Elon Musk has ordered all federal employees to submit a report on their accomplishments for the previous week. Employees may lose their job if they fail to submit a detailed accounting of their work week.
Elon Musk’s Directive to Federal Employees
Billionaire Elon Musk, who serves as an advisor to US President Donald Trump, has announced that all federal employees submit a report detailing their accomplishments from the previous week by Monday, February 24, 2025.He said that all US federal employees may lose their job if they fail to submit a detailed accounting of their work week.
Musk, who has been tasked with the responsibility of helping to reduce US government spending and waste, took to X to announce the new arrangement.
“Consistent with the President’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk said in a post on X.
Elon Musk has issued a directive requiring U.S. federal employees to report their work from the previous week by Monday. The email, with the subject line “What did you do last week?”, asks employees to reply to the email with five bullet points and copy their managers, with a submission deadline of 11:59 p.m.
The emails, sent from the Office of Personnel Management, were distributed to agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
It is unclear what legal basis Musk would have to fire federal workers if they fail to respond to his request.
Some federal Justice Department employees received the email from OPM on Saturday, people familiar with the matter said. Most agency employees had been ordered to stay off work since the beginning of this month, causing a dilemma. The agency is under a temporary court order not to resume mass shootings pending the outcome of legal proceedings.
Union Vows Legal Action
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union representing federal workers, condemned the order and vowed to fight any unlawful layoffs.
“Once again, Elon Musk and the Trump administration have demonstrated their utter contempt for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelly.
The Trump administration’s fast-paced and controversial process to reduce government spending by shrinking the federal workforce, led by Musk and his young associates at DOGE, has resulted in random firings that have led to numerous mistakes and forced several agencies to quickly rehire critical employees, such as those working in nuclear safety, defense, and power generation.
The first wave of layoffs has targeted workers who are easy to fire, such as probationary employees who have been on the job for less than two years or those who have started new roles within an agency.
The indiscriminate firings have led DOGE to fire people whose jobs are not funded by taxpayers and have sparked outrage across the country from people concerned about the loss of services and the impact of federal job losses on local economies.