Federal workers free to ignore Elon Musk email ultimatum, US personnel office says – live
“The article describes the confusion surrounding Elon Musk's email to all 2.3 million government workers, demanding they justify their jobs. Some agencies, like the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, have instructed their employees to comply with the email. However, other agencies, such as the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, have ordered their employees not to respond to the email.
OPM says federal workers not obliged to respond despite Musk’s that ignoring email would be considered resignation
As we’ve mentioned on the blog, a federal judge denied the Associated Press’s request to immediately restore its access to presidential events.
From the Guardian staff and agencies:
The US district judge Trevor McFadden declined to grant the AP’s request for a temporary injunction restoring its access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House. The Trump administration barred the outlet earlier this month for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage after the president renamed it the “Gulf of America”.
McFadden, a Trump appointee, said the restriction on “more private areas” used by Trump was different from prior instances in which courts have blocked government officials from revoking access to journalists.
“I can’t say the AP has shown a likelihood of success here,” McFadden said.
But he also described the ban as “problematic” and advised the government that “case law in this circuit is uniformly unhelpful to the White House”. McFadden said the issue required more exploration before ruling. Another hearing in the case has been set for next month.
The AP filed a lawsuit over the ban last week, in which it named three senior Trump aides and argued that the decision to block its reporters from certain locations violates the US constitution’s first amendment protections against government abridgment of speech by trying to dictate the language they use in reporting the news.
“The constitution prevents the president of the United States or any other government official from coercing journalists or anyone else into using official government vocabulary to report the news,” Charles Tobin, a lawyer for the AP, said during a court hearing.
The outlet’s attorneys argued the AP would face “irreparable harm” if the ban was not immediately lifted.
Office of personnel management says Musk ultimatum will not hold
The US office of personnel management has told government HR officials that employees should not feel obliged to respond to email asking them to justify their jobs, undermining billionaire Elon Musk’s ultimatum to federal workers, Reuters reports.
Over the weekend, Musk sent out an email via the OPM to millions of employees demanding that federal workers detail what they do at their jobs in bullet-pointed list or face dismissal. Agency heads have since given workers conflicting advice about whether or not to respond.
As my Guardian colleagues reported earlier:
Musk’s ultimatum was sent out on Saturday in a mass email to federal employees from the office of personnel management (OPM), one of the first federal organs Musk and his team on the so-called “department of government efficiency” infiltrated after Trump was sworn in. The message gave all the US government’s more than 2 million workers barely 48 hours to itemize their accomplishments in the past week in five bullet points, and in a post on X, Musk indicated that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation”.
The order provoked instant chaos across the government, with Trump’s own appointed leadership in federal agencies responding in starkly different ways. Workers in the Social Security Administration and the health and human services department were told to comply with the email, and CNN reported that the Department of Transportation ordered all its employees to respond to the Musk email by its deadline. That included air traffic controllers who are currently struggling with severe understaffing and a spate of recent accidents.
Several others agencies told their employees to refrain, including the FBI, where the new director, Trump loyalist Kash Patel, asked agents to “please pause any responses”. At the homeland security department, employees were similarly informed that “no reporting action from you is needed at this time”.
All employees at the Department of Defense, who now answer to the former Fox News host and Trump acolyte Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, were ordered to pause responding to the OPM missive. Employees in other federal departments were told to await further orders or to simply ignore Musk’s edict.“
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