Multiple senior officials within the Trump administration told employees not to respond to Trump advisor Elon Musk’s order over the weekend, which instructed federal government employees to justify their positions by reporting “what they got done last week.”
By Sunday afternoon, however, the Defense Department, Homeland Security Department, State Department, FBI, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence told employees to hold off on responding to Musk’s directive, The Washington Post reported. An email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent out on Saturday told federal government employees to “reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk warned in a post on X on Saturday. OPM’s email did not threaten termination, according to The New York Times.
Federal employees received the email hours after President Donald Trump praised Musk in a post on Truth Social and called on him to “GET MORE AGGRESSIVE.” Trump has set Musk, along with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project’s employees, loose on numerous federal agencies as the administration pushes for significant government cuts.
Experts have warned that federal workers in some positions could jeopardize national security by responding, potentially making the information vulnerable to foreign intelligence services.
The OPM email caught many senior Trump officials off guard and required them to reach out to their employees on Sunday to give further guidance. The Department of Defense sent an email to employees telling them to “pause any response to the OPM email titled ‘What did you do last week.'”
“DoD personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information. 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,” the email stated. “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.'”
Defense Department Statement on OPM Mail Guidance. pic.twitter.com/fq8V7ltI2A
— Department of Defense ???????? (@DeptofDefense) February 23, 2025
Patel similarly told FBI employees to “pause any responses” to the OPM email, adding that “the FBI, through the office of the director, is in charge of all our review processes.” Gabbard cited “the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work” as the reason her staff “should not respond to the OPM email,” according to the Times.
The State Department’s acting undersecretary of state for management, Tibor P. Nagy, reportedly told the Post that “no employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command.”
On Sunday, Musk responded to a report of a Pentagon official calling the email the “silliest thing in 40 years.”
“Anyone with the attitude of that Pentagon official needs to look for a new job,” Musk wrote.
Musk also shared a response to the OPM email that was generated by his artificial intelligence tool, Grok. The AI chatbot devised five simple sentences a federal government employee could use to reply to OPM’s request.
“This was made using @Grok. The standard @DOGE is asking for in a response is literally this low,” Musk wrote. “EXTREMELY troubling that some parts of government think this is TOO MUCH!! What is wrong with them??”
This was made using @Grok.
The standard @DOGE is asking for in a response is literally this low.
EXTREMELY troubling that some parts of government think this is TOO MUCH!!
What is wrong with them?? https://t.co/5C620vfQ2Y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 23, 2025