Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.
Federal employees have started receiving another round of emails ordering them to explain their accomplishments at work as part of a drive by president Donald Trump and his “first buddy” Elon Musk to cut government staff numbers.
The first email, which was sent a week ago, asked employees to list five things they achieved at work in the past five days, adding that failure to do so would be taken as a resignation.
The emails have been produced by Mr Musk’s meme-inspired Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), empowered by the American president to downsize agencies and eliminate thousands of federal jobs.
The first email led to outrage and confusion among government departments, with some issuing directives to workers telling them that – contrary to what the White House was saying – the initiative was voluntary.
Now, a new email has begun landing in staff inboxes, some as early as Friday evening, with the subject line “What did you do last week? Part II” and were reportedly delivered in a different way.
The email came from individual agencies with direct oversight of career officials as opposed to the Office of Personnel Management, which acts as the federal government’s human resources agency, the Associated Press reported, citing employees with knowledge of the matter.
“Please reply to this email with approximately 5 bullets describing what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” the message read, according to AP News.
“If all of your activities are classified or sensitive, please write, ‘All of my activities are sensitive.’” the email reportedly read.
The emails are set to be a weekly occurrence, with employees expected to submit a response each week by Monday at 11.59 pm ET.
Less than half of federal workers responded to the first email, according to the White House.
The US president said he was not “thrilled” about employees not responding.
“Maybe we’re paying people that don’t exist,” Mr Trump said.
Less than 24 hours before that deadline, Mr Musk had confused matters further by claiming the emails were a ruse to “test whether federal employees are ‘capable of replying to an email’”.
It remains unclear how national agencies plan to handle the latest email.
Meanwhile, a memo distributed by the Trump administration has instructed federal agencies to downsize with thousands of probationary employees already fired and thousands more forced to take buyouts.
Amid the chaos, Russian and Chinese spy agencies appear to be attempting to take advantage of the Doge-directed layoffs to recruit terminated US government workers.
Sources told CNN that adversary countries are targeting terminated employees with security clearances and those “who may have valuable information about US critical infrastructure and vital government bureaucracy”.
