Shannon Bond
Appearances
NPR News Now
NPR News: 02-03-2025 7PM EST
White House Secretary Caroline Leavitt said today Elon Musk is what's known as a, quote, special government employee today. That's a temporary appointment to perform limited services. She said she does not have details about Musk's security clearance. And we don't know about the status of others working at Doge, like whether or not they're government employees, what clearances they may have.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 02-03-2025 7PM EST
What we do know is that some of these folks are young engineers who have come in from Silicon Valley.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 04-01-2025 5PM EDT
The Departments of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation said this week they're reopening their deferred resignation programs. Similar notices went out on Friday at the Defense Department and the General Services Administration. The new round mirrors the fork-in-the-road offer sent in February to nearly all 2.3 million civilian federal employees.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 04-01-2025 5PM EDT
The Trump administration has said about 75,000 employees elected to resign under the program's first round. But many workers who tried to accept the offer were later told they were ineligible. Some of the new agency notices exempt jobs considered critical. Shannon Bond, NPR News.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 02-06-2025 4PM EST
The Treasury system processes trillions of dollars in federal spending every year and including Social Security and Medicare benefits. The judge's order is temporary while the union's lawsuit moves forward. Shannon Bond, NPR News.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 02-06-2025 4PM EST
The judge's order allows two special government employees at Treasury who are connected to Musk's Doge team to continue accessing payment records on a read-only basis. But it bars them from sharing information outside the Treasury Department. Musk's Doge team has been seeking access to information and systems across federal agencies, raising worries highly sensitive data could be compromised.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 02-07-2025 7PM EST
Those posts have been deleted, but NPR did independently confirm them. And Ales has now resigned, although Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance are saying he should get his job back.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 02-07-2025 7PM EST
His name is Marco Ales. He's a 25-year-old Rutgers University graduate who previously worked at Musk's SpaceX and at X. He was a temporary appointee at Treasury who was granted access to this payment system alongside Krauss. Now, on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal identified racist posts from a social media account linked to him.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
So I think those sort of turf battles and then how those like resonate through the way the agencies are actually run is going to be the thing we're watching out for.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
And it didn't end up that simple. So Musk posted about this on X on Saturday, said everyone's going to receive this email. And by the way, if you don't respond, we're going to take that as a resignation, which is sort of kind of a stunning thing to announce, like by this person who He is a special government employee, but the White House has said he's not running anything, right?
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
He's not running any of these agencies. He's not running the Office of Personnel Management. He's not even running the Doge office that he has sort of established in the White House. Technically, we'll get into that. But then this government-wide email comes out from the Office of Personnel Management asking people to respond to this. Well, no, it did not have the ultimatum about not responding.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
And immediately we just saw like utter confusion and chaos across federal agencies. You know, workers are being like, am I supposed to respond to this? Like some of them are like, I work on classified material or, you know, and it said don't put any classified information in. But like a lot of people were quite nervous about like what is going to be done with this? How do I respond?
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Agencies start in some cases saying, yes, this is fine. Go ahead and respond. Other agencies, including the State Department, the Defense Department, Homeland Security are like, absolutely not. Do not send this in. And, you know, that is some of the first sort of real backlash we've gotten against Musk by, you know, people in the cabinet, right?
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Cabinet level secretaries saying, hold on, you know, we run these agencies. This is our workforce. We get to control and manage what they're doing. And you can't just sort of order people to do this. But it does raise all these questions. I mean, many of the workers I were talking to were saying, like, who's in charge here? Like, is it the agency? And then in some cases is telling me,
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
First to respond, then telling me not to respond, you know, with supervisors or giving people conflicting information. You have Musk continuing to say on X, if people don't respond, they're going to be fired. You have OPM first coming out and saying, actually, this is voluntary, then putting out another memo being like, well, it's up to the agencies to decide if it's voluntary or not.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Like, just again, like people are just like, who is in charge? Who is making the decisions here? And I think we're going to see, like, to what degree do some of these political appointees who have been Senate confirmed, right, to their positions? you know, how are they going to continue to assert their power over Musk?
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
So like an example here is like the Department of Energy, right? Which as we reported on, you know, when these sort of initial probationary layoffs or firings happened, you know, cut a bunch of workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration. You know, these are people who work with nuclear warheads and then had to rehire them, right?
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Because actually they were like, oh no, we can't actually fire these people. Like we need these people. They're very much in the position now, right? I think there's a bit of like
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
You know, the actual functionality of these agencies, they do have work to do and they need to make sure that if they are going to trim down, they trim, you know, not trimming people who actually need to be doing some of this work. And I guess I think some of this is about like ego and sort of turf battles over like who ultimately is the decider here.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Like, you know, these are all people, many of them, you know, themselves have business backgrounds, right? They're coming in saying like, I want to be in charge here. And like, you know, I'm not going to just like let Elon Musk tell me what to do.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
But it's been quite interesting because I think a lot of people were sort of speculating, you know, is it Musk and Trump who are going to have a fallout? Like what's going to happen here? And actually, I think some of the first battles we're seeing is between Musk and these cabinet secretaries. OK, we got to take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Yeah, that's right. I mean, some of this is like literally the exact playbook, right? And we knew that with the fork in the road email, right, offering for government workers to resign. He sent an email with the same subject line to Twitter employees, again, asking them to resign after he bought that company.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Similarly, this idea of like reporting in five things you accomplished last week, you know, that is something he has implemented at his companies. Even the title of that email, what did you do last week? That is something that he had famously texted to the then CEO of Twitter, like when he was basically making the decision to buy the company and try to kick out current management.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
And we're seeing again and again, he's bringing this playbook in from his businesses that, you know, I think to his mind has been successful in the past, right? Yeah. And I think what that tells us very much is – and we've talked about this before, right? He – Musk sees the government, you know, as not really any different from a corporation. He's talked about this.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
He's called it America Incorporated. And it needs to have a corporate restructuring. And he's very much going about it the way he would, you know, if you were the, you know, pretty independently powerful CEO of a large company where you can say, yeah, I'm going to fire wide swaths of people.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
I mean, this is also played out in the same way at Twitter, where Twitter fired people and then had to rehire them, right? Because they actually found out some of them were doing jobs that the company needed. But part of the reason we're seeing kind of so much like confusion and disruption and pushback is that like the problem is fundamentally the government is not a corporation.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
And so, yes, if you were going to do large scale reductions in force, like there are actual legal channels you need to follow. There are requirements over things like preference to people who have veteran status or people with disabilities. Like there are things that exist in the government world that may not exist in the corporate world.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
And I think that's where we're seeing so many of these clashes. But it is really kind of this like very differing kind of view of what the purpose of government is and really different value system. I think that we're seeing Musk bring in that I think is causing just so much of this like confusion and drama and like honestly heartache for a lot of the workers that we're talking to.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
I think that's all true. And I think what's also really important to think about is in the meantime, like Sue, as you said, I mean, he is clearly effectively running this, right? Like he says this email is going to go out. The email goes out. He says people are going to get fired. You know, the agencies say, well, maybe not. But like, I don't know.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
He and then Trump also says if people don't respond, they're going to get fired. So, you know, who are you trusting? And I think a lot of the folks that I've been speaking to, the federal workers who are at the receiving end of this are saying, OK, Like, I don't know, but I kind of can't risk my job at this point. I mean, they're also all preparing to be laid off anyway.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
But they're saying, you know, at the end of the day, like, yes, there are all these kind of legal questions and that will play out. But it will, as Chris says, take months. And in the meantime, you know, it is effectively Musk calling the shots here.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Right. So this has come after, you know, actually quite a bit of mystery through a lawsuit where the court was asking the government over and over again because they said, well, you know, Musk is not in charge of the U.S. Doge service, which is part of the office of the president that has been renamed from the U.S. Digital Service. And they were like, OK, great. Who is?
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
And then the government lawyers were like, well, we don't know. We can't tell you. This dragged on for a couple of days, which kind of, you know, pretty unprecedented to just not be able to say who is actually running this. I'm sure judges love that. Yeah. As you can imagine, the judge was not amused.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
So the White House has announced that Amy Gleason is, in fact, the acting administrator of the Doge service. She is somebody who is a veteran of the U.S. digital service. She's a former health care investment executive. You know, we don't know a lot about her. We don't really know a lot about what her actual kind of acting role is.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
You know, what does it mean, again, for her to be the acting administrator when clearly, effectively, you know, Musk is calling the shots here? But there is a name now. And I'm sure that that will, like, raise a whole new set of court challenges over, you know, what are the directives that Musk is issuing? You know, where does that maybe trample on her territory?
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
But again, like, you know, at the end of the day, the office of the president of the White House, which is what the Doge service is under, you know, is separate from these agencies. Yes. The president can issue executive orders saying – calling on agencies to prepare for reductions in force, which it has done. The White House itself like can't just go and fire people at agencies.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
OPM can't go and fire people at agencies. Like the agencies themselves are doing this. And so that's again where like the kind of what is the chain of command here I think is murky and is why this is being opened up to all of this questioning legally and just practically by the people having to carry out this mission.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
I think the thing I would say is, you know, what additional pushback is there sort of from inside the government and especially at the cabinet level? We know that Musk is going to be sitting in on Trump's cabinet meeting today. You know, would love to be a fly on the wall in that room, like what the dynamic is like.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Because, you know, again, I think, you know, it's been really notable, particularly that some of the most powerful cabinet secretaries, you know, the head of agencies that are, you know, very critical to national security are the ones who have kind of come out most aggressively in sort of marking their own territory here.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
And again, like you said, it's not that these folks are not on board with the idea of cutting spending and reducing the workforce. But, you know, I think Marco Rubio is going to have a very hard time if he is not the one as secretary of state who is deeply involved in setting U.S. foreign policy. And like, you know, Musk is trying to get involved there.
Up First from NPR
Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal
Yeah, this USDA worker was pretty confused by this, so they actually drove to the address on this list. Sure enough, it was a storage facility. And when the worker asked the owner of the facility why it might be showing up on a list of federal office spaces, they said the owner laughed and said, yes, you know, the federal government does rent a unit here. It's used to store a boat.
Up First from NPR
Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal
Now, to be clear, this employee doesn't expect to actually be working out of the storage unit. Like other federal employees I spoke with, they didn't want us to use their name because they fear retaliation from the Trump administration for speaking out. I reached out to the USDA. They told me they are identifying issues and addressing them quickly.
Up First from NPR
Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal
But, Michelle, this is just one example of the kind of confusion, even absurdity, some federal workers are encountering around this order back into offices. What are some of the other stories that you've heard?
Up First from NPR
Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal
Yeah, my colleague Jenna McLaughlin and I talked to employees at a dozen agencies who are being ordered back into the office to comply with President Trump's executive order terminating all remote work. And what they told us is in many cases, these offices just are not equipped for an influx of people. So they're running out of toilet paper and soap in the bathrooms.
Up First from NPR
Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal
There aren't enough desks or computer monitors. Internet connections and Wi-Fi service can be slow or unavailable. You know, I even spoke to people at the FDA who went back to the main office in Maryland last week. They're nervous to drink the water in the building because last year testing found Legionella bacteria in some FDA buildings. That causes Legionnaires disease.
Up First from NPR
Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal
Now, the agency notified employees coming back that it is safe to drink the water. But some say because they haven't made new testing results available, they just don't want to risk it. The FDA told me it's keeping employees up to date on their working conditions.
Up First from NPR
Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal
Well, about 10 percent of federal employees were fully remote, according to a federal government report last year. That's around 288,000 people, and many more had the ability remotely. to work from home sometimes. And of course, Michelle, teleworking increased a lot during the pandemic.
Up First from NPR
Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal
But actually, many federal agencies had been encouraging telework going back decades as a way of saving on costs around like, you know, real estate, utilities, office space. The Office of Personnel Management found telework saved taxpayers more than $230 million in 2023. And the government was encouraging telework during the first Trump administration as well.
Up First from NPR
Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal
You know, many of the employees that I spoke with said this is not about They don't want to go back into the office, that it's inconvenient or that they're being lazy. They say that for them, remote work has enabled them to be more efficient, to be more productive. And then getting rid of it feels like an indirect way of pressuring them to quit.
Up First from NPR
Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal
And they say it just doesn't make a lot of sense bringing people back into offices that can't accommodate them. It's actually going to cost the government money.