Elon Musk’s push to reduce the federal workforce is running into headwinds as Senate-confirmed Cabinet and agency officials block his immediate efforts to carry out the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) plans.
Musk’s weekend directive for government employees to respond with bullet points describing what they accomplished in the past week under the threat of termination was not thwarted by courts or independent watch dogs.
Instead, it was newly minted department and agency chiefs who slowed the effort, earning the support of some GOP lawmakers.
“I think that’s why we worked so hard to get these folks confirmed,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters Tuesday. “They’re now in a position to make those decisions, and I think some of those already asserted that right to make those decisions.”
“These are very capable people that are going to be responsible for running big departments and agencies and overseeing thousands of employees,” Thune continued, saying the administration is giving them “latitude” for now.
“They ought to do everything they can to make their departments work more efficiently and to find savings. And in many cases, they are going to make those decisions on their own.”
The GOP leader added to The Hill that the directive was getting “mixed reviews” from a number of the agency heads who had been confirmed.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have broadly welcomed DOGE’s actions to reduce the roughly 2 million federal workforce in the name of waste, fraud and abuse. But the way that DOGE and Musk have operated clearly have been an annoyance.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said the recent move has resulted in “organizational confusion that doesn’t benefit anybody,” including the rising number of secretaries and directors of various government entities who have won approval by the upper chamber.
“A lot of them are thinking when you get a confirmed position, that they need to take control,” Tillis said. “And then DOGE becomes a facilitator, but shouldn’t be dual-track.”
“It was OK to have some leadership coming out of DOGE, but now these [Senate-confirmed individuals] are coming in. They’re the report-tos,” Tillis continued. “They’re going to be responsible for the overall performance of the organization. They’ve got to have control.”
Musk’s email started what looked like a turf war between DOGE and agency heads. Some told their employees they would not need to respond to the email, while others said employees should do so.
Leaders at the FBI and the departments of Justice and Homeland Security and more all advised their employees not to respond.
This does not mean the Trump allies do not want to reduce the size of the government. But they do appear to want to do it on their terms.
FBI Director Kash Patel in a Saturday message to staff said “when and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”
“The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of our review processes and will conduct reviews,” he added.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has offered conflicting guidance about whether employees even need to respond to the email.
In a meeting with human resources leaders at each agency, the OPM relayed it was ”voluntary” for employees to respond and also said those who didn’t would not have their nonresponse logged as a resignation.
But after numerous reports about that advisement, OPM issued a new memo that walked that back slightly, writing that it was up to each agency head whether to exempt their staff from responding to Musk’s latest email.
However, that guidance conflicts with an earlier memo the OPM was forced to prepare in response to litigation, in which the agency said any response to the [email protected] email address was “explicitly voluntary.”
White House counselor Alina Habba brushed aside concerns that Musk was at odds with agency heads.
“There’s no question that every single Cabinet member, every single person that was put into this administration wants the American people working, wants people back to work, wants to stop the Zoom calls and wants to stop people from double-dipping and having two jobs when taxpayer dollars are paying for you to come to work,” she told reporters Tuesday.
Some GOP lawmakers also zeroed in on Trump saying in recent days that he wanted Musk and DOGE to get “more aggressive,” and that it could be an avenue to put pressure on the numerous department and agency leaders to act.
“[The White House wants] to be aggressive. They want to do top-to-bottom review, which is great, and you’ve got some of the Cabinet secretaries who are like, ‘Yeah, we’re for that — but we prefer to do that ourselves,’” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) about the ongoing effort. “So I think you’ve got a push and pull going on there.”
“My guess is [Trump’s] trying to push his Cabinet secretaries a little bit because Musk is kind of stirring things up, and some of them are like, ‘OK, OK, OK, OK, OK — we don’t want him to do our own personnel so we’ll do it,’” Hawley continued. “And maybe that suits the president. … This is early days in this White House, and sure, it’s the second term, but it’s a whole new team of people, so I think they’re figuring it out.”
Others are downright supportive and want the Trump-Musk duo to shatter Washington norms for good.
“I don’t understand why so many people are screaming like Musk stole their dog. I just don’t think this is at all unreasonable,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “I understand this is not normal for Washington, D.C. But normal in Washington is a setting on the dryer.”
Alex Gangitano contributed.
