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Donald Trump has moved to constrain Elon Musk’s cost-cutting task force, ordering his cabinet to ensure the “most productive” civil servants are exempted from sweeping lay-offs that have wreaked havoc across the US.
In a meeting at the White House on Thursday attended by secretaries of state and Musk, the president hinted the billionaire’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency may have been too indiscriminate in its mass firings of federal employees.
Trump posted on Truth Social soon after the meeting ended: “As the secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go. We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet’.”
The president’s comments come amid mounting disquiet among Republican lawmakers and cabinet members over the speed and breadth of Doge’s lay-offs, which have affected at least 20,000 federal employees — among them veterans and cancer researchers.
“It’s very important that we cut levels down to where they should be, but it’s also important to keep the best and most productive people,” Trump wrote in his post. “We’re going to have these meetings every two weeks until that aspect of this very necessary job is done.”
Speaking to reporters in the White House on Thursday afternoon, Trump went further: “I don’t want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut . . . I want the cabinet members to go first, keep all the people you want, everybody that you need.”
Trump’s post echoed comments by New York Republican congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis last month, in which she urged Doge to use a “scalpel not a sledgehammer” when identifying savings “to avoid unintended consequences and unnecessary anxiety”.
Senate majority leader John Thune this week said dismissals “need to be done in a respectful way”, while a number of his Republican colleagues have gently criticised proposed cuts to scientific research, US aid spending and the culling of FBI agents.
In response to the concerns, Musk on Wednesday agreed to provide some Republican senators with his personal phone number to call and flag problematic cuts, according to some who were in the room.
House Speaker Mike Johnson advised Republican members of congress not to hold in-person meetings in their districts, after a number of lawmakers were subjected to loud protests over Doge’s cuts at town halls in Georgia, Texas and Kansas, among other states.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration quietly clarified a directive that spurred the firings, stating that it was up to agencies to determine whether to dismiss employees.
Last week, a federal judge barred the US government’s Office of Personnel Management — a key vehicle for Musk’s Doge project — from firing probationary workers at specific departments, clarifying that the office “does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees at another agency”.
Some probationary employees fired from the National Science Foundation last month began to be rehired on Monday, the agency said. The US government was also forced last month to rehire employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
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