Summary

Elon Musk is distancing himself from sweeping federal job cuts linked to DOGE, blaming agency heads—not DOGE—responsible for mass layoffs, including the announced 70,000 job cut at Veterans Affairs.

Despite claiming DOGE’s role as merely advisory, Musk admitted to mistakes in private meetings with GOP lawmakers and pledged to correct them.

Some cuts have already been reversed, with a Trump administration memo clarifying agencies are not required to fire probationary employees (new hires).

  • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    This is because Trump slipped up at his address to Congress and called Musk the head of the agency when he’s legally not supposed to be. Now they’re just playing the game of zero integrity and trying to twist things around to pretend that he’s not the one making all the decisions because it’s illegal and lawmakers picked up on Trump’s slip up.

    • mkwt@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      It’s not just lawmakers. There’s a bunch of lawsuits trying to use the federal courts to figure out:

      • What is DOGE in the federal government?
      • What is the nature of the “DOGE Temporary Organisation?”
      • Who is in charge of DOGE? (Definitely not Musk, officially…)
      • Why can DOGE make all these consequential personnel decisions up and down the federal government?

      These are all things that have been shrouded in secrecy, obfuscation, and contradiction. Because the truth is that the real answers are not legally sound. The fact that these people are scared to say the real truth is a good sign, because it means they still have some fear of the courts and institutions. Those institutions still have some power to mess up the plan.