CNN
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A rift appeared to open Sunday between some of President Donald Trump’s agency heads and Elon Musk, the billionaire tasked with reforming the federal government, over Musk’s demand that all federal employees state their weekly accomplishments or risk termination.
By Sunday evening, leaders at the Pentagon, Federal Bureau of Investigation, State Department, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Energy had all instructed their staff not to reply to an email that federal workers received from the Office of Personnel Management on Saturday afternoon with the subject line: “What did you do last week?”
Some managers, including at the Department of Health and Human Services, instructed workers to comply with the request to send a list of five accomplishments from the past week to a generic government email address, only to later reverse course. And others simply told their staff to wait until Monday — and not to reply to the note before then.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the apparent discrepancy between Musk’s directive and the guidance provided by agency heads.
The scramble to discern Trump and Musk’s exact intentions with the email added another layer of uncertainty to an already-rattled federal workforce. It seemed to set up a showdown between some agency heads — who were appointed by Trump himself, and who are all considered loyalists to his cause — and Musk, who has paid little mind to the strict chains of command that dictate life within the federal bureaucracy.
Amid the confusion, Musk showed no sign of easing up.
“EXTREMELY troubling that some parts of government think this is TOO MUCH!!” he wrote Sunday on X, the platform he owns. “What is wrong with them??”
Overnight and into Sunday, senior officials at every agency worked to provide their employees guidance on how to proceed. Among the first to advise against responding was Kash Patel, who was just sworn in as FBI director at the end of last week.
“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. “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”
By Sunday, a flurry of other agencies — many tasked with protecting the nation’s safety and national security — followed suit, even as Trump suggested online that he was still behind the plan.
“The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” acting Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Darin Selnick wrote Sunday. “When and if required, the department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM. For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled ‘What did you do last week.’”
Multiple senior Defense Department officials told CNN the email thrust their weekend into chaos as they tried to determine what to tell employees about how to respond.
“It is the silliest thing I’ve seen in 40 years and completely usurps the chain of command,” one official said. “That might be done elsewhere, but in the DoD it’s not done.”
Homeland Security personnel received a message from the department’s deputy under secretary for management, R.D. Alles, telling them not to respond for now, according to an email obtained by CNN.
“DHS management will respond on behalf of the department and all of its component offices,” the email, dated Sunday, reads. “No reporting action from you is needed at this time. For now, please pause any responses outside of your DHS chain of command.”
And the State Department informed its far-flung workforce that they, too, were not obligated to respond.
“The State Department will respond on behalf of the Department. No employee is obligated to report their activities outside their Department chain of command,” an email sent late Saturday from the acting Undersecretary of Management said.
The Department of Health and Human Services told employees Sunday morning that the email was legitimate and that staffers should read and respond to it by the 11:59 p.m. ET Monday deadline. But the agency reversed its guidance on Sunday afternoon, telling employees to “pause” activities in answering the email.
Employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, which are part of HHS, had already been told by individual agencies to wait until Monday for more guidance on how to respond. On Sunday afternoon, staffers at these divisions received the email from HHS telling them to pause responding.
Across the sprawling federal workforce — from Secret Service agents to federal judges to air traffic controllers to diplomats — employees spent Sunday reckoning with yet another upheaval at the hands of Musk and his team.
This time, the impetus appears to have been Trump’s request, made on social media, for Musk to get more “aggressive” in his attempts to overhaul the federal government.
It didn’t take long for Musk to reply with his plan to demand workers provide an accounting of their last week’s work. In a post on X, he said anyone who didn’t respond would be fired. Hours later, when the emails began hitting federal inboxes, there was no mention of the ultimatum.
Even as the confusion across the workforce became clear, Trump showed little sign he was backing off the plan. He posted a “SpongeBob SquarePants” meme that ridiculed the situation. “Got done last week,” the image read, followed by a list of five bullet points: “cried about Trump, cried about Elon, made it into the office for once, read some emails, cried about Trump and Elon some more.”
For many senior officials, the episode underscored what has so far been relatively unchecked power by Musk to dramatically reshape the federal government.
With Trump’s blessing and encouragement, Musk’s team of young engineers has embedded itself at a host of agencies, gaining access to sensitive databases and demanding career workers justify their continued employment.
For the most part, the secretaries and department heads named by Trump have offered little objection to Musk’s efforts, and instead offered encouragement to see their buildings investigated and reformed.
But privately, questions have lingered over just how expansive Musk’s power has become, and whether he should have ultimate say in how federal agencies — many with their own intricate systems — should be run.
By Sunday, even some Republicans had voiced opposition to Trump’s plan.
“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s, ‘Please put a dose of compassion in this. These are real people. These are real lives,’” Sen. John Curtis of Utah said in a Sunday interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “It’s a false narrative to say we have to cut, and you have to be cruel to do it, as well. We can do both.”
CNN’s Meg Tirrell, Josh Campbell, Jenny Hansler, Priscilla Alvarez and Sean Lyngaas contributed reporting.
