NEW YORK -- Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the last week as part of billionaire Elon Musk's crusade to slash what he describes as "waste everywhere" in the federal government.
Musk, who serves as President Donald Trump's cost-cutting chief, teased the extraordinary request on his social media network on Saturday.
"Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump's instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week," Musk posted on X, which he owns. "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."
Shortly afterward, federal employees received a three-line email with this instruction: "Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager."
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The deadline to respond is Monday at 11:59 p.m.
Thousands of government employees already were forced out of the federal workforce -- either by being fired or offered a buyout -- during the first month of Trump's administration as the White House and Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency fire both new and career workers, tell agency leaders to plan for "large-scale reductions in force" and freeze trillions of dollars in federal grant funds.
There is no official figure available for the total firings or layoffs so far, but The Associated Press has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside of Washington. The cuts include thousands at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others.
AFGE President Everett Kelley quickly condemned the ultimatum as an example of Trump and Musk's "utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people."
"It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life," Kelley said. "AFGE will challenge any unlawful terminations of our members and federal employees across the country."
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Musk on Friday celebrated his new role at a gathering of conservatives by waving a giant chainsaw in the air. He called it "the chainsaw for bureaucracy" and said, "Waste is pretty much everywhere" in the federal government.
McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson at the Office of Personnel Management, confirmed Musk's directive and said that individual agencies would "determine any next steps."
What happens if an employee is on leave or vacation? Again, she said individual agencies would determine how to proceed.
Earlier, Trump said "nobody's ever seen anything" like his administration's sweeping effort to fire thousands of federal employees and shrink the size of government, congratulating himself for "dominating" Washington and sending bureaucrats "packing."
Addressing a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington, he promised, "We're going to forge a new and lasting political majority that will drive American politics for generations to come."
The president argues that voters gave him a mandate to overhaul government while cracking down on the U.S.-Mexico border and extending tax cuts that were the signature policy of his first administration.
Trump clicked easily back into campaign mode during his hour-plus speech, predicting that the GOP will continue to win and defy history, which has shown that a president's party typically struggles during midterm elections. He insisted of Republicans, "I don't think we've been at this level, maybe ever."
Trump also said during the speech that he'd carry out harsher immigration policies. But those efforts have so far largely been overshadowed by his administration's mass federal firings. He announced that one federal entity with a worforce that had been significantly reduced, the U.S. Agency for International Development, would have its Washington office taken over by Customs and Border Protection officials.
"The agency's name has been removed from its former building," he said.
Associated Press writers Chris Megerian, Will Weissert and Adriana Gomez Licon contributed to this report.
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