Musk's email to all federal workers prompts blowback

What happened

Workers across the federal government received emails Saturday afternoon instructing them to reply with approximately "5 bullets of what you accomplished last week" by the end of Monday. Earlier Saturday, Elon Musk said on X that "failure to respond" to the upcoming email would be "taken as a resignation."

The emails were sent from the White House Office of Personnel Management, which "has been largely taken over by Musk's U.S. DOGE Service," The Washington Post said.

Who said what

Federal employees and administration officials "scrambled throughout the weekend to interpret Musk's unusual mandate," The Associated Press said. After issuing sometimes confusing and contradictory guidance, "appointees of President Donald Trump" at the FBI, Directorate of National Intelligence and the Departments of Defense, State, Energy, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services told their employees not to respond to the email.

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Those instructions effectively "countermanded" Musk's order, "challenging the broad authority" Trump has "given the world's richest man to make drastic changes to the federal bureaucracy," The New York Times said. "The public pushback reflects a growing unease — and, in some cases, alarm — behind the scenes across the Trump administration" about Musk's apparent "unchecked power." The email scheme "came together in a matter of hours" after Trump said on social media he wanted Musk and DOGE to "get more aggressive" in shrinking the government, The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

The episode set in motion a "power struggle between Musk" and Trump appointees, Politico said, marking the "first sign that even staunch Trump loyalists are beginning to flex their political muscle against Musk, an unelected 'special government employee.'"