WASHINGTON — President Trump and Elon Musk are continuing their efforts to scrutinize the federal workforce with a new email being sent to federal employees, requiring them to detail their recent accomplishments.
The second request, initially planned for Saturday, began arriving in some employees’ inboxes late Friday. A source familiar with the situation, who remained anonymous due to lack of authorization to speak publicly, revealed the plan for this second round of emails.
The initial email, sent the previous week, asked employees to list five completed tasks from the past week, with Musk, head of the Trump-empowered Department of Government Efficiency (tasked with downsizing agencies and eliminating federal jobs), threatening termination for non-compliance. Many agencies advised their employees to ignore the email or issued conflicting instructions.
According to the same source, the second email was designed to potentially streamline disciplinary actions for those who don’t comply.
Instead of being sent from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which acts as the federal government’s HR but lacks direct hiring/firing power, the new email was expected to come from individual agencies with direct oversight of their staff.
However, some employees at two different agencies reported receiving the email late Friday—with the subject line “What did you do last week? Part II”—from the same “hr@opm.gov” address used for the first email. Employees at a third agency received it from an internal department address.
The email instructed recipients to “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets describing what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” and stated that responses would be required weekly by the following Monday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.
It remains unclear how national security agencies will manage this second request, given that they instructed employees to ignore the first email due to the sensitive or classified nature of their work. The White House claims that less than half of federal workers responded to the initial request.
The version reviewed by the Associated Press late Friday included the instruction: “If all of your activities are classified or sensitive, please write, ‘All of my activities are sensitive.'” However, concerns remain about the digital footprint created by sending an email, regardless of its content.
An OPM spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for clarification Friday night.
During his first Cabinet meeting of his second term on Wednesday, Trump supported Musk’s argument that the request was a “pulse check” to confirm that government employees have “a pulse and two neurons.”
Musk and Trump have both suggested that some federal workers may be deceased or nonexistent, and the president has publicly endorsed Musk’s methods.
Trump addressed those who didn’t respond to the first email, stating “they are on the bubble” and expressing his displeasure with their lack of response.
“Now, maybe they don’t exist,” he said, without providing any supporting evidence. “Maybe we’re paying people that don’t exist.”
In addition to recent firings of probationary employees, a recently distributed memo has set the stage for significant layoffs and program consolidation.
The Education Department offered its employees a $25,000 buyout, also warning of potential impending layoffs. An email sent to all agency workers gave them until the end of Monday to consider the offer, which was promoted as preceding “in advance of a very significant Reduction in Force.”
The email was sent from the department’s chief human capital officer, and the agency did not immediately provide any comment.
—Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press writers Collin Binkley and Cal Woodward in Washington contributed to this report.
