“What Did You Do Last Week?”: Musk Says Federal Employees Have Until Midnight On Monday To Explain Work, Or They’re Fired

Elon Musk is ‘running the Twitter playbook on the government,’ after writing in a Saturday post on X that all federal employees will be receiving an email “shortly” requesting to “understand what they got done last week.”

Those who fail to reply “will be taken as 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.

Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025

And there it is (though no mention of the implied resignations for failure to respond):

New: America’s diplomats serving around the world have now received Elon Musk’s email asking them to explain their work, per a diplomatic source. Here it is, subject line: “What did you do last week?” https://t.co/4bOxUGpSF7 pic.twitter.com/3sXspFUB1C

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) February 22, 2025

When X user ‘The Rabbit Hole’ commented that Musk is “running the Twitter playbook on the government,” Musk replied: “It works.“

It works https://t.co/TFkpHlJa7a

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025

The post came hours after President Donald Trump encouraged Musk to “get more aggressive” with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), adding “REMEMBER, WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE.“

So awesome https://t.co/t2yAXh8qFZ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025

Musk’s email comes after roughly 77,000 federal employees accepted DOGE’s “Fork in the Road” email offering roughly 8 months of pay in exchange for resigning. After that, DOGE moved to fire thousands of employees across various agencies – mostly those in a probationary period who have been in their jobs for less than one year.

It also comes after the Trump administration scored a legal victory when a judge allowed Musk and crew to continue accessing federal data and arranging for mass layoffs.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to work with DOGE to make “preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force.”

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