When Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Chair Elon Musk asked federal staffers to respond to a personal productivity email or get fired — not all federal agencies complied. 

While some leaders of federal agencies voiced support for the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) email instructing staffers to provide a summary of the tasks they accomplished the previous week by Monday at 11:59 p.m., and participated themselves, others instructed their agencies to ignore it. 

One million federal workers did comply with Musk’s request, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday. 

‘All federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working and moving,’ Leavitt told reporters at the White House Tuesday. ‘We have a country to save, and we want this federal government to be responsive to the needs of the American people who re-elected this president to have historic, massive reform. And that’s what the intention of this idea is.’

Musk unveiled the email in a post on X Saturday and cautioned that a failure to reply was equivalent to handing in a resignation.

‘Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,’ Musk wrote. ‘Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.’

Although the deadline has passed, it’s not over for those who didn’t reply. Musk said later on Monday in a post on X that ‘subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance’ to respond. Failure to do so will result in termination, he said.

However, the White House said Tuesday that employees should look to their own agency for guidance on how to proceed with the directive. 

‘Agencies should consider any appropriate actions regarding employees who fail to respond to activity,’ a White House official told Fox News Digital Tuesday. ‘It is agency leadership’s decision as to what actions are taken.’

Musk is heading up the newly created DOGE, which aims to reduce government waste and fraud.

Here are the agencies that followed Musk’s directive:

Department of Transportation

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy listed five accomplishments he completed for the week, pointing to the Trump administration’s effort to halt New York City’s congestion pricing toll program, which charges passenger vehicles $9 to enter certain areas of Manhattan. 

‘Mr. President, 5 things I did last week:’ Duffy posted to X Monday. ‘1. Terminated NYC elitist, anti-worker congestion pricing. 2. Launched an investigation into the $16 billion in taxpayer dollars wasted on a high-speed rail project that, after 17 years, has yet to lay a single mile of track. 3. Saved $10 million a year by eliminating redundant and outdated landlines.’ 

Other tasks Duffy listed included visiting the Air Traffic Control Command Center in Warrenton, Virginia, and touring the Burbank, California, traffic control tower. 

Department of Veterans Affairs

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins posted his own productivity report to X Monday, taking credit for processing 1 million disability claims for fiscal year 2025 and identifying ‘wasteful’ contracts to cancel. 

‘I launched a review of VA’s community care practices so we can maximize Veterans’ health care choices (more on this in the future)!’ Collins said in the post. 

Small Business Administration 

Kelly Loeffler, who is leading the Small Business Administration (SBA), shared a list with Fox News Digital of five things she accomplished following her Wednesday confirmation. 

Among the tasks she cited were supporting ‘the Office of the Advocate to work across agencies to cut burdensome regulation imposed on small businesses,’ and establishing the Office of Manufacturing and Trade to advance President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda. 

Other tasks included creating a fraud working group to analyze loan fraud and meeting with governors to discuss SBA’s services at the state level. 

SBA aims to provide small business owners with counseling, capital and contracting expertise to advance their businesses.

Here are the agencies that have pushed back on Musk’s email edict: 

Department of Defense

Darin Selnick, who is performing the duties of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, issued a letter Sunday to civilian personnel at the Pentagon about how to handle the matter. 

‘When and if required, the Department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM,’ he wrote. ‘For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled, ‘What did you do last week.”

State Department 

The State Department also ensured its staff didn’t need to feel compelled to respond to OPM’s email. 

‘The State Department will respond on behalf of the Department,’ Tibor Nagy, the acting undersecretary of management, said in an email Saturday. ‘No employee is obligated to report their activities outside their Department chain of command.’ 

Justice Department and FBI 

FBI Director Kash Patel also instructed his employees to disregard Musk’s email. 

‘FBI personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information,’ Patel told employees in an email on Saturday. ‘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. When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.’

Likewise, the Justice Department also issued similar instructions, according to a letter obtained by CNN. 

Health and Human Services

While the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) didn’t order its employees to disregard the OPM email, it did warn its personnel to exercise caution if they chose to respond and use ‘a high level of generality and describe your work in a manner to protect sensitive data,’ NBC News reported. 

‘There is no HHS expectation that HHS employees respond to OPM and there is no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond,’ the email from HHS said, according to NBC News. ‘That said, if you choose to respond, here are the guidelines you should follow.’

‘Assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly,’ the email said. 

An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

President Donald Trump said Monday the rejection by the agencies was ‘friendly,’ and due to the nature of their work.  

‘That was done in a friendly manner,’ Trump said at a Monday press briefing alongside French President Emmanuel Macron. ‘Only things such as, perhaps Marco (Rubio) at State Department, where they have very confidential things. Or the FBI, where they’re working on confidential things. And they don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon. They’re just saying there are some people that you don’t want to really have them tell you what they’re working on last week.’

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report. 

Federal employees within the intelligence community are under investigation for allegedly misusing an internal agency messaging board to dish on their sexual fantasies under the guise of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), officials say. 

Chat logs from the National Security Agency’s (NSA) ‘Intelink’ messaging platform, obtained by researchers from the conservative Manhattan Institute reportedly via sources within the NSA, revealed employees from various intelligence agencies discussing their experiences with gender-reassignment surgery, artificial genitalia, hormone therapy, polyamory and pronoun usage. Some of these agencies reportedly include the Defense Intelligence Agency, U.S. Naval Intelligence and the NSA.

One Defense Intelligence Agency officer who had gender transition surgery appears to have written messages about experiences ‘being penetrated,’ while other messages included graphic descriptions of laser hair removal, hormone replacement therapy and breast augmentation, among other procedures. Some discussions included talk about sexual arousal post-operation and other lewd sexual experiences.

After the Intelink chat logs were released Monday, an NSA spokesperson indicated to Fox News Digital that it was ‘actively investigating’ potential abuses of the agency-operated messaging platform. 

‘NSA hosts the Intelink service for the Intelligence Community. As the service provider, NSA takes very seriously the allegations in this reporting, and, if accurate, they would be violations of longn-standing Intelligence Community policy,’ the agency spokesperson said. ‘The Intelligence Community places great trust in those personnel that we authorize to access U.S. Government systems, and in return we expect full compliance with all laws, policies and regulations which govern our work.’

Meanwhile, recently confirmed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called the uncovered behavior ‘unacceptable,’ writing on social media that ‘those involved WILL be held accountable.’

‘These disgusting chat groups were immediately shut down when [the president] issued his EO ending the DEI insanity the Biden Admin was obsessed with,’ Gabbard wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday evening. ‘Our IC must be focused on our core mission: ensuring the safety, security, and freedom of the American people.’

The chat logs in question stemmed from DEI-focused groups hosted on the NSA’s Intelink Messenger, titled ‘LBTQA’ and ‘IC_Pride_TWG,’ according to the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow. Rufo said the sources that approached him indicated the sexually explicit chats were given legitimacy through the NSA’s DEI efforts, which the agency has described as ‘not only mission critical, but mission imperative.’

The messages were part of DEI-focused employee resource groups that had been hijacked by activists who ‘spent all day’ holding meetings with titles such as ‘Privilege,’ ‘Ally Awareness,’ ‘Pride,’ and ‘Transgender Community Inclusion,’ the source who leaked the chat logs reportedly informed the Manhattan Institute.

The source recounted, according to Rufo, that they were particularly ‘disgusted’ by a chat that included discussions of weekend group sex.

Other discussions included conversations about spending thousands of dollars in countries like Italy and Thailand to obtain gender-reassignment surgery, experiences of being publicly ‘groped’ at a concert, and using ‘it/its’ pronouns.

The NSA source highlighted to Rufo that the chat logs raised questions about some intel officials’ mental fitness for their jobs. ‘These are folks with top secret clearances believing they are an IT!’ the source said to Rufo.  

More than one million federal workers participated in the Elon Musk and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) directive to provide a bullet-point list of their work accomplishments from the previous week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday in a press briefing. 

‘I can announce that we’ve had more than one million workers who have chosen to participate in this very simple task of, again, sending five bullet points to your direct supervisor or manager and CC’ing OPM,’ Leavitt told Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich when asked about the directive during Tuesday’s briefing. ‘I actually participated in it myself. It took me about a minute and a half to think of five things I did last week. I do five things in about ten minutes, and all federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working and moving.’ 

‘We have a country to save, and we want this federal government to be responsive to the needs of the American people who reelected this president to have historic, massive reform. And that’s what the intention of this idea is,’ she said. 

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Chair Musk announced Saturday that federal employees would receive an email directing them to list their accomplishments from the week prior, with the DOGE leader adding later that day that the assignment should take less than five minutes to accomplish. 

Employees had until 11:59 p.m. Monday to send the list or risk losing their employment, according to emails regarding Musk’s directive that were sent by the Office of Personnel Management.

Musk added to X on Monday evening that, ‘subject to the discretion of the President, (federal employees) will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.’

‘The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!’ he wrote in a separate post. ‘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?’ 

When asked Tuesday about the ‘actual deadline’ for federal employees to comply with the directive following Musk’s X post that employees will ‘be given another chance,’ Leavitt explained that ‘agency heads will determine the best practices for their employees at their specific agency.’

‘This was an idea that Elon [came] up with.  DOGE  worked with OPM to actually implement the idea. And the secretaries are responsible for their specific workforce. And this is true of the hirings and the firings that have taken place. And we advise federal workers, unless your agency has dictated you not to, to respond to this email,’ she said.

The White House told Fox News Digital earlier Tuesday that individual federal agencies are in control as to what actions will be taken against government employees who did not respond to an Office of Personnel Management email asking for a bullet-point list of what they accomplished during the previous work week

‘Agencies should consider any appropriate actions regarding employees who fail to respond to activity,’ a White House official told Fox News Digital Tuesday. ‘It is agency leadership’s decision as to what actions are taken.’ 

A handful of federal departments that deal with sensitive and classified information told staffers to ignore the order to list their accomplishments, which President Donald Trump said on Monday was a ‘friendly’ rejection due to the sensitive materials some government employees handle on a regular basis. 

FBI Director Kash Patel, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security were among the agencies and departments that informed staff to not respond to the email. 

‘That was done in a friendly manner,’ Trump said Monday while speaking with the media alongside French President Emmanuel Macron. ‘Only things such as, perhaps Marco at State Department, where they have very confidential things. Or the FBI, where they’re working on confidential things. And they don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon. They’re just saying there are some people that you don’t want to really have them tell you what they’re working on last week.’

Other Trump officials, such as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Small Business Association Administrator Kelly Loeffler and Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, publicly reported their accomplishments for the previous work week on social media or in comments to Fox News Digital. 

Following the deadline, Musk posted a meme on X showing Greek mythology warrior Achilles and an arrow piercing his heel. A caption over the Greek figure reads, ‘Largest most entrenched bureaucracy on earth,’ while a caption over the arrow reads, ‘What did you get done last week?’  

Trump lauded the directive Monday, arguing that it will expose government employees who aren’t actually carrying out tasks.

‘There was a lot of genius in sending it,’ Trump said Monday from the White House. ‘We’re trying to find out if people are working. And so we’re sending a letter to people. Please tell us what you did last week. If people don’t respond, it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working.’ 

A Biden-era legal win that allowed the president to fire certain board members set the stage for President Donald Trump to can several people who sat on the Kennedy Center board. 

Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer – one of the plaintiffs in that case, Spicer v. Biden – told Fox News Digital that, evidently enough, the suit was ‘about sending a message to the President of the United States.’

With Trump under fire for removing multiple Kennedy Center board members earlier this month, Spicer says his loss is Trump’s win. 

‘The idea was to make sure that the Republican Party in the future had the legal backing to do what President Trump is doing now,’ Spicer said. 

Upon starting his term in 2021, President Joe Biden attempted to remove Spicer, current director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought and others from their positions on the Board of Visitors for the Naval Academy.

Spicer and Vought were serving statutory terms on the Naval Academy board after being appointed by Trump during his first term. Spicer’s term was set to expire in December 2021. 

At the time, he was also serving on the Commission of White House Fellows, to which he submitted his resignation shortly after Biden entered the Oval Office. 

On Sept. 8, 2021, Spicer and Vought received a letter from the White House Presidential Personnel Office, stating, ‘I am writing to request your resignation from the Board of Visitors to the United States Naval Academy. If we do not receive your resignation by end of day today, you will be terminated,’ according to the initial complaint. 

Spicer said he would not be resigning. America First Legal, founded by current Trump White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, approached the board members with the proposal to pursue a lawsuit against the Biden administration. 

‘This is about sending a message to make the President of the United States go to court and argue that he had the right to fire any of these people,’ Spicer said. ‘It was America First Legal that came up with the strategy, and we were the two appointees that agreed to be the example.’

Spicer said the suit ‘was not about getting back on the board,’ and the irony of it all was that the goal was to lose the case in the courts. 

‘The goal was to make sure that a future Republican president had the legal backing to clean house when they came into office and to be able to point to President Biden as the reason,’ Spicer said. 

The suit was ultimately dismissed by the district court while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in a similar case, Severino v. Biden, that a presidential appointee similar to Spicer and Vought could be removed by the president at will. 

‘America First Legal is proud to have represented Sean in this case, which established clear precedent that the President has the authority to remove any presidentially appointed official,’ an AFL spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement.

‘I think it was sort of to acknowledge that, even though it was unprecedented because the Kennedy Center Board had always been bipartisan, there was nothing to prevent Donald Trump from doing exactly that – appointing the trustees whom he wanted, and then having those trustees vote to have him become chairman of the Kennedy Center Board,’ John Malcolm, vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital.

Since the start of his second term, Trump and his administration have become the targets of over 70 lawsuits over his executive orders and directives, many of which seek to delineate how much power the executive branch truly has. 

On Friday, the Supreme Court paused the Trump administration’s efforts to dismiss former head of the Office of Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, after a lower court reinstated the Biden appointee to his post. 

In its initial appeal to the high court, the Trump administration argued that the judiciary is attempting ‘to seize executive power’ as courts have blocked the president from firing certain federal employees. 

Likewise, just several weeks back, Trump’s Justice Department penned a letter to Congress stating that it was seeking to overturn a landmark Supreme Court case in an effort to give the president greater control over independent three-letter agencies.

‘The idea would be [that] we have a unitary executive and all that means is in Article II of the Constitution, that vests all executive branch authority in one president,’ Malcolm said. ‘And the idea is that if you are an executive branch official, it is implied that the Constitution gives the president the authority to keep those officials or not keep those officials so that if they are not properly implementing executive branch policies, that the buck stops with the president and he can fire people.’

Amid the legal pushback toward the Trump agenda, Spicer said, in hindsight, he and AFL ‘took a page out of [Trump’s] book to begin with.’

‘I think Trump, from the day he came down the escalator at Trump Tower, basically told conservatives, ‘Stop being such wusses and learn to fight back,’’ Spicer said. ‘So, it was Trump in 2015, 2016 that made it clear that conservatives don’t have to sit and take it anymore. We can fight back. And that was kind of the notion of this lawsuit.’

Some House Republicans are increasingly frustrated with Elon Musk’s handling of his role in the federal government – frustrations that flared during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday.

Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., raised concerns about Republican lawmakers not being on the ‘same page’ as the White House and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), three people in the room told Fox News Digital.

He is not the only GOP lawmaker who feels that way, either.

‘He wants to see better communication between DOGE, the president, and the House, because we’re getting fed to the wolves, while Elon’s just tweeting,’ one GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital.

A second GOP lawmaker said, ‘I’m going to echo Austin’s comments about, you know, it would be nice to have some heads up. There’s a lot of questions.’

‘Words matter, right? So let’s make sure we’re putting out accurate information that’s correct,’ the second lawmaker said.

Two House Republicans said Scott warned that DOGE needed to ‘measure twice, cut once’ in its audits of the federal government. 

Two others, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and another lawmaker, said Scott took issue with Musk re-posting a meme on X that referred to people on federal benefits as the ‘parasite class.’

‘What Elon was talking about is those who are gaming the system are parasites. But Austin looks at it differently, which is fine, Austin means right. But he said his people took offense to that,’ Norman said.

Scott told Fox News Digital he supported DOGE’s goals but reaffirmed his frustration.

‘DOGE’s recent requests for federal employees should have been coordinated with the agencies before they were issued. I fully support those agencies working with DOGE to improve efficiency and eliminate tax dollar waste,’ Scott said in a written statement. ‘With that being said, referring to Americans who may need government assistance as ‘parasites’ is unacceptable in any circumstance.’

House lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill on Monday after a week in their home districts, during which more than half a dozen Republicans were confronted by constituents who were searching for more answers on DOGE. Several demonstrations were facilitated by progressive groups.

GOP lawmakers who spoke with Fox News Digital all said they support the goal of cutting government waste but had issues with Musk’s methods – several raised specific issues with his directive that federal employees email five bullet points on the work they did last week.

While the email from the Office of Personnel Management did not mention job status, Musk posted on X that employees who failed to comply could be terminated.

‘It’s not how most normal good bosses would lay off somebody,’ a third House Republican told Fox News Digital. ‘Some of them may be bad, but most of them are good. Treat them like Americans.’

A fourth House Republican, a member of the House DOGE Caucus, told Fox News Digital that Musk’s comments were not ‘helpful.’

Another person took issue with Musk’s suggestion of stimulus checks for Americans using DOGE savings.

‘I think it’s childish,’ that person said. ‘Now we want to take the money for waste, fraud, and abuse that was collected by the federal government and give everyone $5,000…or we could just pay off the national debt, or we could use that for the next round of appropriations we have to pay for here in Congress.’

Others were public with their frustration, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who posted on X, ‘Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform. The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn’t it.’

Rep. John Rutherford, R-Fla., said it was up to the executive branch to deal with its personnel.

‘Reductions in force are up to the executive branch agencies and the executive branch, which is run by President Trump. So if President Trump wants to make cuts to the executive branch agencies, that’s his prerogative,’ Rutherford said.

Additionally, the vast majority of Republicans are still backing Musk, at least publicly.

‘I would say that I think the vast majority, the American people, understand and applaud and appreciate the DOGE effort, the goal to scale down the size and scope of government,’ Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a press briefing on Tuesday. ‘The reason we’re excited about what Elon Musk and the team at DOGE are doing, the end result of that is going to be achieving the goal that we’ve always had, and that is to make government more efficient.’

When reached for comment, the White House pointed Fox News Digital to Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s comments on DOGE at her briefing on Monday.

‘The president’s sent out a Truth last weekend to Elon Musk saying he loves everything Elon is doing. And he wants him to be even more aggressive because DOGE thus far has proven incredibly successful in making our government more efficient,’ Leavitt said. ‘And so Elon and DOGE came up with this idea. Elon has implemented this at his private companies. It has proven successful. And it’s a very simple idea when you think about it all.’