US President Donald Trump makes a rare appearance with Elon MuskHis most powerful advisor, in the oval office on Tuesday before signing an executive decree to continue to reduce the federal workforce.
The Associated Press examined an information sheet on the White House on the Order, which is intended to advance the work of Musk reducing spending with its Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government.
Musk said there were good people in the federal bureaucracy, but they must be responsible and called him a fourth branch “not elected”.
“People voted for a major government reform and that’s what people will get,” he said. “This is what democracy is used for.”
The White House prevented a journalist with the Oval Office event due to the organization of the media guidelines In order not to follow the order of Trump which reversing the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, The Associated Press said in a press release.
It was the first time that Musk had taken up questions to journalists since he joined the Trump administration as an employed from the special government with a sprawling influence on federal agencies. He is also the richest person in the world and the owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Despite the concerns he raises an inexplicable power with little transparency, Musk described himself as an open book. He joked by saying that the exam was like a “daily proctology exam”.
The White House information sheet said that “agencies will undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force and will determine the agency’s components (or agencies themselves) can be eliminated or combined because their functions are not required by law. “
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He also said that agencies should “not hire more than an employee for four employees who are facing federal services”. There are plans for exceptions with regard to immigration, the application of the law and public security.
Trump and Musk push federal workers to resign in exchange for financial incentives, although their plan is currently pending while a judge reviews his legality. The delayed resignation program, commonly described as a takeover, would allow employees to leave and always be paid until September 30. Administration officials said more than 65,000 workers had taken the offer.
Also on Tuesday, a federal court of appeal confirmed an order of the court forcing the government to continue the federal funds which have been frozen within the framework of a widely criticized service note from the Trump administration.
In addition, a federal judge left a ban on Tuesday which prevents the Musk department from accessing the files of the US Treasury Department containing sensitive personal data for millions of Americans.
Hundreds of people gathered for a rally on Tuesday on the other side of the American Capitol in favor of federal workers.
Janet Connelly, graphic designer of the Ministry of Energy, said that she was fed up with emails from the staff management office encouraging people to follow the Delayed resignation program.
She tried to use her spam settings to filter the emails but in vain. Connelly said that she did not intend to take the offer.
“From the start, I don’t trust her,” she said.
Connelly said that she considered her work as trying to do an important service for the American public.
“It is too easy to vilify us,” she said.
Others said that fear and uncertainty had swept the federal workforce.
“They are worried about their work. They are worried about their families. They are also worried about their work and the communities they serve, ”said Helen Bottcher, former employee of the Environmental Protection Agency and Union leader in Seattle.
Bottcher participated in a press conference organized by Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington.
Murray said workers “deserve better than being threatened, intimidated and pushed by Elon Musk and Donald Trump”. She also said that “we really need these people to stay in their work or that things will start to break”.
A government lawyer, who spoke to the Associated Press on the state of anonymity due to fears of reprisals, said that it was a terrifying moment to be a federal worker.
She said people fear that their phones and computers be watched. She is a single mother with a young girl and her father exhorts her to take safer work in the private sector.
But it is skeptical about the deferred resignation program, stressing that accepting the offer means that workers cannot continue if they are not paid what they are promised.
The idea, she said, was crazy.
The writers of the AP Martha Bellisle in Seattle, Rebecca Santana, Michelle L. Price and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland contributed to this report.
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