Elon Musk’s latest blow to federal workers
After an ominous email instructed federal employers to name what they “accomplished last week,” key agencies refuse to comply
Elon Musk at a February 11 press conference in the Oval Office (Photo: The White House)
On Saturday, February 22, Elon Musk, head of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, issued a threatening email ultimatum to hundreds of thousands of federal workers which has been met with widespread rejection.
Musk wrote on his platform X on Saturday: “Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Soon after, hundreds of thousands of federal employees received an email containing only three lines from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The email instructed workers to “please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”
The deadline to reply was set for Monday at 11:59 pm.
Labor unions representing federal workers have already sued over Musk’s email, alleging that the communication violates laws relating to the federal workforce.
“No OPM rule, regulation, policy, or program has ever, in United States history, purported to require all federal workers to submit reports to OPM,” stated the lawsuit, which was amended from a lawsuit filed last week in California aiming to block Musk’s mass layoffs of federal workers. Unions involved in the lawsuit include the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP).
The communication appears to contradict a February OPM assessment which said that responses to government emails by employees must be “explicitly voluntary”—despite Musk claiming on X that failure to respond will constitute a resignation.
Some federal agencies told their employees that they did not need to comply with Musk’s dramatic request to disclose what they “accomplished last week.” These agencies include the FBI, the State Department, and the Pentagon, who instructed their employees to not respond to the email.
Musk and Trump’s attacks on federal workers, including firings and a buyout offer, have already forced thousands out of the workforce and the nation’s largest employer—the federal government.
