WASHINGTON: 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 job.
The pushback from appointees of President Donald Trump marked a new level of chaos and confusion within the beleaguered federal workforce, just a month after Trump returned to the White House and quickly began fulfilling campaign promises to shrink the government.
Administration officials scrambled throughout the weekend to interpret Musk’s unusual mandate, which apparently has Trump’s backing despite some lawmakers arguing it is illegal. Unions want the administration to rescind the request and apologize 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, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., instructed its roughly 80,000 employees to comply. That was shortly after the acting general counsel, Sean Keveney, had instructed some not to. And by Sunday evening, 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,” Keveney said in an email viewed by The Associated Press that acknowledged a broad sense of “uncertainty and stress” within the agency.
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.”
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, Musk said any employee who failed to respond by the deadline — set in the email as 11:59 p.m. EST Monday — would lose their job.
Democrats and even some Republicans were critical of Musk’s ultimatum, which came just hours after 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, Musk celebrated his new position by waving a giant chainsaw during an appearance at a conservative conference.
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, was among the members of Trump’s own party who had concerns. Utah has 33,000 federal employees.
“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s like, please put a dose of compassion in this,” Curtis said. “These are real people. These are real lives. These are mortgages. ... It’s a false narrative to say we have to cut and you have to be cruel to do it as well.”
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., questioned the legal basis the Trump administration would have for dismissing tens of thousands of workers for refusing to heed Musk’s latest demand, though the email did not include the threat about workers losing their jobs.
For Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., there was no doubt: “The actions he’s taking are illegal, and we need to shut down this illegal operation.”
Trump mocked the affected workers in a meme he posted 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 Trump,” “Cried about Elon,” “Made it into the office for once,” and “Read some emails.”
Screen grab of President Donald Trump's post on his Truth Social platform mocking federal employees who were told by Elon Musk to reply to his email by listing what they had done at work the past week.
Newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel, an outspoken Trump ally, instructed bureau employees to ignore 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,” 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 Sunday that may cause more confusion. Martin noted that he responded to Musk’s order.
“Let me clarify: We will comply with this OPM request whether by replying or deciding not to reply,” 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,” Martin continued. “We can do this.”
The night before, Martin had instructed staff to comply. “DOGE and Elon are doing great work. Historic. We are happy to participate,” Martin wrote at that time.
Officials at the Departments of State and Defense were more consistent.
Tibor Nagy, acting undersecretary of state for management, told employees in an email that department leadership would respond on behalf of workers. “No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command,” Nagy wrote in an email.
Pentagon leadership instructed employees to “pause” any response to 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 defense for personnel and readiness. “When and if required, the Department will coordinate responses.”
Everett Kelley, president of the 800,000-member American Federation of Government Employees, said in a letter Sunday to the administration that it should rescind Musk’s original email request and apologize 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 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 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.
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!” 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, Musk and 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.
The Trump administration said 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.
Curtis and Van Hollen were on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and Lawler appeared on ABC’s “This Week.”
