WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday backed Elon Musk’s demand for federal employees to justify their work accomplishments by the end of Monday — or risk their own firing.
“What he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. “If people don’t respond, it’s very possible that there is no such person, or they aren’t working.”
Musk, who is overseeing efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to slash federal spending, revealed Saturday on X that every government worker would be getting an email asking “what they got done last week.”
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” he said, adding that DOGE cost-cutters “believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud.”
The Office of Personnel Management sent out the email, which read: “Please reply to this email with [approximately] 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”
The deadline to reply was Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
“If you don’t answer,” Trump hedged Monday, “you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist.”
The president also claimed that “hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud” had been uncovered by DOGE.
Federal unions, businesses, veterans and conservation organizations responded by filing an updated lawsuit against Musk, 53, accusing him of having violated the law with the mass firing threat.
Attorneys for the State Democracy Defenders Fund, which filed the amended lawsuit in San Francisco federal court on Monday called it “one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country.”
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly fired back in a statement: “In the time it took these employees on taxpayer-funded salaries to file a frivolous lawsuit, they could have briefly recapped their accomplishments to their managers, as is common in the private sector, 100 times over.”
Some agencies, however, instructed staff to disregard the message, including the Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Commerce and Energy as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI.
“The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures,” Patel responded in an email, according to the Associated Press. “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”
“Those who do not take this email seriously will soon be furthering their career elsewhere,” Musk posted early Monday on X, even after some department heads had given the OK for their employees to ignore it.
At least 65,000 federal employees have already left their posts in response to a separate buyout offer initiated by DOGE, as Musk and his team seek to overhaul and downsize the federal government.
More than 20,000 have also been fired or otherwise put on a track to be laid off at agencies.
The Post reached out to the Office of Personnel Management for comment.
