The Office of Personnel Management has sent an email to federal employees asking what they did in the past week.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, an adviser to President Donald Trump who is involved in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), wrote on social media that if federal workers do not reply to the email, it will be seen as a resignation.
“All federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk wrote on X Saturday. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Musk said the email was partly a test, since “a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!”
He also noted that some of the responses were impressive, and that those employees deserve promotions.
An administration official told The Epoch Times that it’s up to each agency to determine whether a response to the email is mandatory or not.
Some agencies have asked employees to comply, while others, like the FBI and State Department told them to hold off for a bit and await further guidance.
The email follows a comment from Trump saying DOGE is doing a good job, but he wants it to be “more aggressive.”
“I thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows that they work for the government,” the president said.
The email was not well-received by everyone.
“This is a clear attempt to force the departure of civil servants who resoundingly refused to take the bait on the scam ‘deferred resignation’ offer,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) wrote on X.
That offer, which ended on Feb. 12, allowed employees to resign in exchange for full pay and benefits until Sept. 30.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) also decried the move.
“[Musk] has no legal authority to make his latest demands,” he said in a statement.
“We will block him in Congress and in the courts. Again.”
The American Federation of Government Employees and other labor groups say that OPM did not inform employees that their jobs depended on a response to the email, violating the Administrative Procedure Act.
They are asking a court in San Francisco to declare the email unlawful, and to block the government from firing any more “probationary” employees.
—Zachary Stieber, Jack Phillips, Mark Tapscott, Stacy Robinson
BOOKMARKS
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden refused on Feb. 24 to force Donald Trump’s administration to restore the Associated Press’ spot in the exclusive White House press pool. The outlet was banned from the 13-member group after it refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, despite a Trump executive order that changed its name on Jan. 20.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams says the city will close a shelter for illegal immigrants at the Roosevelt Hotel. The hotel had housed around 173,000 illegals since 2023.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is launching a local version of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), in a plan to downsize his state’s government. The agency will “implement a multi-pronged approach to eliminating bureaucratic bloat and modernizing our state government to best serve the people of Florida in the years ahead,” DeSantis said.
Infectious Diseases Society of America President Tina Tan is raising concerns after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that it is postponing an upcoming vaccine advisory meeting. Tan says the move, which comes shortly after Robert F. Kennedy’s confirmation as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, “delays vital discussions and needed decisions on a variety of vaccines.”
Trump announced on Feb. 24 that he is negotiating an economic deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as he is in talks with that nation over a cease-fire in its war with Ukraine. Trump said he hopes to end the war within weeks “if we’re smart,” but “if we’re not smart, it‘ll keep going, and we’ll keep losing young, beautiful people that shouldn’t be dying, and we don’t want that.”
—Stacy Robinson
