With Elon Musk by his side, Trump gives DOGE more power to make staff cuts

With Elon Musk by his side, Trump gives DOGE more power to make staff cuts

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to give the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) more power to shrink the federal workforce by making large-scale staff cuts. The signing of the order in the Oval Office on Tuesday was witnessed by the tech billionaire and his four-year-old son, X Æ A-Xii.

According to the White House, the new executive order directs federal agencies to “coordinate and consult” with DOGE to cut jobs and limit hiring. Each agency will be ordered to “undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force” and limit hiring to only “essential positions”.

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At a press conference after the signing, Trump praised the work of DOGE and said he wanted the Tesla CEO to do more despite multiple lawsuits against his agency on whether it was acting within the law.

“For the sake of the country, I hope that the person in charge and the other people that report to me are allowed to do the right thing. I can’t imagine a judge saying you got elected to look over the country and make America great again, but you don’t have the right to look and see whether things are right, that they are paying or that things are honest,” the President said.

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Meanwhile, Musk, who wore an all-black “Make America Great Again” cap, said that “you can’t have an autonomous federal bureaucracy. You have to have one that’s responsive to the people”, as he defended his role as an unelected official who has been granted unprecedented authority by the President to dismantle parts of the US government.

“We find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth. We’re just curious as to where it came from,” he added.

“If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives, by the form of the President, the Senate, and the House, then we don’t live in a democracy; we live in a bureaucracy.”

As Musk spoke to the reporters, his son, whom the tech billionaire refers to as Little X, stole the show by making faces, clinging on to this father and interrupting him.

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Several videos of the four-year-old, who has accompanied his billionaire father to several Trump events since last year, have gone viral on social, with one where he is seen picking his nose and wiping it on the Resolute desk, which was a gift to President Rutherford Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880.

The historical desk has been used by nearly every American President since.

Reuters Photo.

Another video captured Little X, who the tech billionaire shares with singer Grimes, mimicking his father, prompting the latter to pause briefly.

In his address to reporters on Tuesday, Musk, who said he speaks to Trump nearly every day, also pledged to find $1 trillion in savings through his efforts to identify fraud and waste in the government, a figure that would represent almost 15 per cent of total federal spending.

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There are about 2.3 million US civilian employees, excluding the Postal Service.

Security-related agencies account for the bulk of the federal workforce, but hundreds of thousands of people work across the country in jobs overseeing veterans’ healthcare, inspecting agriculture and paying the government’s bills, among other jobs.

Earlier, Musk made a post on his social media platform X that harshly criticised firms that have filed lawsuits on behalf of federal employees.

“Which law firms are pushing these anti-democratic cases to impede the will of the people?” he tweeted.

Published By:

Karishma Saurabh Kalita

Published On:

Feb 12, 2025

CosmoNews

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