‘If you don’t answer … you’re fired’:

‘A lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist,’ Trump says

President Donald Trump warned that federal employees who don’t follow current guidance requiring them to report personal productivity could lose their jobs.

The effort stems from an email that SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk spearheaded that asked federal workers to send an email Monday detailing a summary of what tasks they accomplished the previous week. Musk is heading up the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that aims to reduce government waste and fraud.

“I thought it was great,” Trump told reporters of the initiative Monday at the White House, “because we have people who don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government. So by asking the question, ‘Tell us what you did this week,’ what [Musk is] doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’ If you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired, or you’re fired, because a lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist.”





President Donald Trump on Monday voiced support for Elon Musk’s efforts to track productivity. (Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)

Musk unveiled the email in a post on X on Saturday and cautioned that a failure to reply was equivalent to handing in a resignation.

“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk wrote on X. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Federal employees received an email from the Office of Personnel and Management on Saturday that instructed them to provide a list of five things they accomplished the previous week by a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Monday.

The American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union for federal workers, criticized the policy and said Trump and his administration have once again demonstrated “utter disdain” for federal employees.

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