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WASHINGTON — Attorneys representing federal workers filed a lawsuit on Monday, accusing billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk of violating the law with his recent demand that employees justify their accomplishments or face termination.
The amended lawsuit, submitted in federal court in California and shared with The Associated Press, seeks to halt mass layoffs initiated by Musk and President Donald Trump. This includes dismissals linked to an email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent on Saturday, instructing federal employees to submit a list of five accomplishments from the previous week by Monday’s end of day.
“No OPM rule, regulation, policy, or program has ever, in United States history, required all federal workers to submit reports to OPM,” the complaint stated. Filed on behalf of unions, businesses, veterans, and conservation groups, it described the mass firing threat as “one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country.”
Musk, tasked with overhauling and downsizing the federal government, continued his pressure campaign Monday morning despite growing confusion within federal agencies and some top officials advising employees to ignore the directive.
“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 announced a crackdown on remote work, stating, “Starting this week, those who still fail to return to the office will be placed on administrative leave.”
The controversy began over the weekend when Trump praised Musk’s performance on Truth Social, his social media platform, but urged him to be “more aggressive.” In response, Musk announced that “all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” warning that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” This approach echoed Musk’s management style at his companies.
Shortly after, OPM distributed its email, instructing employees to reply with “approximately five bullet points of what you accomplished last week” and to cc their managers. However, it did not mention any termination threats. The deadline was set for 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday.
Resistance quickly emerged from key agencies led by Trump appointees—including the FBI, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the Pentagon—advising employees not to respond. Lawmakers from both parties questioned the legality of Musk’s directive, while unions threatened legal action.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., initially instructed its 80,000 employees to comply. However, after Acting General Counsel Sean Keveney advised some not to respond, agency leadership later directed employees to “pause activities” related to the request until noon on Monday.
“I’ll be candid with you. Having put in over 70 hours of work last week advancing the Administration’s priorities, I was personally insulted to receive the below email,” Keveney wrote in an internal message viewed by the AP. He raised concerns about confidentiality, including attorney-client privilege, and questioned whether adequate safeguards were in place to protect employees’ responses.
Criticism also came from lawmakers, including Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah. Speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation, Curtis urged Musk to show more compassion. “These are real people. These are real lives. These are mortgages,” he said. “It’s a false narrative to say we have to cut and you have to be cruel to do it as well.”
FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump ally, instructed employees to ignore Musk’s directive 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 internal email, adding, “For now, please pause any responses.”
At the Department of Justice, interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s message added to the confusion. “Let me clarify: We will comply with this OPM request whether by replying or deciding not to reply,” he wrote. “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.”
Other agencies took a more consistent stance. At the State Department, Acting Undersecretary of State for Management Tibor Nagy informed employees that department leadership would respond on their behalf. “No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command,” he wrote.
The Pentagon’s leadership directed 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. Similarly, the Department of Homeland Security advised that “no reporting action from you is needed at this time” and that agency managers would handle the response, according to Deputy Undersecretary for Management R.D. Alles.
The controversy comes amid an exodus of federal employees. Thousands have already been forced out of the workforce through firings or so-called “deferred resignations” during the first month of Trump’s second term. Although no official figures have been released, the AP has tracked hundreds of thousands of affected workers, many of whom are outside Washington, D.C.
Musk defended the initiative, calling it “a very basic pulse check.” He claimed that some government workers do so little that they never check their email. “In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud,” Musk wrote on X, though he provided no evidence for these claims.
Separately, both Musk and Trump recently made unsubstantiated claims that tens of millions of deceased individuals over 100 years old were still receiving Social Security payments.
Meanwhile, thousands more federal employees are expected to leave their jobs this week, including probationary civilian workers at the Pentagon and the majority of staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development, either through cuts or leave.
Contributing to this report were 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.
