The Donald Trump administration has sent a stern warning to United States federal government employees, demanding they detail their work accomplishments from the previous week by Monday night or risk losing their jobs.
This directive comes via email, sent on Saturday evening, and is backed by Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, who stated on social media platform X that failure to respond would be viewed as a resignation.
Musk’s post was preceded by President Donald Trump’s own social media post, urging more aggressive efforts to downsize and reshape the federal workforce.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk tweeted on Saturday.
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
“A large number of good responses have been received already. These are the people who should be considered for promotion,” Musk said in another X post on Sunday.
The emails sent to employees across various federal agencies, according to Reuters, included the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, request a five-point summary of accomplishments from the previous week, with a deadline of 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday.
However, questions remain about the legal basis for terminating federal workers who fail to respond to this request, as well as the implications for employees handling confidential work.
Meanwhile, the email asks employees to reply with five bullet points summarizing “what you accomplished at work last week,” and to copy their managers.
Reuters reports that some federal judiciary employees received the email on Saturday from OPM, even though the court system is not part of the executive branch, people familiar with the matter said. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the judiciary’s administrative arm, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also received the email, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
However, most agency staff had been ordered not to perform any tasks since early this month, creating a conundrum. The agency is also under temporary court order not to resume mass firings pending the outcome of legal proceedings.
A spokesperson for DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The AFGE, the union representing federal employees, said in a statement it will challenge any “unlawful terminations.”
“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,” said Everett Kelley, the AFGE’s president.
The Trump administration’s fast-paced and controversial process to reduce government spending by shrinking the federal workforce spearheaded by Musk and his young aides at the cost-cutting DOGE has led to haphazard firings that resulted in numerous mistakes and forced several agencies to quickly rehire vital employees, such as those working on nuclear safety, defense and power generation.
The first wave of job cuts has targeted workers who are easier to fire, such as probationary employees on the job for less than two years or those who have started new roles within an agency.
The indiscriminate firings have led to DOGE terminating people whose jobs are not funded by taxpayers and have begun to anger people across the country who are concerned about a loss of services and the impact of federal job losses on local economies.
Trump has repeatedly talked about Musk as the functional leader of DOGE, which is not a cabinet-level department, but the White House said in a court filing this month that Musk had no authority over DOGE and was not an employee of the program.
Some federal agencies sent follow-up emails to employees advising staff not to respond to the email over the weekend as they assess its validity and devise a protocol for responding to the message.
“To be clear, this is irregular, unexpected and warrants further validation by management,” said one email sent to NOAA employees and seen by Reuters.
