Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has been dramatically cutting federal jobs over the past month, creating chaos and fear throughout the federal workforce, but meeting little official pushback. This weekend, however, the heads of other federal agencies seemed to take a stand against further worker cuts by instructing employees not to engage with Musk’s latest email demand.
On Saturday, approximately 2.3 million government workers received an email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which acts as the HR department for the federal workforce, with the subject line “What did you do last week?” The letter instructed employees to list five examples of what they had accomplished within that time frame, excluding classified information, by midnight on Monday. Musk posted on X that “failure to respond will be taken as resignation,” although the email itself made no such claim.
While previous moves from Musk and DOGE have been met with silence from top agency leadership, this case was different. The Department of Defense posted a statement on X Sunday defying the DOGE directive, stating that “when and if required, the Department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM.” Employees at the State Department were told that the department would be replying to the OPM email on their behalf, and that “no employee is encouraged to report their activities outside of their department chain of command.”
Newly appointed FBI director Kash Patel said in an email that the bureau “through the office of the director, is in charge of all our review processes.” Leaders at NASA have also instructed employees to hold off on responding to the OPM email, according to Bloomberg.
It's unclear if we're witnessing the beginning of the end when it comes to slowing down the mass culling of federal workers. But this is the first sign from the Trump-appointed heads of federal agencies that they've had enough, and the indiscriminate cuts aren't working for them anymore.
Saturday’s missive follows other drastic actions against federal workers, including an executive order demanding all federal employees return to the office five days a week, a deferred resignation offer, and the mass firing of probationary federal employees—recent hires to the agency or long-serving employees who recently took on a new position. Around 220,000 federal employees in total had less than a year of service completed as of March 2024, according to government data.
The weekend OPM email, in addition to the firings of probationary workers, has already triggered legal action from a coalition of unions, small business, veterans, and conservation groups. An initial complaint against DOGE and the Trump administration was amended on Feb. 23 to include the latest email demanding that workers list their accomplishments.
