US government employees received an email on Saturday afternoon, in which they were asked to list their achievements or resign from last week – the latest development in the efforts of the Trump administration targeting the federal workforce.
The tweet by billionaire Trump confidant Elon Musk, in which he stated that workers would “shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” preceded the sending of the email.He wrote, “Failure to answer will be taken as resignation.” Musk has led an external effort to make funding and firing employees aggressively cut to reduce government spending. Trump came into an email inbox shortly after talking at the Orthodox political action conference (CPAC).Read about the message, “What did you do last week?” from a sender listed as HR.
The Federal Government’s Human Resource Agency, Personnel Management Office, and Experssepaper American news partner CBS confirmed in a statement that the email was authentic.
“OPM employees are asked to provide a summary of what was done last week by the end of Monday as part of the commitment of the Trump administration. to an efficient and accountable federal workforce. The next steps will be determined by the agencies.” The BBC was able to obtain a copy of the email and found that it asked employees to summarise their week’s accomplishments in five bullet points by Monday midnight, without disclosing any classified information. It was not stated in the message whether the failure to respond would constitute resignation. The largest union, representing the American Federation of Government Employees and federal employees, criticised the message as “cruel and derogatory” and vowed to challenge any “illegal termination” of federal employees.
In a statement, union president Everett Kelly said, “Once again, Elon Musk and the Trump administration have shown their complete contempt for federal employees and important services. provided to the American people.” In an email, newly confirmed FBI director Kash Patel instructed his employees to “pause any responses” to the OPM memo.Patel wrote in a message received by Experssepaper, “FBI personnel may have received an email from OPM.” “The FBI is in charge of all our review processes through the director’s office, and we will do the review according to the FBI procedures.” Earlier in the day, Trump cut and told the crowd of supporters at CPAC that the work of federal employees was inadequate, as some of them work at least some time away.
The president told the crowd at the annual conference in suburban Washington on Saturday afternoon, “We are removing all unnecessary, disabled and corrupt bureaucrats from the federal workforce.”
“We want to make the government small, more efficient,” he said. “We’re not going to keep the worst people; we want to keep the best people.” Through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), Elon Musk’s team has imposed extensive changes on the US federal infrastructure with approval from the White House. In the past few weeks, thousands of government workers at the Pentagon, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and other agencies have been let go. The email reflects Musk’s interactions with employees following his acquisition of Twitter in 2022.As the employees shrank under his ownership, he issued an ultimatum, which also included a well-known request to be “extremely staunch” to work or resign.
Musk’s efforts to reduce government spending have been repeatedly praised by Trump. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that Musk is doing a “great job” of shrinking the federal government and that he would like to see him “get more aggressive” in his pursuit of this goal.
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Elon Musk Donald Trump United States