Federal Workers Face Ultimatum from Trump's Administration: Document Results or Resign

The Trump administration, backed by Elon Musk, has sent a shocking email to federal workers requesting they detail their weekly accomplishments or face termination. This development follows Musk's influence in government spending cuts and has drawn criticism from labor unions.

Federal workers received an email on Saturday afternoon asking them to list their accomplishments from the past week or resign - the latest development in the Trump administration's efforts targeting the federal workforce. The emails came after billionaire and Trump confidante Elon Musk tweeted that workers would "shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week". "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation," he wrote.

Musk has been leading an outside effort to aggressively curtail government spending through funding cuts and firings. The email arrived in inboxes shortly after Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac). The messages came with the subject line "What did you do last week?" from a sender listed as HR. In a copy of the email obtained by the BBC, employees were asked to explain their accomplishments from the past week in five bullet points - without disclosing classified information - before Monday at midnight. The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government's human resources agency, confirmed the emails were authentic in a statement to CBS, the BBC's US news partner.

"As part of the Trump Administration's commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce, OPM is asking employees to provide a brief summary of what they did last week by the end of Monday, CC'ing their manager. Agencies will determine any next steps," the statement read.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal employees, criticized the message as "cruel and disrespectful" and vowed to challenge any "unlawful terminations" of federal employees. "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," Everett Kelley, union president, said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, Trump touted cuts and told a crowd of supporters at Cpac that the work of federal employees was inadequate because they did not come into the office. The Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) is not an official government department, but Musk's team has enacted wide-ranging changes to the US federal infrastructure with approval from the White House.

Thousands of government employees at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Pentagon, and the Federal Aviation Administration, as well as other agencies, have been fired in recent weeks. The email mirrors Musk's handling of employees after he acquired the social media platform Twitter in 2022. As the staff there shrunk under his ownership, he issued ultimatums that included a now-infamous request to commit to being "extremely hardcore" at work or resign. Trump has repeatedly applauded Musk's cost-cutting measures. In a Truth Social post, Trump said that Musk is doing a "great job" in reducing the size of the federal government and that he would like to see him "get more aggressive" in the pursuit.