Elon Musk stirred confusion among federal workers by demanding they summarize their weekly accomplishments, threatening job loss for non-compliance. This directive, aligned with President Trump’s encouragement for aggressive bureaucratic changes, rattled employees already burdened by recent layoffs. An email from the Office of Personnel Management furthered anxiety by mandating responses under a tight deadline. Reactions varied: some agency leaders supported Musk’s approach, while rank-and-file workers expressed distress over feeling “terrorized.” The American Federation of Government Employees condemned the move as disrespectful and potentially unlawful. Experts criticized Musk’s tactics, likening them to methods used during his Twitter takeover.
Elon Musk added to the confusion and concern among federal employees on Saturday by demanding they summarize their weekly accomplishments, cautioning that failure to comply would be interpreted as a resignation. Shortly after this directive, which he shared on X, civil servants throughout the government received an email from the Office of Personnel Management with the subject line, “What did you do last week?” The message hit inboxes across various agencies, unsettling workers already affected by recent layoffs, who were left unsure about how to respond to Mr. Musk’s ultimatum. His escalating pressure on the federal workforce followed encouragement from President Trump, who has been vocal about how the billionaire has disrupted the bureaucracy and urged him to be even “more aggressive” on Saturday.
In his post on X, Mr. Musk stated that employees who did not respond would be dismissed. However, this warning was not mentioned in the email itself. “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished this week and cc your manager,” read the message sent to federal employees on Saturday afternoon, which required responses by midnight on Monday.
The email was disseminated to workers across the government, including the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Personnel Management, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to copies obtained by The New York Times. Some agency leaders welcomed Mr. Musk’s actions. “DOGE and Elon are doing great work! Historic. We are happy to participate,” Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., and a Trump nominee for the permanent position, wrote in a note to his staff.
However, responses from rank-and-file employees varied significantly. A staff member at the National Institutes of Health, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation, expressed shock at the message, stating it left her feeling ill. Upon learning more context, she texted a colleague: “They’re terrorizing us.”
In reaction to Mr. Musk’s request, the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, announced it would contest any “unlawful” terminations. “Once again, Elon Musk and the Trump administration have demonstrated their utter disregard for federal employees and the crucial services they provide to the American people,” said Everett Kelley, the union’s president, in a statement. “It is cruel and disrespectful,” he continued, “to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are serving in the civil service to be compelled to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed a single hour of honest public service in his life.”
Experts suggested that the message was likely to face legal challenges. “There is zero basis in the civil service system for this,” remarked Sam Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget. “This is obviously designed to intimidate employees. Musk and DOGE and the Trump administration are consistently acting in ways that flout civil service rules, counting on courts not being able to catch up and clean up after them. They are banking on employees saying, ‘This is too much, I can’t keep doing this.’”
The request for employees to justify their output mirrored a tactic Mr. Musk employed to reduce the workforce at his social media company. He has frequently cited his 2022 acquisition of X, previously known as Twitter, as inspiration while he seeks to overhaul the federal government through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. With backing from the Trump administration, Mr. Musk has instigated layoffs across the federal government and effectively closed several agencies. “Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him be more aggressive,” Mr. Trump stated in a post on Truth Social on Saturday.
Mr. Musk promptly accepted the challenge. “All federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” he wrote in a social media post on Saturday, asserting that his actions were “consistent” with the president’s demands. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” he added. The White House did not immediately respond to a request regarding the email sent to federal workers or the implications for those who did not reply.
The Office of Personnel Management, which had previously sent Mr. Musk’s deferred resignation offer to employees under the subject line “Fork in the Road,” sidestepped the inquiry. “As part of the Trump administration’s commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce, O.P.M. is asking employees to provide a brief summary of what they did last week by the end of Monday, cc’ing their manager,” stated McLaurine Pinover, a spokeswoman for the agency on Saturday. “Agencies will determine any next steps.”
The demand left many employees reeling. The majority of the C.F.P.B.’s workforce had recently been put on leave as Mr. Musk significantly downsized the agency, leaving them with no work to report, according to a worker there. Allegations emerged from Mr. Musk’s allies in government suggesting the use of artificial intelligence to evaluate budget cuts, causing anxiety among employees at several agencies regarding how their responses might be appraised by A.I.
This strategy echoed one Mr. Musk employed with executives and employees at Twitter. In April 2022, as Mr. Musk was poised to join the board of the social media company, he clashed with Parag Agrawal, its then-CEO, over Mr. Musk’s public criticisms of the platform. When Mr. Agrawal requested that Mr. Musk refrain from making negative remarks, Mr. Musk texted, “What did you get done this week?” before informing Mr. Agrawal that he would buy Twitter outright. This exchange led to Mr. Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the company, finalized in October 2022. Mr. Musk claimed to have fired Mr. Agrawal immediately, though Mr. Agrawal disputed the circumstances of his departure and sued Mr. Musk for withholding severance payments.
Shortly after the acquisition, Mr. Musk instructed employees to print code they had recently written, intended to prove their productivity. When privacy concerns were raised by company executives, Mr. Musk directed employees to shred the printed code. On Saturday, Mr. Musk acknowledged the parallels. “Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired,” he stated in an X post regarding the message intended for federal workers.
Nicholas Nehamas, Maggie Haberman, Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Madeleine Ngo, Mattathias Schwartz, Matthew Goldstein, Erica L. Green, Eileen Sullivan, Margot Sanger-Katz, Edward Wong, Mark Walker, Kennedy Elliott, and Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.