President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to give tech billionaire Elon Musk more power than federal workers, adding to the integration of the quick and clean political influence of masks. He said that.
Trump praised his office work known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as the mask stood to his right in an oval office. And Trump is facing multiple lawsuits from trade unions and Democratic state attorney generals over whether Doge is acting within the law, but Musk wants to do more now. I said.
The new executive order directs federal agencies to “coordinate and consult with Doge,” according to a summary provided by the White House, to cut jobs and limit employment. Institutions have been ordered to “plan for major cuts,” and employment will be restricted to “essential positions,” the summary states.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the wealthiest person in the world, Musk is also serving as a “special government employee” while exercising federal authorities without giving up on private sector work. This is a temporary position to bypass some of the disclosure obligations required for full-time government employees.
He was wearing an all-black “Make America Great Again” hat and had one of his 11 children at his feet for a briefing.
Trump and Musk were questioned by reporters during a freewheel exchange for more than 30 minutes, but the two spoke mostly in generality and did not provide details about the alleged fraud that Doge said he had discovered. .
For weeks, Musk has been opposed to what he says is a waste, fraud or abuse that Doge has identified, but many of the examples he posted on social media are lacking in detail. On Monday, X’s Doge account said the administration has terminated 89 contracts worth $881 million, but did not say what they were or why they were counted as waste. .
In other instances, independent fact supervisions have raised questions about alleged mask waste. His claim that the US spent $50 million on condoms in the Gaza Strip was widely criticized for lack of evidence.
Asked by a reporter about the fact-check of the condom, Musk admitted that some of what he said about the government’s alleged waste was found to be false.
“No one is going to hit 1,000,” Musk said. (At the beginning of the day, Musk had posted a penis joke to X.)
Musk also said he has made the exception to working with Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “turn on funds” for Ebola and HIV prevention, attempting to freeze overall spending. He said he would suspend the funds saying they were “mistakes.”
“We make mistakes, but we correct mistakes very quickly,” he said.
The two calm concerns that they are violating the Constitution, including attempting to shut down federal agencies without Congressional approval or refusing to spend the money allocated by Congress. He said there is almost none. Among the goals for Doge’s elimination are the US International Development Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and the Education Department.
In response to a reporter’s question, Musk said that it is not a conflict of interest for SpaceX to intervene in the operations of its main contractor, the Department of Defense. He said he would delegate related work on SpaceX.
“First of all, I’m not the one who has signed up for a contract. I’m the people at SpaceX,” he said. And he added: “If the place awarded to SpaceX and it wasn’t the best value for money for taxpayers, then all of them were, so let me know.”
According to government data, SpaceX had $3.8 billion in federal contracts last year.
Trump has sidelined reporters’ questions about whether they would ultimately require Congressional approval to cut spending.
“I really don’t know,” he said. “If you need a Congress vote to find fraud or abuse, that’s fine for me. I think you’ll get the vote.”
Trump also attacked a federal judge in New York and granted a temporary restraining order related to Doge’s activities at the Treasury Department on Saturday. He called the judge “activists.”
However, he answered later questions and stated that he would comply with the ruling of the harmful court.
“I’m always guarding the courts – I’m always guarding them – and I’ll appeal,” he said.
Three weeks after Trump took office, the plaintiffs have 52 on his executive orders and other administrative measures, including Doge’s activities, according to a database managed by Just Security, a legal publication based at New York University. has filed a lawsuit.
The image of Trump and Musk asking questions side by side seemed to stop questioning whether Musk had Trump’s support for his vast overhaul proposal. And the latest executive order appeared to aim to expand the scope of mask impact.
Trump did not sign the Doge-related executive order in front of reporters, but the White House said he later signed it.
According to the Pew Research Center, there are approximately 2.4 million federal employees, excluding postal workers. This number has increased slightly above 1% per year since 2000, but has remained largely unchanged in last month’s report as a share of all private employment.
According to the Brookings Institution, even if Doge succeeds in cutting federal workers by a significant number of times, their compensation accounts for a small percentage of their overall budget. The majority of federal spending is directed towards social security. Health care for the elderly, disabled and poor. The military; the Congressional Budget Office states that there is an interest in national debt.
Musk and Trump mentioned the words “waste,” “fraud,” or “abuse” dozens of times in more than half an hour of talking to reporters, but there was little detail. Trump said the unspecified man was given a federal contract for three months but was paid for 20 years. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for further information.
Before Doge was created, several longtime government agencies were already dedicated to finding waste, fraud and abuse. These include the government’s accountability department and inspectors from individual departments.
Musk said Doge is investigating the net worth of some federal employees and considers net worth a sign of potential fraud for government workers.
“There are quite a few bureaucrats who ostensibly have hundreds of thousands of dollars of salaries, but somehow managed to get tens of millions of dollars of net worth,” he says. Ta. “We’re curious to see where it came from.”
Musk didn’t say how Doge retrieved data on the net worth of federal employees, and a White House spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for details on his comments.
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