President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and billionaire, Elon Musk, will be in the room when Trump meets with his cabinet on Wednesday at the White House.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed reports that Musk will attend the president’s first cabinet meeting, saying the SpaceX and Tesla CEO would be present to discuss the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project “and how all of the cabinet secretaries are identifying waste, fraud, and abuse at their respected agencies.”
“We look forward to the meeting tomorrow, and I think you’ll be hearing from the president and his cabinet when they’re on campus tomorrow,” Leavitt added.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2025
In the first month of the new Trump administration, the president has set Musk loose on multiple government agencies, seeking ways to drastically cut back on spending. Over the weekend, Musk stirred the pot in Washington, D.C., sending an email to federal employees through the Office of Personnel Management that instructed workers to respond with five things they had accomplished in the past week.
Senior Trump officials in multiple departments, including the State Department, Defense Department, and FBI told their employees to ignore the OPM email. The DoD and FBI said that they have their own “review processes,” and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard cited “the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work” as the reason her staff “should not respond to the OPM email.”
In remarks to reporters on Monday, Trump approved of Musk’s tactic, saying, “I thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government.”
“So by asking the question, ‘Tell us what you did this week,’ what he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’ And then if you don’t answer, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired,” Trump added.
Musk initially set a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Monday for federal workers to respond to the email or be terminated, but he then said he would give government employees “another chance” to reply without setting a specific deadline.
“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” Musk wrote on X. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
Musk’s cost-cutting efforts have riled up Democrats and the legacy media who claim that the actions taken by Musk and DOGE are putting Americans’ financial and medical stability at risk. Musk responded to those attacks, saying last week, “The actions that we’re taking, with the support of the president and the support of the agencies, is what will save Medicare, what will save Social Security. … That’s the reason I’m doing this. Because I was looking at the big picture here and it’s like, man, it’s getting out of control.”