Federal workers began receiving Friday night emails asking them to provide this week’s list of achievements, a request from Elon Musk that spread fear and chaos in the administration a few days ago.
Workers in various departments received emails from the Office of Personnel Management, including defense, labor and agriculture, according to a copy of the New York Times email.
The email titled “What did you do last week? Part Two. The explosion happened shortly after Mr. Musk's, when President Trump appointed the role of narrowing the federal workforce.
The message sent to workers Friday similarly instructed them to send about five bullets, describing their achievements this week. It also said that looking forward, employees are expected to complete tasks weekly by 11:59 PM ET.
There are some differences from the first email. This time, only employees who only engage in confidential or sensitive activities are instructed to write “all my activities are sensitive”.
Although Mr. Musk said he was acting for Mr. Trump’s encouragement, the original directive sowed chaos and led to massive chaos throughout the federal government.
In some cases, federal employees cannot access their government emails when they are not working. Some managers direct employees to respond, while others tell them not to. Privately, some agency leaders fear that complying with Mr. Musk’s orders could lead employees to reveal national security secrets and other sensitive information. By Monday afternoon, the Office of Personnel Management notified the agency that they did not have to ask employees to reply to the original email, asking for details of their work week.
Recent legal challenges have tested the power limitations of the Office of Personnel Management (Government Human Resources Department), which wields a federal civilian workforce of about 2.3 million people. On Thursday night, a federal judge ruled that the agency issued a memorandum outlining the steps to fire most federal workers on probation.
“Congress has authorized the employment and fire,” said Judge William Alsup of the Northern California region. “Under any regulations in the history of the universe, the Office of Personnel Management has no authority to hire and fire employees within another agency.”
Earlier this week, Mr. Musk explained why he wanted federal employees to fulfill orders detailing their work.
“What we're trying to get to the bottom is that we think government wagers are dead, which is probably why they can't respond,” Musk said at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “So we just want to figure out that these people are real, they're still alive and can write an email, which I think is a reasonable expectation.”
Greg Jaffe,,,,, Nicholas Nehamas and Zach Montague Contribution report.
