WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday (Feb 26) ordered federal agencies to undertake more large-scale layoffs of workers, while the president let downsizing czar Elon Musk take a star role at his first cabinet meeting and discuss his ambitious budget-cutting targets.

A new memo instructed agencies to submit plans by March 13 for a "significant reduction" in staffing to a federal workforce already reeling from waves of layoffs and programme cuts by Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency. It did not specify the number of new layoffs.

The memo represents a major escalation in Trump and Musk's campaign to slash the size of the US government.

Thus far, the layoffs have focused on probationary workers, who have less tenure in their current roles and enjoy fewer job protections. The next round would target the vastly bigger pool of veteran civil servants.

At the cabinet meeting, Trump said Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, plans to cut up to 65 per cent of his more than 15,000 employees.

On Tuesday, an Interior Department source told Reuters that bureaus such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have been ordered to prepare for workforce reductions as high as 40 per cent.

Some 100,000 of the nation's 2.3 million civilian federal workers have been fired or taken buyouts.

Trump offered Musk an extraordinary sign of support by inviting the billionaire to tout his work to the presidential cabinet, some of whom had pushed back on his recent demand that all of their employees justify their work or face termination.

Musk is not a cabinet-level official — and faced no approval by the US Senate — and the White House has claimed in court papers that he is not in charge of DOGE, even though Trump has said he is and Musk aides staff DOGE.

As cabinet secretaries looked on, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO — wearing a black "Make America Great Again" baseball cap and a T-shirt reading "tech support" — expressed confidence he can cut the US$6.7 trillion (S$8.9 trillion) budget by US$1 trillion this year. That extremely ambitious target would likely entail significant disruption of government programmes.

Trump made it clear he backed Musk's effort, giving him the floor at the top of the meeting and later asking the gathered officials, "Is anyone unhappy with Elon?" to scattered laughs.

Later on Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to work with DOGE to review and terminate all "unnecessary" contracts and instructing the General Services Administration, which manages the government's real estate, to create a plan for disposing of any unneeded property.

Thus far, Trump and Musk have failed to slow the rate of spending. According to a Reuters analysis, the government spent 13 per cent more during Trump's first month in office than during the same time last year, largely due to higher interest payments on the debt and rising health and retirement costs incurred by an ageing population.

Trump reiterated his promise to refrain from cutting popular health and retirement benefits, which account for nearly half of the budget.

"We're not going to touch it," said Trump.

Trump is simultaneously pushing Congress to extend his 2017 tax cuts, set to expire at year's end. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the 2017 cuts added US$2.5 trillion to the nation's debt, now US$36 trillion, and that extending the tax cuts could cost more than US$5 trillion over a decade.

Republicans are weighing cuts to healthcare and food aid for the poor to help pay for the tax cuts, though specifics have not yet emerged.

Confusion and threats

Some cabinet secretaries were taken by surprise over the weekend when federal workers received an email requiring them to list their accomplishments for the week, a demand Musk said would result in termination if ignored.

Some agencies told employees to ignore the directive, prompting days of confusion over whether Musk and Trump could make good on the threat.

Musk, the world's richest person, told the cabinet his email was an attempt to find out whether government paychecks were going to actual workers.

"We think there are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead," he said, without providing any evidence.

Trump again suggested the roughly 1 million workers who did not respond to Musk's email might be at risk of losing their jobs.

Trump and Musk's unprecedented government overhaul has also frozen foreign aid and disrupted construction projects and scientific research.

In a court filing on Wednesday, the Trump administration said the State Department and the US Agency for International Development had cancelled nearly 10,000 grants and contracts.

The GSA, informally known as the government's landlord, plans to terminate 1,100 leases for office space by the end of the year, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The terminations will target so-called soft-term leases, which are no longer subject to cancellation penalties and can be easily ended, the person said. The GSA manages roughly 2,800 soft-term leases in total, and thousands more "firm-term" leases that cannot be ended without cause.

Source: Reuters