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Early Saturday morning, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to make a seemingly unprompted post egging on Elon Musk.
“ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB,” the post says. “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!”
“Will do, Mr. President!” Musk replied in a post on X.
Within hours, the unelected tech billionaire looked to be eagerly complying, by seemingly ordering the sending of an email to untold numbers of federal employees demanding they promptly respond with “approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.” The email, which is similar to one Musk sent to employees at X after he bought that company, was unsigned and came from a human resources account at the Office of Personnel Management. It told recipients the deadline was Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk said in a post on X announcing the directive.
The email itself does not say that, and as a federal employment law expert told CNN, Musk doesn’t have the authority to force federal employees to resign—and if he tried to, they would have ample legal recourse. And on Sunday afternoon, a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management seemed to walk back Musk’s threat of firings, telling Mother Jones that “[a]gencies will determine any next steps.”
But predictably, the email created even more mass chaos across a federal workforce that Musk has already thrown into disarray through mass layoffs prompted by his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The biggest surprise may have been the federal officials—including a couple of Trump loyalists—who sought to guard their own turf from Musk, even by quickly telling their staff to essentially ignore the email, because Musk is not their boss.
Among them are newly-confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel, who wrote to staff Saturday night telling them to “please pause any responses” to the OPM email, while reminding them that the FBI will conduct its own internal reviews, NBC News reported. Interim US attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin, who was one of three people appointed by the RNC and the Trump campaign to run the party’s 2024 platform committee, wrote to employees to undermine the email, telling them to “be general” in their responses, and adding, “If anyone gives you problems, I’ve got your back,” CNN reported.
Ambassador Tibor Nagy, acting under secretary of management at the State Department, told staff that the department would respond on behalf of employees, adding, “No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command,” NBC also reported. CNN reported, citing an anonymous source, that employees of the National Security Agency were told they should not respond until they get further guidance from the Department of Defense.
So far, it seems the only official who has publicly ordered employees to comply was Secret Service Director Sean Curran, who told employees that the email “requires your response,” according to CNN. Spokespeople for the White House and the Office of Personnel Management did not immediately respond to questions.
All of this—Musk’s overstepping of his authority and upending the federal workforce with uncertainty—is part of why GOP voters have turned out to recent town halls in droves to demand their Republican congresspeople answer how they would respond to how DOGE has accessed sensitive data and mass firings of federal workers, the Washington Post reported Friday.
As I have previously reported, polls keep showing that many Americans want Musk and DOGE out of government; new polls out this week from CNN and the Washington Post, for example, show far more Americans disapprove of Musk’s role in government than approve of it.
Update, Feb. 23: This post was updated with a comment from a spokesperson from the Office of Personnel Management.
