Summary
Elon Musk is distancing himself from sweeping federal job cuts linked to DOGE, blaming agency heads—not DOGE—responsible for mass layoffs, including the announced 70,000 job cut at Veterans Affairs.
Despite claiming DOGE’s role as merely advisory, Musk admitted to mistakes in private meetings with GOP lawmakers and pledged to correct them.
Some cuts have already been reversed, with a Trump administration memo clarifying agencies are not required to fire probationary employees (new hires).
This asshole is treating these jobs like he treated Twitter. Fire everyone, see what breaks, then hire those people back. Real efficient there! Let’s not actually review processes and jobs to see if there are overlaps anywhere. Just get rid of everyone and see what grinds to a halt or is really unpopular with people.
The government isn’t the place to run “scream tests.”
I’m pretty sure he did not “hire those [Twitter] people back”. I would be surprised if the moderation team were even close to the same size as before.
That wasn’t one of the things that broke, from his perspective. Twisting the narrative via activist mods was always the goal. He did hire a bunch of the engineers back when the site actually stopped working, because then it couldn’t distribute his bullshit propaganda.
And this is only seeing what immediately breaks, not following all the fractures.