Trump appointees appear to contradict Musk for first time in pushback to OPM email – CNN
Source: CNN
A rift appeared to open Sunday between some of President Donald Trump’s agency heads and Elon Musk, the billionaire tasked with reforming the federal government, over Musk’s demand that all federal employees state their weekly accomplishments or risk termination.
By Sunday evening, leaders at the Pentagon, FBI, State Department, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Energy had all instructed their staff not to reply to an email that federal workers received from the Office of Personnel Management on Saturday afternoon with the subject line: “What did you do last week?”
Some managers, including at the Department of Health and Human Services, instructed workers to comply with the request to send a list of five accomplishments from the past week to a generic government email address, only to later reverse course. And others simply told their staff to wait until Monday — and not to reply to the note before then.
Trump said Monday that the email was “pretty ingenious” and that anyone who doesn’t answer is “semi-fired, or fired.”
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Asked by reporters whether there was a communication disconnect because some agencies told employees not to respond to it, Trump said, “No.”
“That was done in a friendly manner,” Trump said in the Oval Office while meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. “And they don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon,” he said of the agency heads who told their employees to disregard the email.
“But other than that, I think everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea,” Trump said. “We have to find out where these people are. Who are they? And we said, ‘If you don’t respond, we assume you’re not around, and you’re not getting paid anymore, too.’”
The scramble to discern Trump and Musk’s exact intentions with the email added another layer of uncertainty to an already-rattled federal workforce. It seemed to set up a showdown between some agency heads — who were appointed by Trump himself, and who are all considered loyalists to his cause — and Musk, who has paid little mind to the strict chains of command that dictate life within the federal bureaucracy.
Amid the confusion, Musk showed no sign of easing up.
“EXTREMELY troubling that some parts of government think this is TOO MUCH!!” he wrote Sunday on X, the platform he owns. “What is wrong with them??”
Musk’s efforts faced criticism from Republicans over the weekend, including from Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who highlighted what she called the “absurd weekend email.”
“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,” Murkowski wrote on X.
Overnight and into Sunday, senior officials at every agency worked to provide their employees guidance on how to proceed. Among the first to advise against responding was Kash Patel, who was sworn in as FBI director at the end of last week.
“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. “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”
By Sunday, a flurry of other agencies — many tasked with protecting the nation’s safety and national security — followed suit, even as Trump suggested online that he was still behind the plan.
“The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” Darin Selnick, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, wrote Sunday. “When and if required, the department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM. For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled ‘What did you do last week.’”
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Multiple senior Defense Department officials told CNN the email thrust their weekend into chaos as they tried to determine what to tell employees about how to respond.
“It is the silliest thing I’ve seen in 40 years and completely usurps the chain of command,” one official said. “That might be done elsewhere, but in the DoD it’s not done.”
Homeland Security personnel received a message from the department’s deputy undersecretary for management, R.D. Alles, telling them not to respond for now, according to an email obtained by CNN.
“DHS management will respond on behalf of the department and all of
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