(NewsNation) — Thousands of federal employees have received a second accomplishment email from the Trump administration.
The emails began to be sent out late Friday night with a subject line “What did you do last week? Part II,” according to a copy of the email that was obtained by The Hill.
Last week, Elon Musk announced that federal workers would be obligated to list five accomplishments or risk losing their jobs.
The directive appeared to contradict guidance from the Office of Personnel Management, which told federal departments and agencies that responses were voluntary. Multiple federal agencies instructed employees to disregard Musk’s initial email, at least temporarily.
There is no word yet on how many federal workers complied with the original directive.
Elon Musk’s ultimatum
Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency, sent the first email to hundreds of thousands of federal employees last weekend, giving them roughly 48 hours to report five specific things they had accomplished during the week prior. In a separate message posted on social media, Musk said any employee who failed to respond by the deadline — set in the email as 11:59 p.m. EST Monday — would lose their job.
OPM later clarified that individual agencies must decide if they require responses and determine the consequences of those who fail to do so. It added that agencies should consider whether the “accomplishment bullets” should be integrated into the agency’s weekly activity report.
President Donald Trump signaled his support of Musk early Monday.
DOGE employees resign
Musk’s unusual demand has faced resistance from several key U.S. agencies led by the president’s loyalists — including the FBI, State Department, Homeland Security and the Pentagon — which instructed their employees over the weekend not to comply. Lawmakers in both parties said Musk’s mandate may be illegal, while unions are threatening to sue.
One federal worker from the Department of Health and Human Services shared an email with NewsNation they received Monday night. “No HHS expectation that HHS employees respond to OPM and there is no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond,” the email read.
If employees did respond, they were advised to tailor their answers as if “malign foreign actors” might read them.
Twenty-one civil service employees resigned from DOGE on Tuesday, saying they refused to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.