US government workers have been asked to list their accomplishments for the past week or resign as part of a new efficiency drive led by Elon Musk.

Announcing the measure on his social media network X this weekend, Musk said: “Consistent with President Donald Trump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly be receiving an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as resignation.”

As promised, shortly after, federal employees received a three-line email from the Office of Personnel Management with the instruction: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”

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Musk has been brought in by President Trump to run the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), which has already targeted government diversity and inclusion programmes. Government workers have also been asked to return to the office full-time.

The deadline to respond to the email is listed as 11.59pm, although the memo did not include Musk’s threat about notice of resignation for those who fail to respond.

A number of federal agencies including the FBI, the State Department and the Pentagon have already instructed employees not to comply with the demand.

At the Department of Health and Social Services, now led by Robert F Kennedy Jr, employees were instructed to comply by Kennedy shortly after acting general counsel Sean Keveney had instructed some of them not to.

Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’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.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025

According to reports by the Associated Press, Keveney has security and safeguarding concerns about employees detailing their work, and has received no assurances that there are appropriate protections in place.

Tibor Nagy, acting undersecretary for management at the State Department, told staff: “No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command.”

Republican senator John Curtis told CBS that he also had concerns around the severity of the measure: “These are real people. These are real lives. These are mortgages. … It’s a false narrative to say we have to cut and you have to be cruel to do it as well.”

The American Federation of Government Employees criticised the plans as “cruel and disrespectful” and vowed to challenge any “unlawful terminations” of federal employees.

Everett Kelley, president of the union, said: “Once again, Elon Musk and the Trump administration have shown their utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people.”

Musk claimed on X that the requirement is important because Doge believes “non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks”, but offered no evidence for this.

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) at the weekend, President Trump said: “We’re removing all of the unnecessary, incompetent and corrupt bureaucrats from the federal workforce.

“We want to make government smaller, more efficient. We want to keep the best people, and we’re not going to keep the worst people.”

 

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