Elon Musk is vowing yet again to fire any federal workers who don't respond to an email asking them to list five things they accomplished last week.
Hours after the U.S. Office of Personnel Management had directed agencies that responses to its email were optional, Musk again threatened federal workers in a post on X, his social media platform.
The Department of Government Efficiency, run by Trump adviser Elon Musk, last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on DOGE's "Wall of Receipts" shows more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings.
That's usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and in many cases has already done so.
"It's like confiscating used ammunition after it's been shot when there's nothing left in it. It doesn't accomplish any policy objective," said Charles Tiefer, a retired University of Baltimore law professor and expert on government contracting law. "Their terminating so many contracts pointlessly obviously doesn't accomplish anything for saving money."