U.S. President Donald Trump made a rare appearance with Elon Musk, his strongest adviser, within the Oval Office on Tuesday before signing an executive order to proceed downsizing the federal workforce.
The Associated Press reviewed a White House fact sheet on the order, which is meant to advance Musk’s work slashing spending along with his Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk said there are some good people within the federal bureaucracy but they have to be accountable and called it an “unelected” fourth branch.
“The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the individuals are going to get,” he said. “That’s what democracy is all about.”
The White House barred an AP reporter from the Oval Office event as a consequence of the media organization’s guidelines to not follow Trump’s order renaming the Gulf of Mexico because the Gulf of America, the Associated Press said in an announcement.
It was Musk’s first time taking questions from reporters since he joined the Trump administration as a special government worker with sprawling influence over federal agencies. He’s also the world’s richest person and the owner of X, the social media platform formerly often called Twitter.
Despite concerns that he’s amassing unaccountable power with little transparency, Musk described himself as an open book. He joked that the scrutiny was like a “day by day proctology exam.”
The White House fact sheet said that “agencies will undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force and determine which agency components (or agencies themselves) could also be eliminated or combined because their functions aren’t required by law.”
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It also said that agencies should “hire no multiple worker for each 4 employees that depart from federal service.” There are plans for exceptions relating to immigration, law enforcement and public safety.
Trump and Musk are pushing federal staff to resign in return for financial incentives, although their plan is currently on hold while a judge reviews its legality. The deferred resignation program, commonly described as a buyout, would allow employees to quit and still receives a commission until Sept. 30. Administration officials said greater than 65,000 staff have taken the offer.
Also on Tuesday, a federal appeals court upheld a court order requiring the federal government to proceed delivering federal funds that were frozen under a widely criticized memo from the Trump administration.
Individually, a federal judge on Tuesday left intact a ban that stops Musk’s department from accessing U.S. Treasury Department records containing sensitive personal data for tens of millions of Americans.
Lots of of individuals gathered for a rally Tuesday across the road from the U.S. Capitol in support of federal staff.
Janet Connelly, a graphic designer with the Department of Energy, said she’s fed up with emails from the Office of Personnel Management encouraging people to take the deferred resignation program.
She tried to make use of her spam settings to filter out the emails but to no avail. Connelly said she has no plans to take the offer.
“From the get-go, I didn’t trust it,” she said.
Connelly said she thinks of her work as attempting to do a crucial service for the American public.
“It’s too easy to vilify us,” she said.
Others have said fear and uncertainty have swept through the federal workforce.
“They’re anxious about their jobs. They’re anxious about their families. They’re also anxious about their work and the communities they serve,” said Helen Bottcher, a former Environmental Protection Agency worker and current union leader in Seattle.
Bottcher participated in a press conference hosted by Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington.
Murray said staff “deserve higher than to be threatened, intimidated and pushed out the door by Elon Musk and Donald Trump.” She also said that “we really need these people to remain of their jobs or things are going to start out breaking.”
A government lawyer, who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity due to fears of retaliation, said it was a terrifying time to be a federal employee.
She said individuals are anxious that their phones and computers are being monitored. She’s a single mother with a young daughter, and her father is urging her to take a safer job within the private sector.
But she’s skeptical of the deferred resignation program, emphasizing that accepting the offer means staff can’t sue in the event that they’re not paid what they’re promised.
The concept, she said, was insane.
AP writers Martha Bellisle in Seattle, Rebecca Santana, Michelle L. Price and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland contributed to this report.
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