Padilla Urges Elon Musk and OPM to Stop Sending Mass Emails to Legislative Branch Employees

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, urged Elon Musk and Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Charles Ezell to cease mass email communications from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and OPM to employees of legislative branch offices and agencies. Despite not being subject to personnel actions by the executive branch, several legislative branch offices and agencies have received mass emails from hr@opm.gov, risking the sharing of sensitive, unauthorized information.

Over the weekend, thousands of employees across the federal government received mass emails, asking them to summarize what they did in the past week, with Musk saying failure to respond would be taken as their resignation. Padilla stressed that sending these emails to legislative branch offices and agencies is particularly troubling as executive branch agencies warn their own employees not to respond to OPM’s mass email because “doing so would risk sensitive information falling into the hands of malign foreign actors.”