EPA issues guidance that spending of $50,000 or more must gain approval of Doge

Whitehouse added that the involvement of Musk’s “unvetted, inexperienced team raises serious concerns about improper external influence on specialized agency decision-making”.

The latest development came after Donald Trump on Thursday gave a clear sign of admitting that drastic government cuts spearheaded by his ally Musk have gone too far. The US president’s views after an explosive, closed-door cabinet confrontation involving Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, exposed simmering anger over the billionaire entrepreneur’s key role, which Musk attended even though he is not a cabinet member.

After weeks of turmoil in the federal bureaucracy wreaked by the Doge team, Trump issued a call for a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” to be applied to the task of reducing the federal bureaucracy.

The president’s comment in a social media post followed a volatile encounter that saw Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla owner who has assumed a central role in Trump’s fledgling administration, face off against Rubio, whom he accused of “firing nobody”, according to the New York Times. Rubio, who had been furious over Musk’s role in shutting down the main US foreign assistance body, USAid – over which the secretary of state supposedly has control – hit back vigorously, according to the report.

Thursday’s cabinet meeting was scheduled abruptly after howls of protest about the effects of Doge’s slashing of government agencies by the constituents of Republican members of Congress, including former military veterans, many of whom have been fired in a wave of indiscriminate cuts.

“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,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

“We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’ The combination of them, Elon, Doge, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level.”

Trump’s public call for discretion came after he told cabinet secretaries that they rather than Musk had the final say over whom to hire and fire.

Musk conveyed a similar message in a meeting with senators on Capitol Hill on Thursday, claiming he was not to blame for the mass layoffs and giving them his phone number if they wanted to relay concerns.

It contrasted starkly with the image he projected at last month’s CPAC conference, when he paraded on stage with a chainsaw to symbolise his ruthless approach to downsizing government agencies. He has openly boasted of feeding the now-gutted USAid “into the wood chipper”, while laying off its estimated 10,000-employee workforce.

“Elon doesn’t fire people,” Richard Hudson, a Republican member of Congress from North Carolina, told reporters after a pizza dinner with Musk in the basement of the US Capitol on Thursday.

“He doesn’t have hiring and firing authority. The president’s empowered him to go uncover this information, that’s it.”

The attempt to downplay a role Musk in which has consistently sought the limelight follows questions from judges in the multiple court cases filed against Doge’s activities about who is leading the staff-culling crusade – and whether Musk himself has a direct role.

The administration has argued in legal filings that Musk, who has not been confirmed by Congress, is not the official head of Doge. But Trump undercut that in a prime-time address at the US Capitol on Tuesday by flatly suggesting that he is, a declaration that commentators said could directly affect pending court rulings.

Numerous recently hired federal employees have been summarily fired before their probation period ended – when their posts would become harder to terminate because of legal protections.

Carlos Gimenez, a Republican representative from Florida, said that the agencies rather than Musk had fired the probationers.

“Some of the folks that were the probationary people, he didn’t fire them, they were actually supposedly fired by the agencies – and they messed up,” Gimenez said.

The portrait of an impartial, hands-off Musk jarred with anecdotal on-the-ground evidence from agencies infiltrated by Doge operatives.

On Thursday, federal marshals escorted members of Doge, along with Peter Marocco, director of the state department’s office of foreign assistance, into the Washington office of the US African Development Foundation (USADF), a day after staff had denied them access in what was seen as a David-versus-Goliath act of defiance by one of the smallest federal agencies.

The entry resulted in a “traumatising scene”, employees told the Washington Post, and prompted a federal lawsuit by USADF’s president, Ward Brehm, challenging the authority of Trump, Marocco and Doge to close an agency that the president has deemed unnecessary.

Further evidence of a de facto Doge takeover of government came in reports of its workers installing themselves in four separate rooms on the sixth floor of the General Service Administration’s building, “complete with beds from Ikea, lamps and dressers.”

Politico said the agency was considering spending about $25,000 to install a washer and dryer on the premises, apparently to serve the resident Doge staff. Ethics experts warned that the arrangement could breach agency rules, the website reported.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

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