- Federal workers were told to send a list of accomplishments by midnight on Monday or lose their jobs.
- However, some federal agencies are telling their employees not to respond.
- President Donald Trump and Elon Musk appear intent on moving forward with the request.
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk want federal workers to report a list of their achievements over the last week, but some federal agencies are telling their employees not to do that.
On Saturday, the Office of Personnel Management sent an email to federal workers asking them to send an “email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week” by Monday 11:59 p.m. ET.
Musk wrote in an X post on Saturday that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
At least eight federal agencies have told their employees that they did not have to respond to the OPM’s email.
Trump and Musk, however, seem intent on moving forward with the request.
What Trump is saying
“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,” Trump said of the email and Musk during a press conference on Monday.
“So by asking the question, ‘Tell us what you did this week,’ what he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’ And then, if you don’t answer, you are sort of semi-fired, or you’re fired,” Trump added.
When asked about the differing guidance agencies gave on the request, Trump said that had been “done in a friendly manner” and that they weren’t running counter to Musk’s actions.
“Only things such as perhaps, Marco at State Department, where they have very confidential things, or the FBI where they are working on confidential things. They don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon,” Trump said.
“They are just saying that there are some people that you don’t want to really have them tell you what they are working on last week. But other than that, I think everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea,” Trump added.
The email to federal workers appears to be a response to Trump’s Truth Social post on Saturday, in which he praised Musk’s work with DOGE but said he would like to see Musk “get more aggressive.”
Musk’s latest comments on the DOGE ask
On Monday, Musk wrote in an X post that federal workers who have yet to respond to the request “will be given another chance.”
“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination,” Musk wrote.
Musk has also made several comments about the initiative on X, saying on Sunday that the email was meant to be a “basic” ask for government employees.
In a Monday morning X post responding to Garry Tan, the president and CEO of Y Combinator, Musk said the DOGE request was “basically a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email.”
“This mess will get sorted out this week,” Musk wrote. “Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality. They don’t get it yet, but they will.”
Later, on Monday night, Musk wrote that he thought the request was “utterly trivial” and that the “standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send.”
“Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers,” Musk wrote, adding that he thought such “incompetence” made “old Twitter look good.”
The request echoes one that Musk made to employees at X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Shortly after he bought the social network in October 2022, Musk asked software engineers to print out their latest code for review.
Representatives for the White House and DOGE did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Guidance varies across departments
There are already at least 8 agencies that have told workers that they don’t have to respond to DOGE’s email yet. These include the Department of Defense, the Social Security Administration, NASA, the Department of Justice, the Department of Agriculture, the State Department, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Health and Human Services.
It is unclear how the White House plans to square this with DOGE since the agencies’ guidance contradicts the OPM email deadline.
According to emails seen by Business Insider, some departments have told workers that responses about productivity and accomplishments will be handled by the agencies, not staff.
Meanwhile, other government departments have told employees that they can respond to OPM if they wish, but not responding will not incur penalties.
On Sunday, the Department of Defense posted on X that employees should “pause any response” to the DOGE email.
“The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” the statement read.
There have been conflicting communications from some government departments, which first told staff to respond to the OPM email before reversing course.
For instance, the Social Security Administration told employees on Sunday that the OPM email is a “legitimate assignment.” The agency then told employees on Monday afternoon that responding is “voluntary.”
“Non-responses are not considered a resignation,” the agency’s email to employees read.
This turmoil comes at the end of a chaotic few weeks for government employees, as Musk’s DOGE proposed broad head count cuts across government agencies.
Thousands of federal workers have been fired. Some of these workers received termination notices saying that the job cuts were based on performance, per documents BI viewed.
