Federal employees face a midnight deadline to comply with Elon Musk's second demand for reports on their recent accomplishments, a request that has become a flashpoint within the government workforce. Musk and President Donald Trump have suggested that employees who don't comply could get fired. They've also described the requirement ' a list of five things that each person did last week ' as an unobjectionable way to increase accountability within a sprawling bureaucracy.

But for many workers, the request has been a source of anxiety and confusion as the new administration tightens its grip on the federal government. Some agencies are still telling their workforces not to respond or to limit what they say in response, just as they did after Musk's first request last month.