The second email blast to federal employees promised by the Trump administration began being distributed over the weekend according to numerous reports. However, there are some changes this time from the first email.
The Office of Personnel Management began distributing the emails over the weekend. However, the Associated Press reports that some of the emails came from individual federal agencies.
New this time is that this will be a standing weekly requirement for federal employees. They will be expected to respond each Monday by 11:59 PM ET. “Going forward, please complete the above task each week by Mondays at 11:59pmET,” according to one of the emails reviewed by CBS News.
The new email has the subject line, “What did you do last week? Part II” and, just like the first, instructs federal employees to list five bullet points of what they accomplished during the prior week at work. It adds that if the work done was classified or sensitive to respond by simply stating that “All of my activities are sensitive.”
Recipients were also instructed to CC their supervisors in their replies.
This comports with what Musk said in a cabinet meeting last week when he stated, “Our goal is not to be capricious or unfair. We want to give people every opportunity to send an email and the email could simply be ‘What I’m working on is too sensitive or classified to — to describe.’ Like, literally, just [reply] that would be sufficient. I think this is just common sense.”
The Defense Department initially told its employees not to respond to the first email. However, DoD Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo that required responding to the email. The DoD guidance also said that the email would be coming from the agency directly.
There is still reportedly pushback to the effort, however. The Washington Post reported that there was resistance coming from some agencies. For example, it stated that NASA’s acting administrator Janet Petro told employees to “temporarily ignore it” and check in with their supervisors once back on duty.
Elon Musk said in a post on X, “The President has made it clear that this is mandatory for the executive branch. Anyone working on classified or other sensitive matters is still required to respond if they receive the email, but can simply reply that their work is sensitive.”
He also said in a cabinet meeting last week the email was intended as a “pulse check” “…to figure out are these people real, are they alive, and can they write an email…”
President Trump echoed his support for Musk’s efforts and confirmed the purpose of the email in other remarks he made from the White House. He said, “If they’re not [working], it could be there’s no such person, it could be that the person is no longer working, they’re no longer living at that address, they maybe moved, maybe they moved to a different country, or maybe the person doesn’t exist. And we then take that person off the payroll and we save a lot of money by doing that. I think it’s a very smart thing.”
