On Monday evening, Elon Musk reiterated his threat to terminate federal workers who do not provide a list of five or more successes they had made at work in the last week.
Regarding federal employees, Musk posted on his social media platform X, "They will be given another chance, subject to the President's discretion."
Musk, who has been charged by President Donald Trump with reducing federal government expenditures and the number of federal employees, wrote, "Failure to respond a second time will result in termination."
His fresh warning was issued just hours after The Federal Office of Personnel Management denied his initial threat, stating to senior federal government HR managers that the list of workplace accomplishments "is voluntary" in response to the OPM email.
Musk seemed to laugh at such a notion.
"The email request was completely pointless because all you had to do to pass the test was enter a few words and hit send! However, he tweeted on Monday night, "So many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers."
Have you ever seen such incompetence and disregard for the use of YOUR TAXES? Enhances the appearance of old Twitter. Didn't believe it was feasible.
Musk's initial threat on Saturday that employees who did not reply to an OPM email asking them what they did last week would be forced to "resign" was referenced in a freshly amended lawsuit filed over the weekend.
Widespread misunderstanding and debate on whether workers need to reply to an email sent by the OPM on Saturday requesting these names by Monday night were also mentioned in that filing in a federal court in San Francisco.
The Pentagon was among the main departments that instructed their staff to wait to respond to OPM's request. Others, such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services component of the Department of Health and Human Services, instructed their employees to comply.
The Department of Government Efficiency, or "DOGE," is what the CEO of Tesla called that endeavor.
A coalition of unions representing federal employees initially filed the case against OPM and acting OPM director Charles Ezell on Wednesday, and it was revised on Sunday.
The lawsuit requests that a judge prevent OPM from firing "tens of thousands of federal employees in violation of federal statutory and constitutional law."
According to the lawsuit, on February 13, OPM directed federal agencies "to effectively eliminate the category of probationary employee, by terminating tens of thousands of federal employees en masse."
Following OPM's implementation of a "new mandatory reporting program for all federal employees," as noted in the complaint, the suit was modified.
"What did you do last week?" was the headline of the email, which came from a new OPM email account.
The email's body read, "Please reply to this email with approximately five bullet points of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager." "This Monday at 11:59 EST is the deadline."
According to the lawsuit, government employees were not obliged to provide OPM with any work-related reports before Saturday.
By President @realDonaldTrump's directives, Musk stated in a tweet on his social media platform X on Saturday that "all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week."
In that tweet, Musk also stated, "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the unions suing OPM, denounced Musk's warning.
“The Trump Administration and Elon Musk have once again demonstrated their complete disregard for federal workers and the vital services they offer to the American people,” Kelley said in a statement.
Being forced to defend their job responsibilities to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never in his life served the public honestly is cruel and disrespectful to the hundreds of thousands of veterans who are serving in the civil service in their second uniform, according to Kelley.
According to the updated lawsuit, "no notice was published, in the Federal Register or anywhere else, regarding any OPM program, rule, policy, or regulation requiring all federal employees to provide a report regarding their work to OPM" before Saturday.
The lawsuit claims that OPM "has not complied with any procedural requirements... concerning this new program."
According to the lawsuit, "at least some federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, began telling their employees not to respond to this OPM surprise request" after OPM sent out the blast email to federal employees on Saturday.
The Justice Department, Defense Department, State Department, FBI, and other national intelligence agencies have also told their staff not to reply to OPM's email right away.
But according to an email that NBC News was able to get on Monday, the Transportation Department has instructed staff to reply.
According to the email, "Please make sure that you exclude classified information, links, and attachments."
A hearing on the union's request for a temporary restraining order to stop the mass terminations was set for Thursday afternoon by a court later on Monday.
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