By Brian Schwartz, Lindsay Ellis and Scott Patterson
WASHINGTON—Millions of federal employees are heading into their workweek caught between differing factions of the Trump administration, with Elon Musk giving them a Monday night deadline to explain their productivity or risk losing their jobs while some senior officials told workers to ignore the directive.
The effort marked an escalation of the Trump administration’s push to scale back the scope of government, with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, exerting growing pressure on the 2.3 million employees in the federal workforce. DOGE has pressured federal employees to quit, and the administration has fired thousands of newly hired workers, often without providing specific reasons for their dismissal.
Musk over the weekend, in a post on X, said that “all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The email, which asked “What did you do last week?” in the subject line, told federal workers to respond by 11:59 p.m. Monday with a list of “5 bullets of what you accomplished last week.” The note didn’t say that nonresponses would be considered resignations.
Musk’s moves have rattled career government employees for weeks, but the Saturday email appeared to prompt the most push back so far by other top administration officials. Perhaps most prominently, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel told employees to “pause any response” to Musk’s note.
Some officials across the government including at the State, Justice and Health and Human Services departments sent similar emails to their teams, according to people familiar with the matter and messages viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Musk’s plan came together in a matter of hours on Saturday, according to people familiar with the matter. Early in the day, President Trump posted on social media that he wanted the Tesla chief executive to “get more aggressive” with his role. In response, Musk and his team at DOGE jumped into high gear to implement the what-did-you-do-last-week email, the people said. Musk’s effort mirrored a similar pressure campaign on Twitter employees after he purchased the social-media company in 2022 before later renaming it X.
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