Federal workers’ lawyers said on Monday in a trial that Trump billionaire councilor Elon Musk had violated the law with its request for a weekend that employees explain their achievements or risk being dismissed.
The trial updated, which was filed before the Federal Court in California and was provided to the Associated Press, attempts to block mass dismissals pursued by Musk and President Donald Trump, including all linked to the e -Mail distributed by the staff management office on Saturday.
The office, which operates as a human resources agency for the federal government, said employees had to detail five things they did last week at the end of the day on Monday.
“No rule, regulation, political or program of the OPM has never, in the history of the United States, supposed to demand that all federal workers submit relations to the OPM,” said the modified complaint, which Was tabled on behalf of the unions, veterans and business conservation and group conservation. He described the threat of mass layoffs “one of the most massive employment fraud in the history of this country”.
Musk, who directs the efforts of the Republican president to revise and reduce the federal government, continued to threaten the federal workers on Monday morning, even if the confusion was spread by the administration and certain senior officials told employees not to conform.
“Those who do not take this email seriously will soon continue their careers elsewhere,” Musk published early in X, his social media platform.
He also increased Trump’s demand for employees to stop working remotely.
“From this week, those who still do not reach the post will be placed on administrative leave,” said Musk.
The last series of troubles started over the weekend, when Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media website, which Elon does a great job, but I would like to see it becoming more aggressive. “”
Musk followed by saying: “All federal employees will soon receive an email asking to understand what they did last week.” He said that “non-compliance would be considered a resignation”. The directive echoes the way the billionaire entrepreneur has managed his own businesses.
The staff management office sent its own request later.
Get national news
For news that has an impact on Canada and worldwide, register for the safeguarding of news alerts that are delivered to you directly when they occur.
“Please answer this email with approximately. 5 balls of what you accomplished last week and CC your manager, ”said the message. However, he said nothing about the potential of employees to be dismissed for non-compliance. The deadline was listed on Monday at 11:59 p.m.
There was a rapid resistance of several key American agencies led by the president’s loyalists – notably the FBI, the State Department, Hommelier and the Pentagon – which asked their employees this weekend not to answer . The legislators of the two parties said that Musk’s mandate could be illegal, while the unions threatened to continue.
Sunday morning, a message from the Ministry of Health and Social Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asked its 80,000 employees with around 80,000 employees. It was shortly after the acting general councilor Sean Keveney had asked not to do it. And Sunday evening, the management of the agency issued new instructions according to which employees should “take a break” linked to the request until noon on Monday.
“I will be frank with you. After having done more than 70 hours of work last week, advancing the priorities of the administration, I was personally insulted to receive the email below, “said Keveney in an email referred to in the ‘Associated Press which recognized a wide sense of “uncertainty and stress” within the agency.
Keveney presented security problems and stressed that some of the work carried out by agency employees can be protected by the lawyer-client privilege: “I have not received any assurance that there are appropriate protections in place for Protect the answers to this email. “
Democrats and even some Republicans, including Senator John Curtis, Rutah, criticized Musk’s ultimatum.
“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s like, please put a dose of compassion on this subject,” said Curtis, whose state has 33,000 federal employees, on “Face The Nation” of CBS. “” They are real people. They are real lives. These are mortgages. … It is a false story to say that we must cut and you must also be cruel to do it. “
The director of the recently confirmed FBI, Kash Patel, a Trump Frank ally, asked employees to ignore the request for Musk, at least for the moment.
“The FBI, through the director’s office, is in charge of all our examination processes and will carry out examinations in accordance with the FBI procedures,” Patel wrote in an e-mail confirmed by the AP. “When and if additional information is necessary, we will coordinate the answers. For the moment, please suspend all the answers. »»
Ed Martin, an American interim prosecutor of the Columbia district, sent a message on Sunday to his staff who may have caused more confusion.
“Let me clarify: we will respect this OPM request, whether by responding or deciding not to answer,” wrote Martin in the e-mail obtained by the AP, referring to the office of management of staff.
“Please make an effort in good faith to respond and list your activities (or not, as you prefer), and I will, as I mentioned, have my back concerning any confusion,” continued Martin. “We can do it.”
Officials of state departments, defense and internal security were more consistent.
Tibor Nagy, an acting state under Security for Management, told employees in an email that the department’s management would respond to the name of the workers. “No employee is forced to report his activities outside their department channel,” Nagy wrote in an email.
Pentagon’s leadership asked employees to “take a break” at the Musk team, according to an email from Jules Hurst, the deputy defense subsectary for staff and preparation.
The Department of Internal Security, on the other hand, told employees that “no action of your report is necessary for the moment” and that the agency directors would respond, according to an e-mail from RD Ales, under -assistant secretary for management.
Thousands of government employees have already been forced to leave the federal workforce – either by being dismissed or by a “deferred resignation” – during the first month of Trump’s second term. So far, no official figure has been available for layoffs or layoffs, but the Associated Press has counted hundreds of thousands of affected workers. Many work outside Washington.
Musk called on Sunday his last request “a very basic pulse verification”.
“The reason why this counts is that a significant number of people who are supposed to work for the government do so little work that they do not check their email at all!” Musk wrote on X. “In some cases, we believe that non -existent people or the identity of the dead are used to collect payroll checks. In other words, there is pure and simple fraud. »»
He has provided no evidence of such fraud. In addition, Musk and Trump have falsely affirmed in recent days that tens of millions of deaths over 100 years old receive social security payments.
Meanwhile, thousands of other employees are preparing to leave the federal workforce next week, including the probationary civilian workers of the Pentagon and all except a fraction of the American agency for international development employees by Cups or leave.