Federal workers sue over Elon Musk’s threat to fire them if they don’t explain their accomplishments
Image via AP.

Elon Mush Javier Milei
Will the courts need to intervene again?

Billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk violated the law with his weekend demand that federal employees explain their accomplishments or risk being fired, attorneys for the workers said Monday in a lawsuit.

The updated lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in California and was provided to The Associated Press, is trying to block mass layoffs pursued by Musk and President Donald Trump, including any connected to the email distributed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Saturday. The office, which functions as a human resources agency for the federal government, said employees needed to detail five things they did last week by the end of day on Monday.

“No OPM rule, regulation, policy, or program has ever, in United States history, purported to require all federal workers to submit reports to OPM,” said the amended complaint, which was filed on behalf of unions, businesses veterans, and conservation organizations represented by the group State Democracy Defenders Fund. It called the threat of mass firings “one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country.”

Musk, who’s leading the Republican President’s efforts to overhaul and downsize the federal government, continued to threaten federal workers Monday even as confusion spread through the administration and some top officials told employees not to comply.

“Those who do not take this email seriously will soon be furthering their career elsewhere,” Musk posted on X, his social media platform.

He also escalated Trump’s demand for employees to stop working remotely, saying those who fail to return to the office will be placed on administrative leave.

The latest round of turmoil began over the weekend, when Trump posted on his social media website: “ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE.”

Musk followed by saying “all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.” He claimed “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” The directive echoed how the entrepreneur has managed his own companies.

The Office of Personnel Management sent out its own request afterward.

“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” the message said. However, it said nothing about the potential for employees being fired for noncompliance. The deadline was listed as 11:59 p.m. EST Monday.

There was swift resistance from several key U.S. agencies led by the President’s loyalists — including the FBI, the State Department, Homeland Security and the Pentagon — which instructed their employees over the weekend not to respond. Lawmakers in both major political parties said Musk’s mandate may be illegal, while unions threatened to sue.

One message Sunday morning from the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., instructed its 80,000 employees to comply. That was shortly after the Acting General Counsel, Sean Keveney, had instructed some not to. And by Sunday evening, agency leadership issued new instructions that employees should “pause activities” related to the request until noon Monday.

“Having put in over 70 hours of work last week advancing Administration’s priorities, I was personally insulted to receive the below email,” Keveney said in an email that acknowledged a broad sense of “uncertainty and stress” within the agency.

Keveney laid out security concerns and pointed out some of the work done by the agency’s employees may be protected by attorney-client privilege.

However, Education Department workers were directed to comply on Monday morning.

“The email is legitimate and employees should respond,” wrote Rachel Oglesby, Chief of Staff at the Department. She added that “frontline supervisors will evaluate responses and non-responses,” factoring in whether employees were on approved leave.

Democrats and even some Republicans, including U.S. Sen. John Curtis of Utah, were critical of Musk’s ultimatum.

“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s like, ‘Please put a dose of compassion in this,’” Curtis, whose state has 33,000 federal employees, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “These are real people. These are real lives. These are mortgages. … It’s a false narrative to say we have to cut and you have to be cruel to do it as well.”

New FBI Director Kash Patel, an outspoken Trump ally, instructed employees to ignore Musk’s request, at least for now.

“The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures,” Patel wrote in an email. “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”

Ed Martin, Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, sent his staff a message Sunday that may have caused more confusion.

“Let me clarify: We will comply with this OPM request whether by replying or deciding not to reply,” Martin wrote in the email.

“Please make a good faith effort to reply and list your activities (or not, as you prefer), and I will, as I mentioned, have your back regarding any confusion,” Martin continued. “We can do this.”

Officials at the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security were more consistent.

Tibor Nagy, acting undersecretary of state for management, told employees in an email that department leadership would respond on behalf of workers.

Pentagon leadership instructed employees to “pause” any response to Musk’s team, according to an email from Jules Hurst, the deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

The Homeland Security Department, meanwhile, told employees that “no reporting action from you is needed at this time” and that agency managers would respond, according to an email from R.D. Alles, deputy undersecretary for management.

Thousands of government employees have been forced out of the federal workforce — either by being fired or through a “deferred resignation″ offer — during the first month of Trump’s second term. There’s no official figure available for the total firings or layoffs, but the AP has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside of Washington.

Musk on Sunday called his latest request “a very basic pulse check.”

“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!” Musk wrote on X. “In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks.”

He has provided no evidence of such fraud. Separately, Musk and Trump have falsely claimed in recent days that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving Social Security payments.

Meanwhile, thousands of other employees are preparing to leave the federal workforce this coming week, including probationary civilian workers at the Pentagon and all but a fraction of U.S. Agency for International Development staffers through cuts or leave.

___

Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

Associated Press


14 comments

  • Michael K

    February 24, 2025 at 12:40 pm

    He’s a clown. He broke Twitter, Tesla sales are tanking world-wide, his rockets are blowing up – and the US government is not his play toy. The hostile assault on civil servants by the un-elected drug-addled Afrikaner should not circus entertainment. This is beneath our dignity. But it certainly pleases Putin.

    He’s not reducing waste – he’s destroying public institutions. Only an idiot would be cutting IRS personnel at the height of tax season. Even Republicans are pushing back on the nonsense and disruptions.

    • Paul Passarelli

      February 24, 2025 at 1:23 pm

      He *cleaned* twitter, if he broke it, it would be gone. Funny how it still manages to operate at 10% of the previous bloated staffing levels.

      I don’t follow Tesla sales worldwide, but *INFLATION* might have a lot to do with decreased car sales. Chrysler’s sales are far far worse. Millions of unsold trucks are on their dealer’s lots. What did they do wrong, besides ‘GO WOKE’? Clearly the two are unrelated.

      Rockets do fail. That’s what happens when machinery is pushed to its physical limits.
      Ask ant America’s Cup sailor how the best boats tend to explode. Space-X is vastly outperforming NASA. I’ve been arguing for the aging agency to be put out of its misery for a long time.

      Yes, Must & Trump are dismantling *BUREAUCRACIES* but bureaucracies are not institutions. No one treasures an agency, it’s not an institution, they are burdens, a blights, impediments to liberty & freedom.

      You really need to try to shake off that Progressive-Socialist indoctrination.

      • Michael K

        February 24, 2025 at 4:54 pm

        Twitter lost 80% of it value. Tesla lost $160 billion.

        • JD

          February 25, 2025 at 2:29 pm

          Yeah, they seem to forget that, don’t they? Him tanking the companies. He’s using this latest stit to suck off tax dollars just like ole Donny did. Another guy that tanks things when he acts in charge.

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        February 28, 2025 at 4:57 pm

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    • Oscar

      February 24, 2025 at 7:37 pm

      So you are complaining that a bunch of UNELECTED bureaucrats are being asked to demonstrate that they actually do work for the citizens that pay their salaries? What’s your net worth? How many jobs have you created? Have you accomplish anything of significance? Nope. YOU are the clown!

      • Skeptic

        February 24, 2025 at 7:51 pm

        What would Musk’s net worth be if he weren’t on public assistance? Has he created any jobs? Or only paid people doing the jobs that the federal government created with their icky “regulations” until the federal dollars ran out? The only thing he appears to have invented is a way to milk the public teat. But I guess he got tired of being milking the MAGA mental midgets (maybe they ran out of money after investing in $Trump NFTs) that mine has closed) and now wants to be an unelected bureaucrat selling out the US to China so that he can try to milk their economy.

        • Peachy

          February 25, 2025 at 1:46 pm

          Musk built a huge Tesla plant in Austin. Do you think he might have created some jobs there? 😜

          • JD

            February 25, 2025 at 2:32 pm

            Peachy, building a factory with billions in subsidies doesn’t prove Musk created jobs without public assistance. Tesla, SpaceX, and other ventures have thrived on government contracts, tax breaks, and EV credits. All funded by taxpayers.

            The real question isn’t whether Tesla employs people, but whether Musk’s empire would exist without public funding. If those subsidies vanished, would the jobs still be there? He’s a welfare queen.

            #muskisatool
            #muskisawelfarequeen

          • Peachy

            February 25, 2025 at 6:07 pm

            JD,

            Companies make many business decisions based on incentives, taxes, labor costs, etc. That is pretty much how this country operates. Now AOC proved how much of an idiot she was by chasing Amazon away. Don’t be AOC JD.

          • JD

            February 25, 2025 at 10:10 pm

            I guess when Tesla took the $64M in local tax breaks AND cut 2,700 jobs in Austin in 2024 I guess the local government look like AOC too? Or worse. AOC didn’t have to give the tax breaks to lose the jobs (and it wasn’t just her doing it, but OK Peachy).

      • Peachy

        February 25, 2025 at 1:47 pm

        Well said Oscar. Keep up the good work.

  • SuzyQ

    February 25, 2025 at 7:55 pm

    Inmates running the asylum will come to end.

  • Michael K

    February 26, 2025 at 2:30 pm

    We forget: Musk is a venture capitalist – he just buys companies and slaps his name or X on them. He was not a co-founder of Pay Pal and he does not own any of those companies, just shares. The only thing he actually “makes” is 13 children from multiple (who knows how many) mothers – excluding one child he disowns because she is trans. He does wear that one child like a raccoon of top of his head, however.

Comments are closed.


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