Trump Administration Nixes an Infamous Musk Initiative

Federal workers are officially off the hook from responding to Elon Musk's "five things" email. Reuters reports that the Trump administration has nixed the ex-DOGE leader's infamous directive, which was sent to government employees in February mandating that they detail what they'd accomplished at work in the previous week. The latest move was announced Tuesday by the Office of Personnel Management, the government's HR arm that put Musk's email into effect. "We believe that managers are accountable to staying informed about what their team members are working on and have many other existing tools to do so," OPM chief Scott Kupor says in a statement.

Reuters notes that the often-confusing directive had already fallen out of use within many individual federal agencies. Last month, Kupor had described the process involved with gathering and reviewing the weekly emails as "very manual" and "not efficient." Politico notes that the Trump administration's latest move on the matter calls attention once more to the very public falling-out between Musk and President Trump, even though Trump had initially supported the email ask. "We're trying to find out if people are working," the president said in February, per the Hill. "If people don't respond, it's very possible that there is no such person or they're not working."