US authorities staff acquired an e mail on Saturday afternoon asking them to record their accomplishments from the previous week or resign – the most recent growth within the Trump administration’s efforts to cut back the federal workforce.
The e-mail got here after Trump’s billionaire confidante Elon Musk posted on X that staff would “shortly obtain an e mail requesting to grasp what they acquired executed final week”.
“Failure to reply shall be taken as a resignation,” he wrote.
Musk, as the pinnacle of the so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity (Doge), has been main an out of doors effort to aggressively curtail authorities spending by way of funding cuts and firings.
The e-mail arrived in inboxes shortly after Trump spoke on the Conservative Political Motion Convention (Cpac). The messages got here with the topic line “What did you do final week?” from a sender listed as HR.
The Workplace of Personnel Administration (OPM), the federal authorities’s human assets company, confirmed the e-mail was genuine in a press release to CBS, the BBC’s US information accomplice.
“As a part of the Trump administration’s dedication to an environment friendly and accountable federal workforce, OPM is asking staff to offer a quick abstract of what they did final week by the tip of Monday, CC’ing their supervisor,” it mentioned. “Companies will decide any subsequent steps.”
In a duplicate of the e-mail obtained by the BBC, staff had been requested to elucidate their accomplishments from the previous week in 5 bullet factors – with out disclosing categorized data – earlier than midnight on Monday.
The message didn’t point out whether or not a failure to reply can be thought-about a resignation.
The American Federation of Authorities Staff, the most important union representing federal staff, criticised the message as “merciless and disrespectful” and vowed to problem any “illegal terminations” of federal staff.
“As soon as once more, Elon Musk and the Trump Administration have proven their utter disdain for federal staff and the essential providers they supply to the American folks,” Everett Kelley, union president, mentioned in a press release.
On Sunday morning, Musk wrote on his social media platform X that “numerous responses have been acquired already”, including: “These are the individuals who ought to be thought-about for promotion.”
Newly-confirmed FBI director Kash Patel advised his staff in an e mail that they need to “pause any responses” to the OPM memo.
“FBI personnel might have acquired an e mail from OPM requesting data,” Patel wrote in a message obtained by CBS Information. “The FBI, by way of the Workplace of the Director, is answerable for all of our evaluate processes, and can conduct critiques in accordance with the FBI procedures.”
Earlier within the day, Trump touted cuts and advised a crowd of supporters at Cpac that the work of federal staff had been insufficient as a result of a few of them work remotely a minimum of a few of the time.
“We’re eradicating all the pointless, incompetent and corrupt bureaucrats from the federal workforce,” the president advised the group on the annual convention in suburban Washington on Saturday afternoon.
“We wish to make authorities smaller, extra environment friendly,” he added. “We wish to maintain the perfect folks, and we’re not going to maintain the worst folks.”
Elon Musk’s staff has exacted wide-ranging adjustments to the US federal infrastructure by way of Doge and with approval from the White Home.
1000’s of presidency staff on the Inside Income Service (IRS), the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in addition to different companies, have been fired in current weeks.
The e-mail mirrors Musk’s dealing with of staff after he acquired social media platform Twitter, now known as X, in 2022. Because the employees there shrunk beneath his possession, he issued ultimatums that included a now-infamous request to decide to being “extraordinarily hardcore” at work or resign.
Trump has repeatedly applauded Musk’s government-cutting measures.
In a Reality Social put up, Trump mentioned that Musk is doing a “nice job” in lowering the scale of the federal authorities and that he want to see him “get extra aggressive” within the pursuit.
