The federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is the latest agency to buck DOGE chief Elon Musk’s dictate that workers justify their jobs via email or be fired.
Adding to the chaos is the fact that OPM is the agency that sent the request in the first place.
OPM, which effectively serves as the federal government’s human resources department, told leaders across the Trump administration that Musk’s order is voluntary and noncompliance will not result in workers losing their jobs—directly contradicting public statements made by Musk in recent days.
“This afternoon, OPM during a Chief Human Capital Officers Council meeting, informed agencies that employee responses to the OPM email is voluntarily,” an OPM representative wrote to other agency heads, according to an email obtained by The Hill. “OPM also clarified that a non-response to the email does not equate to a resignation.”
The latest OPM guidance was also confirmed by sources who spoke to CBS News and ABC.
Musk stirred a weekend of chaos and confusion with an email to federal employees on Saturday titled “What did you do last week?” that demanded bullet points on what they accomplished over the past work week.
The email, originally sent by OPM, set a deadline of Monday 11:59 p.m. Musk later said on X that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The directive quickly exposed a rift in Trumpworld as several Cabinet secretaries instructed their staff to hold off on responding, citing security concerns.
Among the agencies that told employees not to respond to the DOGE email were the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Departments of State, Defense, and Energy.
“Given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, I.C. employees should not respond to the OPM email,” national intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard reportedly wrote in an email to intelligence officials.
Unions representing federal workers also challenged Musk’s order in court. They filed a lawsuit in San Francisco asking a judge to prohibit the OPM from terminating “tens of thousands of federal employees in contravention of federal constitutional and statutory law.”
As his Cabinet picks tussle with “first buddy” Musk, President Donald Trump lauded the DOGE directive from the Oval Office on Monday.
“There was a lot of genius in sending it,” Trump told reporters. “We’re trying to find out if people are working and so we’re sending a letter to people, please tell us what you did last week. If people don’t respond, it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working.”
