WASHINGTON 鈥� President Donald Trump made a rare appearance Tuesday with Elon Musk, his most powerful adviser, in the Oval Office before signing an executive order to continue downsizing the federal workforce.
The Associated Press reviewed a White House fact sheet on the order, which is intended to advance Musk's work slashing spending with his Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk said there are some good people in the federal bureaucracy but they need to be accountable and called it an "unelected" fourth branch.
"The people voted for major government reform and that's what the people are going to get," he said.
It was Musk's first time taking questions from reporters since he joined the Trump administration as a special government employee with sprawling influence over federal agencies. He's also the world's richest person and the owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Despite concerns that he's amassing unaccountable power with little transparency, Musk described himself as an open book.
The White House fact sheet said "agencies will undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force and determine which agency components (or agencies themselves) may be eliminated or combined because their functions aren't required by law."
It also said that agencies should "hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart from federal service."
There are plans for exceptions when it comes to immigration, law enforcement and public safety.
Trump and Musk are pushing federal workers to resign in return for financial incentives, though their plan is tied up while a judge reviews its legality.
The deferred resignation program, commonly described as a buyout, would allegedly allow employees to quit and still get paid until Sept. 30. Administration officials said more than 65,000 workers took the offer.
Meanwhile, a federal judge made some tweaks Tuesday but left a ban intact for now to prevent Musk鈥檚 DOGE team from accessing Treasury Department records containing sensitive data for millions of Americans.
Judge Jeannette A. Vargas in Manhattan issued an order to continue a ban prior to a hearing Friday. The ban was put in place last week by another federal New York jurist in response to a lawsuit that 19 Democratic attorneys general brought against Trump.
Justice Department attorneys told Vargas in a filing Sunday that the ban needed to be reversed.
Vargas made changes to the ban to clarify its reach. For instance, she said Treasury Department officers nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate can access the records, making it clear that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is not subject to the ban.
The lawsuit contended that Musk鈥檚 team was composed of 鈥減olitical appointees鈥� who should not have access to Treasury records handled by 鈥渃ivil servants鈥� specially trained in protecting such sensitive information as Social Security and bank account numbers.
Hundreds of people gathered for a rally Tuesday across the street from the U.S. Capitol in support of federal workers.
Janet Connelly, a graphic designer with the Department of Energy, said she's fed up with emails from the Office of Personnel Management encouraging people to take the buyout.
She tried to use her spam settings to filter out the emails but to no avail. Connelly said she has no plans to take the offer.
"From the get-go, I didn't trust it," she said.
Connelly said she thinks of her work as trying to do an important service for the American public.
Others say fear and uncertainty have swept through the federal workforce.
"They're worried about their jobs. They're worried about their families. They're also worried about their work and the communities they serve," said Helen Bottcher, a former Environmental Protection Agency employee and current union leader in Seattle.
Bottcher participated in a news conference hosted by Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington.
Workers "deserve better than to be threatened, intimidated and pushed out the door by Elon Musk and Donald Trump," Murray said. "We actually need these people to stay in their jobs or things are going to start breaking."
A government lawyer, who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because of fears of retaliation, said it was a terrifying time to be a federal worker.
She said people are worried their phones and computers are being monitored. She's a single mother with a young daughter, and her father urged her to take a safer job in the private sector.
But she's skeptical of the deferred resignation program, emphasizing that accepting the offer means workers can't sue if they're not paid what they're promised.
The idea, she said, was insane.