Several US government agencies have advised their employees to ignore for now a demand from Elon Musk’s government efficiency office to justify their jobs or face dismissal.
The Pentagon and Department of Justice have told workers to pause on replying to the Trump administration’s email, citing potential legal pitfalls and agency autonomy.
The Department of Health and Human Services pivoted late Sunday after initially directing employees to answer the message, telling them that it was a legitimate email. The agency said in its updated guidance that employees should “pause” activities in answering the query, and that it would provide additional guidance on Monday. Meantime, managers of one NASA group told employees they are working on guidance on how to respond.
The varying responses from government agencies, including those led by appointees of President Donald Trump, have added to confusion and panic surrounding the directive to more than 2 million federal workers. Emails sent to the federal employees instructed them to provide by late Monday five bullet points describing what they accomplished last week.
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk said on X just before the emails were sent.
The directive didn’t address a myriad of legal and pragmatic complexities, and seemed to indicate the government could simply stop paying any number of federal workers, from the postal service to penitentiaries, if an email justification of their jobs wasn’t made.
At least five DOJ office leaders quickly responded to the Musk email by telling their staff not to detail their work until they receive further clarity, Bloomberg Law reported, citing people familiar with the situation. DOJ lawyers are concerned that answering the email will trigger ethics violations.
As a special government employee and adviser to Trump, Musk doesn’t have any direct power to fire federal employees.
The Department of Defense told its employees to pause responding to emails. “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,” Darin Selnick, who is performing duties for the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, said in a posting on X.
Meanwhile, workers at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. received an email from Chief Information Security Officer Zachary N. Brown instructing them to hold off on responding to the Office of Personnel Management email until they received further instructions from agency leadership, Bloomberg Law reported, citing sources who received it and requested anonymity to protect against retaliation.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said it was reviewing the request from OPM. Both regulators told workers they would provide further guidance before the deadline, Bloomberg Law reported.
The American Federation of Government Employees, which says it represents 800,000 workers, sent a letter Sunday to OPM saying Musk’s email provides no legal basis for his request and accused him of bullying “hard-working federal employees.”
Employees “have no obligation to respond to this plainly unlawful email absent other lawful direction,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in the letter, which asked OPM to rescind the email, apologize to federal employees and respond to AFGE by midnight Sunday.
The job justification email came shortly after Trump praised the work of DOGE, which was created to transform the federal workforce, reduce the size of the government and limit hiring to essential positions. “Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him get more aggressive,” Trump said on social media.
Musk, in a late night X post, wrote he expected the “mess will get sorted out this week,” signaling his plans remain in place despite the pushback. “Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality,” he added.
The rapid-fire directive from Musk, who has used similar tactics at his companies Tesla and X, has been met with criticism from both sides of the political aisle, with lawmakers questioning the tone and practicalities.
“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s like, please put a dose of compassion in this,” Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “These are real people. These are real lives. These are mortgages. We — 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.”
How Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Reshaping the US Government: QuickTake
With assistance from Tony Czuczka, Janet Lorin, Evan Weinberger, Derek Wallbank and Natalie Choy.
