US government workers received an email on Saturday afternoon asking them to list their achievements from last week or resign-the latest development of the Trump administration to reduce the federal workforce.
The email came after the billionaire of Trump, the Confident Elon Musk, published on X that the employees “would briefly receive an email asking to understand what they did last week”.
“The lack of response will be considered a resignation,” he wrote.
Musk, as head of the so-called Ministry of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), has led an external effort to aggressively reduce public spending thanks to funding and layoffs.
The email arrived in reception boxes shortly after Trump spoke at the conservative political action conference (CPAC). The messages came with the object line “What did you do last week?” from a sender listed like HR.
The Personnel Management Office (OPM), the Federal Government Human Resources Agency, confirmed that electronic mail was authentic in a press release at CBS, the BBC news partner.
“As part of the Trump administration’s commitment to an efficient and responsible federal workforce, OPM asks employees to provide a brief summary of what they did last week by the end of Looking for their manager on Monday, “he said. “The agencies will determine all the next steps.”
In a copy of the email obtained by the BBC, the employees were invited to explain their achievements last week in five chips – without disclosing classified information – before midnight on Monday.
The message did not mention if a lack of response would be considered a resignation.
The American Federation of Government employees, the largest union representing federal employees, criticized the message as “cruel and disrespectful” and promised to challenge the “illegal dismissals” of federal employees.
“Once again, Elon Musk and the Trump administration have shown their total disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people,” said Everett Kelley, president of the Union, in a statement.
On Sunday morning, Musk wrote on its X social media platform that “a large number of responses have already been received”, adding: “These are the people who should be considered for the promotion”.
The director of the newly confirmed FBI, Kash Patel, told his employees in an email that they should “suspend any response” to the MEMO of the OPM.
“FBI staff may have received an OPM email asking for information,” Patel wrote in a message obtained by CBS News. “The FBI, through the director’s office, is in charge of all our examination processes and will carry out examinations in accordance with the FBI procedures.”
Earlier in the day, Trump praised cuts and said to a host of CPAC supporters that the work of federal employees had been inadequate because some of them operate at least part of the time.
“We delete all unnecessary, incompetent and corrupt bureaucrats of the federal workforce,” the president told the crowd at the annual conference in the suburbs of Washington on Saturday afternoon.
“We want to make the government smaller, more effective,” he added. “We want to keep the best people, and we are not going to keep the worst people.”
The Elon Musk team has made many changes to the American federal infrastructure by DOGE and with the approval of the White House.
Thousands of employees of the government of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), as well as other agencies, have been dismissed in recent weeks.
E-mail reflects the treatment of employees by Musk after acquiring the Twitter social media platform, now called X, in 2022. While the staff shrinking, he published ultimatums which included a now infamous request ‘Engage to be “extremely hardcore” at working or resigning.
Trump has repeatedly applauded the Musk government’s cup measures.
In a social article of truth, Trump said that Musk was doing an “excellent job” to reduce the size of the federal government and that he would like to see it “become more aggressive” in the pursuit.
