Elon Musk has shockingly revealed in a recent Fox News interview that ‘almost no one’ has been fired as the result of cuts made by the newly established Department of Government Efficiency, challenging the idea of DOGE as a ‘fire-heavy’ agency.
Savings made by DOGE so far reportedly exceed $130 billion – although this figure has been challenged by experts – and while a major focus outlined on the agency’s website is the cancellation of leases and contracts, many have put significant focus on its apparent mass firing initiatives.
Headlining this push was an albeit unsuccessful government-wide email that threatened the roles of 100,000 federal employees if they seemingly didn’t provide an adequate enough response to what they had achieved in the last week.
Job cuts have seemingly become a major part of DOGE operations since Musk entered government (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
However, there have also been major job cuts across countless other departments, including those in USAID for Ebola prevention initiatives, alongside the Department of Energy which reportedly threatened national security.
Musk, through the support of bureaucracy-reducing executive orders from President Trump, has also slashed certain federal agencies to just a single employee – which is the legal minimum.
Many of these firing initiatives have been deemed either ‘accidental’ or both illegal and unconsitutional by multiple judges, and have had to be walked back with significant rehiring efforts.
Musk, alongside several key DOGE officials, have now stated though that a very small percentage of government employees have actually been fired in a recent interview with Fox News, as reported by The Guardian.
“You’ve heard a lot of news about people getting fired,” Anthony Armstrong illustrated. “At this moment in time, less than 0.15% of the federal workforce has actually been given an RIF notice.”
Musk also quickly supported this claim from Armstrong, adding that “basically almost no one has gotten fired, that’s what we are saying.”
Numbers from Statista indicate that in 2023 there were around 2.87 million federal government employees currently working, and while these numbers will have likely shifted in the two years since, the 0.15% report from Armstrong would indicate that 0.15% of that would leave around 4,305 without their jobs.
Whether Armstrong’s numbers include those that have since been rehired, both through legal orders or after DOGE realized their ‘mistakes’, is currently unclear, but messaging from President Trump himself also appears to contradict the argument that part of the Department’s job isn’t to cut through the workforce.
In revealing the limits of DOGE and Musk’s power, Trump detailed in a Truth Social post that he has “instructed the Secretaries and Leadership to work with DOGE on Cost Cutting measures and Staffing,” adding that once they’ve forged a partnership, “they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go.”
This appears to make it clear that the cutting of employment is a key part of DOGE’s operations, although Trump did point out that he favors the ‘scalpel’ over the ‘hatchet’ when it comes to cuts, and that “it’s also important to keep the best and most productive people.”
US President Donald Trump has ordered the mass re-hiring of around 25,000 previously fired federal workers, as two judges rule that the actions of Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were ‘illegal’.
Elon Musk‘s new role as head of DOGE has been highly controversial in the private agency’s first few months, as his team have torn through almost every government department in order to enact significant spending cuts.
Musk and his team have threatened the jobs of 100,000 employees in a widespread email, reduced entire departments to just one employee, and even put the country’s national security at risk due to cuts in the Energy Department’s (DOE) nuclear weapon division.
Musk’s spending cuts through DOGE have proven controversial, and in some cases illegal (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
They’ve already had to walk back a number of cuts after claiming they were ‘accidental’, re-hiring the aforementioned DOE workers and ‘restoring’ key Ebola prevention initiatives that are apparently still not enough according to one former USAID lead.
While one judge has ruled DOGE’s targeted cuts in USAID to be ‘unconstitutional’, two other judges have issued a major order for President Trump to rehire around 25,000 workers that were previously fired by Musk’s department, calling the process ‘illegal’.
As reported by the BBC, Judges James Bredar of Maryland and William Alsup of California have ordered the rehiring of probational workers in departments such as Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury, among many others.
Judge Bredar in particular took issue not with the firing in isolation, but in the manner it was carried out, highlighted also in a lawsuit brought forward by 19 Democratic-led states which points towards the pressure on social services following mass redundancies.
The Trump administration has somewhat complied with these rulings as employees have been technically rehired, although they are now currently being placed on administrative leave, which Judge Alsup has criticized.
Musk and Trump have been ordered by courts to reverse previous job cuts made by DOGE (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Judge Alsup has outlined that this process “would not restore the services the preliminary injunction intends to restore,” but the Department of Justice (DOJ) claims that this is simply just the first step that they’re taking to fully reinstate all previously fired workers.
The DOJ has also appealed both court rulings, taking issue with the denial of DOGE initiatives.
While President Trump has previously indicated the limits of Elon Musk and DOGE’s power within his administration, favoring the ‘scalpel’ over the ‘hatchet’ when it comes to spending cuts, these new court rulings also place significant hurdles in the way of DOGE that could be challenging to navigate in the near future if appeals are denied.
One of Tesla’s earliest investors is urging CEO Elon Musk to step down, arguing he’s too distracted.
Wealth manager Ross Gerber has called for Musk to either fully commit to Tesla or step aside as he feels the tech billionaire’s growing responsibilities have pulled him away from running the carmaker.
Just this year, Musk was appointed as the Head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) tasked with federal spending cuts whilst being Donald Trump’s right-hand man.
Meanwhile, the US President ordered the SpaceX founder to bring two NASA astronauts back to Earth after they were stranded on the ISS for nearly 10 months.
Gerber says Musk’s heavy political involvement is turning Tesla into a political symbol. Andrew Harnik / Staff / Getty
Gerber believes this, along with Musk’s other ventures, have led to the electric car maker being ‘neglected.’
Furthermore, Gerber says Musk’s heavy political involvement has turned the company into a political symbol, putting off potential buyers.
In response, it has attracted public anger, protests and arson attacks on Tesla shops.
“I think Tesla needs a new CEO and I decided today I was going to start saying it and so this is the first show that I’m saying it on,” Gerber said.
“It’s time for somebody to run Tesla. The business has been neglected for too long.
He added: “There are too many important things Tesla is doing, so either Elon should come back to Tesla and be the CEO of Tesla and give up his other jobs or he should focus on the government and keep doing what he is doing but find a suitable CEO of Tesla.”
Pointing to Tesla’s declining stock value, which has plummeted by over $800 billion since December 2024, and Musk’s political responsibilities, Gerber argued that the business was ‘absolutely’ in crisis. In response, he said he sold off a substantial amount of shares in recent months.
Kent Nishimura / Contributor / Getty
The business has been struggling on several fronts, including slowing demand for electric vehicles in Western markets and increasing competition from Chinese competitors – plus, its unimpressed feedback at the October Robotaxi event.
Now, with the looming impact of Trump’s trade war on production costs – it’s no wonder investors are concerned.
And since buying X (formerly Twitter) in 2022, the world’s richest man has fuelled a wave of controversies and built a growing base of critics.
“The company’s reputation has just been destroyed by Elon Musk,” he said.
“Sales are plummeting so, yeah, it’s a crisis. You literally can’t sell the best product in the market place because the CEO is so divisive”.
Elon Musk’s desk setup has led to many questions after he posted it on social media, as everyone seems to have pointed out the same awkward detail in his new Department of Government Efficiency home.
Having offered significant support to now-President Donald Trump during the election campaign trail, Elon Musk was swiftly rewarded with a role as head of the newly instated Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as ‘DOGE’.
This fresh private advisory board has been tasked with cutting significant spending from the federal budget and reducing bureaucracy as much as possible, and in the few months since Trump became president it’s certainly dominated the headlines.
Mass job cuts, entire departments wiped out, and even threats of national security. DOGE has even been ordered to rehire employees in a key department after a judge called the budget cuts ‘unconstitutional’ in how they were enacted.
While the Department has a team doing much of the dirty work – albeit one that’s shrunk due to mass resignations in protest – it’s leader Musk has shown off his very own office, and it’s not quite what you might expect.
Located inside the White House but a fair distance away from the Oval Office, Musk’s desk setup features a rather anachronistic mix of old grandeur and new technology, with many pointing out his somewhat ‘inappropriate’ choice of working devices.
“Elon’s office?? That is nice,” points out one user in the replies, subsequently questioning: “But the computer looks old, or powerful.”
That’s very much the beginning to the puzzle of Elon’s office, as that user is most probably correct in their final assessment. Looking closely, you can spot the PC’s silver case, illuminated by a white LED inside.
Importantly, you can aso spot that the PC has a graphics card inside – something that you would typically see in gaming-focused machines and not a government issued one – and that lines up more with the rest of the desk.
Many people in the replies have called on AI assistant Grok to provide the specs for the PC setup, while also enquiring about the mouse and keyboard which are notably wired.
The elephant in the room is undoubtedly the ultrawide curved monitor, which like the PC is definitely from the world of gaming – although there are definitely productivity benefits to having a far wider screen.
“Everyone knows ultra wide monitors are for gaming and not work,” writes a concerned individual in the replies, adding: “You better not be playing on government time.”
Musk is certainly known for his love of gaming, even if that has led to him cheating his way up to the top of the leaderboards, so who knows if he’s the first person to play some Diablo or Path of Exile in the White House.
Generally though, the concern seems to be regarding how ugly the setup is as a whole. “You need an interior designer,” one remark claims, whereas another jokes that “you’d hope a billionaire could afford a cable tidy.”
This isn’t the first time that Musk’s living arrangements have caused controversy on social media though, as a previous post sharing his bedside table was also a bit strange.
Four empty zero sugar Coke cans, an American independence-themed musket, and a bulky modern revolver were Musk’s bedside accompaniments, and the excess of marks left by previous coke cans can perhaps join the messy cables in showing an untidy side to his life.
Much like the man himself, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is never far from the news these days. After finding himself a cushy position alongside President Donald Trump as a ‘special government employee’, the world’s richest man has been tasked with slashing $2 trillion from the government spend.
With Musk axing thousands of jobs, cutting whole departments, and sending out emails asking others to justify their jobs in bullet point form, the tech billionaire has irked millions. This has overflowed into his net worth taking a hit, Musk being sent death threats, and scenes of violence at Tesla dealerships.
There have already been questions about the young age of Musk’s DOGE staffers and the fact they’re being granted access to high levels of government security. In an embarrassing week that’s already seen the US’ war plans leaked via a Signal chat, a damning report from Reuters claims that one DOGE employee known as ‘Big Balls’ provided services to a gang that cyberstalked an FBI agent two years ago.
Musk’s DOGE staffers are now in the spotlight (Andrew Harnik / Staff / Getty)
19-year-old Edward Coristine is a prominent member of the DOGE team and has access to critical computers as part of his position trying to assist in trimming the governmental waste.
Musk himself has championed Coristine’s work, previously saying, “Big Balls is awesome” on X. According to Reuters’ investigation, Coristine ran a company called DiamondCDN, which provided network services to others. Among the DiamondCDN users was a group of cybercriminals that operated under “EGodly” between October 2022 and June 2023.
Attempting to access the EGodly website would apparently greet you with a DiamondCDN ‘security check’.
In February 2023, EGodly thanked DiamondCDN for its help and wrote: “We extend our gratitude to our valued partners DiamondCDN for generously providing us with their amazing DDoS protection and caching systems, which allow us to securely host and safeguard our website.”
As well as EGodly boasting about committing cryptocurrency theft, the group is accused of hijacking emails and contact numbers for law enforcement across Latin America and Eastern Europe.
EGodly also distributed the phone number and photos of one FBI agent’s home in early 2023, alongside a drive-by video of him being harassed outside his house.
The FBI agent is now retired but told Reuters that EGodly had drawn attention due its use of ‘swatting’. Although he didn’t go into further detail, he concluded: “These are bad folks. They’re not a pleasant group.”
Coristine and the DOGE did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment, while he’s listed as a “senior adviser” at the State Department and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The CISA is responsible for protecting federal government networks from cybercriminals and foreign spies, but it didn’t comment, and neither did the State Department.
It all comes in the aftermath of a Fox News interview where Musk hyped the work of the DOGE and said: “Basically almost no one has gotten fired, that’s what we’re saying.”
Less than 3 years before Elon Musk made him part of his government “overhaul,” Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, then 17, was subject of a heated dispute between executives at cybersecurity firm where he was an intern & suspected of leaking proprietary information to competitor.
In the aftermath of the report, ‘Big Balls’ started trending on X in the USA.
One concerned citizen wrote: “This is why we need a full investigation into WHO is working for DOGE. Big Balls could never pass a background check, much less get a security clearance.”
Another said: “Meanwhile, @elonmusk wants access to voter rolls & Social Security… what could go wrong? Oh. Maybe we shouldn’t hand the keys over to someone who provided tech support to a criminal gang….”
A third called out the DOGE’s entire mission statement and joked: “Not much has changed for Big Balls. He’s still working for a crime ring.”
Nitin Natarajan served as deputy director of CISA under Joe Biden and shared his concerns with Reuters: “This stuff was not in the distant past,” he said. “The recency of the activity and the types of groups he was associated would definitely be concerning.”
Will Musk still think ‘Big Balls’ is as ‘awesome’ after all of this?
