Elon Musk is serving as a ‘special government employee,’ White House says
CNN
Elon Musk is officially serving under President Donald Trump as a special government employee, according to a White House official.
Elon Musk is officially serving under President Donald Trump as a special government employee, according to a White House official. That designation means Musk – the billionaire tech entrepreneur who has been a force within the new Trump administration – is not a volunteer but also not a full-time federal employee. According to a Justice Department summary, a special government employee is “anyone who works, or is expected to work, for the government for 130 days or less in a 365-day period.” Musk is not being paid, a person familiar with his employment told CNN. Musk, who is the world’s richest man and became an ardent supporter of Trump’s during the campaign, has an office on the White House campus. Within weeks of Trump taking office, Musk has shown he has a broad mandate to carry out his government efficiency initiative known as DOGE. On Monday, Trump confirmed Musk has access to the Treasury Department’s critical payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was inside the Oval Office as Trump commented on Musk’s purview. “Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval. And we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won’t,” the president said.
As tents went up in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to hold migrants, attorneys at the Department of Homeland Security and Pentagon were still trying to determine whether it was legal to take the unprecedented step of flying migrants from the US southern border to the facility, according to two US officials and a person familiar with the planning.
Dozens of senior officials put on leave. Thousands of contractors laid off. A freeze put on billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance to other countries.
The founder of a Florida-based neo-Nazi group was convicted Monday of conspiring with his former girlfriend to plan an attack on Maryland’s power grid in furtherance of their shared racist beliefs.
Senior FBI leaders are bracing for a Tuesday deadline as they grapple with whether to hand over information demanded by the Justice Department regarding bureau employees who worked cases involving the January 6 Capitol riot, multiple sources tell CNN.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrival as the first foreign leader to pay President Donald Trump a visit since he returned to the White House comes at a consequential moment.
Crews in Washington, DC, working at the site of the deadliest aviation disaster in a generation are balancing two important missions: extracting parts of two aircraft that crashed and fell into the Potomac and searching for remains of victims within the wreckage, which is the searchers’ priority.
The Trump administration’s freeze of foreign aid and dismantling of the agency that oversees it is putting at risk thousands of jobs in the US and abroad, industry sources told CNN.
Elon Musk and his allies have spent the last two weeks barreling full speed into multiple government agencies, causing confusion and chaos and raising questions about whether an unelected businessman can wield this kind of authority, seemingly running roughshod over laws and programs set up by Congress.
A former deep-sea treasure hunter who has served nearly a decade in jail for refusing to disclose the whereabouts of missing gold coins has had that term ended by a federal judge in Ohio, but he will remain behind bars for now.
El Salvador has agreed to receive deportees from the United States of any nationality, including violent criminals who are US citizens currently imprisoned, in an unprecedented deal that has alarmed critics and rights groups.
Ellen Greenberg was found dead in 2011 in her Philadelphia apartment with 20 knife wounds and numerous bruises. Authorities ruled her death a suicide. Fourteen years later, the pathologist who performed her autopsy says he’s changed his mind.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a former physician who has spent his career touting the safety of vaccines, will likely determine whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, becomes the country’s next Health and Human Services secretary.
President Donald Trump moved swiftly to announce his selections for his next Cabinet and key administration posts in the days and weeks following the election. Now that Trump has been sworn in, it’s the Senate’s job to consider his nominations.