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**Hugh** · 24-02-2025, 22:39

Quote:

Trump administration tells agencies they can ignore Musk order on email reply

The Office of Personnel Management told HR officials that employees wouldn’t be let go for not replying to an email asking what they did last week.

The Trump administration has told federal agency leaders that they can ignore the public decree from Elon Musk 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. 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.

Musk 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.