The Trump administration’s Friday evening shakeup at the Pentagon saw the firing of six senior officers as Secretary Pete Hegseth made good on promises to upend the agency’s leadership. 

President Donald Trump and Hegseth fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. C.Q. Brown, and replaced him with a relatively unknown figure in Lt. Gen. Dan Caine. 

The choice of Caine shows the president’s preference for irregular warfare and special operations: Caine was among a group of military leaders who met with the president in December 2018 at the Al Asad airbase in Iraq. Trump was there to deliver a Christmas message and hear from commanders on the ground, and there Caine told Trump they could defeat ISIS quickly with a surge of resources and a lifting of restrictions on engagement. 

”We’re only hitting them from a temporary base in Syria,” Trump said Caine told him. ”But if you gave us permission, we could hit them from the back, from the side, from all over – from the base that you’re right on, right now, sir. They won’t know what the hell hit them.” 

‘It was a different message than [Trump] had gotten from leadership at the Pentagon, and I think that really made an impression,’ according to Rob Greenway, a former National Security Council official who was on the trip and has known Caine since they graduated from Virginia Military Institute together. 

Trump, on picking Caine Friday, lauded him as ‘an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.’

He’d plucked the retired general from relative obscurity to serve as his senior military adviser after accusing his predecessor, C.Q. Brown of pushing a ‘woke’ agenda at the Pentagon. Brown had been behind a 2022 memo laying out diversity goals for the Air Force. 

Caine does not meet the position’s prerequisites, such as being a combatant commander or service chief, and will require a waiver to be confirmed to the position. 

But the choice leaves Pentagon watchers curious on what direction Caine will take at his new high-level post. 

‘Caine hasn’t written much, we’re sort of trying to read the tea leaves here,’ said Mark Cancian, a senior defense advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

Greenway called Caine ‘an absolutely inspired pick, a tremendous officer with a remarkable background, and he has the confidence in the president.’ 

Trump was undoubtedly attracted to his reputation as an aggressive fighter pilot that earned him the nickname ‘Razin’ Caine. But Caine’s nontraditional path throughout the military ranks and the business world was surely a selling point, according to Greenway.

‘It’s a priority of the president to have the Pentagon pass an audit, to have someone who knows what a balance sheet looks like, and can hopefully help the department get to the right side of it.’

The Pentagon has failed seven straight audits and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has set its sights on budget cuts at DOD. 

Caine, an F-16 pilot by background, spent time as the top military liaison to the CIA, an Air National Guard officer and regional airline founder in Texas. He was a White House fellow at the Agriculture Department and a counterterrorism specialist on the White House’s Homeland Security Council.

From 2018-19, he was deputy commander of Special Operations Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, which has been fighting the Islamic State since 2014, though little is publicly known about his role in that operation. The role of airstrikes, however, grew during that time, including clandestine ones, and Trump designated airstrike approval to commanders rather than the White House. 

But critics say Caine, like Hegseth, does not have the command experience for the role as Trump’s top military advisor. 

‘Trump sees [the role] as somebody who has the ability to move forces and direct funding, and it just doesn’t work that way. That’s not what the role is. So now you have a president who has people around him who are his principal advisors, [Hegseth] and this new chairman, who really have limited qualifications at the more senior levels,’ said Gene Moran, former advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and founder of lobbying firm Capitol Integration. 

The administration also relieved Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations – who Hegseth believed had been given the job because she was a woman – Gen. Jim Slife, Air Force vice chief of staff, and the judge advocates general of the Army, Navy and Air Force. 

‘If naval operations suffer, at least we can hold our heads high. Because at least we have another first! The first female member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – hooray,’ Hegseth wrote in his 2024 book, ‘The War on Warriors.’ 

‘The Navy, in particular, has been unable to complete a procurement program on time and on budget and notoriously has decommissioned more ships than it’s made,’ said Greenway. ‘So I think the message there was accountability has to be restored.’ 

The switch-up of judge advocates general could be the biggest signal of policy change, where Hegseth has looked to grant greater authority to forces on the ground without having to worry about legal constraints. 

The judge advocates general, the top uniformed attorneys of the Army, Air Force and Navy, oversee the legal advisors for each branch and the defense counsel and prosecutors for courts-martial. 

Hegseth has spoken out against what he sees as an ‘obsessive’ prosecution of war crimes. ‘He wants to give the benefit of the doubt to the warfighter, if there’s not, you know, an absolute massacre,’ one source familiar with the defense secretary’s thinking said.  

‘Ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens,’ the Pentagon chief told Fox News on Sunday. 

‘Hegseth has said the troops should do what they need to achieve victory and not feel constrained by the lawyers,’ said Cancian. ‘But then you could have some actions that are contrary to international law or treaties, that could make a huge controversy, both domestically and with our allies.’

But the advancement of Caine, with his covert operations background, and the removal of the top lawyers would signal a new focus on covert operations – a push that would line up with new terrorism designations for cartels in Latin America – and could set the military up for covert counter-narcotics strikes south of the border. 

‘We could definitely see a change in troop postures in some of these regions we’ve been in for too long, and new missions in Mexico going after the cartels,’ another Hegseth ally said. 

Among the critics who posted on X Sunday after my Fox News show was one who made an argument that surprised me.

Don’t pay attention to what President Trump says, this person wrote. Pay attention to what he does.

Now that’s a novel idea. What the President of the United States says is unimportant and should be ignored. I doubt that this person applied the same standard to President Joe Biden.

And yet there’s an interesting thought exercise here. Trump says a lot of things, especially since he talks to journalists at length virtually every day. Not everything rises to the same level of seriousness. I say this as someone who has interviewed him many times over the years, including our sitdown two weeks before the election.

Sometimes the president says things just to rile up the press. Sometimes he says things that aren’t true, or are exaggerations or taken out of context.

But more often he says the quiet part out loud, signaling what he plans to do or insulting those with whom he disagrees, the kind of stuff that reporters used to have to attribute to unnamed aides, and he does it in front of the cameras.

At the top of the list right now would be Ukraine. Donald Trump is a smart guy, he knows that Russia invaded its much smaller sovereign neighbor with the aim of wiping it off the map and putting it under Moscow’s control. But he has chosen to blame Ukraine for starting the war, and to insult Volodomyr Zelenskyy as a dictator when everyone knows that label perfectly describes Vladimir Putin.

The most charitable interpretation is that Trump believes the only way to end the war is through an alliance with Putin for a settlement that could then be sold to Ukraine. (The United States voted with Russia yesterday against a U.N. resolution condemning the invasion.) 

Of course, Trump has cozied up to Putin for a long time. During their Helsinki summit in the first term, the president accepted Putin’s denial that the Kremlin had hacked into Democratic emails, despite the evidence gathered by his own intelligence agencies.

Trump has repeated again and again that Zelenskyy bears responsibility for the war that just marked its three-year anniversary. Is this aimed at the American public or at Moscow or Kyiv (to put pressure on Ukraine)?  

Journalists keep asking Trump aides and Republican supporters if they agree with the president’s blame-Ukraine approach, and many have simply tried to deflect the question.

In my ‘Media Buzz’ interview with Jason Miller, the longtime Trump confidante and senior adviser to the Trump transition team, he deftly avoided contradicting the president.

‘What President Trump has done,’ he said, ‘is he has forced the sides to the table to actually stop the killing and come up with a peace deal. For the last several years. Joe Biden has sat there completely incompetent, doing nothing but fueling and funding more killing and more death.’ 

When I tried again, Miller said of his boss that ‘his legacy really will be as a peacemaker.’

I came back a third time, quoting conservative radio host Mark Levin as saying, ‘This is sick. Ukraine didn’t start this war. What were they supposed to do? Roll over and play dead? They’re just trying to survive.’ 

And I asked: ‘Why is President Trump blaming Zelenskyy for the beginning of the war?’

‘Well, Zelenskyy has a lot of blame. I think that would go to this as well. But again, you want to look into the past, I want to look into the future, what we do to save lives.’ 

Jason Miller was doing his job. A similar scenario played out on the other Sunday shows.

On ‘Fox News Sunday,’ my colleague Shannon Bream asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth whether it was fair to say that Russia was unprovoked when it attacked Ukraine. He replied that it was ‘fair to say it’s a very complicated situation.’

Stressing that Trump wants to end the war, Hegseth said: ‘‘You’re good, you’re bad; you’re a dictator, you’re not a dictator; you invaded, you didn’t.’ It’s not useful. It’s not productive.’

Another part of my Sunday interview also shed light on Trump’s use of language.

The president had told reporters: ‘I think we should govern the District of Columbia, make it absolutely flawlessly beautiful.’ 

The District has enjoyed home rule for 50 years, although Congress retains the power to overturn its laws. The capital, like most cities, grapples with crime, poverty and other urban ills.

I asked point blank: Is the president ready to end home rule in D.C.?

Miller said Mayor Muriel Bowser is largely doing a good job, adding: ‘I think part of the reason why President Trump won is because he said he was going to clean up our cities to make them safe. Of course he’s going to put pressure on the District of Columbia.’

So Trump’s words in this instance had a different meaning, as a warning signal to the District.

Oh, I also wondered why Trump keeps referring to Canada as the 51st state when that’s not going to happen.

‘The president’s having a little bit of fun with it. But he’s also making some very serious points.’

My online detractor was wrong. It’s important to pay attention to the president’s words, especially for the media, which have a tendency to overreact to some of his language. The challenge is deciphering when he’s dead serious, when he’s sending signals, and when he’s just trolling. 

Billionaire Elon Musk, who’s slashing wasteful government spending with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said federal workers who fail to respond to his productivity email may be given another chance, but warned if they fail to respond a second time, they’ll be terminated.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent an email titled, ‘What did you do last week?’ to federal employees, calling on them to submit five bullet points detailing their accomplishments over the past week, or face possible termination.

Several agencies, including the Department of Defense (DOD) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), responded to the request, telling their employees to ignore the OPM email.

Musk appeared to be fired up by the lack of response to the request, turning to X to express his frustration just hours before the 11:59 p.m. Monday deadline.

‘The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!’ he wrote. ‘Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent? Makes old Twitter look good. Didn’t think that was possible.’

Musk responded to a post by Matt Walsh, host of ‘The Matt Walsh Show,’ saying the government should fire any federal worker who did not answer the email, complained publicly or privately about the email or did anything other than answer it promptly.

‘Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,’ Musk responded. ‘Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.’

When Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he called on the social media giant’s former CEO Parag Agrawal to detail what he accomplished during the work week — years before he employed the same tactic on federal employees while serving in his capacity as chair of DOGE under the Trump administration.

‘What did you get done this week,’ Musk texted Agrawal in April 2022.

Musk helped resurrect the text exchange over the weekend on X, when he responded to an account that shared a ‘how it started, how it’s going’ post that showed a screenshot of Musk’s text to Agrawal, accompanied by a screenshot of a post on X from Musk on Saturday, directed at federal employees.

In the post, Musk wrote, ‘Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired.’

‘Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,’ Musk wrote on X on Saturday. ‘Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.’ 

‘To be clear, the bar is very low here,’ Musk wrote. ‘An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable! Should take less than 5 mins to write.’ 

Musk’s DOGE is in the midst of auditing various federal agencies in search of wasteful spending, corruption and mismanagement. 

DOGE’s work comes as President Donald Trump ordered the federal workforce to return to the office after five years of remote work stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, and has vowed to clean house of bad actors within the government and axe overspending.

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report.

House Republicans’ mammoth budget reconciliation bill is in peril on Monday evening with at least two GOP lawmakers threatening to vote against it.

House GOP leaders are hoping to hold a vote Tuesday on a vast bill advancing President Donald Trump’s priorities on the border, defense, taxes, and energy. 

But at least two House Republicans have said they oppose the legislation – and the GOP’s razor-thin margins mean Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., can only afford one defector to still pass anything along party lines, if all Democratic lawmakers are present.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told reporters he was against the bill on Monday, the day after Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., said she was also opposed. Both said they are seeking assurances that Congress is sufficiently committed to cutting government over-spending.

Meanwhile, a group of GOP lawmakers in less ruby-red districts are still undecided over potentially severe cuts to Medicaid and other federal programs to offset the cost of Trump’s priorities.

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., told reporters there was ‘somewhere between six and 10’ House Republicans who needed more clarity on where spending cuts will fall.

‘If I don’t get answers, I’m not going to vote for it,’ Malliotakis said. ‘But if I can get some clarity and assurances, then you know, we’re moving a little bit more toward the ‘yes’ column.’

Malliotakis said on the way into Johnson’s office Monday that there was ‘a lot of seniors and people with disabilities’ in her district, ‘and I want to make sure they’re not gonna get harmed in this process.’

Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., who was also part of that meeting, called it ‘helpful’ but did not commit to supporting the bill.

Malliotakis and Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, also said they were still undecided when leaving the meeting.

Spartz is also expected to meet with Johnson at some point Monday to discuss her stance.

Burchett, however, told reporters he had no current plans to speak with Johnson about his opposition – but left room to be persuaded.

‘I would like to see a commitment that we’re going to go after [spending cuts],’ Burchett said. ‘When we say we’re decreasing the rate of growth, we’re still growing. And again, can we not just go back to pre-COVID spending levels?’

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., also signaled he was against the bill, writing on X, ‘If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better.’

House and Senate Republicans are aiming to use their majorities to pass a broad swath of Trump policies, from more border security funding to eliminating taxes on tipped and overtime wages, via the budget reconciliation process.

By leveling thresholds for passage in the House and Senate at a simple majority, reconciliation allows the party in power to pass fiscal legislation without any support from the opposing side. The Senate has a two-thirds majority threshold to advance most measures. 

The bill aims to increase spending on border security, the judiciary and defense by roughly $300 billion, while seeking at least $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in spending cuts elsewhere.

As written, the bill also provides $4.5 trillion to extend Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) provisions, which expire at the end of this year.

A handful of President Donald Trump administration officials are publicly listing their top accomplishments for the previous work week following Department of Government Efficiency Chair (DOGE) Elon Musk announcing federal employees must provide a bullet-point list of work successes before midnight on Monday or risk losing their jobs. 

‘Mr. President, 5 things I did last week:’ Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted to X Monday morning. ‘1. Terminated NYC elitist, anti-worker congestion pricing. 2. Launched an investigation into the $16 billion in taxpayer dollars wasted on a high-speed rail project that, after 17 years, has yet to lay a single mile of track. 3. Saved $10 million a year by eliminating redundant and outdated landlines.’ 

He continued: ‘4. Visited the Air Traffic Control Command Center in Virginia to see the critical tech upgrades we need to make our air traffic system the envy of the world. 5. Toured Burbank, California traffic control tower and heard from air traffic controllers about how to improve conditions and retain and recruit more controllers.’

Musk announced Saturday that federal employees would receive an email directing them to list their accomplishments from the week prior, with the DOGE leader adding later that day that the assignment should take less than five minutes to accomplish. 

Employees have until 11:59 p.m. on Monday to send the list or lose their employment, according to emails regarding Musk’s directive that were sent by the Office of Personnel Management.

A handful of Trump administration officials also have provided their accomplishments lists for the past work week, including Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration. 

Loeffler listed her accomplishments in a comment provided to Fox News Digital, which led with her empowering ‘the Office of the Advocate to work across agencies to cut burdensome regulation imposed on small businesses.’ 

‘Established the Office of Manufacturing and Trade to promote President Trump‘s America first agenda; created a Fraud Working Group to crack down on loan fraud across all portfolios; ended voter registration MOUs with state governments, rejecting Biden-era efforts to turn SBA into a vehicle for partisan voter registration; canceled all employee telework agreements in accordance with the president’s return to work presidential memorandum, enabling the agency to better deliver results for job creators; Met with governor’s from around the country to discuss SBA’s services at the state level and presence across the country,’ the list continued. 

The White House also provided five examples on Saturday afternoon on its Rapid Response X account.  

‘Just got this email. Where do we begin?’ the White House’s Rapid Response X account posted Saturday evening, accompanied by a screenshot of the OPM email informing employees to comply with the accomplishment directive. 

The White House listed: Trump signing an executive order expanding access to in vitro fertilization treatments, another executive order that works to ​​stop taxpayer benefits landing in the hands of illegal immigrants, Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks reporting Trump’s policies have led to a 94% drop in illegal border crossings, Apple announcing a $500 billion investment in U.S., and the Trump admin working to ensure ‘Maine does not allow men in girls’ locker rooms and sports’ through an investigation of the state’s Department of Education. 

Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins posted his list of five accomplishments at Veterans Affairs, including identifying and eliminating ‘wasteful contracts.’ 

Ahead of Musk’s announcement informing federal workers list their accomplishments, other agencies posted their wins for the first month in office, including Collins posting a Friday video of the department’s accomplishments for the first month on the job, while the Department of Defense launched a rapid response account on X to celebrate accomplishments while also ‘Fighting Against Fake News.’

A handful of federal departments that deal with sensitive and classified information told their staffers to ignore the order to list their accomplishments, which President Donald Trump said on Monday was a ‘friendly’ rejection due to the sensitive materials some government employees handle on a regular basis. 

‘That was done in a friendly manner,’ Trump said Monday while speaking with the media alongside French President Emmanuel Macron. ‘Only things such as, perhaps Marco at State Department, where they have very confidential things. Or the FBI, where they’re working on confidential things. And they don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon. They’re just saying there are some people that you don’t want to really have them tell you what they’re working on last week.’

FBI Director Kash Patel, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security were among the agencies and departments that informed staff to not respond to the email. 

‘FBI personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information,’ Patel told employees in an email over the weekend. ‘The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures. When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.’

Trump lauded the directive Monday, arguing that it will expose government employees who aren’t actually carrying out tasks. 

‘There was a lot of genius in sending it,’ Trump said Monday from the White House. ‘We’re trying to find out if people are working. And so we’re sending a letter to people. Please tell us what you did last week. If people don’t respond, it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working.’ 

Some unions and Democratic lawmakers have lambasted the directive, including Illinois Rep. Sean Casten calling on federal employees to flout the order, arguing it is a ‘a good opportunity for mass civil disobedience.’ 

As the Trump administration’s DOGE efforts continue to have an impact across government agencies, over 12,000 employees at the General Services Administration are being notified in an agency-wide email Monday evening that a ‘reduction in force’ is underway.

In the memo from acting GSA administrator Stephen Ehikian, according to a draft obtained by Fox News Digital, the agency thanked those employees who decided to be part of the ‘first step’ of staff reduction on Friday by resigning from GSA and previewed the ‘next step of this process in support of the Presidential Executive Order: Implementing The President’s Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative, The White House, dated February 11, 2025.’

‘This serves as notice that the agency will be conducting a Reduction in Force (RIF) and is seeking approval from Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to also obtain a Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA),’ the email states. ‘More information to impacted business units and employees will be forthcoming.’

The letter ends by thanking the employees that will be affected for their ‘service to this nation.’

‘I promise you that GSA will continue to do everything in our power to make your departure fair and dignified,’ the letter concludes. 

Fox News Digital was told by a source familiar with the situation that 30-40 employees will be affected by the reduction at first, as the agency starts with a focused number meant to ensure the plan is executed well with minimal mistakes.  

The GSA, which performs a variety of tasks including managing federal real estate and procuring goods and services, is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has 11 regional offices. 

A GSA senior manager familiar with the process told Fox News Digital that the first actions will be targeted on select offices rather than the entire agency and that bargaining unit employees are not anticipated to be affected. 

Additionally, the agency is looking for an additional Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, as outlined by the OPM, and will be offering severance or discontinued services annuities as appropriate. 

‘GSA realizes that a Reduction in Force, while necessary to meet the administration’s mandate to rightsize the federal government, reduce waste and redundancies, and deliver a more cost-effective service to the taxpayer, will impact our workforce,’ a GSA spokesperson told Fox News Digital. 

‘GSA is committed to treating all of our employees respectfully and fairly, in accordance with all applicable laws and bargaining unit agreements, during this process.’

The executive order from earlier this month cited in the memo stated that it was intended ‘to restore accountability to the American public’ and ‘commences a critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy.’

‘By eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity, my Administration will empower American families, workers, taxpayers, and our system of Government itself,’ the executive order states.

Elon Musk is taking his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for a victory lap, touting a new poll that suggests massive support for the Trump administration initiative.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris poll revealed a majority of Americans support reducing wasteful government spending. Most voters agree there should be a government agency dedicated to efficiency and that DOGE is helping to make major spending cuts, the nonprobability-based poll found. 

‘Polls show that @DOGE is overwhelmingly POPULAR and that government spending should be reduced by at least $1 trillion!!’ Musk wrote on X. 

The White House and Musk have shared the results on social media, pointing to the new polling as evidence that ‘reducing government waste & fraud is strongly supported by the people,’ as Musk wrote in an X post. 

President Donald Trump shared the favorable poll on his Truth Social account, and Musk shared a screenshot of Trump’s post on his X account. 

The Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found a majority of voters believe the government’s debt is unsustainable and that the government should try to cut expenses. A vast majority agreed ‘government expenditures are filled with waste and agree with cutting $1 trillion in expenses.’

Most people polled said DOGE employees should not have access to Americans’ sensitive information and that court challenges to DOGE are based on the law and are not politically motivated.

Recent national polling suggests Musk and DOGE have garnered the support of Republicans and the disapproval of Democrats.

The Feb. 13-19 Washington Post-Ipsos poll was less favorable for Musk and his ‘DOGE boys’ as approval split along ideological lines, with 70% of Republicans and 6% of Democrats approving of Musk’s job. Fewer Republicans, at 56%, approved of Musk halting federal government programs.

Further, 55% of voters said Musk has too much power, according to the Quinnipiac University poll released Feb. 19. Once again, the results fall upon party lines, with 78% of Republicans polled saying Musk has the right amount of power and 96% of Democrats saying he has too much power. 

The AP-NORC poll released Jan. 24 also found Republicans are more likely to favor DOGE than Democrats. However, the poll found the majority of the public ‘believe corruption, inefficiency and red tape are major problems in the federal government,’ which is consistent with the new Harvard CAPS-Harris poll.

A CNN poll conducted by SSRS found that 54% of voters said Musk’s prominent role in Trump’s administration is a ‘bad thing.’

Musk’s posts celebrating his new favorable polling come on the heels of his latest DOGE initiative: Federal employees received an email on Saturday instructing them to respond with ‘what they got done last week’ or lose their job.

‘Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,’ Musk said.

‘To be clear, the bar is very low here. An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable! Should take less than 5 mins to write,’ Musk added. 

Darin Selnick of the Department of Defense and Kash Patel of the FBI told their employees they did not need to comply with Musk’s request. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy followed the assignment, submitting his accomplishments in a post.

‘Mr. President, 5 things I did last week… Looking forward to another week of fighting for Americans,’ Duffy wrote. 

Trump, in a Truth Social post ahead of Musk’s new email directive, said the DOGE leader is ‘doing a great job,’ adding he would ‘like to see him get more aggressive.’

DOGE’s jarring revelations about where American taxpayer dollars are going have dominated headlines during Trump’s first month back in the White House. Republicans have embraced Musk’s commitment to government efficiency as many new Cabinet members and Republican governors establish their own DOGE departments. 

Meanwhile, Musk’s massive layoffs of government employees and department cuts have created outrage among Democrats in Washington. Democrats have led weekly protests against DOGE and Musk’s political power, calling Trump’s executive actions a ‘constitutional crisis.’

The Trump administration is rescinding a Biden-era directive protecting hospitals from investigations and signaled that beefed-up protections for medical whistleblowers would be forthcoming.

The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) announced Friday it would be rescinding an executive order issued by former President Joe Biden in March 2022, which, among other things, gave hospitals the right not to comply with state-level investigations related to their provision of transgender medical treatments to minors. 
Trump’s directive eliminates these protections, and the rescission notice indicates that further safeguards for medical whistleblowers are anticipated in the future.

‘Under the Biden regime, the door for whistleblowers was closed,’ said Dr. Eithan Haim, who was prosecuted by the Biden administration after he leaked documents to the media that revealed Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston was performing transgender medical procedures on minors, even after it said it had stopped. ‘It was a complete inversion of the role of HHS, the role of our legal framework, because the criminal entities were being protected and the individuals exposing criminal entities were now the ones being targeted.’

Haim was indicted last year by Biden’s Department of Justice for blowing the whistle on Texas Children’s Hospital, after it continued to provide transgender medical treatments to minors even though the hospital had publicly indicated it had stopped such services in order to comply with new state guidance. Several days after President Donald Trump was sworn in, the charges against Haim were dropped. 

Under Biden’s March 2022 directive, titled, ‘HHS Notice and Guidance on Gender Affirming Care, Civil Rights and Patient Privacy,’ hospitals were permitted, but not required, to comply with investigations seeking information on their provision of transgender treatments. But, according to HHS’s rescission notice, such guidance lacked ‘adequate legal basis under federal privacy laws.’ The notice added that, ‘by its own terms,’ Biden’s March 2022 directive ‘permits’ the release of personal health information tied to transgender procedures when it is needed to comply with other laws. 

‘Covered entities should no longer rely on the rescinded 2022 OCR Notice and Guidance,’ stated HHS’ rescission notice. It added that ‘in consultation with the Attorney General’ the agency will also be ‘expeditiously’ issuing new guidance to protect whistleblowers who take action in accordance with Trump’s efforts to protect children ‘from chemical and surgical mutilation.’ 

Haim said that under Trump’s new leadership, the U.S. legal system is being restored ‘to a place of equal protection under law, particularly as it relates to people who are trying to follow [Trump’s] executive order, or any other federal laws.’

‘The key thing with this new directive is that, as a healthcare provider, if a hospital or other doctors are participating in misconduct, if they’re lying about something, if they are intervening on patients in a way that is harmful to those patients – especially kids – as a doctor, it’s not only something you should do, it’s something you have to do,’ Haim pointed out.

In addition to compelling hospitals and gender clinics to begin rigorous compliance with investigations, the Trump administration’s Friday directive also removed gender dysphoria from being considered a disability under the federal Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. It also rescinded orders from the Biden administration indicating it was discrimination for federally funded health programs to refuse to treat someone on the basis of their gender identity.

Fox News Digital reached out to HHS for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

A massive piece of legislation that House Republicans hope will advance a broad swath of President Donald Trump’s agenda is facing its final hurdle on Monday before a chamber-wide vote.

The House Rules Committee, the final gatekeepers for most bills before a House floor vote, is meeting to debate a measure that GOP leaders want to have on Trump’s desk by sometime in May.

The bill aims to increase spending on border security, the judiciary and defense by roughly $300 billion, while seeking at least $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in spending cuts elsewhere.

As written, the bill also provides $4.5 trillion to extend Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) provisions, which expire at the end of this year.

It comes after the Senate held an all-night session to advance its own version of the Trump plan last week. In the Senate Republicans’ budget plan, the first reconciliation bill includes Trump’s priorities for border security, energy and national defense, while the second bill, to be drawn up later in the year, would focus on extending Trump’s tax policies from TCJA.

Since the commander in chief has already telegraphed his preference for House Republicans’ proposal, the Senate bill has been relegated to a de facto backup plan if the House is not able to pass its own. This much was relayed to senators by Vice President JD Vance last week as he gave them the White House’s blessing to push their bill forward, a source told Fox News Digital. 

Current margins dictate House Republicans can only lose one vote to still pass a bill without Democratic support.

Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., wrote on X Sunday night that she was against the bill as written.

‘Why I am a NO on the current version of the house budget instructions – I have a TRILLION DOLLAR QUESTION – where is the money – $1T? Interesting FACT: roughly 85% of spending is not ever even looked at by Congress – convenient if you would like to hide waste, fraud and abuse,’ Spartz announced.

Other Republicans have expressed concerns over the $880 billion in spending cuts under the Energy & Commerce Committee, which many have taken to mean at least some cuts to federal programs like Medicaid.

The House version of the bill differs from the Senate in that the latter version does not include funding for Trump’s tax cuts. Senate GOP leaders argue that splitting Trump’s priorities into two bills will allow the party to secure early victories on the border and defense, places where there is more agreement within the conference.

However, House Republican leaders contend that Republicans have not passed two reconciliation bills since the 1990s and under far more favorable margins.

Both chambers are contending with razor-thin margins and an ideologically diverse Republican conference as they look to make major conservative policy changes via the budget reconciliation process this year. 

By leveling thresholds for passage in the House and Senate at a simple majority, reconciliation allows the party in power to pass fiscal legislation without any support from the opposing side. The Senate has a two-thirds majority threshold to advance most measures.

It is not clear, however, whether Trump’s support for the House plan will be enough to get it over the line.