Federal Workers Told Once Again To Justify Their Work To Doge

Federal workers are again being asked to justify their jobs to the Department of Government Efficiency overseen by billionaire Elon Musk.

Public-sector employees across the government, who have been buffeted in recent weeks by large-scale firings orchestrated by DOGE, received emails late Friday with an ominous subject line: “What did you do last week? Part II.”

The emails from the Office of Personnel Management landed in the inboxes of people in many parts of the government, including the State Department, the Energy Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the IRS, the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Administration.

The White House and OPM had no immediate comment.

OPM’s email came four hours after the end of the business day and asked employees to reply with “approx. 5 bullets describing what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.

“Going forward,” the message said, “please complete the above task each week by Mondays at 11:59pmET.”

It created further uncertainty for government employees, who received the first round of such emails last week as part of a Musk-led effort to conduct a wholesale shrinking of the federal workforce with the support of President Donald Trump.

“I’m just sort of numb to it by now,” said an employee of the National Institutes of Health who was granted anonymity because of fears of retaliation. “It’s been like one long funeral and it never lets up.”

Workers received a similar email last week, but the FBI and other agencies involved in national security directed workers not to respond. Musk has described the emails as a “pulse check” on public employees as his DOGE effort seeks to dismiss thousands of workers in the face of legal challenges.

The billionaire, who has made a fortune from government contracts, has said workers face dismissal if they do not respond.

While the emails do not feature a threat of dismissal, OPM also revised its privacy rules to clarify that response to the email was voluntary.

Still, Musk and Trump have previously threatened federal workers with the possibility of termination if they do not respond.

“You’ve got a lot of people who have not responded,” the president said at a press conference before his cabinet on Wednesday. “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.”

Nahal Toosi, Dasha Burns, Zack Colman, Josh Gerstein and Paul McLeary contributed to this report.