It Is Happening Every Day, Every Where
The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and others told employees not to respond to a directive from Mr. Musk to summarize their accomplishments.
The firings added to doubts about whether Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agency’s acting head, supports lifesaving humanitarian assistance, as he has said he does.
Elon Musk has drawn inspiration from his 2022 takeover of X, then known as Twitter, as he works to overhaul the federal government.
Some civil servants are using whatever levers they have to resist the orders of the world’s richest man, both in public and behind closed doors.
The figures from Elon Musk’s team of outsiders represent billions in government cuts. They are also full of accounting errors, outdated data and other miscalculations.
The timeline for identifying the agents and employees who would move from the Washington area to field offices and a sprawling campus in Huntsville, Ala., was not immediately clear.
The firings are the first of what is expected to be a vast wave of layoffs by the Pentagon.
Waving a chain saw onstage at CPAC, Elon Musk showed how he has emulated a right-wing leader.
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Errol Musk questioned his son’s parenting ability on a podcast, but said that his comments had been taken out of context and that they were on good terms.