing that it’s unacceptable for people not to be checking emails on the weekend, and that the move is intended to stop fraud.
Recommended by Our Editors
“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!” he tweeted. “In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud.”
He’s made the same false claims about the Social Security Administration and other agencies, but has thus far not produced any evidence of fraud—only spending on things he doesn’t like.
The email is the same playbook Musk deployed when he took over Twitter in 2022. He requested that all Twitter engineers physically print out their last 30 to 60 days of code and show it to him, according to Platformer, before later backtracking on the request.
A few dozen Twitter engineers is a whole different ballgame from millions of federal employees whose jobs cover everything from forestry to national security.
DOGE is currently facing several legal challenges as part of attempts to block it from accessing systems like those at Treasury IT, which contain the personal information of millions of Americans. The DOGE website, meanwhile, was so insecure that it was easily editable.
Get Our Best Stories!
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links.
By clicking the button, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our
Terms of Use and
Privacy Policy.
You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
About Will McCurdy
Contributor
