Elon Musk’s demand that more than 2 million federal employees defend their work is facing pushback from other powerful figures in the Trump administration, in a sign that the billionaire’s brash approach to overhauling the government is creating division.

On Saturday evening, federal workers received an email telling them to submit five bullet points accounting for their past week, due Monday at midnight Washington time. Musk had previewed the demand in a post on X, the social-media platform he controls.

Yet it didn’t take long for some of President Donald Trump’s hand-picked top officials to rebuff the effort. 

FBI Director Kash Patel, in his first full day on the job, told employees in a memo that he was in charge of reviewing bureau personnel and would coordinate any information needed.

“For now, please pause any responses,” said Patel, who was a stern critic of the agency he now leads and one of Trump’s most ardent defenders. 

In the early days of the Trump administration, when workers from the Department of Government Efficiency began arriving at federal offices, temporary leadership was running much of the day-to-day business of the government.

Now, most departments have a Senate-confirmed cabinet secretary in place, counterbalancing Musk’s proximity to the president and giving many agencies more powerful advocates who can provide a bulwark against DOGE’s directives.

The Department of Defense, run by vocal Trump defender Secretary Pete Hegseth, told its workers in a tweet to “pause” any response to the email and that the Pentagon would “coordinate” any responses “when and if required.”

Officials overseeing all or parts of the State Department and NASA were also told to refrain from replying to the email. 

Employees at the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Secret Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, received an email late on Sunday saying management would respond on behalf of all workers, according to a message seen by Bloomberg News. 

Musk defended the move in a post on X early Monday, calling it a “check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email.” A CNN poll from last week found that a slight majority of Americans — 54% — say it’s a bad thing that Trump gave Musk such a prominent role in his administration.

“This mess will get sorted out this week,” Musk said in the tweet. “Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality. They don’t get it yet, but they will.”

Since Trump took office last month, Musk’s DOGE team has been dispatched to access sensitive data, organized a buyout program to push employees into “higher productivity” private-sector jobs and fired thousands of probationary employees. 

Despite the resistance by Patel and others, employees of other parts of the government were told to respond to the bullet-point prompt, which was sent from the Office of Personnel Management. 

The Social Security Administration’s human-resources department told staffers in an email that OPM’s request was a “legitimate assignment,” according to a copy of the email viewed by Bloomberg News. 

At the Justice Department, a senior official emailed other agency leaders around the country, telling them to be ready to respond but cautioning care in what they and their staff share. 

“This is an official OPM email address and employees should be prepared to follow the instructions on Monday as requested but be advised that you should not respond with sensitive, confidential, or classified information,” Jolene Ann Lauria, assistant attorney general for administration, wrote on Saturday evening, according to an email seen by Bloomberg News. 

Judicial review

The OPM email was sent out so widely that it even went to some federal judges and their staffs, who under the Constitution work for a separate branch of government and don’t report to the president. 

Federal judges are presiding over the dozens of lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive actions, including Musk’s role in the administration.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which coordinates personnel policy for the judicial branch, sent its employees a message late Saturday suggesting that they not respond to any similar communication from the executive branch, according to an email seen by Bloomberg News. 

“Most of what we do is protected by the Privacy Act as we deal with very sensitive personal information of claimants,” said Judge Som Ramrup, the president of Association of Administrative Law Judges, a union representing Social Security Administration judges. “We cannot discuss or release any information related to any case that we work on. I don’t think there’s any way to realistically provide ‘five bullet points’ about the work we performed last week.”

Employees have received confusing and contradictory instructions on how to handle the email. National Weather Service employees were first told to hold off replying to the email, and then late Sunday instructed workers to answer the request, coordinating the response with their supervisors, according to an email seen by Bloomberg News. 

Workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Sunday morning received instructions to reply to email using “action verbs,” such as “planned, initiated, coordinated.” After the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, said it would reply on behalf of the entire department, workers were told to stand down.

Musk said in a tweet on Saturday that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” The Office of Personnel Management said “agencies will determine any next steps.”

OPM doesn’t have the authority, except through regulation, to order another agency’s employees to do anything, said Jim Eisenmann, a partner at Alden Law Group PLLC who advises federal and private-sector employees on employment issues.

“In any legal sense, failing to respond cannot be considered a resignation,” he said of the email.

Musk’s momentum

Trump gave Musk cover to pursue more brazen actions, posting on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that his government efficiency czar was doing a good job, “BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE.”

A few hours later, Musk put federal employees on notice.

“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” he wrote on X.

The email that followed came from an address familiar to more than two million federal workers. It was the same [email protected] address that tried to coax them into voluntarily resigning 25 days earlier. That email, with the subject line “Fork in the Road,” promised workers they would get paid through September if they left in February. 

Only 75,000 federal workers took the offer — fewer than the 240,000 the White House had hoped. 

Like the “Fork in the Road” missive, Saturday’s email recalled past communications from Musk. The subject line — “What did you do last week?” — echoed the text he sent Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal before he bought the company and fired him. 

Some officials within the Interior Department are concerned that the administration could use their responses to Saturday’s email to justify reneging on the terms of the “Fork in the Road” retirement deal — effectively declaring their accomplishments didn’t justify continuing to pay them through September, one official said, on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private matter. 

A State Department employee who had submitted their resignation via the buyout program still received the email asking for bullet points, according to the employee and emails reviewed by Bloomberg News.

The person replied on Saturday with five bullet points referencing their support of the Trump administration’s goals — including one that noted they had already agreed to leave their job.