Trump appointees refuse to comply with Musk’s latest cost-cutting order

Washington: Key US agencies, including the FBI, State Department and the Pentagon, have instructed their employees not to comply with cost-cutting chief Elon Musk’s latest demand that federal workers summarise what they accomplished last week – or risk losing their jobs.

The pushback from appointees of President Donald Trump marked a new level of chaos and confusion within the beleaguered federal workforce, just a month after Trump returned to the White House and quickly began fulfilling campaign promises to shrink the government.

Elon Musk has demanded federal workers summarise what they accomplished last week in an email. Some are refusing.Credit: AP

Musk’s team emailed hundreds of thousands of 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 as 11.59pm EST on Monday (4pm Tuesday AEDT) – would lose their job.

Administration officials scrambled throughout the weekend to interpret Musk’s unusual mandate, which apparently has Trump’s backing despite some Congress members arguing it is illegal and unions threatening to sue.

Some officials are resisting. Others are encouraging their workers to comply. At some agencies, there was conflicting guidance.

One message on Sunday from the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, instructed its roughly 80,000 employees to comply. That was shortly after the acting general counsel, Sean Keveney, had instructed some not to.

“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 obtained by The Associated Press that acknowledged a broad sense of “uncertainty and stress” within the agency.

President Donald Trump, followed by Musk, alights Air Force One at a Maryland air base last week.Credit: AP

Keveney laid out security concerns and pointed out some of the work done by the agency’s employees might be protected by lawyer-client privilege: “I have received no assurances that there are appropriate protections in place to safeguard responses to this email.”

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 so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The day before, Musk had celebrated his new position by waving a giant chainsaw during an appearance at a conservative conference.

Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, was among the members of Trump’s own party who had concerns. Utah has 33,000 federal employees.

Elon Musk holds a chainsaw as he arrives to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference.Credit: AP

“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s like, please put a dose of compassion in this,” Curtis said. “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.”

Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, questioned the legal basis that the Trump administration would have for dismissing tens of thousands of workers for refusing to heed Musk’s latest demand, though the email did not include the threat of workers losing their jobs.

For Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, there was no doubt: “The actions he’s taking are illegal, and we need to shut down this illegal operation.”

Trump mocked the affected workers in a meme he posted on his social media network. The post featured a cartoon character writing a list of accomplishments from the previous week led by, “Cried about Trump”, “Cried about Elon”, “Made it into the office for once” and “Read some emails”.

Newly confirmed FBI director Kash Patel, an outspoken Trump ally, instructed bureau employees to ignore Musk’s request, at least for now.

“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 in an email confirmed by the AP. “When and if further information is required, we will co-ordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”

Ed Martin, the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, sent his staff a message that may cause more confusion. Martin noted that he had responded to Musk’s order.

“Let me clarify: We will comply with this OPM request whether by replying or deciding not to reply,” Martin wrote in the email obtained by the AP, referring to the Office of Personnel Management.

“Please make a good faith effort to reply and list your activities (or not, as you prefer), and I will, as I mentioned, have your back regarding any confusion,” Martin continued. “We can do this.”

The night before, Martin had instructed staff to comply. “DOGE and Elon are doing great work. Historic. We are happy to participate,” Martin wrote at that time.

Officials at the State and Defence departments were more consistent.

Tibor Nagy, acting undersecretary of state for management, told employees in an email that department leadership would respond on behalf of workers. “No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their department chain of command,” Nagy wrote in an email.

Pentagon leadership instructed employees to “pause” any response to Musk’s team as well. “The Department of Defence is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel, and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” according to an email from Jules Hurst, the deputy undersecretary of defence for personnel and readiness. “When and if required, the department will co-ordinate responses.”

Thousands of government employees have already been forced out of the federal workforce – either by being fired or through a “deferred resignation” offer – during the first month of Trump’s second term.

There is no official figure available for the total firings or lay-offs so far, but the AP has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside Washington, DC.

Musk on Sunday called his latest request “a very basic pulse check”.

“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!” Musk wrote on X.

“In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud.”

He has provided no evidence of such fraud. Separately, Musk and Trump have falsely claimed in recent days that tens of millions of dead people, otherwise aged 100 years old, are receiving Social Security payments.

Meanwhile, thousands of other employees are preparing to leave the federal workforce this coming week, including probationary civilian workers at the Pentagon and contractors at the US Agency for International Development. The USAID move escalates a month-long administration assault on the international humanitarian agency that has frozen its funding.

Curtis and Van Hollen were on CBS’ Face the Nation, and Lawler spoke on the American ABC’s This Week.

AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.