- The Pentagon is telling employees to “pause any response” to DOGE’s request for a work report.
- Federal employees were told this weekend to list five tasks they achieved last week by Monday night.
- But the Defense Department has instead said it would be the authority to review its employees.
The Pentagon is the first major federal agency to publicly tell employees to hold off on responding to an instruction from the White House DOGE office to list their work accomplishments.
“For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled ‘What did you do last week,'” the Defense Department wrote in a statement to civilian employees that was posted online on Sunday.
“The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” said the statement, posted on behalf of Darin S. Selnick, the acting defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness.
It added that the Pentagon would handle responses to the email request.
Selnick was referring to an email sent through the Office of Personnel Management, which asked federal employees to respond by 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday with five tasks or accomplishments that they achieved over the last week.
“Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments,” said the DOGE email, which was sent to employees in federal agencies across the US.
It came just after President Donald Trump publicly wrote on Saturday that he wanted Elon Musk to “get more aggressive” in cutting workers and expenses from the federal bureaucracy.
Musk, who oversees the DOGE team, also announced the email on social media and said that a “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.
Staffers at other security-related government departments — including the Department of Homeland Security, National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — did not respond to BI’s requests for comment.
Representatives for the State Department and the FBI declined to comment on the DOGE emails.
