The Department of Government Efficiency will continue to send “What did you do last week” emails to federal employees despite some backlash from dissenters.
The email raised some hackles after Elon Musk said that those workers who did not respond with five examples of work they completed would be dismissed from their employment. Several agencies said they had instructed employees to ignore the emails while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said more than a million workers responded to the email.
‘If you have a pulse and two neurons, you can reply to an email. I think this is not a high bar.’
Rather than back off over the criticism, Musk is leaning into it.
The Office of Personnel Management sent another email on Friday to federal workers entitled “What did you do last week? Part II,” asking them again to detail work items by Monday night by 11:59 p.m., according to the New York Times.
The email asked those who worked on classified or sensitive activities to add the phrase “all of my activities are sensitive” in their response.
The FBI, the Pentagon, and the State Department had instructed workers to ignore the first email sent out by the DOGE.
Critics like Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California claimed the controversy over the email manifested the “uninformed, poorly executed, and chaotic” nature of the DOGE.
When Musk was pressed by Blaze News senior editor for politics Christopher Bedford about progress on the email program, he offered a clarification.
“Is there a timeline in place for next moves, for people being fired?” Bedford asked Musk. “When can the American people expect to see results from that?”
“To be clear, I think that email was perhaps misinterpreted as a performance review, but actually it was a pulse-check review,” Musk responded. “If you have a pulse and two neurons, you can reply to an email. I think this is not a high bar.”
He added that he was hopeful that the DOGE would be able to able to root out a trillion dollars’ worth of savings in waste, fraud, and abuse from federal spending.
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