Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Elon Musk has warned US government employees that they must disclose what they have been working on in the past week or face the sack.
The billionaire posted on Saturday that “consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.”
The de facto leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency added that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation”.
A memo sent shortly afterwards from the US government’s human resources department, which was summarised for the Financial Times by several people, orders government staff to respond with approximately five bullet points on what they have achieved by midnight on Monday.
It also exhorts employees not to send any classified material in their responses.
The move — which echoes the tactics used by Musk during his takeover of Twitter — came soon after a post by Donald Trump, in which he said the billionaire was “DOING A GREAT JOB, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE.”
Musk’s Doge has already ravaged key government departments, shredding hundreds of contracts and suspending tens of thousands of staff.
The Trump administration has faced some backlash for firing veterans and cyber security personnel, and was forced to rehire staff at the agency responsible for securing America’s nuclear weapons.
Doge also offered federal employees the chance to resign if they did not want to return to office full time, with the White House predicting that as many as 200,000 would accept. The scheme, which closed earlier this month, ultimately attracted 77,000 resignations.
On Friday, Donald Trump fired General CQ Brown as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff alongside five other top Pentagon officials. The defence department also plans to cut 5,400 probationary workers from next week.
Saturday’s email demand, which came from the government Office of Personnel Management, did not repeat Musk’s online threat of termination for failure to comply.
But Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said his organisation would “challenge any unlawful terminations of . . . federal employees”.
“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,” he said.
“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life.”
A spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management did not respond to a request for comment.
