Dems press agencies to ignore Musk: ‘Reckless, cruel, unlawful, and unenforceable’

House Democrats are pressing every major agency head in Washington to reject the recent demand from Elon Musk that federal workers must detail their recent work accomplishments or be fired.

More than 100 Democrats endorsed a Monday letter to the leaders of 24 federal agencies characterizing Musk’s missive — and a subsequent memo from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reinforcing it — as an illegal move without precedent or binding force.

They’re urging the agency heads not only to dismiss the order, but to state explicitly that no federal workers will be fired for noncompliance.

“Mr. Musk’s threat is reckless, cruel, unlawful, and unenforceable,” the Democrats wrote. “You must take immediate action to clarify that the federal employees at your agency are not obligated to respond to this ill-conceived email stunt and that nonresponse cannot constitute resignation.”

The letter, spearheaded by Rep. Gerry Connolly (Va.), the senior Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is just the latest round of pushback from public officials in response to Musk’s demand, which he posted Saturday on the X platform that he owns.

“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk wrote. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Shortly afterwards, the OPM sent an email to hundreds of thousands of federal workers reinforcing Musk’s threat.

“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished this week and cc your manager,” OPM said on Saturday afternoon.

Federal workers were told they have until the end of Monday to comply.

A number of federal agencies, however, are already fighting the order. And some of them are headed by some of the most high-profile of President Trump’s executive officer picks, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, FBI Director Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, all of whom have instructed employees under their jurisdiction to ignore the order — at least for now.

Other agencies, though, are siding with Musk and OPM, including the Treasury Department, where employees reportedly received notice Monday that they must comply with the reporting requirement.

Musk’s actions have been cheered by many conservatives, who have long accused the federal government of being a breeding ground of sloth and incompetence, where the nation’s ills originate. In that vein, the House GOP’s campaign arm blasted the Democrats’ new letter, vilifying federal workers as overpaid and unaccountable.

"House Democrats are working overtime to put unelected bureaucrats on the endangered species list — because apparently, overpaid, unaccountable pencil-pushers need more protection than American taxpayers,” Mike Marinella, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a brief statement.

Democrats have decidedly different views, noting that the country’s core institutions can’t function without the workers who make them tick.

“Whether Mr. Musk understands it or not, America is a nation of laws, our government is a system of checks and balances, and federal agencies will not be reorganized by social media post,” Connolly and the Democrats wrote on Monday.

“This stunt is yet another example of the cruel and arbitrary chaos Mr. Musk inflicts on the American people by carelessly ‘taking a chainsaw’ to the people’s government and the dedicated public servants who keep it running.”

Updated at 2:12 p.m. EST

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