Feds to Start Getting Weekly Emails Asking What They Did. Bosses Will See If It Fits Trump Goals.

The Washington Post

14:26 JST, March 1, 2025

Federal workers are slated to receive a second email as early as Saturday asking them for a bullet-point description of what they did in the past week – only this time, a new strategy from the Trump administration means they might have to respond, according to three people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

The emails are slated to become a weekly requirement, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and a person briefed on the Office of Personnel Management’s decisions. In part, the responses will serve to gauge agencies’ alignment with President Donald Trump’s agenda and executive orders, according to the documents and the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Late Friday, night emails from OPM started going out to federal workers titled “What did you do last week? Part II.” The text asked for five bullet points of accomplishments and asked that, “going forward,” workers “complete the above task each week by Mondays” at midnight.

The email went to workers at at least four agencies as of 9 p.m. Friday, per emails obtained by The Post, including the Energy Department, the Defense Department, the Veterans Health Administration and the FEC.

Last weekend, OPM sent a message to government employees from hr@opm.gov, asking for a list of what workers had accomplished the week before. The new message is expected to arrive from addresses associated with chiefs of agency HR departments across the federal government, two of the people said. The documents show, and the person briefed confirmed, that the eventual plan is for agencies to develop Microsoft forms to capture employees’ five-bullet responses, that such replies will be mandatory and that the collected information will go to department heads across the government. Details on employees’ work will not be released externally, according to the person briefed and the documents.

The switch could give the request more teeth, because agencies typically have more direct authority over their staff than OPM, which enacts HR policy across the bureaucracy but doesn’t actually employ most workers.

Several Cabinet departments and other federal agencies advised workers this week not to respond to the initial email, foiling plans by billionaire Elon Musk – who is advising Trump on how to slash the government – to consider those who didn’t reply as having offered their resignations.

“The president of the United States cannot fire a career employee, because they are not reporting to him,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that advocates for a stronger federal government. “But if an agency head says this is what all employees need to do, there is fairly significant latitude.”

It was not clear how many federal employees would receive the new email or whether any agencies would be exempt. Agencies that already require employees to share regular work updates – which is common across the government – may not have to debut the weekly email initiative, and emails may not be required every week in every case, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. OPM plans to provide written guidance and an example of how to carry out the initiative.

At least one agency, the Department of Defense, is already getting on board with the weekly email plan. The department on Friday issued a memo stating “all DoD civilian employees” would be required to “submit five bullets on their previous week’s achievements” beginning when the first email hits. Employees must respond within 48 hours and cc their supervisors, per the memo, obtained by The Post.

“Submissions must exclude classified or sensitive information and will be incorporated into weekly situation reports by supervisors,” the memo stated. “Non-compliance may lead to further review.”

The initial email – titled “What did you do last week?” – landed in millions of inboxes Saturday, kick-starting a frenzy to determine its implications and an outcry from agencies worried that the directive would force the disclosure of classified information. Musk said on X, his social media platform, that if employees failed to respond with five bullet points, it would be taken as a resignation. But he backed off after the White House directed agency heads that the order wasn’t binding, the first apparent fissure between the president and the richest person in the world.

On Wednesday, Musk attended Trump’s first Cabinet meeting, even though he isn’t a member of the Cabinet, for a show of unity. Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “TECH SUPPORT,” he told reporters that the email had been “misinterpreted as a performance review,” when it was designed to be a “pulse-check review.” He said earlier in the week that he was trying to make sure there weren’t fake employees listed as working for the government, though he did not offer evidence to show there are.

The weekly emails are being touted internally as a way for agency leaders to gauge their employees’ compliance with the president’s agenda and to drive alignment across organizations, according to the documents and the person briefed on OPM’s decisions, as well as a way for supervisors to better understand their subordinates’ work and for workers themselves to determine whether there are things they should not be doing. The check-in emails also are being cast as an accountability measure to taxpayers and as a way to inspire federal employees to work harder.

The emails could be used as a means to review workers’ performance and identify issues, the person and documents say, although OPM pointed out that this could require deliberation if agencies’ employees are subject to bargaining agreements.

During the meeting Wednesday, Musk sidestepped questions about whether the workers who did not reply to the email would indeed be let go. But Trump chimed in.

“Those people are on the bubble,” the president said. “Maybe they’re going to be gone.”

The White House said 1 million workers responded to the email – a little less than half of the 2.3 million civil servants working for the federal government as of January.

The email blasts, along with an earlier offer from the same hr@opm.gov account for “deferred resignation,” are part of Trump’s escalating effort to drastically and quickly downsize the federal government, a campaign led by Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service. But some of its most sweeping plans have run into legal trouble, in part because of OPM’s role.

On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the personnel office to rescind directives that initiated the mass firings of probationary workers in several agencies, finding that “the Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees at another agency.”

The judge stressed that hiring and firing power lies with agencies themselves.