Trump's Appointees Put Musk's Power to the Test

Multiple government agencies run by Trump-appointed leaders have told employees not to respond to an email from Elon Musk, demanding they provide five bullet points explaining the work they got done over the past week. "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation," Musk wrote Saturday on X. In one of the first major tests of the billionaire's newfound power, the Kash Patel-run FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under Tulsi Gabbard, and the departments of Defense, State, Energy, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security have told employees not to reply, the New York Times reports. The administrative office for the federal courts has also suggested federal judges take "no action."

Patel told FBI employees to "pause any responses" as "the FBI, through the office of the director, is in charge of all our review processes." The acting Pentagon official in charge of personnel similarly noted the Defense Department "will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures." Gabbard, meanwhile, told intelligence community officers not to respond "given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work," per the Times. "Even if people don't send classified information, the aggregation of all this information in one place would become classified information, which is a national security violation," an active-duty military officer tells the Washington Post.

The email sent by the Office of Personnel Management also seemed to fly in the face of OPM's own guidance. Just weeks ago, it released an assessment concluding any responses to government-wide emails must be "explicitly voluntary," per the Post. The president of the largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees, said the message was "plainly unlawful" in addition to showing "a lack of regard for the integrity of federal employees and their critical work," per the Times. Musk continued to urge responses over the weekend, at one point claiming without evidence that federal workers include "non-existent people or the identities of dead people," per the Post. President Trump instructed Musk to be more "aggressive" in his government cuts on Saturday. (More Elon Musk stories.)