Washington (AP) confusion and chaos will begin their working week on Monday with hundreds of thousands of federal employees to explain their recent achievements or to lose their work.
The unusual demand from Musk was exposed to resistance by several vital US agencies of the President – including the FBI, the Foreign Ministry, the Homeland Protection Authority and the Pentagon, which its employees noticed over the weekend. The legislators of both parties said that Musk’s mandate could be illegal while the unions threatened to complain.
At the weekend, Trump asked that Musk was more aggressive in his paid crusade through the so -called Department of Government Efficiency or Doge, and recorded a meme on social media, the federal employee who “cried” about Trump and Elon “.
The Musk team sent an e -mail to hundreds of thousands of federal employees on Saturday and gave them around 48 hours to report five specific things they had reached last week. In a separate message on X, Musk said that every employee who did not answer after the deadline – would lose their job in the e -mail as 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday.
On the eve of the deadline, a mass confusion followed when some agencies resisted the order, others encouraged their workers to fulfill themselves, and other offered contradictory instructions.
A message on Sunday morning from the Department of Health and Human Services led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. instructed his approximately 80,000 employees. That was shortly after the reigning General Counsel, Sean Keveney, had not instructed some. On Sunday evening, the management of the agency gave up-to-date instructions that the employees gave the request in connection with the request in connection with the request in connection with the processing of employees.
“I will be open to you. After doing over 70 hours of work in the administration’s priorities last week, I was personally insulted to get the following e -mail, ”said Keveney in an e -mail that was viewed by the Associated Press Feeling of “uncertainty and stress” within the agency recognized.
Keveney made security concerns and pointed out that some of the workers performed by the agency’s employees can be protected by lawyers and privileges: “I have not received any assurances that there are adequate protective measures to answer this email protect.”
Democrats and even some Republicans, including Senator John Curtis, R-Utah, criticized Musks Ultimatum.
“If I could say Elon Musk one, it is as if I would put a dose of compassion in this way,” said Curtis, whose state has 33,000 federal employees, in CBS ‘”Face the Nation”. “These are real people. These are real life. These are mortgages. … it is a wrong story to say that we have to cut and you have to be cruel to do it. “
The newly confirmed FBI director Kash Patel, a pronounced ally of Trump, instructed the employees to ignore Musk’s request for the time being.
“The FBI is responsible for all of our review processes via the director’s office and will carry out checks according to the FBI procedures,” wrote Patel in an e -mail confirmed by the AP. “When and if further information is required, we coordinate the answers. Please make all the answers for the time being. “
Ed Martin, preliminary US lawyer of the District of Columbia, sent his employees a message on Sunday, which may have caused more confusion.
“Let me make it clear: We will comply with this OPM request whether you do not answer by answering or decision,” wrote Martin in the e -mail received from the AP and referred to the Office of Personnel Management.
“Please try to answer and list your activities (or not, as you prefer), and I will have a back on confusion, as I mentioned,” continued Martin. “We can do that.”
Officials from the state departments, defense and home protection were more consistent.
Tibor Nagy, the acting understate secretary of the state for management, told the employees in an e -mail that the management of the department on behalf of the employees would answer. “No employee is obliged to report their activities outside of their command chain of the department,” Nagy wrote in an e -mail.
According to an e -mail by Jules Hurst, the deputy understate secretary of the defense for personnel and willingness, “pause” Pentagon Leadership, to “pause” the reaction to Musk’s team.
The home protection department told the employees that “currently no report measures are necessary” and that according to an e -mail from approx.
Thousands of government employees were already in the first month by Trump’s second term from the federal employees – either by dismissal or by a “postponed resignation”. So far there is no official number for the entire shots or layoffs, but the AP has overtaken hundreds of thousands of employees who are affected. Many work outside of Washington.
Musk described his latest request “A very simple pulse check” on Sunday.
“The reason for this is that a considerable number of people who are supposed to work for the government do so little work that they do not check their e -mails at all!” Musk wrote about X. “In some cases we believe that non -existent people or the identity of dead are used to collect salary checks. In other words, there is a direct fraud. “
He has not presented any evidence of such fraud. Regardless of this, Musk and Trump have wrongly claimed in the past few days that tens of millions of dead people have received over 100 years of social security payments.
In the meantime, thousands of other employees are preparing to leave the federal agent in the coming week, including civil workers in the probation officer in the Pentagon and, apart from a fraction of the US agency for international development employees, through cuts or vacation.
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The peoples reported from New York. Associated Press Writers Byron Tau, Ellen Knickmeyer, Matthew Perrone and Tara Copp in Washington and Valerie Gonzalez in Mcallen, Texas, contributed to this report.
