 "Trump convenes first Cabinet meeting tonight, ‘special govt employee’ Musk to attend")
US President Donald Trump will hold his first Cabinet meeting on Wednesday since returning to office last month, aiming to push his agenda with most of his nominees now confirmed by Congress.
Billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk will also attend the meet as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), which has been working to cut thousands of federal jobs.
Although Musk does not hold a ministerial position or have formal decision-making power, the White House classifies him as a “special government employee” and a “senior adviser to the president.”
Musk, Trump’s biggest donor in the 2024 campaign, is not the only controversial figure expected at the meeting.
Musk, Trump’s top donor during the 2024 presidential campaign, will not be the only controversial member of the Trump administration at the meeting.
Among the most contentious are Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who has espoused conspiracy theories, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host who has faced allegations of sexual assault.
The US Senate has approved all of Trump’s cabinet picks so far, despite outcry from Democrats over their trackrecords and lack of experience.
Trump’s Republican Party holds a narrow majority in the Senate, and the refusal of more than a couple Senators to vote against Trump’s picks shows his iron grip on the party, where dissenters have largely quit or been cowed.
Former Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell was the sole Republican dissenter to Kennedy’s confirmation as health secretary, an appointment that caused alarm among the medical community over his history of promoting vaccine misinformation and vows suspend research on infectious diseases.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsA few Trump cabinet appointees still await confirmation by the Senate, including Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a former congresswoman, and Linda McMahon, who helmed the Small Business Administration for part of Trump’s first term.
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 downplayed 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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