The Trump Administration on Tuesday continued to voice support for Elon Musk’s controversial push to require federal workers to summarize what they accomplished last week or face termination—despite mounting confusion and resistance from even some Trump-appointed agency heads.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that President Trump stands firmly behind the Tesla CEO’s latest directive and defended Musk’s latest email campaign, yet also suggested agency leaders—not Musk—have the last word on whether employees should even bother to respond. The move has already caused significant chaos across federal agencies, with many department heads advising workers to ignore Musk’s directive altogether.
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“The President and Elon and his entire cabinet are working as one unified team and they are implementing these very common sense solutions,” Leavitt told reporters.
The email, which was sent to millions of federal employees on Saturday, demanded a quick and detailed account of their work over the past week, with Musk warning on his X platform that non-responders would effectively be considered resigned from their positions. Confusion followed as some departments instructed staff not to comply, citing national security concerns and issues surrounding the disclosure of sensitive information.
While Musk had called the directive “common sense,” his mandate quickly sparked a backlash from lawmakers, unions, and even some senior officials within the Trump Administration. The Office of Personnel Management—which is effectively the federal government’s human resources department—was forced to issue clarifications to agency leaders, acknowledging that responses to Musk’s email were voluntary and that agency heads had the discretion to exempt certain employees. Some agencies appear to have ignored Musk’s mandate entirely. Both Defense Department and State Department employees were told to ignore the email, NPR reported..
Leavitt said that more than one million federal workers have responded to the email, including herself. “It took me about two minutes,” she said. “All federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working and moving.”
While voicing the administration’s unwavering commitment to Musk’s goals, which have already led to the firing of thousands of probationary employees, Leavitt acknowledged that agency leaders had the final say on how their employees should view Musk’s ultimatum. “The President respects the decisions of his Cabinet secretaries to tell their staff not to respond to that email because they did so out of interest of national security,” she said. “The agency heads will determine the best practices for their employees at their specific agencies.”
In what many view as an unprecedented move, Leavitt also confirmed that Musk will attend the first official Cabinet meeting of the Trump Administration on Wednesday—underscoring the role the billionaire and his Department of Government Efficiency now plays in shaping the administration’s direction. “Elon–considering he is working alongside the president and our Cabinet secretaries–this entire administration will be in attendance tomorrow just to talk about DOGE’s efforts and how all of the Cabinet secretaries are identifying waste, fraud, and abuse at their respective agencies,” she said.
But asked who is the DOGE administrator—a question that has come up in legal proceedings around DOGE’s actions—Leavitt said, “I’m not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium.”
Trump has sought to downplay any apparent disconnect between Musk and federal agencies. Speaking from the Oval Office on Monday, the President suggested that the only exceptions to Musk’s email were coming from agency heads that had concerns about national security implications, like the FBI and State Department. “They don’t mean that in any way combatively, with Elon. They’re just saying there’s some people that you don’t want to really have them tell you what they’re working on last week,” Trump said. “Other than that, everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea.”
Musk also downplayed concerns about his email, which was sent out over the weekend after Trump publicly called on him to be more aggressive in his efforts. “Absurd that a 5 min email generates this level of concern!” Musk wrote on X. “Something is deeply wrong.”
Some critics, including government watchdogs and congressional Democrats, argue that Musk’s efforts are part of a broader agenda to slash the federal workforce with little regard for how it impacts government functions. “This stunt is yet another example of the cruel and arbitrary chaos Mr. Musk inflicts on the American people by carelessly ‘taking a chainsaw’ to the people’s government,” wrote Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, and dozens of House Democrats in a letter to federal agency leaders.