Musk Order to Federal Workers Dubbed Illegal, ‘Amateurish’ (1)

The Trump administration’s weekend demand that federal workers describe their job accomplishments or face termination raises legal questions about establishing new evaluation metrics by email and threatening employees for noncompliance, as well as practical concerns about what the effort will accomplish.

Federal employees across government agencies received an email Saturday asking for five bullet points of what they “accomplished last week” by Monday at 11:59 p.m. Elon Musk, who’s led the administration’s campaign to slash federal jobs, wrote Saturday on his social media platform X that failure to respond would be “taken as a resignation.”

Congress and presidential administrations have developed an extensive framework for evaluating employees’ performance, said David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown University. That includes laws establishing appraisal systems, detailing what criteria should be used, setting consequences for poor performance, and governing reductions in force.

“This amateurish approach of Mr. Musk is completely contrary to the law and to common sense on how to measure employee performance,” Super said.

President Donald Trump praised Musk’s effort on Monday, calling it “genius.”

Federal workers can control when they resign and forcing workers to quit for not responding to the email would be tantamount to terminations in violation of their civil service protections, said Michael Fallings, a federal sector employment lawyer with Tully Rinckey PLLC.

The email from the Office of Personnel Management combined with Musk’s social media threats mark the Trump administration’s latest broadside against the federal workforce, following mass firings of workers and efforts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and US Agency for International Development.

OPM clarified Monday that any response to the request for job accomplishments is voluntary and not responding won’t be considered a resignation.

‘Not Understanding How Government Works’

Even if workers comply with OPM’s request, it’s unclear “what on earth they’re going to do with two million emails,” said Jenny Mattingley, vice president for government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that focuses on the federal workforce.

Making sense of the responses will require an enormous amount of work to determine performance parameters for each position, develop metrics for success, and extract that information from individual emails, she said.

There are also security risks associated with workers responding about their job activities via email because many of those messages could include sensitive information about national security, law enforcement actions, and other privileged topics, Mattingley said.

“This is just more of Elon Musk not understanding how government works,” said Suzanne Summerlin, an employment attorney who specializes in federal workforce issues.

The Trump administration’s request prompted confusion for federal workers who typically get their orders from their agency’s leadership, not OPM. More than 100 House Democrats called on federal agency heads to tell their staff that they didn’t have to reply to the email, adding that dismissal for failing to respond “would be illegal.”

Some agencies have contradicted the OPM email requesting information. The Justice Department told workers they need not respond, for example, while the Defense Department said it will conduct performance reviews in accordance with its procedures.

“The best approach for federal employees right now is to listen to the advice of their individual agencies,” said Tamara Slater, a federal sector employment lawyer with Alan Lescht & Associates PC.

The message also appears to violate OPM’s statement to the US District Court for the District of Columbia that its government-wide emails to employees would explicitly say that responses would be voluntary. The email didn’t include such language. Musk on Monday separately posted on X that those “who do not take this email seriously will soon be furthering their career elsewhere.”

Federal employee unions said Monday in a lawsuit that the “What did you do last week” email violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the law that requires agencies to collect opinions from the public before implementing a new rule. The unions asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to say that employees that don’t respond won’t be punished.