The growing employee backlash against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over his refusal to act on U.S. President Donald Trump’s incendiary tweets about protests is exposing a fracture inside the company over the boss’ commitment to letting politicians speak freely.

Scores of employees across the U.S., including at management level, declined to work on Monday in protest. And many took to social media to express their dissent — a rare act of public defiance of Zuckerberg at a tight-lipped company where many employees revere him.

“I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we’re showing up. The majority of coworkers I’ve spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard,” Jason Toff, a director of product management, tweeted on Monday.

“The hateful rhetoric advocating violence against Black demonstrators by the U.S. president does not warrant defense under the guise of free expression,” one company official posted on their Facebook profile. The person, a former Republican senior staffer who was among those who took off work, declined to be named out of concern about public recrimination.

The intensity of the reaction is a particularly revealing example of how Zuckerberg’s approach to political involvement is creating as many problems for him as it is solving. Liberals wonder if the man having private phone calls and dinners with Trump is cozying up to the administration, while conservatives allege that Facebook’s efforts to draw lines on certain content smack of bias. In deciding in this latest case not to act against the president of the United States, Zuckerberg may find that he has put himself in the most contentious position yet — risking internal revolt.

The Trump tweet that ignited the debate came early Friday morning, about protests over the death of George Floyd under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he tweeted in part. Twitter labeled the tweet for “glorifying violence” for threatening demonstrators, though Trump later said he was referring to looters themselves becoming violent. Zuckerberg declined to take action despite what he described in a post as a “visceral negative reaction” to Trump’s post.

The public reaction was swift but expected: many liberal groups denounced the lack of action while many Republicans applauded it. Then as protests against racial injustice swept across American cities and Trump continued to demand an iron-fist response from military and police over social media, anger inside the company started to cross to action.

“Censoring information that might help people see the complete picture is wrong. But giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable, regardless who you are or if it’s newsworthy,” tweeted Andrew Crow, Facebook’s head of design for Portal. “I disagree with Mark’s position and will work to make change happen.”

“As allies we must stand in the way of danger, not behind,” product designer Sara Zhang tweeted Monday. “I will be participating in today’s virtual walkout in solidarity with the black community inside and outside FB.”

The New York Times reported Monday that some employees have also threatened to resign and at least one prospective hire declined a job offer. Zuckerberg is moving a weekly discussion with employees from Thursday to Tuesday to assuage concerns, the Times noted.

“We recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our Black community,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership. As we face additional difficult decisions around content ahead, we’ll continue seeking their honest feedback.”

But Zuckerberg has made it clear that popularity isn’t his objective. He’s acknowledged in numerous public comments that his staunch dedication to free speech and resisting calls to filter inflammatory political rhetoric will never please the company’s growing chorus of critics.

“My goal for this next decade isn’t to be liked, but to be understood,” Zuckerberg told investors in January. “In order to be trusted, people need to know what you stand for.”

Some conservative groups have applauded Zuckerberg’s light-touch to regulation, arguing that political leaders shouldn’t meddle in the affairs of private enterprises and private enterprises shouldn’t meddle in the speech of political leaders.

“If you’re going to make free expression the paramount value and if you’re to say that you don’t believe it’s your role to be fact-checking political speech, both of which I think are right, then this is what that looks like,” said Jesse Blumenthal, who oversees tech policy for the Koch-backed advocacy group Stand Together. “And it’s not surprising to me that people don’t like it, including some of Facebook’s own employees.”

Late Sunday night, however, Zuckerberg followed in the footsteps of Twitter, Amazon, Uber, AT&T and other companies expressing support for the black community following the death of a Minneapolis man named George Floyd and other African Americans killed by police. “We all have the responsibility to create change,” the 36-year-old CEO wrote and, to start, Facebook will dole out $10 million to racial justice groups.

Civil rights advocates who have long prodded Facebook to improve its reputation on race, from hiring more minority engineers and executives to taking a tougher stance on white supremacists, were unimpressed with the late-night missive. Several of those leaders expressed their outrage to Zuckerberg directly in a phone call Monday that left them “disappointed and stunned” by his explanations.

“Mark Zuckerberg thinks he can put a $10 million price tag on our silence. He’s wrong,” tweeted Rashad Robinson, the president of the racial justice group Color of Change, who shared his civil rights concerns with Zuckerberg at a dinner in November.

“You can’t call Trump and let him keep up a statement inciting violence against Black people, refuse to speak to civil rights leaders & Black employees, and then write a check to make it go away,” Robinson continued.

Vanita Gupta, the CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, tweeted Monday that Zuckerberg has chosen not to enforce Facebook’s prohibitions on voter suppression and inciting violence, policies that her organization and others had worked with the company to develop. His donation, she wrote, amounts to “#bloodmoney.”

“No amount of money can absolve the fact that his inaction on Trump’s tweets is directly putting Black lives and our very democracy in the line of fire,” Gupta tweeted.

Zuckerberg has cited the black civil rights movement and its leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., as an inspiration for his views on free expression. Restricting speech often results in minority voices going unheard, he told a crowd at Georgetown University last fall, and he’s proud Facebook offers an open forum. The first #BlackLivesMatter hashtag appeared on Facebook, he boasted.

“What tech companies are now faced with is the extent to which they have been involved in the type of political polarization that we’re seeing in society today,” said Nicol Turner-Lee, a fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation. “Maintaining that level of violence-inducing language in the public domain is not necessarily helpful when there is not a response which carries the same political weight.

“There needs to be a distinction between free and responsible speech, particularly when you are at a crossroads of a chaotic event that is causing more and more civil unrest,” Turner-Lee continued. “Because the problem is not necessarily being addressed by our leadership.”

The reaction to Zuckerberg’s decision marks a contrast to that received by his peer, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Dorsey’s company has earned praise from Democratic lawmakers for adding warning labels to Trump’s tweets in recent days, while drawing the anger of Trump and his allies. Indeed, Trump signed an executive order seeking to curtail social media companies’ legal protections after Twitter indicated two of his tweets on mail-in voting were misleading.

“I’m glad to see Twitter taking action on the President’s attempts to mislead voters, in violation of the platform’s rules,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia tweeted Monday. “It’s a shame that Facebook seems unwilling to stand up for truth on its platform.”

Meanwhile, Facebook’s decision to leave up Trump’s post has been met by rare plaudits from one key corner — Republicans who have railed against the company and its social media rivals over allegations they stifle conservative speech. The warm reaction could mean Facebook and Zuckerberg’s attempts to both privately and publicly woo Republicans is paying off.

Zuckerberg attended a secretive dinner with Trump at the White House last year, igniting accusations from Democratic lawmakers that the tech mogul was cozying up to the administration to ward off regulatory scrutiny. It was one of several sit-downs by the Facebook chief and top political leaders in Washington, including a series of prominent GOP tech critics. He also spoke with Trump by phone Friday.

“I agree with what Mark Zuckerberg said when he said that social media shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who also met with Zuckerberg during his D.C. charm offensive, said at a press conference last week.

Yet despite supporting Facebook’s latest decision on Trump’s divisive messages, don’t expect the tech giant’s most vocal critics on the right to let up the pressure.

Maria Jeffrey, a spokesperson for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), told POLITICO on Monday that while the company made “the right move” by keeping up the president’s posts, “The fact remains that Silicon Valley billionaires can easily censor, deceive, and manipulate without consequence.”

“[Cruz] will continue working with his colleagues and the Trump administration to protect free speech and hold Big Tech accountable to the American people,” she said.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday declared himself the “president of law and order” and said he would mobilize every available federal force both “civilian and military” as he vowed to put an immediate end to violent protests that have swept the nation for days.

In a brief statement delivered from the Rose Garden of the White House as law enforcement forces deployed tear gas and cleared out protesters just on the opposite side of Pennsylvania Avenue, Trump ordered governors and mayors to establish “an overwhelming law enforcement presence” until the protests have been quelled, and he threatened to send in the U.S. military to “quickly solve the problem for them.”

As Trump spoke, police also fired rubber bullets at protesters gathered peacefully on the edge of Lafayette Square directly in front of the White House. After his speech and with the square cleared, the president walked across the street for a photo op in front of the the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he held up a Bible.

Peaceful demonstrations began in Minneapolis last week following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after being pinned down by a police officer’s knee to the neck for nearly nine minutes. But the protests descended into violence at times and quickly spread from coast to coast, with participants setting fire to and looting businesses, and clashing with law enforcement officers dressed in riot gear.

For the past three days, the uproar has lasted well into the night despite local leaders’ imposing curfews, and has teetered on the president’s front yard and the surrounding areas. Dozens of state leaders have called in the National Guard to restore order, a move Trump cheered and urged other governors to replicate.

“Today, I have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets,” he said from the White House, warning that he would step in if a city or state “refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents.”

Trump on Monday denounced the violence as “domestic acts of terror,” accusing far-left anti-fascist groups of being responsible for the chaos as he threatened to use military force to bring them to a halt.

“The biggest victims of the rioting are peace-loving citizens in our poorest communities, and as their president, I will fight to keep them safe,” Trump said, reading from a teleprompter. “I will fight to protect you. I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters.”

The president’s sharp rhetoric on Monday, though couched in a more elevated tone befitting a nationally televised address, was hardly a departure from the incendiary tweets he fired off all weekend long. It also echoed the blunt instructions he gave the nation’s governors on a call earlier in the day during which he berated them as “weak” and urged them to “get much tougher” on people in their states protesting police violence.

In both instances, the president made little mention of the root cause of the unrest, however, aside from acknowledging that Americans are “rightly sickened and revolted” by Floyd’s death. Trump vowed that justice would be served and that Floyd “will not have died in vain,” but never spoke of the systemic changes protesters say are required to prevent more killings of unarmed black Americans by police.

“But we cannot allow the righteous cries and peaceful protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob,” he continued in the Rose Garden. “The biggest victims of the rioting are peace-loving citizens in our poorest communities, and as their president, I will fight to keep them safe. I will fight to protect you. I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters.”

After threatening to unleash the military on unruly protesters, citing his authority under the Insurrection Act of 1807 to circumvent federal law barring the use of federal troops for domestic law enforcement, the president turned and walked away, but not before dropping a cryptic line.

“Thank you very much. And now I am going to pay my respects to a very, very special place,” he said without further explanation as he headed back into the West Wing.

Immediately after Trump ended his speech, it became clear why police had begun to clear out Lafayette Square a short while earlier. Minutes after leaving the Rose Garden, he emerged from the White House surrounded by a security detail and made his way through a deserted Lafayette Square, statues covered in graffiti from the night before and protesters kept away by police in riot gear and mounted on horses.

Trump made his way across the street to St. John’s, which had briefly caught fire in the previous night’s unrest. According to a press pool report, remnants of the tear gas lobbed at protesters spurred coughing and choking by some in the group, while Trump summoned Attorney General William Barr, his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, as he stood in front of cameras holding up a Bible. After several moments, Trump strode away, back onto the White House grounds.

The Rose Garden address and ensuing photo-op came as Trump faced criticism for shrinking from public view over the weekend, remaining inside the White House except for a trip to Florida for a SpaceX launch on Saturday during which he briefly addressed the violence.

While the president responded to questions from reporters about the killing last week, calling Floyd’s death a tragedy and asking the Justice Department to investigate the episode, he had ignored calls for a formal address to the nation — an idea that divided his advisers — while firing off incendiary tweets online.

The brash language continued on Monday morning’s call with the nation’s governors.

“If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time,” Trump told them, according to audio of the teleconference. “They’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”

In the roughly hourlong call, Trump urged for a greater crackdown on the unrest and repeatedly praised the job the National Guard had done in Minneapolis over the weekend to bring under control what had become at times violent protests, saying that guardsmen “knocked them down … like bowling pins.”

He continually cast the use of force as the only way to deter protesters once and for all, telling the governors that “the harder you are, the tougher you are, the less likely they’re going to be hit.”

“It’s a movement that if you don’t put it down, it’ll get worse and worse,” Trump added, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post.

Trump went further than his calls for greater force, lambasting some governors who he said weren’t heeding his pleas.

“The only time it’s successful is when you’re weak,” he said of the protests. “And most of you are weak.” He later told governors who neglected to call in the National Guard that they were “making yourself look like fools,” naming none but name-dropping cities like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York and Washington.

In D.C., he said ominously, “we’re going to do something that people haven’t seen before. And you’re gonna have total domination.”

In the Rose Garden address, the president shed more light on his threat.

“As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the wanton destruction of property” in the District, he said. “We are putting everybody on warning, our 7 p.m. curfew will be strictly enforced. Those who threaten innocent life and property will be arrested, detained and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

He also compared the current moment with the Occupy Wall Street movement, calling the use of force to sweep out those protesters in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis “a thing of beauty.”

“It was an hour of bedlam, but when it was all over it was a beautiful thing and that’s the way it has to end,” Trump told the governors.

He also implored them to carry on with prosecutions of arrested protesters “or they’ll be back.”

“You have to arrest people, and you have to try people, and they have to go jail for long periods of time,” he said, asserting that “you have to do retribution” in order to properly deter future clashes.

Barr told participants that the Justice Department would be using joint terrorist task forces to track instigators at the protests.

He urged them to control crowds rather than react to them, and echoed Trump’s call to “dominate” the scene and “go after troublemakers.”

Only one governor openly objected to the president’s comments on the call.

“I wanted to take this moment, and can’t let it pass,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, going on to outline his “extraordinary” concern about the president’s “inflammatory” rhetoric, which he said was making the upheaval worse.

“We’ve got to have national leadership in calling for calm,” Pritzker told the president, who responded in kind and accused the governor of mishandling the coronavirus outbreak in his state.

It was at this point Trump also lashed out at criticism that he hadn’t spoken enough about Floyd’s death. Trump complained that he wasn’t receiving enough credit for mentioning it at the SpaceX launch, telling the call participants that “we just sent out a billion-dollar rocket” but that he still mentioned Floyd at the top of his remarks.

“The whole world was disgraced by it, not just our country,” he told the governors of the manner of Floyd’s death. “Nobody can tell me I haven’t spoken about it. I’ve spoken about it at great length. … But I also have to speak about law and order.”

The president ended the call by instructing governors again to utilize the National Guard to clamp down on the protests, telling them that “you’re much better off” with too many defense assets than too few, and “too few is unacceptable.”

“So go out and get ‘em, good luck tonight,” he finished.

The Justice Department did not respond to questions about the involvement of Barr, who was captured by news cameras standing in the park with police just before they began to clear protesters out of the area, in that decision. But a department spokesperson, Kerri Kupec, said Barr was leading Monday night’s efforts in the District, after Trump called the handling of Sunday night’s protests a “disgrace.“

But the move by law enforcement officers to deploy tear gas and fire rubber bullets to enable the president’s photo op immediately sparked outrage.

Mariann Edgar Budde, the diocesan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, which oversees St. John’s, tore into the president in a CNN interview on Monday night.

“Let me be clear. The president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese without my permission as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything our churches stand for,” she told host Anderson Cooper. “And to do so, as you just said, he sanctioned the use of tear gas by police officers in riot gear to clear the church yard. I am outraged.”

Moreover, she said, the president did not use the church to pray, nor did he address the unrest simmering across the country.

“I just can’t believe what my eyes have seen tonight,” Budde continued. She then blasted what she called an “abuse of sacred symbols for the people of faith in this country to justify language, rhetoric, an approach to this crisis that is antithetical to everything we stand for.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser also slammed the move, pointing out in a tweet that officers’ clearing of the park came less than half an hour before the city’s curfew went into effect.

“Federal police used munitions on peaceful protestors in front of the White House, an act that will make the job of @DCPoliceDept officers more difficult,” she wrote on Twitter. “Shameful!”

Shia Kapos contributed to this report.