Elon Musk, the billionaire advisor in charge of radically reducing the United States government, will attend the first meeting of President Donald Trump’s cabinet on Wednesday, while agitation continues around his plans to fire federal workers.
The meeting occurs in the middle of a strip and loosen between Musk and Trump, and US government officials, which has become an early evidence of the Musk authority.
Musk is not a cabinet official, but no one in the president’s circle has exerted more influence in Trump’s first weeks.
Musk’s email directive that all federal workers detail their achievements or face the loss of their jobs plunged the government into chaos after some agencies told their employees to fulfill their demand and others said that They could ignore her.
Even after the US personnel administration office, the agency that supervises the federal bureaucracy told workers that they did not need to respond to Musk’s email, Trump and their allies seemed to suggest that workers could be better if they complied with Musk’s wishes.
Musk said on Saturday that federal workers must list five things they did during the week or run the risk of being fired and gave them a period of 48 hours to answer by email.
On Tuesday, Musk continued to press on social networks for workers to respond. Apparently it was helped in that effort by Trump, who told reporters on Tuesday that the request by email was “something voluntary, but it is also that if you do not answer, I suppose they say goodbye.”
When asked on Tuesday, if Musk’s threat would be carried out, the White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Trump would undergo the guidance of the cabinet secretaries for his individual workforce.
Some Cabinet officials, such as Kelly Loeffler, head of small businesses, supported Musk’s demand.
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Musk has criticized federal judges who have intervened to prevent their team from accessing confidential systems and data
“We just want to know: are there people doing their job? And again, the bar is so low that it is ridiculous, ”Loeffler told Fox News in an interview on Tuesday.
But others, including the loyal ones to Trump as Kash Patel, the new FBI chief, told their employees to refrain from responding.
While the strip and loosening were developed, 21 workers on Tuesday renounced the so -called government efficiency department of Musk in protest.
“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise central government systems, jeopardize the confidential data of Americans or dismantle critical public services,” employees wrote in a resignation published online.
The Musk personnel reduction initiative has fired more than 20,000 workers, and another 75,000 accepted purchases, and the effort continued to accelerate on Tuesday. There are about 2.3 million civil federal employees.
The vast majority of dismissed workers had been in their jobs for less than a year, which facilitated their dismissal under the rules of public service. But there were signs that Doge was focusing his attention on long -term career staff.
Executives of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have been told to prepare for another round of job cuts beyond the almost 12,000 employees who are already scheduled to be fired, two familiar people said With the matter, referring to the approximately 7,000 employees in the trial period that will be fired and the 5,000 employees that will accept a purchase. The cuts so far ascend more than 10% of the workforce of the service.
The Department of the Interior received on Tuesday an OPM directive that says that offices such as the US fishing and life service and the Indigenous Affairs Office must prepare plans for reductions in its workforce ranging from 10% to 40 to 40 %, a source from the interior told Reuters.
Musk spent much of Tuesday criticizing federal judges who have intervened to prevent their team from accessing confidential systems and data in the Department of Treasury, the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Administration, and to order the Administration that Release frozen foreign aid funds.
“The only way to restore the people of the people in the United States is to accuse the judges,” Musk wrote in X. “No one is above the law, including judges.”
With Reuters information.
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