‘What did you do last week?’ Read the email DOGE sent to federal workers.

President Donald Trump made good on a campaign promise when he created DOGE. 

The White House DOGE office had an email sent to federal employees on Saturday asking them to list what work they accomplished in the last week.

The subject of the email, which was seen by B-17, read, “What did you do last week?”

“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” the message sent from the OPM’s HR email address reads. “Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments. Deadline is the Monday at 11:59pmEST.”

An email was received by federal employees asking them to list the work tasks they accomplished over the last week. 

The emails followed President Donald Trump’s instruction to Elon Musk to “get more aggressive” in reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy. Musk had teased that the emails would be forthcoming in a subsequent post on X, writing: “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” but the email received by employees did not detail any potential consequences for failing to reply by the deadline.

One Department of Education employee whose work has been affected by executive orders and layoffs told B-17 that they planned to check in with their supervisor before responding to the email and were uncertain how to reply.

“Everything I normally do is on hold because they are reviewing it so I’m at a total work stoppage,” the Department of Education employee said. “I could go into everything I normally do that they are currently holding up. Another approach would be not to respond.”

The email also confounded and frustrated other federal employees who spoke to B-17.

“No idea how to respond being as this is from outside our chain of command,” one federal worker told B-17. “This is pure harassment.”

Another federal employee — from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — said they “can only imagine how many people they’ll fire based on the responses/non-responses to this.”

“I’m not running cover for this horseshit,” one employee of the Federal Communications Commission told B-17.

In just a matter of weeks, Trump and the White House DOGE office have gone full steam ahead to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy.

About 77,000 federal workers accepted the buyouts Trump offered shortly after he took office for his second term. The administration has laid off scores of workers at the US Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and other key agencies. Several top-level officials who initially pushed back against Musk’s efforts have now resigned or retired.

DOGE on Thursday said it had so far saved $55 billion in taxpayer dollars, largely through canceled contracts.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.