The Pentagon on Wednesday scrapped a controversial initiative spearheaded by Elon Musk that required Department of Defense employees to send weekly emails detailing their activities — a move that coincides with the billionaire entrepreneur’s reduced role in the Trump administration.
“On May 23, 2025, the Official Performing the Duties of Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Mr. Jules W. Hurst III, informed the DoD civilian workforce via email that the Department would conclude the weekly ‘What You Did Last Week’ initiative on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, and asked employees to share in their final submission one concrete idea to enhance efficiency or root out waste,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement.
He noted that the Department of Defense “remains committed to driving meaningful change in support of the mission” to cut government waste.
Civilian DoD employees had been submitting emails detailing their top five accomplishments of the week since late February, in response to a directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Office of Personnel Management.
“This initiative provided leaders and supervisors with additional insights into their employees’ contributions, fostered accountability, and helped to identify opportunities for greater efficiency and effectiveness throughout the Department,” Parnell said of the experiment.
Pentagon officials initially balked at the idea of having DoD employees list their accomplishments over email, instructing them not to respond to the Feb. 22 “What did you do last week?” email, over apparent concerns that classified information would be shared.
The Department of Health and Human Services, FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and National Security Agency also initially told workers to hold off on any responses.
Hegseth and other federal agency heads reversed course days later and instructed civilian personnel to respond to the OPM missive but exclude classified or sensitive information.
Musk had threatened that “failure to respond” to the Feb. 22 email — which was sent to federal workers across government — “will be taken as a resignation.”
When a subsequent round of emails went out soliciting responses, Musk claimed that “failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
Musk, who made similar demands during his takeover of Twitter — which he renamed X — insisted that the email demand was simply “a very basic pulse check.”
The SpaceX and Tesla founder, and unofficial head of the Department of Government Efficiency, departed the White House last month, with his 130-day special government employee status expected to conclude at the end of May.
Musk, 53, told reporters last week that since President Trump took office, he has spent “seven days a week, or close to seven days a week” working on DOGE initiatives, but plans to cut that down closer to one day a week.
“I’m willing to contribute one to two days a week, coming to DC every other week for one to three days — indefinitely, as long as the president wants me to do that,” Musk said of his future role as an informal DOGE adviser.
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