President Donald Trump says he has instructed the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk and his cabinet secretaries to be discerning when cutting federal staff.
“We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The president met with his cabinet and Musk on Thursday, Politico reported, and told them Musk’s job is to make recommendations — not one-person decisions on staffing and policy.
“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. “We’re going to have these meetings every two weeks until that aspect of this very necessary job is done.”
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He added the meeting was “positive,” as well as the relationships among those in the room.
In the Oval Office later Thursday, Trump reiterated he doesn’t want “to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut,” and said he told the cabinet to “keep all the people that they want.”
“So, we’re going to be watching them, and Elon and the group are going to be watching them. And if they can cut, it’s better, and if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting,” Trump said.
Trump said “no” when asked by reporters in the room if DOGE and Musk had moved too quickly, adding he thinks “they’ve done an amazing job.”
Republicans in Congress broadly say they want the cuts and savings DOGE has to offer, but lawmakers have shown concern in recent weeks about layoffs of federal workers and the power struggle between DOGE and cabinet secretaries’ authority.
Some prominent Republicans in the House and Senate disagreed with DOGE’s pause to foreign aid programs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already approved. Additionally, they’ve shown concern over the potential effects of layoffs in the Federal Aviation Administration and how cuts at the National Institutes of Health may affect their home states. Sen. Susan Collins also said she’s hoping the education secretary will review DOGE’s contract cuts at the Department of Education.
Wide-scale layoffs of probationary employees — staff in the first year or two in their roles — have affected most federal agencies over the last month. They’ve also been the subject of roiling legal fights: A federal judge ruled last week that the mass firings of probationary staff was likely illegal.
DOGE’s slashing of the federal workforce has left some Republican lawmakers unnerved, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune advocating in February for more respect toward federal workers.
“All employees need to be treated in a respectful and dignified way,” Thune told reporters. “I think they are trying as best they can to figure out how to proceed, how to find ways to achieve savings in government, find efficiencies and make government cost less and hopefully be more effective and efficient.”
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Em Luetkemeyer is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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