On Saturday afternoon, billionaire Elon Musk emailed US government workers to ask that they list what they achieved last week.
He wrote: “Failure to respond will be taken as resignation.”
Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been attempting to reduce government spending by cutting down on funding and staff numbers.
On Sunday, he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “a large number of responses have been received already” and that the respondents “should be considered for promotion.”
He said: “A significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all.”
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said that the request demonstrates “the Trump administration’s commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce.”
However, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) called the message “cruel and disrespectful,” describing Musk as an “out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life.”
Trump has praised Musk’s plans: “We want to make the government smaller, more efficient. We want to keep the best people, and we’re not going to keep the worst people.”
Thousands of government employees working for the Pentagon, IRS, and FAA, among other agencies, have recently been dismissed from their roles.
Trump has said he would like to see Musk “get more aggressive” in reducing the number of government employees.
“Elon Musk – Caricature” by DonkeyHotey is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.