Elon Musk is finding himself locked in a power struggle with top Trump administration officials over an out-of-the-blue email blast to federal workers Saturday demanding that they list their professional accomplishments last week — or risk being fired.
Multiple Trump-appointed agency and department heads — including the Department of Defense, State Department and FBI — have instructed their employees to ignore the email despite the billionaire’s public warning that “failure to respond” by 11:59 p.m. Monday “will be taken as a resignation.”
In an email Saturday, Trump loyalist and newly-minted FBI Director Kash Patel instructed his staff to “pause any response.”
“FBI personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information,” Patel said.
“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. When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any response.”
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already pushed for sweeping personnel cuts across the government, with the latest move raising concerns that the Tesla CEO intends to make more personnel decisions based on replies to the missive.
“If Elon Musk truly wants to understand what federal workers accomplished over the past week, he should get to know each department and agency, and learn about the jobs he’s trying to cut,” moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) griped on X.
“Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform. The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn’t it.”
Musk’s brash way of running DOGE is leading to a turf war in Washington over who gets to call the shots on personnel decisions — Senate-confirmed agency and department heads or the DOGE honcho, who has not undergone Senate scrutiny but appears to have immense power thanks to President Trump’s backing.
“The unelected and unaccountable billionaire then proceeded to threaten these civil servants on social media as different agencies and divisions of the federal government provided conflicting guidance to workers on this legally dubious move,” Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) seethed on X.
House Democrats also penned a letter to 24 agency and department heads Monday asking that they clarify to their workers that the Musk-directed email is “invalid.”
“To this day, despite repeated inquiries from Congress, we do not know Mr. Musk’s official status in government, we do not know what his financial conflicts of interest may be, and we do not know what — if any — control President Trump actually has over his actions,” they wrote.
Mark Maxin, an attorney with expertise in federal employment law, said Musk’s latest ploy should rankle Washington — and department heads are “wising up.”
“Elon Musk has no authority. He’s not in the chain of command of these employees, so getting a direct order to do something or lose your job in some capacity when he had no authority to do that is something these agency heads are basically wising up to,” Maxin, who has served as counsel for labor relations at the Department of Labor, told Politico.
The email ultimatum has also stoked national security fears if government workers share privileged details of what they do, even though Musk’s missive said not to include classified material.
“Given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, IC [intelligence community] employees should not respond to the OPM [Office of Personnel Management] email,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, another Trump ally, reportedly wrote to staff.
Since its inception, DOGE has partnered with OPM as part of its cost-cutting crusade to whittle down and modernize the vast federal bureaucracy.
OPM had sent out the email with the subject line, “What you accomplished last week,” to federal employees on Musk’s behalf.
Musk later publicly stated on X that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation” — something that was not included in the email blast.
Labor unions are now challenging the scope of OPM’s power, arguing in court that it does not have the legal authority to oversee federal employees in other agencies and departments.
Several federal union officials, such as the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), have advised their members against responding to the email, arguing that they don’t work for OPM and that the directive appears to have come without coordination between agencies.
Some unions have also hinted at potential litigation over the missive.
The Post has reached out to OPM and a DOGE spokesperson for clarification on whether it expects responses from federal employees instructed by their agency or department heads not to reply.
Some of the agency and department heads pushing back against Musk have considerable clout within the MAGA movement, such as Patel who was just confirmed to a 10-year term atop the intelligence bureau last week.
However, critics are largely pushing back behind the scenes and not in the public eye.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and her team privately asked Musk to do a better job keeping them in the loop about major decisions he makes, Reuters reported.
Still, there are lawmakers in Congress, including some Republicans such as Murkowski, who have slammed Musk’s ultimatum openly.
Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said the SpaceX billionaire needs to have more compassion.
“I don’t think this is a request that is that difficult,” Sen. Curtis said, before adding that it also doesn’t need to “be so cold and hard.”
“Let’s put a little compassion and, quite frankly, dignity, in this as well,” he said.
Trump, meanwhile, is standing behind Musk in full force.
“I thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government,” Trump told reporters at the White House Monday. “What he’s doing is saying ‘Are you actually working.’
“A lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist, that’s how badly various parts of our government were run.”
Amid the firestorm over the email, the president also posted a Spongebob-inspired meme on Truth Social mocking federal workers who were up in arms at the demand.
Just prior to the email blast, Trump had publicly urged Musk to ramp up his efforts amid media reports of growing friction between administration officials and Musk over his cost-cutting crusade.
“Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him get more aggressive,” Trump wrote in a Saturday post on Truth Social.
Trump and Musk had sat for a joint interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired last week in which the two billionaire tycoons acknowledged Dem efforts to stoke friction between the two of them.
The Trump administration is also facing well over six dozen lawsuits over DOGE’s efforts to trim down the federal government.
