CNN
—
Federal employees at multiple government agencies are once again being told to report their work accomplishments over the past week to the Trump administration, according to a union source and several employees who received the Friday evening missives.
The emails, titled “What did you do last week? Part II,” were sent to employees at the Bureau of Prisons, General Services Administration, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Office of Personnel Management, Social Security Administration and the departments of Education and Veterans Affairs, among others, the sources said. CNN has viewed a number of the emails.
Workers were again directed to reply to the email, which in nearly all cases originated from OPM’s new HR email address, with five bullet points of their accomplishments and to copy their managers. But this time, they were told that this will be a weekly requirement, due by 11:59 p.m. ET on Mondays.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees also received the directive on Friday. However, two emails sent to CDC staffers that CNN viewed originated from a National Institutes of Health listserv, and it was unclear whether replies would be directed to OPM.
A similar mass email was sent without warning last Saturday to more than 2 million federal workers shortly after Elon Musk announced on X that employees would have to say what they did at work in the past week, warning, “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” They were given a deadline of 11:59 p.m. ET last Monday.
That email request, which originated from OPM but did not include the threat of termination, sparked mass confusion and concern among workers and agencies. Several agencies, including the FBI and departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security and Energy, instructed their workers not to respond. Other agencies told staffers that replying was voluntary, while still others mandated that their employees comply. Just hours before the deadline, OPM provided guidance that responding to the email was voluntary.
Also on Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered all Pentagon civilian employees to respond to a similar email that they will receive on Monday requesting five bullet points “on their previous week’s achievements,” according to a copy of a memo distributed to the workforce, signed by Hegseth and obtained by CNN. The memo noted the shift from the agency’s previous guidance that paused responses to the initial email.
Civilian employees received separate guidance stating that the email will be coming from the Pentagon and that employees’ responses will also be kept internal to DoD, rather than going to OPM.
Department of Homeland Security employees received the “What did you do last week? Part II” email on Friday evening, according to a source familiar. On Saturday, DHS leadership sent out an email to workers, obtained by CNN, saying the department would be collecting its own list of accomplishments.
“As part of our internal accountability and reporting efforts, we are implementing a structured process for employees to submit a brief summary of their key accomplishments from the previous week,” the DHS email read. “This exercise aligns with and supplements the intent of the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) recent guidance while remaining internal to DHS, given our national security responsibilities.”
DHS gave its employees until Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET to submit a list of bullet points to an internal department email address summarizing their weekly accomplishments.
One million federal workers responded to the initial email, the White House said Tuesday. Seeking to clarify the parameters of the directive, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, said, “The agency heads will determine the best practices for their employees at their specific agencies.”
Speaking at President Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting of his second term on Wednesday, Musk said the email was not a “performance review” but rather a “pulse check review.”
“We think there are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead. Which is probably why they can’t respond. And some people who are not real people, like they’re literally fictional individuals that are collecting pay checks,” he said.
“So we’re literally trying to figure out, are these people real, are they alive and can they write an email?” Musk said.
However, Trump was quick to interrupt to claim those federal workers who have not replied to the email “are on the bubble” and at risk of getting fired.
“Those million people that haven’t responded to Elon, they are on the bubble,” Trump said.
“Those people are on the bubble, as they say. Maybe they’re going to be gone, maybe they’re not around, maybe they have other jobs, maybe they moved, and they’re not where they’re supposed to be,” Trump added.
CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Josh Campbell and Alejandra Jaramillo contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional details.
