March 1 (UPI) — Federal employees received a second email from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management asking them to list their accomplishments in the past week.
Late Friday night, they were told to list five bullet points about what they did.
Elon Musk speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday. Photo by Al Drago/UPI | License Photo
The message also said: “Going forward, please complete the above task each week by Mondays at 11:59pm ET.”
This time, the email said: “Please do not send links, attachments, or any classified/sensitive information. If all of your activities are classified or sensitive, please write ‘All of my activities are sensitive.'”
Roughly 1 million of the 2.25 million federal workers responded to the first email.
“I’m just sort of numb to it by now,” an employee of the National Institutes of Health who was granted anonymity because of fears of retaliation told Politico. “It’s been like one long funeral and it never lets up.”
A coalition of labor unions and civic organizations in a lawsuit allege that the first “What did you do last week?” email, sent last weekend, violates federal law.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup found that the Office of Personnel Management likely violated the law by failing to comply with notice and comment rulemaking in issuing memos. The judge also found agencies improperly fired probationary employees. Alsup was appointed by President Bill Clinton.
In a privacy assessment first published Feb. 5 in response to the lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s implementation of the email system, OPM said responding to any mass email was “explicitly voluntary.”
On Friday, OPM updated its privacy assessment to say federal employees could decline to respond, but that “the consequences for failure to provide the requested information will vary depending on the particular email at issue.”
Elon Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency, said they are “pulse check” as the Trump administration seeks to dismiss thousands of workers.
Musk, the world’s richest person with an estimated net worth of $359.4 billion, according to Forbes, said workers face dismissal if they do not respond.
The average federal worker salary was about $106,000 in 2024, PBS Newshour reported.
Trump weighed in on the matter at a press conference on Wednesday.
“You’ve got a lot of people who have not responded,” he said. “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.”
Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, an unclosed number of probationary employees have been dismissed and about 75,000 veteran workers have accepted buyouts.
About 220,000 federal employees had less than a year on the job as of March 2024, according to government data maintained by OPM. Some of these positions have been exempted, and others who were terminated have since had the notice rescinded.
Civil service workers, as opposed to political ones, have certain job protections.