Elon Musk listens to U.S. President Donald Trump speak in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The campaign by President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk to radically cut back the U.S. bureaucracy spread on Friday (February 14, 2025), firing more than 9,500 workers who handled everything from managing federal lands to caring for military veterans.

Workers at the departments of Interior, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Health and Human Services had their employment terminated in a drive that so far has largely — but not exclusively — targeted probationary employees in their first year on the job who have fewer employment protections.

The firings, reported by Reuters and other major U.S. media outlets, are in addition to the roughly 75,000 workers who have taken a buyout that Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have offered to get them to leave voluntarily, according to the White House. That equals about 3% of the 2.3 million person civilian workforce.

Mr. Trump says the federal government is too bloated and too much money is lost to waste and fraud. The government has some $36 trillion in debt and ran a $1.8 trillion deficit last year, and there is bipartisan agreement on the need for reform.

But congressional Democrats say Mr. Trump is encroaching on the legislature’s constitutional authority over federal spending, even as his fellow Republicans who control majorities in both chambers of Congress have largely supported the moves.

The speed and breadth of Mr. Musk’s effort has produced growing frustration among some of Mr. Trump’s aides over a lack of coordination, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, sources told Reuters.

In addition to the job reductions, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have tried to gut civil-service protections for career employees, frozen most U.S. foreign aid and attempted to shutter some government agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau CFPB almost entirely.

Almost half of the probationary workers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others at the National Institutes of Health are being forced out, sources familiar with the job cuts told Reuters.

The U.S. Forest Service is firing around 3,400 recent hires, while the National Park Service is terminating about 1,000, people familiar with the plans said on Friday.

The tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service is preparing to fire thousands of workers next week, two people familiar with the matter said, a move that could squeeze resources ahead of Americans’ April 15 deadline to file income taxes.

Other spending cuts have raised concerns that vital services were in danger. A month after wildfires devastated Los Angeles, federal programs have stopped hiring seasonal firefighters and halted removal of fire hazards such as dead wood from forests, according to organizations impacted by the reductions.

Critics have questioned the blunt force approach of Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, who has amassed extraordinary influence in Mr. Trump’s presidency.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday shrugged off those concerns, comparing Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to a financial audit.

“These are serious people, and they’re going from agency to agency, doing an audit, looking for best practices,” he told Fox Business Network.

Mr. Musk is relying on a coterie of young engineers with little government experience to manage his DOGE campaign, and their early cuts appear to be driven more by ideology than driving down costs, budget experts say.

Elon Musk’s estranged transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, launched a subtle yet scathing attack on him after the billionaire allegedly made a “Nazi salute” during President Donald Trump’s inauguration rally. The 21-year-old, who legally changed her name and gender at the age of 18 and disowned Mr Musk, did not name him but heavily hinted she was responding to the controversial incident.

“I’m just gonna say let’s call a spade a f***ing spade,” Ms Wilson wrote on Instagram’s Threads platform.

“Especially if there were two spades done in succession based on the reaction of the first spade,” she added.

As her post blew up, Ms Wilson wrote another thread, sarcastically explaining that she did not intend the card analogy to insinuate anything about her father.

“I don’t know why ya’ll are reacting with such vigor, I’m clearly only talking about card suits. I mean I have ADHD and this was CLEARLY just an accident that people happened to interpret to mean something other than just card suits. After all, there’s no proof I’m not just talking about card suits,” Ms Wilson joked.

“People assuming that I’m not just talking about card suits just goes to show how dishonest people/the media can be.”

What did Musk do?

A video showing the Tesla boss making a one-armed gesture during a speech at the rally went viral on social media with users comparing it to a Nazi salute. Mr Musk, however, dismissed the criticism. “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired,” he posted on his social media platform X.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organisation founded to combat anti-Semitism that has criticized Elon Musk in the past, defended his gesture. “It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” the organization posted on X.

Also Read | “I Did Observe…”: Grimes Reacts To Elon Musk’s Gaming Skills Amid Cheating Allegations

‘Woke mind virus’

Ms Wilson and Mr Musk have not been on talking terms for a long time with the Tesla boss claiming that the “woke mind viruses” had killed his son.

“I was tricked into doing this. I lost my son, essentially. They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead,” Mr Musk said in an interview, referring to gender-reassignment surgery.

“I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that. And we’re making some progress,” he added.

Responding to Mr Musk’s assessment of the situation, Ms Wilson said that she had “disowned” him. Her legal transition occurred on June 22, 2022, at a court in California. “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape, or form,” Ms Wilson said back then.

New Delhi:

Elon Musk has been a near-constant presence on the side of US President-elect Donald Trump. It was proven again when Google CEO Sundar Pichai dialed Trump and Musk joined the call, reported The Information. Mr Pichai called Trump to congratulate him on his victory over Kamala Harris in the recently concluded US Presidential Election.

In the past, Musk has alleged biases in Google’s search results, suggesting that upon searching for Trump, news related to Harris surfaced.

Wow https://t.co/9utMxHQCog

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2024

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk has previously joined telephone calls with world leaders and dispensed advice on personnel choices.

It is because of his close ties with the President-elect, Musk is called the “First Buddy”.

Both have been spotted together at various events including the launch of the SpaceX Starship rocket and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) heavyweight bout on November 16.

Under Trump’s cabinet, Musk will lead the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ – a position Trump hinted at during his campaign trail. Musk will head the department alongside Indian-American entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the ‘Save America’ Movement,” Trump said in a statement.

Musk even found a mention in Trump’s victory speech and was described as “an amazing guy”.

“We have a new star, a star is born: Elon,” Trump told his supporters. “He’s an amazing guy. We were sitting together tonight. You know, he spent two weeks in Philadelphia, in different parts of Pennsylvania, campaigning.”

The duo spent the election night at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, keeping a close watch on the results and Trump’s return to the Oval Office after a four-year gap.

Brussels:

Donald Trump’s White House comeback gives his ally Elon Musk a sizeable advantage in a running standoff with EU tech regulators — who may now think twice before fining his X platform over disinformation concerns.

The world’s richest man — as the boss of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the former Twitter — threw his full weight into Trump’s campaign to reclaim the US presidency.

Elon Musk backed the Republican with hard cash but also used his far-reaching social media platform to push pro-Trump messages, including inflammatory disinformation, to his more than 200 million followers.

The bet amply paid off, with a victorious Trump tapping Musk for an outsized role to overhaul the US government — and putting Brussels in an uncomfortable spot.

With the European Union counting on continued US backing to keep an aggressive Russia from its borders, can it really afford to upset Trump by going after a prized ally?

Trump’s future vice-president J.D. Vance even mused on the campaign trail that Washington could drop support for NATO if the EU presses on with attempts to regulate Musk’s X network under a landmark new content law.

“American power comes with certain strings attached. One of those is respect free speech, especially in our European allies,” he warned.

For Musk, hostility to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is about more than just business: along with supporters on the American right he increasingly paints it as an ideological battle against censorship.

“The election in the US will not impact our enforcement work,” a spokesman for the European Commission — the powerful tech enforcer for the 27-nation EU — told AFP.

But experts are not so sure.

Billions in fines?

Musk’s X platform was formally accused by the commission in July of misleading users with its blue checkmarks for certified accounts, of insufficient advertising transparency and failing to give researchers access to the platform’s data.

The allegations are part of a wider DSA inquiry into how X tackles the spread of illegal content and information manipulation.

Each offence could theoretically trigger a fine of up to six percent of the annual global turnover of all the companies Musk controls — reaching into the billions.

According to several sources close to the proceedings, the commission was wrapping up its probe — and readying a heavy fine — when its digital chief Thierry Breton quit in September, having been denied a second term by EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.

But the stars have since realigned, with the EU now caught in the headlights for fear the volatile Trump will start a trade war and cut support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

‘Provoke’ Trump?

With Trump at the reins, enforcing EU tech rules against X may become a matter of politics as much as anything else.

“I’d be surprised if the commission chooses to provoke Trump over something like this,” said Alexandre de Streel, an expert at the Center on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) think tank.

“Transatlantic relations are going to become more complicated — and this probably isn’t the area where they will need to fight hardest,” he said.

“Musk believes the DSA goes too far in how it asks platforms to regulate content — and that is also the view of far-right parties in Europe,” de Streel noted. “It’s become a battle of ideas, and I don’t see Musk folding — especially not now.”

The European Commission also has to factor in Trump’s hard-right allies within the bloc, from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Italian leader Giorgia Meloni.

After Trump’s re-election, von der Leyen stressed the importance of the EU-US “partnership” and a “strong transatlantic agenda” — a stance echoed by Breton’s designated successor as digital enforcer, Henna Virkkunen.

“With war on its doorstep, Europe must think carefully,” said Umberto Gambini, of European affairs consultancy Forward Global. “I don’t think it can afford to upset Trump in these first months.”

Gambini predicts that the commission’s probes into X will keep ticking along but the departure of Breton — who clashed spectacularly with Musk via social media — will offer a chance to reset the relationship.

Already back in August, Brussels had distanced itself from a letter of warning sent by the French commissioner before Musk interviewed Trump live on X.

That said, “if Europe wants to remain credible” in the fight to rein in Big Tech, it “has to keep threatening fines in the billions, not millions”, Gambini said.

But with fragile transatlantic ties in mind, it may choose to focus its firepower on Chinese platforms such as TikTok instead, judged the EU expert.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Billionaire Elon Musk has endorsed Republican former President Donald Trump in the race for the White House, but employees at his collection of companies are largely donating to Trump’s Democratic rival Kamala Harris.

Workers at Tesla have contributed $42,824 to Harris’ presidential campaign versus $24,840 to Trump’s campaign, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks U.S. campaign contributions and lobbying data.

Employees at Musk’s rocket company SpaceX have donated $34,526 to Harris versus $7,652 to Trump. Employees at the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, have donated $13,213 to Harris versus less than $500 to Trump.

While the figures are relatively small for campaign fundraising, they indicate political leanings at odds with Musk’s own. The world’s richest man, Musk has boosted Trump on X and dismissed left-leaning ideas as a “woke-mind virus.”

Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He backed President Joe Biden in 2020 but has tacked rightward since then. Trump has said that if he wins the Nov. 5 election, he will appoint Musk to lead a government efficiency commission.

The OpenSecrets data includes donations from company employees and owners and those individuals’ immediate family members. Campaign finance laws prohibit companies themselves from donating to federal campaigns.

Many of Musk’s employees are based in California, a Democratic stronghold, said Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, which is a Tesla shareholder. Gerber is also an investor in X.

In July, Musk said he would move X and SpaceX headquarters to Texas from California because of a California gender-identity law he called the “last straw.” Gerber said such a move would mean “losing out on a lot of potential talent” in California.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

Elon Musk has deleted a post on his social media platform X in which he said “no one is even trying to assassinate” President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the wake of an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump while he was playing golf.

Mr. Musk, who has nearly 200 million followers on the social media site he bought for $44 billion in 2022, has increasingly embraced conservative ideologies in recent years and endorsed Trump for president.

Also read | Trump blames Biden and Harris ‘rhetoric’ for assassination bids

While he has removed posts in the past, Mr. Musk has also kept up and even doubled down on other such inflammatory comments. Last week, he made a joke about impregnating Taylor Swift after the singer posted an endorsement for Ms. Harris.

Early Monday, after taking down the post about the apparent Trump assassination, the 53-year-old billionaire wrote on the platform: “Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X.” The original post was in response to DogeDesigner, one of the 700 accounts that Musk follows, who asked: “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?” Musk’s reply was quickly condemned by many X users, and “DeportElonMusk” began trending on X on Monday morning.

“Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates in response to mr. Musk’s post. “This rhetoric is irresponsible.” The Tesla CEO has previously posted conspiracy theories and feuded with world leaders and politicians. X is currently banned in Brazil amid a dustup between Musk and a Brazilian Supreme Court judge over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

He’s also received criticism in the past for what critics said were posts encouraging violence.

Last month, for instance, the British government called on Musk to act responsibly after he used X to unleash a barrage of posts that officials said risked inflaming violent unrest gripping the country.

Mr. Musk said when he bought the platform then known as Twitter that protecting free speech — not money — was his motivation because, as he put it, “having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilisation.” Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute, noted that Musk has long been trying to “push the boundaries of free speech, in part by engaging in impulsive, unfiltered comments on a range of political topics.”