Elon Musk, the adviser to President Donald Trump, reportedly demanded that employees list their accomplishments over the past week in a letter to avoid being fired.
The memo was distributed by federal agencies on Sunday, one day after Musk’s team sent an email to a tally of tens of thousands of federal employees, giving them 48 hours to prepare reports.
Musk leads the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which in the first weeks of Trump’s administration has laid off more than 20, 000 workers and offered buyouts to another 75, 000, across large segments of the United States government.
In a potential show of conflict between Musk’s supporters and the richest person in his campaign to reduce the government’s 2.3 million civilian workforce, Trump administration-appointed officials at the FBI and State Department sent emails to their staff members demanding that they do not respond outside their chains of command.
“The FBI, through the office of the director, is in charge of all our review processes”, said FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump appointee, in an email to staff seen by the Reuters news agency.
Federal employees were instructed to provide a detailed explanation of their work on Saturday evening by 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday (05:00 GMT Tuesday), shortly after Musk announced on his X social media site that not responding would result in a resignation.
The subject of the email read, “What did you do last week”? and came from a human resources address in the Office of Personnel Management, but did not include Musk’s threat of termination.
According to sources and emails that Reuters reviewed, employees at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Homeland Security, Education, and Commerce, as well as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Internal Revenue Service also received instructions to not respond.
Labour unions have also threatened lawsuits.
While there is bipartisan agreement that the US government, which carries $36 trillion in debt, would benefit from reform, Musk’s approach has drawn widespread criticism.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, stated on X on Sunday that it would formally request that Musk rescind the message and that it did not believe Musk had the authority to fire employees who did not respond.
Basic pulse testing
After weeks of uncertainty about their futures, some employees found the email to be even more irritable and worried.
Some US Justice Department attorneys expressed concern that their work is private.
“I really wonder when someone is going to say enough”, one IRS employee told Reuters.
On Sunday, Musk on X called the email “a very basic pulse check.”
This is important because a large number of people who are supposed to work for the government don’t even check their emails because they do so little.
In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used… https://t.co/Rj5Xe6vYZB
“This is important because a large number of people who are supposed to work for the government don’t even check their emails because they do so little.” Musk also wrote.
“We have a perception that non-existent people or the identities of deceased people are being used to collect paychecks in some cases.” In other words, there is outright fraud”.
He hasn’t provided any proof of this deception.
The action was welcomed by some officials.
Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee for US Attorney in Washington, DC, who is serving in an interim capacity, praised Musk and DOGE in an email response.
He instructed staff to comply with Musk’s order.
Source: Aljazeera
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