Washington | Elon Musk’s month-long rampage through the federal bureaucracy has met its first real test, as some of President Donald Trump’s top loyalists flatly rejected the billionaire’s demand that their employees justify their jobs or be summarily fired.

By Monday, just 48 hours after an email from Musk with the subject line “What did you do last week?” landed in the email boxes of millions of federal workers, personnel officials proclaimed the “request” to be voluntary.