Elon Musk, the billionaire head of the Trump administration’s Division of Authorities Effectivity, threatened on Saturday to fireplace any federal employee who fails to clarify what work they’ve achieved throughout the earlier week.
The menace, issued in a put up on Musk’s social media web site X, was made simply hours after U.S. President Donald Trump posted on his personal social media community Reality Social that DOGE ought to get extra aggressive in its makes an attempt to downsize and reshape the federal workforce.
“All federal workers will shortly obtain an e-mail requesting to know what they obtained carried out final week,” Musk posted on X, previously Twitter. “Failure to reply might be taken as a resignation.”
As of Saturday night, emails had been despatched to workers at federal companies, together with the Client Monetary Safety Bureau, the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, with the topic line “What did you do final week?”
The e-mail, seen by Reuters, asks workers to answer to the e-mail they’ve obtained with 5 bullet factors summarizing “what you achieved at work final week” and replica their managers.
The e-mail provides workers till 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday to reply.
The U.S. federal authorities purge led by Elon Musk and his Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) has allegedly saved $55 billion largely by slicing jobs and contracts. Some authorities staff have resigned in protest over the restructuring strikes and Musk’s entry to delicate information.
It’s unclear what authorized foundation Musk has to terminate federal staff in the event that they fail to reply to his request, which comes amid the Trump administration’s fast-paced and controversial course of to cut back authorities spending by shrinking the federal workforce.
The method, led by Musk and his younger aides on the cost-cutting DOGE, has led to haphazard firings that resulted in quite a few errors and compelled a number of companies to shortly rehire very important workers, corresponding to these engaged on nuclear security, defence and energy era.
The primary wave of job cuts has focused staff who’re simpler to fireplace, corresponding to “probationary” workers on the job for lower than two years or those that have began new roles inside an company.
The indiscriminate firings have led to DOGE terminating individuals whose jobs usually are not funded by taxpayers and have begun to anger individuals throughout the nation who’re involved a couple of lack of providers, in addition to the influence of federal job losses on native economies.
Trump has repeatedly talked about Musk because the purposeful chief of DOGE, which isn’t a cabinet-level division, however the White Home mentioned in a court docket submitting earlier this month that Musk had no authority over DOGE and was not an worker of this system.
