Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Sunday he is now directing all department civilian employees to respond to emails from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) asking for a recap of what they did the week prior.
“I am now directing each member of the department’s civilian workforce — just civilian — to provide those five bullets on what they accomplished in their specific jobs last week,” Hegseth said in a video posted to social media. “To reply to that email and CC their immediate supervisor.”
“It’s a simple task, really, as Elon [Musk] said, as the president recognized in our first Cabinet meeting, just a pulse check — ‘Are you there out?’ — to DOD civilians,” Hegseth continued.
Hegseth said in the video that the Department of Defense (DOD) civilian workforce would soon get a second email outlining next steps “that they need to take in order to comply with this initiative.”
Pentagon officials initially instructed employees not to respond to the first OPM email sent on Feb. 22, but Hegseth said that was only a temporary pause to allow for “a review of Pentagon procedures and consultation with the Office of Personal Management.”
He noted the department deals with sensitive issues and with matters of national security, so “we needed to be careful on that front.”
The directive from Hegseth comes as federal employees have begun receiving a second version of the same OPM email, a controversial practice ignited by Musk.
Musk faced pushback last week from some agency heads, who instructed their employees not to respond to the email from [email protected], even as Musk threatened that a nonresponse to the email would be considered a resignation.
Musk, at the first meeting of President Trump’s Cabinet on Wednesday, defended his email demanding all federal workers report their accomplishments to his office, calling it a “pulse check” and saying anyone with a heartbeat and neurons could complete it.
The initial OPM email directive raised questions about how the emails would be reviewed. Hegseth touched on the matter in his video.
“We will take that into consideration, as we make sure we’re being as focused and as tailored as possible in looking at how we streamline our workforce, to both meet the fiscal demands of the moment but also ensure we have the strongest, most viable fighting force in the world,” he said regarding the email responses.
