On Monday, President Donald Trump endorsed the email announced by Elon Musk that told federal employees to list five examples of what they accomplished in the past week.
“I thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “So by asking the question, ‘Tell us what you did this week,’ what he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’ And then if you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired.”
Trump went on to say that “a lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist.” He also seemed to take a swipe at former President Joe Biden’s administration, saying, “That’s how badly various parts of our government were run, especially by this last group.”
Musk, who is overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort under Trump, announced on Saturday that an email would be sent out to federal workers.
President Trump on DOGE emails: “I thought it was great…by asking the question, ‘tell us what you did this week’ what he’s doing is saying ‘are you actually working?’ and then if you don’t answer, like you’re sorta semi-fired or you’re fired…” pic.twitter.com/PD2TLlzPNL
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 24, 2025
“Consistent with President [Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk declared in a post to his social media platform, X. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent the email with the subject line, “What did you do last week?” It requested employees reply with a list of roughly five accomplishments and carbon-copy their managers. A deadline of Monday at 11:59 EST was given.
“What they’re doing is they’re trying to find out who’s working for the government. Are we paying other people that aren’t working? Where is all that money going? We have found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud so far, and we’ve just started,” Trump said, adding later, “There was a lot of genius in sending it. We’re trying to find out if people are working and so we’re sending a letter to people: ‘Please tell us what you did last week.’ If people don’t respond it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working.”
Some agencies, including the FBI and State Department, instructed their personnel to ignore the email, noting they have their own procedures. But Trump insisted that these orders were “done in a friendly manner” and acknowledged that “confidential things” had to be considered.
“They don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon,” Trump said. “They’re just saying there are some people that you don’t really have them tell you what they’re working on last week. But other than that, I think everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea.”
He added: “We have to find out where these people are. Who are they? And we said, ‘If you don’t respond, we assume you’re not around, and you’re not getting paid anymore, too.'”