‘What Did You Do Last Week?’ – US Unions Lawyer Up as Unelected Billionaire Threatens to Fire More Federal Workers

US President Donald Trump’s right-hand adviser charged with gutting the government, Elon Musk, said on Monday night that federal workers who do not respond to an email they received over the weekend telling them to “state their weekly accomplishments” will be given another opportunity “subject to the discretion of the President,” and warned that they would still be fired if they didn’t reply a second time, the Associated Press reported.

Unions for federal workers have filed a lawsuit to block the mass firings of probationary federal employees by President Donald Trump’s administration, alleging that officials are exploiting and misusing the probationary period to eliminate staff across government agencies, AP said.

The tech billionaire and the unofficial head of Trump’s unsanctioned “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) said that responding to the email was “voluntary” and that failing to reply “wouldn’t amount to a resignation.”

Employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), one of Trump’s primary targets ever since the former and current US President was convicted of dozens of felonies (and only the latest of several federal departments under fire) advised staffers not to respond to the email immediately.

According to the AP, a weekend email came from the Office of Personnel Management’s new HR email address but had no signature. The subject line reads: “What did you do last week?”. Musk had separately announced that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

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Employees of the government on Monday faced a deadline imposed by Elon Musk that required them to explain their work achievements in an email or potentially lose their jobs, AFP explained.

One of the first agencies to be targeted by the South-African-born tech tycoon and Trump campaign supporter was the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which had to immediately suspend its operations in Ukraine, to which it had provided $22.9 billion in direct budget support in 2024.

On Saturday, AFP reported, more than two million federal employees received an email from the US Office of Personnel Management, the government’s HR department, giving them until 11:59 pm Monday to submit “approximately 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week,” following Musk’s post that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

As the deadline neared, President Donald Trump defended Musk’s message, calling it “genius” as it would expose whether “people are working.”

“If people don’t respond, it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working,” Trump told reporters.

The demand “resembled similar ultimatums that Musk, known for his stringent workforce expectations, sent to staff when he took over Twitter in 2022, before renaming it X,” AFP reported.

Musk told his Tesla employees last year that they are welcome to work remotely only after they have put in 40 hours per week at the office.

Recipients of Musk’s latest email also included the US Department of Defense, which posted a note requesting staff “pause any response to the OPM email titled ‘What did you do last week?’”

Employees of the State Department and the Office of National Intelligence reportedly also instructed staff not to respond directly. However, the Treasury Department on Monday directed workers to comply with Musk’s request by midnight on Monday.

Unions quickly opposed Musk’s request, with the largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), vowing to challenge any unlawful terminations, AFP reported. Several recent polls indicate that most Americans disapprove of the disruption to the nationwide federal workforce.

“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s like, ‘Please put a dose of compassion in this,’” said Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah, whose state has 33,000 federal employees. “These are real people. These are real lives. These are mortgages.”