President Donald Trump has given the world’s wealthiest man even more power to reshape the federal government by signing an executive order requiring agencies to cooperate with the Elon Musk-led “Department of Government Efficiency” to slash their workforces and limit the hiring of replacements.
Trump signed the order as Musk stood over his shoulder in the Oval Office on Tuesday as reporters — and Musk’s young son — looked on.
Asked about critics who’ve called his anti-government efforts a “hostile takeover” of the executive branch, Musk told reporters: “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get.”
He claimed that the purpose of Trump’s administration was to “restore democracy” by eliminating the independence of the professionalized civil service, which he described as “this unelected fourth, unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy.”
Musk also suggested that executive branch agencies have “in a lot of ways, currently, more power than any elected representative” and claimed — without offering any evidence — that federal employees were illegally enriching themselves to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
A White House fact sheet obtained by The Independent states that the order requires the heads of federal agencies to “coordinate and consult with DOGE to shrink the size of the federal workforce and limit hiring to essential positions” and directs the Office of Personnel Management, which is already led by Musk allies, to promulgate new rules for federal worker conduct.
It also requires agencies to limit hiring by filling just one position for every four employees who leave federal service and to plan for “large-scale reductions in force” by determining what functions can be eliminated or combined.
Trump’s order, which will not apply to “national security, public safety, law enforcement, and immigration enforcement” components of the federal government, is the latest effort by the new president and his wealthy patron to downsize the nation’s 2.2 million federal workers.
The president and his “Make America Great Again” movement have long been hostile to the idea of a non-partisan civil service staffed by career experts, who swear an oath to “support and defend” the United States constitution rather than any particular president.
In private conversations with confidantes, Trump has often blamed civil servants for stymying his first-term agenda and has complained that he can’t fire career employees for being disloyal to him personally.
One of his first acts as president revived an executive order from his first term that reclassifies broad swaths of the civil service in “policy-determining” positions as at-will employees and strips them of the protections they’ve long enjoyed as part of the nonpartisan system first established under the 1883 Pendleton Act.
