Key US agencies, including the FBI, State Department and the Pentagon, have instructed their employees not to comply with cost-cutting chief Elon Musk’s latest demand that federal workers explain what they accomplished last week — or risk losing their jobs.
The pushback from appointees of President Donald Trump has ushered in a new level of chaos and confusion within the beleaguered federal workforce, just a month after the President returned to the White House and began on his campaign promise to shrink the government.
Administration officials scrambled throughout the weekend to interpret Mr Musk’s unusual mandate, which apparently has Mr Trump’s backing despite some lawmakers arguing it is illegal. Unions want the administration to rescind the request and apologise to workers and are threatening to sue.
Some officials are resisting. Others are encouraging their workers to comply. At some agencies, there was conflicting guidance.
One message on Sunday morning from the Department of Health and Human Services instructed its roughly 80,000 employees to comply.
That was shortly after acting general counsel at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Sean Keveney had instructed some not to.
And by Sunday night, HHS agency leadership issued new instructions that employees should “pause activities” related to the request until noon on Monday.
“I’ll be candid with you. Having put in over 70 hours of work last week advancing Administration’s priorities, I was personally insulted to receive the below email,” Mr Keveney said in an email viewed by The Associated Press that acknowledged a broad sense of “uncertainty and stress” within the agency.
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Mr Keveney laid out security concerns and pointed out some of the work done by the agency’s employees may be protected by attorney-client privilege: “I have received no assurances that there are appropriate protections in place to safeguard responses to this email.”
Mr Musk’s team sent an email to hundreds of thousands of federal employees on Saturday giving them roughly 48 hours to report five specific things they had accomplished last week. In a separate message on X, Mr Musk said any employee who failed to respond by the deadline — set in the email as 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on Monday — would lose their job.
Democrats and even some Republicans were critical of Mr Musk’s ultimatum, which came just hours after Mr Trump encouraged him on social media to “get more aggressive” in reducing the size of the government through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge.
The day before, Mr Musk celebrated his new position by waving a giant chainsaw during an appearance at a conservative conference.
Mr Trump mocked the affected workers in a meme he posted on Sunday on his social media network. The post featured a cartoon character writing a list of accomplishments from the previous week led by, “Cried about Mr Trump”, “Cried about Elon”, “Made it into the office for once”, and “Read some emails”.
Newly confirmed FBI director Kash Patel, an outspoken Mr Trump ally, instructed bureau employees to ignore Mr Musk’s request, at least for now.
“The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures,” Mr Patel wrote in an email confirmed by the AP. “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”
Ed Martin, the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, sent his staff a message on Sunday that may cause more confusion. Mr Martin noted that he responded to Mr Musk’s order.
“Let me clarify: We will comply with this OPM request whether by replying or deciding not to reply,” Mr Martin wrote in the email obtained by the AP, referring to the Office of Personnel Management.
“Please make a good faith effort to reply and list your activities (or not, as you prefer), and I will, as I mentioned, have your back regarding any confusion,” Mr Martin continued. “We can do this.”
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The night before, Mr Martin had instructed staff to comply. “DOGE and Elon are doing great work. Historic. We are happy to participate,” Mr Martin wrote at that time.
Officials at the Departments of State and Defence were more consistent.
Pentagon leadership instructed employees to “pause” any response to Mr Musk’s team as well.
“The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” according to an email from Jules Hurst, the deputy undersecretary of defence for personnel and readiness.
“When and if required, the Department will coordinate responses.”
Elon Musk at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
Everett Kelley, president of the 800,000-member American Federation of Government Employees, said in a letter on Sunday to the administration that it should rescind Mr Musk’s original email request and apologise to all federal workers by the end of the day.
“We believe that employees have no obligation to respond to this plainly unlawful email absent other lawful direction,” he wrote, describing Mr Musk as “unelected and unhinged”.
Thousands of government employees have already been forced out of the federal workforce — either by being fired or through a “deferred resignation” offer — during the first month of Mr Trump’s second term.
There is no official figure available for the total firings or layoffs so far, but the AP has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside of Washington.
Mr Musk on Sunday called his latest request “a very basic pulse check”.
“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!” Mr Musk wrote on X. “In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud.”
He has provided no evidence of such fraud. Separately, Mr Musk and Mr Trump have falsely claimed in recent days that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving Social Security payments.
Meanwhile, thousands of other employees are preparing to leave the federal workforce this coming week, including probationary civilian workers at the Pentagon and virtually the entire staff at the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Trump administration said on Sunday that it is eliminating at least 1,600 US-based staff positions after a federal judge on Friday allowed the administration to move forward with its plan to pull thousands of USAID staffers off the job in the United States and around the world.