Personnel office tells agency chiefs that employee response to Musk-inspired email ‘voluntary’

The Office of Personnel Management notified federal department chiefs Monday that employees’ response to an email prompted by Elon Musk about their weekly work product is voluntary, and failure to do so will not be considered a resignation.

OPM “clarified that a non-response to the email does not equate to a resignation,” according to new guidance obtained by several news outlets. The guidance runs counter to a pronouncement by Mr. Musk, head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, who said Saturday that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

The new directive suspended a Monday deadline faced by most federal workers to either comply with the email or risk losing their jobs. The ultimatum also had created divisions within the administration’s leadership, with some Trump officials publicly backing Mr. Musk’s move and others urging their employees to ignore it.

Earlier Monday, the president said Mr. Musk’s demand for a list of accomplishments from federal workers is “great,” throwing his weight behind the idea even as managers in his administration remained conflicted about compliance.

Mr. Trump said the request from Mr. Musk, a billionaire who is slashing federal spending and payroll, is a way to find out who is reporting to work and what they are doing.

“I thought it was great because we have people who don’t show up to work,” Mr. Trump said. “What he’s doing is saying, ’Are you actually working?’”

Mr. Musk issued the justify-your-job ultimatum soon after the president encouraged him to be more “aggressive” in his cost-cutting efforts.

“Consistent with President [Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Mr. Musk posted on X. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

OPM emailed federal employees shortly after Mr. Musk’s tweet with the subject line “What did you do last week?”

The directive sparked a lawsuit from unionized government workers and mass confusion at agencies.

While some agency heads said workers should respond Monday, leaders at the Pentagon, the State Department, Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence indicated that workers did not need to respond and managers would handle the situation.

FBI Director Kash Patel had led the refusal by directing bureau staff to ignore the request.

The Department of Health and Human Services initially told employees to respond on Sunday but then told them to hold off, according to multiple media reports.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he expected compliance from his workers.

“If you can’t come up with five things that you did, maybe you shouldn’t be employed here,” Mr. Duffy told Fox News.

Mr. Trump had no reservations. He characterized Mr. Musk’s tactics as a fact-finding mission.

“A lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist. Are we paying other people who aren’t working?” Mr. Trump said.

He said the DOGE effort found “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.”

“We’ve just started,” he said.

An amended lawsuit filed in California on Monday said the demand funneled through OPM was unlawful.

“No OPM rule, regulation, policy, or program has ever, in United States history, purported to require all federal workers to submit reports to OPM,” the complaint led by the State Democracy Defenders Fund says.

The revised complaint is part of a broader lawsuit that seeks to stave off mass layoffs in the federal workforce led by Mr. Musk.

The plaintiffs, who include unionized government workers, say the mass firings “represent one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, is backing the fight.

“Elon Musk is traumatizing hardworking federal employees, their children and families. He has no legal authority to make his latest demands,” Mr. Jeffries said over the weekend. “We will block him in Congress and in the Courts. Again.”

But Mr. Musk showed no signs of backing down on Monday. A new post on X said remote workers must return to their government desks.

“Starting this week, those who still fail to return to office will be placed on administrative leave,” he wrote.