More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they refused to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.
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Johnson isn’t sure he has enough votes to pass what Trump calls a ‘big, beautiful’ budget bill
“There may be a vote tonight, there may not be,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at the Capitol.
With an extremely slim House majority, the speaker can only afford to lose about a single vote in the face of stiff Democratic opposition.
Votes are set for the evening, but at a morning meeting Johnson was hearing it from all sides – uneasy GOP lawmakers worried about steep cuts and budget hawks who want even more reductions to reduce the nation’s debt load.
“We’re working right now to get everybody on board,” Johnson said. “Everybody wants to be on this train, and not in front of it.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is dismissive of the mass DOGE resignations
“Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years,” Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump will not be deterred from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers.”
The head of the IRS is resigning
IRS Acting Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell will retire from the agency after roughly 40 years of service, according to a person familiar with his plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to lack to authorization. His last day is Friday.
O’Donnell will be replaced by Melanie Krause — who has worked at the IRS since 2021, having come from the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, according to her LinkedIn account.
In January, former IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel stepped down from his position, though his term was not scheduled to end until 2027.
The turnover of officials at the IRS comes as the agency has laid off roughly 7,000 probationary employees with one year or less of service at the agency and largely includes workers in the compliance department. The cuts are one of the largest purges of probationary workers this year across the government.
O’Donnell’s resignation also comes as furor spread last week over Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency was said to gain access to IRS taxpayer data, though the person said Treasury and the White House have agreed to restrict DOGE access to sensitive data at the IRS.
— By Fatima Hussein
Trump greets the first official White House tour of the year
The president stood behind a roped-off area in a White House hallway Tuesday, saying, “I heard you were here and I said ‘Let’s stop by and say hello.’”
He also called the visitors “a very smart-looking group of people.”
“Maybe you’ll be here some day as president,” Trump said. “Somebody in this group has a chance.”
The crowd chanted, “USA, USA,” as Trump turned to depart.
Johnson tries to push Trump’s ‘big’ agenda forward, but GOP votes are in jeopardy
The House speaker will try against the odds to muscle a Republican budget blueprint to passage this week, a step toward delivering Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” with $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts over stiff opposition from Democrats — and even some Republicans.
With almost no votes to spare in Johnson’s bare-bones GOP majority, the speaker is fighting on all fronts — against Democrats, uneasy rank-and-file Republicans and skeptical GOP senators — as he works to keep the package on track. Votes set for Tuesday evening are in jeopardy, and the outcome is uncertain.
The package, if approved, would be a crucial part of the budget process as Trump pushes the Republicans who control Congress to approve a massive bill that would extend tax breaks, which he secured during his first term but are expiring later this year, while also cutting spending across federal programs and services.
▶ Read more about Johnson’s efforts to pass the spending bill
Apple shareholders reject a
proposal to scrap the company’s diversity programs
The shareholder vote rebuffed an attempt to pressure the technology trendsetter into joining President Trump’s push to scrub corporate programs designed to diversify its workforce.
The proposal drafted by the National Center for Public Policy Research — a self-described conservative think tank — urged Apple to follow a litany of high-profile companies that have retreated from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives currently in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.
After a brief presentation about the anti-DEI proposal, Apple announced shareholders had rejected it without disclosing the vote tally. The preliminary results will be outlined in a regulatory later Tuesday.
▶ Read more about Apple’s shareholder vote on DEI
Speaker Mike Johnson doubles down on DOGE cuts to government
House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the town hall attacks against GOP lawmakers this past week as coordinated complaints by those opposed to President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The Republican says he’s excited that Musk is able to step in for Congress to slash government.
“You ought to be standing up and applauding,” Johnson said at his weekly press conference, “and we all do.”
21 federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk slash government
More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.
The mass resignation of engineers, data scientists and product managers is a temporary setback for Musk and the Republican president’s tech-driven purge of the federal workforce. It comes amid a flurry of court challenges that have sought to stall, stop or unwind their efforts to fire or coerce thousands of government workers out of jobs.
The staffers who resigned worked for what was once known as the United States Digital Service, an office established during President Barack Obama’s administration after the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov, the web portal that millions of Americans use to sign up for insurance plans through the Democrat’s signature health care law.
New York’s governor wants to hire federal workers fired by DOGE
Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday welcomed recently laid-off federal workers to apply for state jobs using an online portal.
“The federal government might say, ‘You’re fired,’ but here in New York, we say, ‘You’re hired.’ In fact, we love federal workers,” Hochul said in a videotaped statement.
Job cuts in the federal government have been coordinated by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency under the stated goal of slashing government bureaucracy. There’s no official tally of the total number of firings.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is heading to the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
He’s making the trip Tuesday to get a first hand look at the new migrant center.
The base is being used as a temporary detention facility for immigrants who’ve illegally entered the U.S. and are waiting to return to their home country or other destination.
Hegseth, who was assigned to Guantanamo Bay when he was on active duty, has called it a “perfect place” to house them.
He’s expected to meet with U.S. troops deployed to the base to help with preparations and security at the center. And he also plans to see sailors on the USS Thomas Hudner, a Navy destroyer that’s docked there.
The Navy base is known for holding a number of suspects captured after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The U.S. has been flying immigrants to Guantanamo since early February, where they’re kept in low-security tent facilities.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan defends the company’s efforts to diversity its workforce
Though he avoided the “DEI” label Tuesday that’s come under attack from President Trump and many of his appointees.
“We have a very diverse company in terms of representation from all economic stratas, all races, all ethnicities,” Moynihan said during an interview at the Economic Club of Washington with David Rubenstein, a co-founder of the private equity firm Carlyle Group. “Once they get in, the opportunity is there of a lifetime.”
Bank of America has hired 30,000 people from low- and moderate-income communities in the past decade, Moynihan said.
Many large companies have come under pressure to dismantle their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, with Apple being the latest example as a conservative think tank has pressured it to drop its DEI efforts. Apple shareholders are expected, however, on Tuesday to vote in favor of keeping the programs.
Trump’s pick for budget office deputy director has anti-abortion history
Dan Bishop, Trump’s pick for deputy director of the office of management and budget and whose confirmation hearing is Tuesday, would help the office’s director make funding decisions related to federal reproductive health programs.
This includes funding for the family planning program Title X, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, the United Nations’ sexual and reproductive health agency and for typically religiously affiliated anti-abortion centers often referred to as crisis pregnancy centers.
Bishop has long been a vocal opponent of abortion rights and, as a member of the North Carolina General Assembly, has supported legislation banning nearly all abortions with no exceptions in the case of rape or incest. During his time as a U.S. representative from North Carolina from 2019 to 2025, he consistently voted in favor of abortion restrictions, including cosponsoring a bill that would have granted constitutional protection to embryos nationwide.
UK to raise defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, Starmer says two days before Trump meeting
In making the pledge Tuesday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Europe is in a new era of insecurity that requires a “generational response.”
The announcement comes two days before Starmer is due at the White House to try to persuade U.S. President Donald Trump to maintain American support for Ukraine and the NATO alliance.
“We must stand by Ukraine, because if we do not achieve a lasting peace, then the economic instability and threats to our security, they will only grow,” Starmer told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
▶ Read more about Britain’s defense spending
The FBI’s new deputy director is a popular podcaster — who has had plenty to say about the agency
The popular right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino has built a career of unleashing sometimes inflammatory rants against the media, Democrats and the federal government.
Now, the 50-year-old former New York police officer and U.S. Secret Service agent will return to the government he has so often criticized as Trump’s selection for deputy FBI director. He said Monday he’ll soon leave his daily show to take on the new role.
Bongino, who will serve under FBI Director Kash Patel, does not have any experience at the premier federal law enforcement agency. Nonetheless, he has strong opinions about how it should be run.
A sampling of Bongino’s podcast commentary from the past year reveals he’s a loyalist to Patel and wants to see sweeping changes, from clearing the bureau of anyone he views as inappropriately political to redirecting investigations away from domestic extremism.
▶ Read more about how Bongino views the FBI, in his own words
Nearly 40% of contracts canceled by Musk’s DOGE are expected to produce no savings
That’s according to the Trump administration’s own data.
The Department of Government Efficiency, run by Trump adviser Elon Musk, last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” shows more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings.
That’s usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and in many cases has already done so.
“It’s like confiscating used ammunition after it’s been shot when there’s nothing left in it. It doesn’t accomplish any policy objective,” said Charles Tiefer, a retired University of Baltimore law professor and expert on government contracting law. “Their terminating so many contracts pointlessly obviously doesn’t accomplish anything for saving money.”
▶ Read more about contracts canceled by DOGE
FDA moves to rehire medical device, food safety and other staffers fired days earlier
Barely a week after mass firings at the Food and Drug Administration, some probationary staffers received unexpected news over the weekend: The government wants them back.
The reversal is the latest example of Trump and Musk’s chaotic approach to cost-cutting, which has resulted in several agencies firing, and then scrambling to rehire, employees responsible for nuclear weapons, national parks and other government services.
The FDA reinstatements followed pushback by lobbyists for the medical device industry, which pays the agency hundreds of millions of dollars annually to hire extra scientists to review products. The industry’s leading trade group said Monday “a sizable number” of device reviewers appear to be returning to FDA.
▶ Read more about the rehiring of employees at the FDA
Federal workers return to offices
Federal employees across the country, many of whom have worked from home since the COVID-19 pandemic, were back at agency offices Monday under President Donald Trump’s return-to-office mandate.
Musk, meanwhile, who is scouring government agencies for suspected waste, delivered a warning Monday to workers on his platform X.
“Starting this week, those who still fail to return to office will be placed on administrative leave,” Musk wrote.
However, it appears at least some federal agencies are not prepared for all remote workers to return to the office.
In an email to U.S. Department of Education Federal Student Aid employees on Friday obtained by The Associated Press, agency officials noted that some regional offices in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco were not ready for workers to return. The message also noted that employees who live more than 50 miles from regional offices in some major cities would not be required to return to the office Monday.
The email also noted that while some workers would begin reporting to offices Monday, others would begin relocating back to offices in phases through April and beyond.
▶ Read more about the federal worker retrn to office mandate
Trump backs Musk as he roils the federal workforce with demands and threats
Trump is backing Elon Musk’s demand that federal employees explain their recent accomplishments by the end of Monday or risk getting fired, even as government agency officials were told that compliance with Musk’s edict was voluntary.
The Republican president said Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has found “hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud” as he suggested that federal paychecks are going to nonexistent employees. He did not present evidence for his claims.
Even as Trump and Musk pressed their case, the Office of Personnel Management informed agency leaders that their workers were not required to respond by the deadline of 11:59 p.m. EST Monday, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The conflicting directives led to varying advice for federal employees, depending on where they work. Some were told to answer the request for a list of five things that they did last week, others were informed it was optional, and others were directed not to answer at all.
▶ Read more about Musk’s demand for federal employees
The Associated Press
