Over the weekend, two million U.S. government workers received an email asking them to provide a bullet point summary of their weekly accomplishments.
In a post to X announcing the email, billionaire and presidential advisor Elon Musk said it was “consistent with President Donald Trump’s instructions”. Musk added employees would be fired for not responding.
In response, unions representing these employees updated an existing lawsuit against the government to include the email. Federal departments have said their employees don’t have to respond.
Late last week, more than two million federal workers received an email titled: “What did you do last week?”
The email was marked ‘high importance’, and asked employees to reply “with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last
week and cc your manager.”
It was sent by the central HR hub of the federal government, called the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Employees were told not to attach any classified information, and to respond by Monday night.
Trump has appointed Musk to lead a new body designed to reduce government spending, called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
While DOGE did not send the email, Musk announced and endorsed it, saying it was on Trump’s request.
On X, he posted: “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Musk added the email “was to see who had a pulse and two working neurons”.
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Response
Within a day, the heads of some departments instructed staff to not reply.
This included the Departments of Defense and Health, and the newly-appointed leader of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Kash Patel.
In a memo sent to staff and reported by U.S. media, Patel said the FBI “will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures,” not the OPM.
Over the weekend, Trump told reporters a federal worker could be “fired” or “semi-fired” if they didn’t reply to the email.
“A lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist,” Trump said.
The White House and Musk have not provided evidence to support this claim.
In a post to X on Tuesday, Musk said employees were being given “another chance,” but that “failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
Lawsuit
Unions representing federal employees filed a lawsuit in the state of California earlier this month accusing the OPM of illegally sacking tens of thousands of public workers in an efficiency drive.
The lawsuit has been updated to include a complaint about the email sent to federal workers.
It accuses the OPM of failing to follow “procedural requirements” required under law.
