US personnel office walks back email ultimatum from Musk to workers

OPM says failure to respond to email will not be considered resignation but Trump ally digs in and threatens job losses

The US government's human resources office has walked back an ultimatum issued by Elon Musk that would have forced its workers to resign if they did not submit a bullet-point list of their recent accomplishments, in one of the first signs of internal pushback to the Tesla billionaire's campaign to downsize the federal workforce.

The demand, made in an email sent to millions of government employees over the weekend and quickly sued over by a coalition of labor and advocacy groups, represented the latest salvo by the department of government efficiency" (Doge), the Trump-sanctioned cost-cutting initiative Musk chairs.