President Trump and Elon Musk are facing a growing backlash against their effort to reshape the government. Some workers say the efforts breach civil service protections and congressional protocols. Some 20,000 federal workers have accepted buyout offers from the Trump administration. NBC News' Peter Alexander reports.
Tech billionaire and newly minted “special government employee” Elon Musk has received quiet White House reminders in recent days that while he has wide, nearly unprecedented latitude to slash spending and reorient the federal government at a breakneck pace, his power is not unchecked. Trump has suggested publicly, and aides have signaled behind the scenes, that Musk is still a staffer and needs to report to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
He and his DOGE effort were behind a broad effort to try to persuade a sizable percentage of federal employees to take “deferred resignations” in an attempt to shrink the workforce. A spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management told NBC News on Tuesday that more than 20,000 have accepted the offer and that the number of resignations is “rapidly growing” ahead of the deadline of Thursday. Musk is also pushing to shut down an entire federal agency: the U.S.
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