Federal workers may be forced to respond to a second wave of controversial productivity emails set to be sent on Saturday if they want to keep their jobs, The Washington Post has reported.
The emails, sent by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk’s leadership, demand that federal employees submit a five-bullet summary of their weekly accomplishments.
The Trump administration is considering a new directive that mandates recipients to respond to this second email, The Post reported, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
This comes as the White House revealed that fewer than half of some 2.3 million government employees had responded to an initial email sent earlier this month. The Post said it’s unclear how many government workers would receive the new email.
“I wouldn’t say that we are thrilled about it,” Trump said of the federal workforce who failed to respond to the first email. “Maybe they are going to be gone. Maybe they are not around, maybe they have other jobs.”
Earlier this week, Musk, who heads DOGE, said on social media platform X: “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
His statement signaled a renewed push for compliance after initially walking back his earlier threat to fire employees who ignored the first email, titled “What did you do last week?”.
Initially, Musk had declared that failure to respond with five bullet points would be treated as a resignation.
But the White House clarified that agency heads had the authority to decide whether their employees needed to comply with Musk’s directive, effectively making the order non-binding.
The mass email campaign is part of a broader effort by advisory body DOGE and the Trump administration to dismantle the federal workforce.
Trump has said he thinks Musk’s plan to circulate a second email to federal workers is a “good idea.”
“You got a lot of people that have not responded, so we are trying to figure out, do they exist? Who are they? And it’s possible that a lot of those people will be actually fired,” he added.
On Thursday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the mass firings of probationary employees were likely unlawful, delivering a blow to the Trump administration as it seeks to cut federal jobs and government spending.
