DOGE chief Elon Musk teased Monday that federal workers may receive a second email asking them to list their weekly accomplishments – and that failure to respond to it will result in “termination.”
The Tesla and SpaceX founder’s warning came hours after the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) notified human resource bosses across multiple agencies that responses to emails sent Saturday –demanding a list of five bullet points detailing what federal workers achieved in the previous five working days — were “voluntary” and that failure to respond would not be taken as a resignation, as Musk had claimed.
“The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!” Musk wrote on X. “Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers.”
“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” he wrote in a separate post. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
The billionaire head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency argued the level of concern sparked by the initial DOGE demand was “absurd” and indicative that “something is deeply wrong” with the federal workforce.
Responses to the first batch of “what you accomplished” emails were due by 11:59 p.m. ET Monday.
Trump, 78, defended the Musk-directed effort hours before OPM’s new guidance circulated.
“I thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “What he’s doing is saying ‘Are you actually working?’”
An amended lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court over OPM’s push to fire probationary federal workers cited Musk’s email blast in its effort to reverse the mass terminations and claimed that the Trump administration has not followed any of the standard procedures for dismissing workers under the Administrative Procedure Act.
“OPM has not complied with any procedural requirements,” the amended lawsuit noted. “At least some federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, began telling their employees not to respond to this OPM surprise request.”
Musk tweeted that federal workers “hate even the tiniest amount of accountability,” in response to lawsuits over the emails.
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