Federal workers sue over Musk’s weekend threat to fire anyone who doesn’t respond to strange work-list email

By Lindsay Whitehurst and Chris Megerian Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – Lawyers for federal employees said on Monday in a lawsuit that billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk had violated the law with his weekend demand that employees explain their performance or run the risk of being fired.

The updated lawsuit, which was brought to the Federal Court in California and was provided to the Associated Press, tries to block mass dismissals that have been chased by Musk and President Donald Trump, including all connected to the E -mail that was distributed on Saturday by the Office or personnel management. The office, which acts as a human resources agency for the federal government, said that employees had to describe five things that they did last week towards the end of the day on Monday.

“No OPM rule, regulations, policy or program has ever claimed in the history of the United States that all federal employees submit reports to OPM,” said the amended complaint submitted on behalf of trade unions, veterans of companies and companies groups. It called the threat of mass fired “one of the most massive employment fraud in the history of this country.”

Musk, who leads the efforts of the Republican President to revise and reduce the federal government, continued to threaten federal employees on Monday morning, even while confusion spread through the administration and some top officials told employees told employees that they should not meet.

“Those who do not take this e -mail seriously will soon promote their career elsewhere,” Musk posted his social media platform early in the morning.

He also escalated Trump’s question to employees to stop remotely.

“From this week, those who are still not returning to the office with administrative leave will be placed,” Musk posted.

The last round of unrest started at the weekend, when Trump on Truth Social, his social media website, that “Elon does great job, but I would like to see him becoming more aggressive.”

Musk followed by saying: “All federal employees will soon receive an e -mail to understand what they did last week.” He claimed that “it will not respond will be considered a dismissal.” The directive repeated how the billionaire entrepreneur managed his own companies.

The Office of Personnel Management afterwards sent its own request.

“Answer this e -mail with approximately. 5 bullets of what you achieved last week and CC your manager, “said the message. However, it said nothing about the potential for employees to be fired at non -compliance. The deadline was mentioned on Monday as 11:59 PM Est.

There was a quick resistance from various important American agencies led by the president’s loyalists – including the FBI, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security and the Pentagon – who instructed their employees in the weekend not to respond. The laws in both parties said that the mandate of Musk can be illegal, while trade unions threatened to sue.

One message on Sunday morning from the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dedicated around 80,000 employees to satisfy. That was shortly after the acting general counsel, Sean Keveney, had instructed a number not to do that. And on Sunday evening, desk leadership has issued new instructions that employees should “pause activities” with regard to the request until Monday to the afternoon.

“I’ll be frank with you. After I had put more than 70 hours of work last week by promoting the priorities of the administration, I was personally offended to receive the e -mail below, “said Keveney in an e -mail viewed by the Associated Press that one Wide feeling of “uncertainty and stress” recognized within the agency.

Keveney explained security problems and pointed out that part of the work done by the office employees can be protected by a lawyer-client privilege: “I have not received any guarantees that there is suitable protection to answers to this e-mail to protect. “

Democrats and even some Republicans, including Senator John Curtis, R-Utah, were critical of the Ultimatum of Musk.

“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s like putting a dose of compassion in here,” said Curtis, whose state has 33,000 federal employees, on CBS ‘Face the Nation’. “These are real people. These are real life. These are mortgages. … it’s a false story to say that we have to cut and that you have to be cruel to do it too. “

Newly confirmed FBI director Kash Patel, a pronounced Trump bondmen, dedicated employees to ignore Musk’s request, at least for the time being.

“The FBI, via the director’s office, is in charge of all our assessment processes and will perform reviews in accordance with FBI procedures,” Patel wrote in an e -mail confirmed by the AP. “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the answers. Pause any reactions for now. “

Ed Martin, Interim -Mamerican lawyer for the District of Columbia, sent his staff a message on Sunday that may have caused more confusion.

“Let me make it clear: we will meet this additional request, whether we will answer or decide not to answer,” wrote Martin in the e -mail obtained by the AP, referring to the Office of Personnel Management.

“Please make a good loyalty attempt to answer and list your activities (or not, as you want), and I will, as I said, will have your back about any confusion,” Martin continued. “We can do this.”

Civil servants of the state departments, defense and domestic security were more consistent.

Tibor Nagy, Acting Undersecretary of State for Management, told employees in an e -mail that would respond department leadership on behalf of employees. “No employee is obliged to report their activities outside their departmental chain,” Nagy wrote in an e -mail.

Pentagon Leadership instructed employees to ‘pause’ every answer to the Musk team, according to an e -mail from Jules Hurst, the deputy subdivisor of Defense for Staff and Prevention.

In the meantime, the Homeland Security department told employees that “no reporting campaign is needed from you” and that deskbanagers would respond, according to an e -mail from RD Alles, deputy Bottle Secretary for Management.

Thousands of government employees are already forced from the federal workforce – either by being fired or by a “postponed dismissal” offer – during the first month of Trump’s second term. So far, there is no official figure available for the total dismissal or dismissals, but the Associated Press has added hundreds of thousands of employees who are affected. Many work outside of Washington.

Musk on Sunday called his last request ‘a very basic pulse control’.

“The reason that this matters is that a considerable number of people who are supposed to work for the government do so little work that they do not check their e -mail at all!” Musk wrote on X. “In some cases we believe that non-existent people or the identity of dead people are used to collect salary. In other words, there is outright fraud. “

He has not provided any evidence for such fraud. Separately, in recent days, Musk and Trump have wrongly claimed that tens of millions of dead people are older than 100 years old.

In the meantime, thousands of other employees are preparing to leave the federal workforce this next week, including probation workers at the Pentagon and at a fraction of the American Bureau for International Development staff due to austerity or departure.

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Associated Press writers Steve Peoples in New York, Eric Tucker, Amanda Seitz, Byron Tau, Ellen Knickmeyer, Matthew Perrone and Tara Copp in Washington and Valerie Gonzalez in Mcallen, Texas, contributed to this report.