Washington (USA) - Elon Musk (53) and his Department for Government Efficiency recently caused quite a stirwith an email to US officials. Various authorities and officials are resisting the absurd demand.

Civil servants were asked by email to describe their achievements of the past week - otherwise they would face dismissal.

Various authorities responded to this request and told their employees that they did not have to respond.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump (78) described the idea as "brilliant" last Monday, as reported by CNN.

Great confusion spread, as at some point nobody knew what to do. Musk, however, does not want to deviate from his hard line. He does not understand why this is "too much" for the employees.

Musk's plans were met with incomprehension from various Republicans. "If Elon Musk really wants to understand what federal employees have done over the past week, he should get to know every department and agency and find out about the jobs he wants to cut," wrote Senator Lisa Murkowski on X .

Since last Sunday, heads of various authorities have been trying to clarify the situation for their employees.

Kash Patel (45), who was only recently sworn in as Director of the FBI, was one of the first to advise against responding to the email.

His example was followed by many other agencies, including the Department of Defense.

"The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures," wrote Darin Selnick, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.

Many senior Defense Department officials told CNN that the email had thrown them into chaos over the weekend. They didn't know what to tell their staff at first.

"This is the dumbest thing I've seen in 40 years, and it completely overrides the chain of command," one of the officials said of the request.