{"id":496,"date":"2025-02-25T08:44:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T08:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/02\/25\/trump-administration-breaking-with-musks-directive-says-replying-to-his-email-is-voluntary-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2025-02-25T08:44:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T08:44:00","slug":"trump-administration-breaking-with-musks-directive-says-replying-to-his-email-is-voluntary-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/02\/25\/trump-administration-breaking-with-musks-directive-says-replying-to-his-email-is-voluntary-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Administration, Breaking With Musk\u2019s Directive, Says Replying to His Email Is Voluntary – The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The response to Elon Musk\u2019s \u201cWhat did you do last week?\u201d email to federal employees suggests that there may be limits to how far he can push the government\u2019s work force.<\/p>\n

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\"Elon<\/picture><\/div>
Elon Musk participated in a fireside chat with the TV host Rob Finnerty during the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., last week.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Eric Lee\/The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Elon Musk\u2019s monthlong rampage through the federal bureaucracy appears to have met its first real test, as some of President Trump\u2019s top loyalists flatly reject the billionaire\u2019s demand that their employees justify their jobs or be summarily fired.<\/p>\n

By Monday, just 48 hours after an email from Mr. Musk with the subject line \u201cWhat did you do last week?\u201d landed in the email boxes of millions of federal workers, personnel officials proclaimed the \u201crequest\u201d to be voluntary even as Mr. Musk renewed his demand.<\/p>\n

For the first time since the beginning of Mr. Trump\u2019s return to power, government employees appeared to be fending off, at least for now, an ambush in their war with the world\u2019s richest man. Even if the head-spinning series of events \u2014 contradictory tweets from Mr. Musk, comments from the president and emails from agency heads \u2014 left many of them confused.<\/p>\n

After Mr. Musk\u2019s email, several agencies quickly sent out emails telling their employees they did not need to provide the five bullet points about their activity that he wanted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere is no H.H.S. expectation that H.H.S. employees respond to O.P.M., and there is no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond,\u201d said an email sent to employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, referring to the agency that sent Mr. Musk\u2019s request, the Office of Personnel Management.<\/p>\n

The Department of Health and Human Services added that anyone who wanted to respond should \u201cassume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. The response to Elon Musk\u2019s \u201cWhat did you do last week?\u201d email to federal employees suggests that there may be limits to how far he can push […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}