Billionaire Elon Musk pushed Tuesday to overcome resistance from within the Trump administration to the orders of his U.S. DOGE Service, intensifying a remarkable high-level power struggle over the fate of the federal workforce.
Over the last several days, more than a dozen federal agencies, primarily led by Trump-appointed Cabinet secretaries, told employees that they did not need to comply with a Musk directive to email a list of what they had done in the past week. The rebuke was the most striking display yet of internal dissatisfaction with DOGE’s moves across the federal government, reflecting the desire of many Trump officials to reassert control over agencies that Musk has tried to gut, in some instances without their explicit permission.
But Musk has fought back, publicly condemning those who resisted and calling for federal employees to face a second order to explain their work accomplishments. His DOGE team, meanwhile, escalated its multipronged assault on the bureaucracy, preparing for a new round of even more sweeping layoffs and moving to cancel additional grants and other forms of federal spending, according to interviews with more than three dozen government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations.
Late Monday evening, Musk said on X that federal employees will be “given another chance” to respond to his email but that “failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
While not attacking any of Trump’s advisers by name, Musk slammed those who had blocked the request in an implicit rebuke of the president’s Cabinet nominees: “The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send! … Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?”
Over the last several days, more than a dozen federal agencies, primarily led by Trump-appointed Cabinet secretaries, told employees that they did not need to comply with a Musk directive to email a list of what they had done in the past week. The rebuke was the most striking display yet of internal dissatisfaction with DOGE’s moves across the federal government, reflecting the desire of many Trump officials to reassert control over agencies that Musk has tried to gut, in some instances without their explicit permission.
But Musk has fought back, publicly condemning those who resisted and calling for federal employees to face a second order to explain their work accomplishments. His DOGE team, meanwhile, escalated its multipronged assault on the bureaucracy, preparing for a new round of even more sweeping layoffs and moving to cancel additional grants and other forms of federal spending, according to interviews with more than three dozen government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations.
Late Monday evening, Musk said on X that federal employees will be “given another chance” to respond to his email but that “failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
While not attacking any of Trump’s advisers by name, Musk slammed those who had blocked the request in an implicit rebuke of the president’s Cabinet nominees: “The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send! … Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?”
Last edited by a moderator:
