(AFP) – US President Donald Trump is set on Wednesday to convene his first Cabinet meeting since returning to office last month, in an effort to further his agenda with most of his nominees now having been confirmed by Congress. Billionaire supporter and advisor Elon Musk, tasked with overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has sought to fire thousands of federal workers, will be among those in attendance at the meeting.
Despite Musk’s lack of ministerial portfolio or formal decision-making authority, he is classified as a “special government employee” and “senior adviser to the president” by heading DOGE, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Musk, Trump’s top donor during the 2024 presidential campaign, will not be the only controversial member of the Trump administration at the meeting. Among the most contentious are Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who has espoused conspiracy theories, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host who has faced allegations of sexual assault.
The US Senate has approved all of Trump’s cabinet picks so far, despite outcry from Democrats over their track records and lack of experience. Trump’s Republican Party holds a narrow majority in the Senate, and the refusal of more than a couple Senators to vote against Trump’s picks shows his iron grip on the party, where dissenters have largely quit or been cowed. Former Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell was the sole Republican dissenter to Kennedy’s confirmation as health secretary, an appointment that caused alarm among the medical community over his history of promoting vaccine misinformation and vows to suspend research on infectious diseases.
A few Trump cabinet appointees still await confirmation by the Senate, including Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a former congresswoman, and Linda McMahon, who helmed the Small Business Administration for part of Trump’s first term. Musk, meanwhile, has already been dealing with upheaval within DOGE. One-third of his staff resigned in protest on Tuesday, days after he engineered a mass email to the federal government’s two million workers, ordering them to justify their work or risk being fired.
Government departments on Monday largely told staff to either ignore the DOGE-inspired email or downplayed the risks of not answering it. So far, thousands of mainly probationary workers — employees who are recently hired, promoted or otherwise changed roles — have been terminated since Trump’s inauguration.
© 2024 AFP
