Federal workers sue over Elon Musk’s threat to fire them if they don’t explain their accomplishments – live
Federal workers sue over Elon Musk’s threat to fire them if they don’t explain their accomplishments
Attorneys for federal workers said on Monday in a lawsuit that billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk had violated the law with his weekend demand that employees explain their accomplishments or risk being fired, the AP reports.
The updated lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in California and was provided to the Associated Press, is trying to block mass layoffs pursued by Musk and president Donald Trump, including any connected to the email distributed by the Office of Personnel Management on Saturday.
The office, which functions as a human resources agency for the federal government, said employees needed to detail five things that they did last week by end of day on Monday.
“No OPM rule, regulation, policy, or program has ever, in United States history, purported to require all federal workers to submit reports to OPM,” said the amended complaint, which was filed on behalf of unions, businesses veterans, and conservation organizations represented by the group State Democracy Defenders Fund. It called the threat of mass firings “one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country.”
Musk, who is leading the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul and downsize the federal government, continued to threaten federal workers on Monday morning even as confusion spread through the administration and some top officials told employees not to comply.
Key events
Elon Musk called the co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to congratulate her on the party’s performance in Sunday’s election after it doubled its support from the last election, my colleagues Deborah Cole and Helen Sullivan report.
Alice Weidel hinted she had slept through an overnight attempt to reach her by the Trump adviser and Tesla CEO, who had repeatedly intervened in the German campaign on her behalf.
“When I turned on my telephone this morning or rather looked at it, I had missed calls from the US including from Elon Musk who personally congratulated [me],” she told reporters.
The party was endorsed by Musk and the US vice-president, JD Vance, during the election campaign. Musk, who had described the AfD in January as the “best hope for the future” in Germany, shared a post showing the party’s gains since 2021, with the caption “Holy shit!”.
Trump administration eliminating 2,000 USAid positions in US, notice says
The Trump administration said it was placing all but a handful of USAid personnel around the world on paid administrative leave and eliminating about 2,000 of those positions in the US, as the rapid dismantling of the organization appears to move into its final phases.
“As of 11:59 p.m. EST on Sunday, February 23, 2025, all USAid direct hire personnel, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and/or specially designated programs, will be placed on administrative leave globally,” reads the notice sent to agency workers and posted online on Sunday.
“Concurrently”, the notice added, the agency is “beginning to implement a Reduction-in-Force” affecting about 2,000 USAid personnel in the US.
The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Billionaire Elon Musk has boasted that he is “feeding USAID into the wood chipper” as his so-called “department of government efficiency” has led an effort to gut the main delivery mechanism for American foreign assistance, a critical tool of US “soft power” for winning influence abroad.
On Friday, a federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to put thousands of USAid workers on leave, a setback for government employee unions that are suing over what they have called an effort to dismantle it.
The full story is here:
Federal workers sue over Elon Musk’s threat to fire them if they don’t explain their accomplishments
Attorneys for federal workers said on Monday in a lawsuit that billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk had violated the law with his weekend demand that employees explain their accomplishments or risk being fired, the AP reports.
The updated lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in California and was provided to the Associated Press, is trying to block mass layoffs pursued by Musk and president Donald Trump, including any connected to the email distributed by the Office of Personnel Management on Saturday.
The office, which functions as a human resources agency for the federal government, said employees needed to detail five things that they did last week by end of day on Monday.
“No OPM rule, regulation, policy, or program has ever, in United States history, purported to require all federal workers to submit reports to OPM,” said the amended complaint, which was filed on behalf of unions, businesses veterans, and conservation organizations represented by the group State Democracy Defenders Fund. It called the threat of mass firings “one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country.”
Musk, who is leading the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul and downsize the federal government, continued to threaten federal workers on Monday morning even as confusion spread through the administration and some top officials told employees not to comply.
The US Transportation Department told workers they should respond to a demand by Donald Trump’s adviser Elon Musk to list their accomplishments in the past week by 11.59 pm ET on Monday.
USDOT has a workforce of about 57,000 people that includes the Federal Aviation Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Railroad Administration regulating companies including Boeing and Tesla.
The department’s email to employees on Monday said they should include about five bullet points of accomplishments but exclude classified information. In response to criticism of the order, Musk wrote on X: “This email is a basic pulse check.”
Some other agencies have told employees not to respond, even the FBI which is now headed by fierce Trump loyalist Kash Patel. Patel instructed agency staff to “please pause any responses,” in an email obtained by Politico.
Leadership at the Pentagon, State Department, Justice Department, FBI, NIH, Energy Department, DHS, HHS, Office of the DNI, NOAA and NSA have all told employees they should not or did not need to respond to the email as yet.
Judge blocks Musk’s Doge team from accessing Education Department and OPM data
A federal judge has blocked the government downsizing team created by Donald Trump and spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk from accessing sensitive data maintained by the US Education Department and the US Office of Personnel Management, Reuters reports.
US district judge Deborah Boardman in Greenbelt, Maryland issued the temporary restraining order at the behest of a coalition of labor unions who argued the agencies wrongly granted Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” access to records containing personal information on millions of Americans.
The judge said the plaintiffs had established that both agencies had likely violated federal law by granting Doge “sweeping access” to sensitive personal information in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974.
That information included social security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, income and assets, citizenship status and disability status for current and former federal employees and student aid recipients.
The Trump administration had argued that a ruling blocking Doge from accessing the information would impede the Republican president’s ability to fulfil his agenda by limiting what information his advisors can access.
But Boardman said her order prevents the disclosure of the plaintiffs’ sensitive personal information to Doge affiliates who, on the current record, do not have a need to know the information to perform their duties.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Auto safety agency laying off staff at agency that investigated Tesla crashes
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration laid off 4% of its staff as part of a government-wide trimming of probationary employees, a spokesperson said on Monday.
The agency has pending investigations into deadly crashes involving Tesla cars. Elon Musk is CEO of the automaker and president Donald Trump’s senior adviser on a crusade to shrink the federal government.
NHTSA said under former president Joe Biden the agency grew by 30% and is still considerably larger after the job cuts earlier this month. Its workforce was about 800 before the job cuts.
In addition to investigations into Tesla’s partially automated vehicles, NHTSA has mandated that Tesla and other automakers using self-driving technology report crash data on vehicles, a requirement that Tesla has criticized and that watchdogs fear could be eliminated.
Here’s a little more on Dan Bongino, the Maga podcaster Donald Trump has named as deputy director of the FBI and who will oversee the bureau alongside newly appointed director Kash Patel.
The president announced the appointment on Sunday night in a post on his Truth Social platform, praising Bongino as “a man of incredible love and passion for our country”. He called the announcement “great news for law enforcement and American justice”.
Bongino, 49, is a former police officer and Secret Service agent who served on the presidential details for then-presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush, before becoming a popular rightwing figure. He became one of the leading personalities in the Maga political movement to spread false information about the 2020 election. According to NPR, Bongino becomes the 20th ex-Fox News host, journalist or commentator to be given a senior job in the new Trump administration.
The deputy director serves as the FBI’s second-in-command and is traditionally a career agent responsible for the bureau’s day-to-day law enforcement operations.
Marco Rubio’s former general counsel, Gregg Nunziata, took to X to criticize the decision:
Kash Patel should have been a redline. Bongino is what you get when R Senators fail to do their jobs and say no to Patel. The Trump Admin is turning federal law enforcement over to unqualified, unprincipled, partisan henchmen. It’s unacceptable and conservatives need to say so.
Musk’s ‘Doge’ claim about USAid funds for India sets off political firestorm
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” has been accused of setting off a political firestorm in India after it claimed that the US government had been sending millions of dollars to support the Indian elections.
In a list published on Musk’s social media platform X last week, Doge, a special group that Donald Trump created, claimed that a $21m grant distributed by USAid – the US agency for international development – to help “voter turnout in India” had been cancelled, as part of the president’s sweeping cuts to foreign aid.
However, records accessed by the Indian Express newspaper have found that no such funds were ever distributed in India and USAid staff have also denied the existence of such a programme.
Instead, documents show that USAid had allocated $21m for a non-profit promoting political engagement in neighbouring Bangladesh, amid a draconian crackdown on the political opposition in the country.
Nonetheless, the claim was seized upon with gusto by Trump, as he sought to discredit USAid and its global development programmes and justify gutting the agency. Musk too has boasted that Doge is “feeding USAid into the wood chipper”.
The full story is here:
Friedrich Merz, whose mainstream conservative party has won Germany’s national election, has vowed to do everything in his power to continue a good transatlantic relationship with the US, even if the Trump administration appears to have waning interest in Europe, the AP reports.
“If those who really do not just make ‘America First,’ but almost ‘America Alone’ their motto prevail, then it will be difficult,” he told reporters on Monday in his first post-election news conference. “But I remain hopeful that we will succeed in maintaining the transatlantic relationship.”
He warned that if the good relationship “is destroyed, it will not only be to the detriment of Europe, it will also be to the detriment of America.”
The election took place against a background of growing uncertainty over the future of Ukraine and Europe’s alliance with the US. In a week that left European leaders reeling, Trump launched a shocking attack on Volodymyr Zelesnkyy whom he called “a dictator” after the Ukrainian president called him out for repeating disinformation and blaming Ukraine for Russia’s invasion. That had followed a crisis meeting of European leaders after the US took the seismic step of holding bilateral talks with Russia in Riyadh on ending the war in Ukraine and on future cooperation between the two countries, with neither Ukraine nor Europe offered a seat at the table.
European leaders have been left scrambling to make the continent relevant to the Trump administration, with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, holding talks with Trump at the White House today and British prime minister Keir Starmer following suit on Thursday.
Merz said his top priority is to unify Europe in the face of challenges coming from the US and Russia. Both US vice-president JD Vance and Trump ally Elon Musk openly supported the far right AfD, which came second in the national election, and Vance left the Munich Security Conference stunned as he launched an ideological attack on Europe, with his remarks condemned by the EU and Germany and praised on Russian state TV.
Merz said he remains “hopeful that the Americans will see it as in their own interests to be involved in Europe as well.”
Still, he warned that it would be unacceptable “if the Americans strike a deal with Russia over the heads of the Europeans, over the heads of Ukraine.”
For more on the aftermath of the German election head to our Europe live blog:
Donald Trump will meet the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at the White House today, on the third anniversary of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and in a moment of deep uncertainty about the future of the transatlantic alliance.
In the first visit to the White House by a European leader since Trump’s inauguration and amid alarm in Europe over Trump’s hardening stance toward Ukraine and overtures to Moscow on the three-year war, Macron will use the meeting to try to convince the US president not to rush to a ceasefire deal with Russian president Vladimir Putin, to keep Europe involved, and to maintain some degree of military involvement in Ukraine – and indeed across Europe.
In a call on Sunday, Macron and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, who will also meet Trump at the White House on Thursday, agreed to “show leadership in support of Ukraine” and on the importance of Ukraine being at the centre of any peace negotiations.
Macron will make the case for Europe to have a seat at the negotiating table, and float proposals for a 30,000-strong European peacekeeping force in Ukraine once the fighting ends. Starmer has urged Trump to provide a US “backstop” to any such force in Ukraine, saying it is the only way to deter Russia from attacking the country again, and Macron will emphasise this at the meeting. The US president has so far refused to offer any postwar security guarantees to Ukraine.
Macron has said agreeing to a bad deal with Russia would amount to a capitulation of Ukraine and would signal weakness to the US’ foes, including China and Iran. In an hour-long Q&A session on social media ahead of his trip to the White House, the French president said:
I will tell him: deep down you cannot be weak in the face of President [Putin]. It’s not you, it’s not what you’re made of and it’s not in your interests.
Macron and Trump are due to hold bilateral talks and a working lunch ahead of a joint press conference at 2pm ET. We’ll bring you more on what comes out of the meeting as we get it.
‘A true free-speech emergency’: alarm over Trump’s ‘chilling’ attacks on media
Adam Gabbatt
The Trump administration is waging a “disturbing” attack on the freedom of the press that amounts to a “true free-speech emergency”, media experts have warned, as the Federal Communications Commission recently launched an investigation into a series of media organizations, including the owner of NBC News.
The FCC, led by Donald Trump appointee and Project 2025 author Brendan Carr, has ordered investigations into NPR and PBS in the first month since Trump took office, while also scrutinizing a CBS News interview and a San Francisco radio station.
In a letter to Comcast, which owns NBC News, Carr said he had asked the FCC’s enforcement bureau to “open an investigation” into the corporation, stating: “I am concerned that Comcast and NBCUniversal may be promoting invidious forms of DEI in a manner that does not comply with FCC regulations.”
It came after Carr, who was appointed to FCC chair by Trump, said he did not “see a reason why Congress should continue sending taxpayer dollars” to PBS and NPR, publicly funded organizations Trump has threatened to defund.
“It’s really quite disturbing,” said Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters, a watchdog group.
What we’re seeing is really an attack on freedom of speech and freedom of the press from all aspects of the Trump administration right now.
You can read Adam’s full story here.
Donald Trump’s sweeping foreign aid freeze has stalled a United Nations programme in Mexico aimed at stopping imported fentanyl chemicals from reaching the country’s drug cartels, according to eight people familiar with the situation, Reuters reports.
It is one of several US counternarcotics efforts in Mexico derailed in recent weeks by the stop-work order.
The initiative provided Mexico’s navy with training and equipment to improve screening of cargo entering and exiting the Port of Manzanillo, the nation’s busiest container port.
Two additional Mexican seaports — Lázaro Cárdenas and Veracruz — were to be added this month, a rollout that’s now on hold due to the funding cutoff, six of the people said.
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly did not answer emailed questions from the news agency about the administration’s decision to halt funding for the Mexican port programme. She did say that Trump is acting to secure the border and cut federal spending.
A federal judge on Monday is set to consider a request by the Associated Press (AP) to restore full access for the news agency’s journalists after Donald Trump’s administration barred them for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in coverage.
US District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, is scheduled to hear the AP’s motion for a temporary restraining order against the administration at 3pm ET in Washington federal court.
The AP sued three senior Trump aides on Friday, arguing that the decision to block its reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One violates the US Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government abridgment of speech by trying to dictate the language they use in reporting the news.
The news agency is seeking to immediately restore its access to all areas available to the White House press pool.
The AP said in January it would continue to use the gulf’s long-established name in stories while also acknowledging Trump’s efforts to change it.
The White House banned AP reporters in response. The ban prevents the AP’s journalists from seeing and hearing Trump and other top White House officials as they take newsworthy actions or respond in real time to news events.
Trump halts medical research funding in apparent violation of judge’s order
Hannah Harris Green
The Trump administration has blocked a crucial step in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) process for funding medical research, likely in violation of a federal judge’s temporary restraining order on federal funding freezes.
The NIH has stopped submitting study sections – meetings in which scientists peer review NIH grant funding proposals – to the Federal Register after the Trump administration paused health agency communications. By law, study sections must appear on the register 15 days in advance of meetings.
“The idea is that the public has the right to know who’s giving advice to the federal government and when they’re meeting,” said Jeremy Berg, a biochemist who has overseen NIH funding in the past.
These meetings are integral in the funding process for scientists at institutions around the country researching virtually all elements of disease and medicine, including drug development, cancer, heart disease and aging.
You can read the full report here:
Government workers to be put on administrative leave if they fail to return to the office – Musk
Elon Musk said on Monday that starting this week, government workers would be put on administrative leave if they fail to return to the office.
Musk, who is leading a downsizing effort at the US government wrote on X:
Those who ignored President Trump’s executive order to return to work have now received over a month’s warning.
Starting this week, those who still fail to return to office will be placed on administrative leave.
Confusion at US agencies over whether to comply with Elon Musk email demanding workers justify their jobs
Hello and welcome to our US politics rolling coverage.
Elon Musk’s email demanding all 2.3 million government workers justify their work has caused confusion with several administration officials telling workers not to reply to the missive.
On Saturday the tech billionaire sent an email titled: “What did you do last week?” requesting a bullet-point summary of what they had achieved in their working week. It gave employees a deadline of 11.59pm ET on Monday and was the latest move by Musk to slash the size of federal government.
The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Communications Commission have told employees to comply. But many others, including the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Education and Commerce, have ordered workers not to respond, Reuters reported.
The Department of Health and Human Services told its workers to cooperate, then later told them to hold off while it figured out how to “best meet the intent” of Musk’s directive.
Meanwhile, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) issued a statement criticising Elon Musk and the Trump Administration, for “their utter disdain” for federal employees.
He added it was “cruel and disrespectful” for staff to be forced to justify their job duties to “this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life.”
In other news:
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French President Emmanuel Macron will meet with Donald Trump in Washington on Monday, saying he will present “proposals for action” to counter the “Russian threat” in Europe and ensure peace in Ukraine.
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Conservative podcaster Dan Bongino has been appointed as FBI deputy director. Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and NYPD officer turned conservative radio host, puts a second Trump ally at the top of the agency. Trump announced the appointment on Sunday night in a post on his Truth Social platform, praising Bongino as “a man of incredible love and passion for our country”.
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The Trump administration on Sunday said it was placing all but a handful of USAid personnel around the world on paid administrative leave and eliminating about 2,000 of those positions in the US, according to a notice sent to agency workers and posted online.
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More than 150,000 people from Canada have signed a parliamentary petition calling for their country to strip Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship because of the tech billionaire’s alliance with Donald Trump, who has spent his second US presidency repeatedly threatening to conquer its independent neighbor to the north and turn it into its 51st state.
