Trump’s action orders agency heads to coordinate with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to “significantly reduce the size of the government” and “limit hiring to essential positions,” according to a White House fact sheet seen earlier Tuesday by Bloomberg News.

Agencies will be permitted to hire no more than one employee for every four workers leaving the government, the document said. Exceptions will be made for law enforcement, national security, immigration and public safety roles. It’s unclear if DOGE — an office within the White House — has the authority to enact mass dismissals.

Musk on Tuesday made a rare appearance in the Oval Office alongside Trump to defend his approach, which has involved young staffers fanning across agencies, obtaining access to sensitive computer systems and employee data, and in some cases shuttering offices and placing workers on leave — all in an effort to reduce the size of government.

The billionaire industrialist said without providing evidence that Treasury Department systems lacked “basic controls,” including measures preventing money going to entities on a “do-not-pay list.” 

“It’s like just a massive number of blank checks just flying out of the building,” Musk said.

Trump asserted DOGE had uncovered “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse,” again without substantiation. 

Musk, who has posted dozens of alleged examples of government fraud and waste on X, told reporters that “some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected.”

Trump’s plans for mass firings follow a voluntary “buyout” plan pushed by Musk, which faces a legal challenge. The latest push is also sure to trigger lawsuits from federal workers and their unions, potentially stymieing Trump’s plans to cull the government bureaucracy.

Trump said he would be willing to go to Congress, if needed, to enact some of DOGE’s recommendations. He criticized federal judges for blocking several of his actions but added he would “abide by the courts.” A federal judge in Rhode Island said Monday the White House has not fully complied with his order to release billions in federal grant money. 

The planned downsizing come after weeks of increasingly urgent warnings that employees who rejected the voluntary deferred resignation plan — allowing them to get paid through the end of September if they quit in February — could see their jobs eliminated. 

For many workers, the federal regulations governing reduction in force could be a better deal than taking the buyout. 

Those regulations say laid-off employees are eligible to receive as much as one year’s salary in severance pay, based on a formula that factors in their years of service and age.

In eliminating positions, agencies must consider the type of appointment, length of service, veterans status and performance before eliminating positions. Some employees will be dismissed, while others may have “bumping” rights into another position. Demoted employees may be able to keep their higher pay for two years, and would get first consideration to be promoted.

Musk’s Strategy

The reduction in force is the latest strategy Trump has employed — with the help of Musk — to reshape the federal government without Congress. Musk’s influence on the effort has been clear, down to the subject line of emails to employees that mimicked those received by eliminated employees of his private companies: “Fork in the Road.”

Musk has regularly chopped personnel at his companies, at times cutting so deeply that he had to almost immediately rehire staff. At Tesla, 9% of the work force was laid off in 2018, during the struggles to ramp up manufacturing of the Model 3 sedan. And last year, widespread cuts at the electric vehicle maker were even more brutal, with “Dear Employee” emails arriving in the middle of the night. 

When Musk bought Twitter, now X, in 2022 for $44 billion, he eliminated roughly 6,000 people, or nearly 80% of the staff. 

On his first day in office, Trump gave Musk a role in personnel policy, instituted a hiring freeze and sought to reclassify thousands of career civil service employees into jobs requiring a political appointment.  

Large swaths of federal workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements, and there are civil service protection rules that make layoffs more complicated than in the private sector. 

The week after offering the deferred resignation deal, the Office of Personnel Management asked agencies to identify their lowest-performing employees. The administration could also dismiss probationary employees — those serving less than one or two years — although those employees are at the bottom of the pay scale and likely would not achieve as much cost savings.