Many federal agencies are instructing personnel to ignore Elon Musk‘s request to share how they’re spending their time at work.
The Office of Personnel Management, deemed the executive branch’s human resources manager, sent an email Saturday evening titled “What did you do last week” requesting employees to share a five-bullet-point list of the tasks they completed in the previous work week.
Agencies such as NASA, the Department of Justice, and the Drug Enforcement Administration gave their employees the green light to respond. However, agencies such as the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the State Department, among several others, told their personnel not to respond to the OPM email.
On Saturday, FBI Director Kash Patel instructed personnel to “pause any responses.”
“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.”
The Department of Defense gave similar instructions and informed personnel that it is the DOD’s responsibility to review their performance.
Meanwhile, the National Centers for Environmental Information, which manages environmental data for the Commerce Department, called OPM’s email “irregular, unexpected, and warrants further validation.”
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Elon Musk took to X to express his frustration with top agencies refusing to honor DOGE’s request, reminding those who refuse to comply by Monday at midnight that it will be interpreted as their resignation.
“Those who do not take this email seriously will soon be furthering their career elsewhere,” Musk posted on X.
Prior to Musk’s Monday threat, Department of State acting undersecretary Tibor Nagy told employees they are not “obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command.”
While Republican lawmakers have shared very little criticism of the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal government, Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) took issue with Musk’s request.
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“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s, ‘Please put a dose of compassion in this,'” Curtis said on CBS News. “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. We can do both.”
But President Donald Trump is pushing for Musk to go further. “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!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.