Several Trump administration officials who lead federal agencies have said employees will be able to summarise their past week's performance or remove them from their position, even if they doubled demand over the weekend. He urged him not to follow the orders.
Just as the directives bounced across the federal government on Saturday evening, officials from some agencies, including the FBI, the State Department and the offices coordinating the U.S. intelligence reporting agency, told employees not to respond.
These instructions effectively defeated orders in several departments of government, challenging the broader powers that President Trump gave Musk, the world's wealthiest person, to scrutinise the federal bureaucracy. .
“The State Department will respond on behalf of the State Department,” wrote Tibor Naji, Trump's appointee, the department's actions, under the secretary of management. “No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of the department's headquarters.”
In a message reviewed by the New York Times, National Intelligence Agency Director Tulsi Gabbard ordered all intelligence agency officers not to respond.
“Given the inherently sensitive and categorized nature of our work, IC employees should not respond to OPM emails,” Gabbard wrote.
FBI Director Kash Patel wrote that “The FBI is responsible for the entire review process through the director's office,” and told employees, “Please pause the response for now.” Masu.
In the Department of Justice and the FBI, threatening signals from Musk are issued by everyone without considering sensitive areas such as criminal investigations, legal confidentiality, and large juices. I came across a mixture of anger and surprise.
Some law enforcement supervisors quickly instructed employees to wait for more guidance from managers on Monday before meeting demand, according to current and former staff.
Department of Defense employees were also told not to follow the email.
“The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing personnel performance and will follow their own procedures to carry out reviews,” said Darrin S. Sernick, the representative Pentagon employee in charge, in a statement.
On Saturday, Musk asked government officials to summarise their week's performance, warning them that they would be considered a resignation. Shortly afterwards, the Human Resources Administration, which manages the federal workforce, sent an email to civil servants asking for a list of their performance, but did not include the threat of removal to fail to comply.
The union representing federal workers suggested that Musk's order was invalid. They advised members to follow guidance from the supervisor on how and whether to respond to emails.
“We require that the OPM officially request that the email be cancelled and be clarified under the authority it has been issued,” a union, a U.S. government employee federation, told members late Saturday. Ta. Coalition President Everett Kelly said in a statement that the order marked Musk and the Trump administration's “completely scornful to federal employees.”
Several intelligence reporting agencies, including the National Security Agency, warned employees that they could be at risk of incorrectly disclosing work in which the response was misclassified.
Musk's original email told employees not to include sensitive material, but current and former Intelligence Reporting Agency officials have accessed thousands of uncategorized accounts of Intelligence Reporting staff's work. It was supposed to remain a secret that if they did, they could stitch together sensitive details and learn about the project.
Mike Lawler, the most heavily contested New York Republican in 2026, raised questions about the order, even as he gave broad support to Musk's cost-cutting efforts.
“I don't know that it's necessarily feasible,” Lawler said of the ultimatum. “Obviously, a lot of federal employees have union contracts.”
But he continued. “As the government's Efficiency Department moves on, what they're trying to do is ensure that all agencies and departments are working effectively and efficiently.”
The legal basis for Musk to justify mass shootings based on his email responses is unknown, and the White House and the Human Resources Administration did not immediately answer questions about the threat of deletion.
But Musk, who made similar unconventional requests during the acquisition of Twitter, now known as X, claimed it was equivalent to “a very basic pulse check” Sunday morning.
In a series of posts, Musk promoted unfounded claims of wage fraud. A significant number of “non-existent” or dead people were employed in federal labor, with criminals using fake employees to collect government salaries. .
“They're covering immeasurable scams,” Musk said in response to a post by a supporter who said “the left is flipping through about a simple email.” In another post, Musk posted a meme that imagines some federal employees being terrified by the order.
His claims reflect similar claims that millions of dead people may have received fraudulent Social Security payments. Recent reports from Social Security Agency inspectors – Watchdog investigating waste, fraud and abuse programs – says that “most” of people in the agency's database that are likely to have died have been paid. I found it.
Report contributed Julian E. Burns, Devlin Barrett, Ken Bensinger, Kate Conger, Minho Kim, Lisa Friedman and Margot Sanger Cuts.
