President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive ordermeant to sharply reduce the size of the federal workforce.
The order includes a specific requirement that the government can only hire one new position for every four that are eliminated.
The White House said the order directs the government to eliminate parts or the whole of agencies whose "functions aren’t required by law."
The order does not apply to the U.S. military and allows certain other exceptions for positions involved with national security and public safety.
President Trump signed the order in the Oval Office with Elon Musk, a billionaire adviser to the president and head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk and DOGE have, under President Trump's guidance, sought to shut down or otherwise purge entire government agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
More broadly, a recent email to government workers invited them to take severance and quit their jobs. The White House estimates as much as 10% of federal workers will take that buyout offer.
Other executive orders have set policy to bring federal workers back to the office full time and enacted hiring freezes across most of the government.
President Trump has also sent a contradictory signal that he intends to sharply reduce the amount of federal office space. The General Services Administration, which manages federal buildings, received new direction in February to cancel leases on some 7,500 office buildings nationwide.
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The bureaucracy as a whole represents an "unelected" fourth branch of government that has to be addressed, Musk told reporters on Tuesday.
“The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get,” Musk said. “That’s what democracy is all about.”
