MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
A critical figure in President Trump's effort to remake the federal government is his billionaire donor, Elon Musk. Trump has given Musk and the ad hoc group called the Department of Government Efficiency - or DOGE - virtually unfettered access to federal agencies. Earlier this week, Musk defended that work, standing beside the president in the Oval Office.
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ELON MUSK: So all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don't think there's been - I don't know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.
MARTIN: This week also saw the start of mass layoffs at federal agencies which have been created by Congress, prompting even more questions about Musk's influence, since his group is not. NPR correspondents Shannon Bond and Stephen Fowler have been following the latest in this effort to restructure the federal government, and they are both with us now. Good morning.
SHANNON BOND, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: Stephen, let's start with you. What stood out for you this week in the workings of Musk and this DOGE group?
FOWLER: It really struck me how much Elon Musk, the world's richest man and not the elected president, was doing things you would expect from a head of state. He met with the prime minister of India. He beamed into the World Governments Summit in Dubai. And he was in the Oval Office Tuesday - next to Trump, of course - taking questions from reporters about his plans to drastically eviscerate federal agencies, the workforce and spending priorities.
MARTIN: So let's get to what they're doing. Shannon, you've been reporting on terminations across agencies. What can you tell us about that?
BOND: Right. So on Tuesday, President Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to start prepping for large-scale reductions in force, and that's happening. NPR reporters across beats have started hearing from people inside agencies who are getting laid off. The full scale of how many are affected at this point is not clear. But many of these cuts initially appear to target employees who are still on probationary status, and at most agencies, that's with - about in one or two years since they were hired.
And just to give you a sense of scale, as of last year, around 220,000 federal workers had less than one year of service. But there's also some workers with longer tenure who are being cut - including up to 100 career staff at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, our colleague Laurel Wamsley reported last night.
MARTIN: Tell us more about the types of jobs affected by these cuts.
BOND: Yeah, this is a wide swath of federal workers. It's people in the Education Department working on student loans. It's software engineers at the General Services Administration. The VA - the Department of Veterans Affairs - said it dismissed more than a thousand probationary workers; said that would save the agency $98 million a year.
This even affects people who work to secure the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. Our colleague Geoff Brumfiel reported that workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration are being cut. That's a small agency within the Energy Department. They maintain the nation's nuclear weapons, and they work to prevent terrorism and proliferation. And according to an employee there, about 300 of a total staff of about 1,800 were expected to be fired. And, Michel, that came after the agency was denied an exemption from these cuts on national security grounds.
MARTIN: Which is interesting, because the newest-hired workers often have the most up-to-date educational credentials, right? They may have access to the latest training, the latest innovations. OK, so those are the layoffs. Stephen, do we know how many people have agreed to resign voluntarily from the government?
FOWLER: Yes. So NPR's Andrea Hsu has been following the so-called Fork in the Road deferred resignation offer; tells us about 3% of the federal workforce, or 75,000-ish employees, have agreed to resign. But that's about half of the typical turnover that the government sees each year.
BOND: And, you know, it's worth noting here, Michel, when we're thinking about these numbers - these moves may not result in the kind of really huge cost savings that Musk and Trump say they want. Federal worker wages made up just 3% of the total federal budget in 2024, according to government data. But this really is the same approach Musk took when he bought Twitter, and at Twitter, that caused a lot of chaos. In some cases, it actually had to hire some of the people who left back because the company needed them in order to function.
FOWLER: And as Shannon mentions Twitter, now known as X, it's also worth noting that many of Musk's six companies are either federal contractors or subject to government regulatory oversight. So these potential conflicts add another layer to recent changes, like the Trump administration's attempted dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Our colleague Bobby Allyn has reported extensively on that change, as well as the complicated ethical questions Musk's arrangement raises.
MARTIN: You know, they've talked a lot about saving taxpayer dollars. Musk, Trump and DOGE claim that they've already saved billions. But what's the evidence of that?
FOWLER: Well, Musk talked extensively about DOGE's efforts in the Oval Office with Trump Tuesday, where he touted the, quote, "maximally transparent" nature of DOGE, pointing to a website and social media. Well, Michel, the website still doesn't have any specifics about contracts they've asked agencies to cancel in recent weeks, and what information has been shared on social media has been both opaque and exaggerated. Here's an example. After DOGE claimed they nixed $1 billion in diversity, equity and inclusion-related contracts, I did some digging through government data - only a few hundred thousand transactions - and found the likely savings were just a fraction of what they claimed.
MARTIN: Shannon, as we enter another week of Trump's second term and we keep, you know, following this story, as you all are and as so many of our beat reporters are, how should we understand Musk's view of his role?
BOND: Well, I think he articulated it pretty clearly on Thursday at that World Governments Summit in Dubai. Here's something that he said.
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MUSK: So it's like a corporate turnaround, but at a much larger scale.
BOND: You know, and the way Musk talks about it, he sees the federal government as a company that needs fixing, much like he saw Twitter as a company that needs fixing. At that event, he referred to it as America Incorporated, right? This is a corporate turnaround, in his view. And so I think this week, what we are seeing with everything that is happening is exactly what that means.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Shannon Bond and Stephen Fowler. They're two of many NPR reporters covering the impact of Trump's second term, and how he and the Trump administration are reshaping the federal government. Thank you both.
FOWLER: Thank you.
BOND: Thanks, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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