A stand-off between the White House and key federal agencies is unfolding after a directive from cost-cutting chief Elon Musk, demanding federal employees document their achievements from the previous week or face losing their jobs.
The mandate, seemingly backed by President Trump, has sparked chaos and confusion within the federal workforce, barely a month into his second term.
Agencies including the FBI, State Department, and the Pentagon have instructed their staff to ignore the request, directly contradicting the White House’s apparent support for Musk’s initiative.
This pushback further fuels the ongoing tension between the administration and federal employees, already grappling with Trump’s campaign promises to shrink the government.
The legality of Musk’s demand has been questioned by politicians, while unions are threatening legal action, urging the administration to rescind the request.
Among the agencies pushing back is the Department of Health and Human Services, which initially instructed its 80,000 employees to comply with Musk’s directive. That was shortly after the acting general counsel, Sean Keveney, had instructed some not to.
The department reversed course hours later, advising staff to “pause activities” pending further clarification.
“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.
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 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 Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, was among the members of Trump’s party who had concerns.
“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s like, please put a dose of compassion in this,” Curtis, whose state has 33,000 federal employees, said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “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.”
On ABC’s This Week, 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. The email did not include the threat about workers losing their jobs.
