US President Donald Trump on Wednesday convened his first Cabinet meeting since returning to office last month. Elon Musk, his billionaire adviser tasked with radically downsizing the US government, attended the meeting.
Despite Musk's lack of ministerial portfolio or formal decision-making authority, he is classified as a "special government employee" and "senior adviser to the president" by heading DOGE, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Musk, meanwhile, has already been dealing with upheaval within DOGE. One-third of his staff resigned in protest on Tuesday, days after he engineered a mass email to the federal government's two million workers, ordering them to justify their work or risk being fired.
Government departments on Monday largely told staff to either ignore the DOGE-inspired email or downplay the risks of not answering it.
So far, thousands of mainly probationary workers -- employees who are recently hired, promoted or otherwise changed roles -- have been terminated since Trump's inauguration.
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