Confusion at US agencies over whether to comply with Elon Musk email demanding workers justify their jobs – US politics live
Government agencies give conflicting advice after email from Elon Musk demanding employees list accomplishments from past week
Trump halts medical research funding in apparent violation of judge’s order
Hannah Harris Green
The Trump administration has blocked a crucial step in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) process for funding medical research, likely in violation of a federal judge’s temporary restraining order on federal funding freezes.
The NIH has stopped submitting study sections – meetings in which scientists peer review NIH grant funding proposals – to the Federal Register after the Trump administration paused health agency communications. By law, study sections must appear on the register 15 days in advance of meetings.
“The idea is that the public has the right to know who’s giving advice to the federal government and when they’re meeting,” said Jeremy Berg, a biochemist who has overseen NIH funding in the past.
These meetings are integral in the funding process for scientists at institutions around the country researching virtually all elements of disease and medicine, including drug development, cancer, heart disease and aging.
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Elon Musk’s email demanding all 2.3 million government workers justify their work has caused confusion with several administration officials telling workers not to reply to the missive.
On Saturday the tech billionaire sent an email titled: “What did you do last week?” requesting a bullet-point summary of what they had achieved in their working week. It gave employees a deadline of 11.59 pm Eastern time on Monday and was the latest move by Musk to slash the size of federal government.
The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Communications Commission have told employees to comply. But many others, including the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Education and Commerce, have ordered workers not to respond, Reuters reported.
The Department of Health and Human Services told its workers to cooperate, then later told them to hold off while it figured out how to “best meet the intent” of Musk’s directive.
Meanwhile, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) issued a statement criticising Elon Musk and the Trump Administration, for “their utter disdain” for federal employees.
He added it was “cruel and disrespectful” for staff to be forced to justify their job duties to “this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life.”
In other news:
French President Emmanuel Macron will meet with Donald Trump in Washington on Monday, saying he will present “proposals for action” to counter the “Russian threat” in Europe and ensure peace in Ukraine.
Conservative podcaster Dan Bongino has been appointed as FBI deputy director. Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and NYPD officer turned conservative radio host, puts a second Trump ally at the top of the agency. Trump announced the appointment on Sunday night in a post on his Truth Social platform, praising Bongino as “a man of incredible love and passion for our country”.
The Trump administration on Sunday said it was placing all but a handful of USAid personnel around the world on paid administrative leave and eliminating about 2,000 of those positions in the US, according to a notice sent to agency workers and posted online.
More than 150,000 people from Canada have signed a parliamentary petition calling for their country to strip Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship because of the tech billionaire’s alliance with Donald Trump, who has spent his second US presidency repeatedly threatening to conquer its independent neighbor to the north and turn it into its 51st state.