Multiple US agencies – including the Pentagon, FBI, State Department and intelligence community – have told employees to delay responding to a weekend email order from Elon Musk.

Musk leads the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which in the first weeks of Donald Trump’s administration has laid off more than 20,000 workers and offered buyouts to another 75,000, across swathes of the government.

On Saturday (local time), he emailed millions of federal government employees, demanding they reply with a list of five accomplishments from their past week at work or risk being fired.

It followed his appearance at a conservative conference in Washington Friday, where he waved around a chainsaw on stage, while yelling: “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.”

By Sunday, Trump administration-appointed officials at the FBI and State Department had emailed their staff telling them not to respond outside their chains of command.

“The FBI, through the office of the director, is in charge of all our review processes,” FBI director Kash Patel, a Trump appointee, wrote in an email to staff seen by Reuters.

The New York Times reported that Trump’s new Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had sent similar guidance to employees of agencies she oversees in the intelligence community.

“Given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, [intelligence community] employees should not respond to the OPM email,” Gabbard reportedly wrote.

Workers at the departments of Defence, Homeland Security, Education and Commerce, as well as at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Institutes of Health and the Internal Revenue Service also were told not to respond pending further guidance, according to sources and emails reviewed by Reuters.

The development is a possible sign of tension between members of the Republican administration and the world’s richest person in his campaign to slash the 2.3 million-strong federal civilian workforce.

The frantic pace of layoffs has led the US government in some cases to rehire workers who perform critical functions, including securing America’s nuclear arsenal and dealing with the bird flu outbreak.

Workers at intelligence agencies likewise would be told not to respond, according to a source.

“To be clear – this is irregular, unexpected, and warrants further validation,” wrote a senior executive at the National Centres for Environmental Information, which manages environmental data and is part of the Commerce Department.

Offices within the Justice Department, including the executive office that supports all US lawyers and the department’s civil division, told employees not to reply pending additional information.

Employees at the Drug Enforcement Administration, part of the Justice Department, were told to respond, according to an email seen by Reuters.

The American Federation of Government Employees wrote on social media that it did not believe Musk had the authority to fire employees who did not respond.

The union advised members to ask their supervisors directly whether to reply and to follow their guidance.

The email left some employees even more frustrated and worried after weeks of uncertainty about their futures.

Musk on his social media platform X called the email “a very basic pulse check” and displayed a fictional list he had generated using artificial intelligence.

“EXTREMELY troubling that some parts of government think this is TOO MUCH!! What is wrong with them??” Musk wrote.

In some cases, employees were left unsure how to respond, with some lawyers expressing concern their work was confidential.

Workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also received the email, according to people with knowledge of the matter. It came despite an order earlier in February demanding they cease working, leaving them with little to do.

-with AAP