Elon Musk’s power is being tested as a number of key federal agencies, including the FBI, the State Department and the Pentagon, have instructed their employees not to comply with his demand that workers explain what they accomplished last week or risk losing their job.
Newsweek has contacted the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for comment by email and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) via a message on social media.
Why It Matters
President Donald Trump tapped Musk, the world’s richest man, to shrink the size of the U.S. government.
But Musk and the DOGE have been accused of overreach, with several moves in recent weeks sparking alarm, including their access to sensitive Treasury data and mass firings of federal workers.
Concerns have been raised about how much power the unelected tech billionaire has accumulated, but the resistance from agencies to Musk’s email demonstrates his influence is not without limits and he could face growing pushback.
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What to Know
An email sent to hundreds of thousands of federal employees from the OPM on Saturday gave them little more than 48 hours to list five things they had accomplished in the past week, the Associated Press reported. The deadline was listed in the email as Monday at 11:59 p.m.
In a post on X, Musk said that “failure to respond will be taken as resignation.”
But several agencies have told employees that they do not have to comply if they received the email.
Pentagon employees were told to “pause” any response to Musk’s email, according to a memo from Darin Selnick, who is working as the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
“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,” Selnick said in the memo, which was posted on X on Sunday. “When and if required, the Department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM.”
Officials at the Departments of State and Homeland Security also told employees not to respond to the email.
“The State Department will respond on behalf of the Department. No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command,” according to an email from Tibor Nagy, acting undersecretary for management, that was obtained by the AP.
The Department of Homeland Security told employees that “no reporting action from you is needed at this time” and that agency managers would respond, according to an email from R.D. Alles, deputy undersecretary for management.
Kash Patel, the newly confirmed FBI director and a Trump ally, also instructed employees to ignore Musk’s email. “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, the AP reported.
But some agencies have offered conflicting guidance to employees. The Department of Health and Human Services in a message on Sunday instructed its employees to comply after acting general counsel Sean Keveney instructed some people not to, the AP reported.
What People Are Saying
Musk wrote on X on Sunday that the reason for the email request 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!
“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.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday: “ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE. REMEMBER, WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE, BUT ULTIMATELY, TO MAKE GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE. MAGA!”
Musk’s request has sparked criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans.
Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday: “If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s like, please put a dose of compassion in this. 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.”
Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, said on Face the Nation on Sunday: “You’ve got Elon Musk taking a chainsaw to the federal government and important services, and there’s no Article 4 in the Constitution that gives Elon Musk that authority… the actions he’s taking are illegal, and we need to shut down this illegal operation.”
Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement: “Once again, Musk and the Trump administration have shown their utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people.
“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service 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. AFGE will challenge any unlawful terminations of our members and federal employees across the country.”
What’s Next
As many of 200,000 federal government employees have lost their jobs amid mass layoffs in the first month of Trump’s second term.
It remains to be seen whether, and how many, federal employees, will be removed from their posts after the deadline to respond to Musk’s email passes. Legal challenges can be expected if that happens.
