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”, it said.
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.
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.
