The Trump administration’s mass email asking federal employees what they worked on last week — and Elon Musk’s announcement that anyone who does not respond will be dismissed — has sent agencies scrambling.
Some agencies advised workers to hold off on responding, setting up a showdown with Musk. But other agencies are telling employees to comply, as unions vow legal challenges.
Would dismissal be legal? Musk can’t legally force federal employees to resign, and attempting to do so would amount to an involuntary termination, Michael Fallings, a federal employment law expert, told CNN. If workers were affected, they could file a claim challenging the action. Employees should discuss the email with their managers and, if applicable, their union officials before responding, Fallings said.
Here’s what officials are telling their workers:
Leaders at the Pentagon, Federal Bureau of Investigation, State Department, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Energy all instructed their staff not to reply to an email that federal workers received from the Office of Personnel Management on Saturday afternoon.
Multiple senior Defense Department officials told CNN the email thrust their weekend into chaos.
“It is the silliest thing I’ve seen in 40 years and completely usurps the chain of command,” one official said. “That might be done elsewhere, but in the DoD it’s not done.”
Department of Health and Human Services: HHS initially told employees to comply. But the agency later reversed its guidance, telling employees to “pause” their answering of the email.
Employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration, which are part of HHS, were told by individual agencies to wait until Monday for more guidance.
NASA is working to issue guidance on how employees should respond, after initially asking workers to comply.
Workers at the Social Security Administration and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were told to comply.
Many employees at the CFPB, which the Trump administration is hoping to dismantle, were told to stop working earlier this month. The Sunday email said: “If you were not able to perform tasks/work… you may reply and simply reference that you were complying with the current work stoppage.”
Employees from the National Transportation Safety Board — tasked with investigating an unprecedented string of air disasters over the last month — have also been asked to justify what they did on the job last week. It’s not clear how the NTSB staff will be directed to respond. The deadline to respond is 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday.
Read more about how agencies are responding.
