New from WaPo: Trump administration tells agencies they can ignore Musk order on email reply
The Tr-ump administration has told federal agency leaders that they can ignore the public decree from E-lon M-usk to effectively fire employees who do not send in bullet-point summaries of their work last week, according to three people familiar with the matter, a break with the billionaire who has exerted significant power to slash the 2.3-million-person federal workforce.
The Office of Personnel Management, a federal agency that functions as the government’s HR department, delivered the news to agency chief human capital officers on a call midday Monday, according to one of the people, an agency official on the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
Another person briefed on the call said that OPM is also looking at weekly reporting for government departments, the person said. But the person said that OPM was unsure what to do with the emails of employees who responded so far, and had “no plans” to analyze them.
M-usk on Saturday posted on his social media platform X that federal employees would receive an email asking for a list of what they did at work last week and would be considered as having resigned if they did not reply by Monday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Shortly thereafter, the email blast went out to millions of people, including federal judges and workers in the legislative branch — prompting confusion as agency heads struggled to apply the guidance to their particular work. Even before the latest directive, some agencies told workers not to comply, fearful that they might, at OPM’s behest, be disclosing information that was sensitive or important to national security.
The administration’s surprising about-face reflected the degree of unease even among senior Tr-ump officials about the scale and ambition of M-usk’s effort to gut the federal government, which has already disrupted some functions. And while agency leaders were given discretion, some departments had not signaled that they were rejecting M-usk’s mandate — leaving the door open for certain federal employees to be let go if they fail to comply.
Officials also told top HR officials to adhere to the guidance they had already issued to their workforce on the timeline of return-to-office mandates, which include deadlines in mid-March, the agency official on the call said. M-usk posted on X on Monday that workers who had not already returned to the office would be placed on administrative leave this week.
“There’s a full revolt going on right now,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank. “D.O.G.E.’s stated objective was to reorganize the agencies to meet their goals, but Cabinet heads want to run their own agencies and they are objecting to the across-the-board cuts coming from M-usk’s team.”
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