The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told employees on Monday that they were required to respond to an email from the Trump administration demanding they summarize their work over the past week, reversing its earlier position.
The administration sent out a second round of emails on Friday evening in a renewed push by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team to assess the performance of government employees and overhaul bureaucracy.
The email asked them to share five bullet points on their accomplishments last week.
Employees at HHS, which includes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), had previously been told that they did not have to respond to DOGE's emails and there would be "no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond."
Multiple other U.S. agencies had also told employees not to respond immediately to DOGE's demand, including the FBI and State Department.
In Monday's email, seen by Reuters, HHS told employees to respond to DOGE's email by midnight without revealing sensitive information, including the names of drugs and devices they are working on.
HHS previously warned employees that responses to DOGE's request may "be read by malign foreign actors." The department sent two versions of its email on Monday, the second of which removed that reference.
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents HHS workers, told members in an email seen by Reuters that they must comply with the agency's choice to proceed with the "ill-advised exercise". The union was not immediately available for comment.
Employees were told in HHS's email to follow supervisor guidance on how to reply and respond in a way that would not identify grants, grantees, contracts or contractors, nor information that would identify the precise nature of scientific experiments, research or reviews.
"I feel I will spend the whole day writing these five bullets in a way that does not contain sensitive information while also providing information that my job is important. I don't know if this can be called efficiency," said an FDA source who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Employees on leave, out of office due to work schedules, or who have signed a deferred resignation agreement are not required to respond, according to the email.
HHS was not available to comment.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
9 Comments
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theFu
Those employees work on lots of sensitive efforts that cannot be legally shared.
• - classified
• - classified
• - classified
• - classified
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lincolnman
And the head of the HHS responds...
"I spent the day talking to the worm in my brain"....
patkim
Where is DOGE's so-called transparency?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-contracts-wall.html
There have been way too many errors on the part of DOGE. It has falsely said it saved billions of dollars on contracts that have either long been ended or expired, or contracts that had already been canceled in previous presidencies.
It just seems like they are just slashing and burning and trying to take credit for any numbers they see. They don't even carefully take a look at what they are cutting out.
patkim
We've come to the point where we all know now that this DOGE chainsaw to cutting services has nothing to do with fraud and waste. Sure, we could all save money by not paying our bills and not buying food, but we just don't do that. So cutting out Veteran services, disability benefits, and disaster relief will save us money, but is it really worth it. Basically, in the end, they are only trying to cut things that fit their own idea of how people should live. They are only cutting things that doesn't fit Trump's vision of what America should be. Nothing to do with the best interests of all Americans.
Yarnaby
What is the most efficient way of checking 80,000+ emails?
wallace
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has said people should have the measles vaccination.
lincolnman
Giving a multi-million dollar contract to one of Musk's companies to do it....
Desert Tortoise
Where my wife works there is this long Powerpoint telling everyone how to do this with what they call C-A-R, Challenge, Action, Response. You can't just say what you did, there has to be a challenge, an action you undertook and a response. But what is the response when you are writing a plan or organizing people for a test event that won't happen for another month? Pending? Sure thing. It has become as big a chore as their full time day job now and their supervisors and supervisor's supervisors up the chain all have to read this stuff they submit. Everyone is sweating bullets running around with their hair on fire fearing their job is at stake. Nothing else gets done until this nonsense is complete. It is the opposite of efficiency. It is a big huge time waster.
Desert Tortoise
Oh yeah, and the supervisors want everyone to have a lot on their list because they don't want to look like their people are slacking. What a cluster !