Federal employees instructed anew to defend their roles to DOGE
The late-night email heightened anxiety levels among public-sector employees.
TroibNews 
Federal workers are once again being asked to justify their roles to the Department of Government Efficiency, which is overseen by billionaire Elon Musk.
Employees from various sectors of the government, who have recently faced significant layoffs initiated by DOGE, received emails late Friday with a concerning subject line: “What did you do last week? Part II.”
The communications from the Office of Personnel Management reached individuals across multiple government agencies, including the State Department, the Energy Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the IRS, the National Institutes of Health, and the Veterans Administration.
Neither the White House nor the OPM provided an immediate response.
The OPM email, which arrived four hours after the end of the business day, requested employees to submit “approx. 5 bullets describing what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” according to a letter obtained by PMG.
“Going forward,” the email stated, “please complete the above task each week by Mondays at 11:59pmET.”
This development has added to the anxiety felt by government employees, as they had already received a similar round of emails the previous week as part of a larger initiative led by Musk aimed at significantly reducing the federal workforce, with backing from President Donald Trump.
“I’m just sort of numb to it by now,” expressed an employee from the National Institutes of Health who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about retaliation. “It’s been like one long funeral and it never lets up.”
Workers had encountered a similar email last week, but the FBI and other national security agencies instructed their staff not to reply. Musk has characterized these emails as a “pulse check” on public employees amid his DOGE initiative, which aims to lay off thousands of workers in light of ongoing legal challenges.
Despite Musk's wealth from government contracts, he has warned that employees face job loss if they do not comply with the requests.
Although the latest emails do not explicitly threaten termination, OPM adjusted its privacy policies to specify that responding is voluntary.
Nonetheless, Musk and Trump have made previous remarks suggesting federal workers could be fired for not engaging with these requests.
“You’ve got a lot of people who have not responded,” the president mentioned during a press conference with his cabinet on Wednesday. “So we’re trying to figure out, do they exist, who are they, and it’s possible that a lot of people will be actually fired.”
This report was contributed to by Nahal Toosi, Dasha Burns, Zack Colman, Josh Gerstein, and Paul McLeary.
Camille Lefevre for TROIB News
Employees from various sectors of the government, who have recently faced significant layoffs initiated by DOGE, received emails late Friday with a concerning subject line: “What did you do last week? Part II.”
The communications from the Office of Personnel Management reached individuals across multiple government agencies, including the State Department, the Energy Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the IRS, the National Institutes of Health, and the Veterans Administration.
Neither the White House nor the OPM provided an immediate response.
The OPM email, which arrived four hours after the end of the business day, requested employees to submit “approx. 5 bullets describing what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” according to a letter obtained by PMG.
“Going forward,” the email stated, “please complete the above task each week by Mondays at 11:59pmET.”
This development has added to the anxiety felt by government employees, as they had already received a similar round of emails the previous week as part of a larger initiative led by Musk aimed at significantly reducing the federal workforce, with backing from President Donald Trump.
“I’m just sort of numb to it by now,” expressed an employee from the National Institutes of Health who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about retaliation. “It’s been like one long funeral and it never lets up.”
Workers had encountered a similar email last week, but the FBI and other national security agencies instructed their staff not to reply. Musk has characterized these emails as a “pulse check” on public employees amid his DOGE initiative, which aims to lay off thousands of workers in light of ongoing legal challenges.
Despite Musk's wealth from government contracts, he has warned that employees face job loss if they do not comply with the requests.
Although the latest emails do not explicitly threaten termination, OPM adjusted its privacy policies to specify that responding is voluntary.
Nonetheless, Musk and Trump have made previous remarks suggesting federal workers could be fired for not engaging with these requests.
“You’ve got a lot of people who have not responded,” the president mentioned during a press conference with his cabinet on Wednesday. “So we’re trying to figure out, do they exist, who are they, and it’s possible that a lot of people will be actually fired.”
This report was contributed to by Nahal Toosi, Dasha Burns, Zack Colman, Josh Gerstein, and Paul McLeary.
Camille Lefevre for TROIB News
