Elon Musk tells Republican lawmakers he's not to blame for federal firings

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s not his fault.

Billionaire Elon Musk is telling Republican lawmakers that he is not to blame for the firings of thousands of federal workers, including veterans, as pushes to downsize the government. Instead, he said in private talks this week that those decisions are left to the various federal agencies.

The message from one of President Donald Trump's most influential advisers came as Republicans publicly support Musk's work at the Department of Government Efficiency — which claims to be digging up waste, fraud and abuse — but are privately raising questions as personnel cuts ripple through communities across the nation.

“Elon doesn’t fire people,” said Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., after a dinner-time pizza meeting with Musk in the basement of the Capitol.

“He doesn’t have hiring and firing authority,” added Hudson, who leads the House Republicans' campaign arm. “The president's empowered him to go uncover this information, that’s it.”

It's a remarkable shift of emphasis away from the chainsaw-wielding tech entrepreneur whose vast power has made him an admired, revered and deeply feared figure in the second Trump administration.

The Republican president weighed in Thursday after a Cabinet meeting, saying he has instructed department secretaries to work with DOGE but to “be very precise" about which workers will stay or go — using a “'scalpel'" he said in a social media post "rather than the 'hatchet.”

“I don’t want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut,“ Trump later told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump suggested that Cabinet and agency leaders would take the lead, but Musk could push harder down the line.

“If they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”

He had said in the earlier post that Musk and Cabinet officials will meet every two weeks to advance their cost-cutting goals

The comments come amid mounting legal disputes over Musk's attempts to centralize management of the government workforce and bypass the traditional role of Congress to appropriate federal dollars.

For example, the White House's Office of Personnel Management directed federal agencies to fire probationary workers, who lack full civil service protection. The scorched-earth approach led to deep cuts that have occasionally been reversed, such as when workers on nuclear weapons programs were brought back on the job.

A federal judge in San Francisco expressed concerns that layoffs violated the law, leading administration officials to insist that it was individual agencies — not Musk or the Office of Personnel Management — calling the shots.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., said Musk told lawmakers that “some of the folks that were the probationary people, he didn’t fire them, they were actually supposedly fired by the agencies —and they messed up.”

Did Musk actually say “they messed up?”

“Well, if they were in fact, you know, critical people, and the agency did the firing, then yeah, they messed up,” Gimenez said. “But not him.”

Musk and his team have burrowed into agencies, accessing sensitive data and rattling career officials with their demands. Top officials, including at the Social Security Administration, abruptly stepped down after refusing to comply with Musk's team. Tens of thousands of workers accepted an offer to resign early and more are facing potential layoffs.

“We're making good progress,” Musk said late Wednesday as he dashed through the halls of the Capitol.

The richest person in the world, Musk is known as a driven, demanding executive who is willing to take bold risks, often with great rewards. His enterprises include the rocket company SpaceX, electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla and social media platform X, known the world over.

But his perch at DOGE is Musk's first public foray into the grit of governing. The speed and scale of the cuts, which are being challenged in dozens of court cases, are introducing the businessman to the concept of political blowback.

When the topic of the fired federal workers came up during a Senate lunch, Musk deflected blame.

“I would say that there was an argument that that’s not coming from DOGE, it’s actually coming from individual agencies,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

Another Republican, Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky, said that Musk went so far as to emphasize that not only had DOGE not recommended mass termination of probationary employees, but that he thought some federal agencies were either incompetent or sabotaging the effort. Musk told them he wanted more precise terminations of those not performing.

“The point that he was making is that DOGE had not made recommendations for across-the-board cuts of all probationary employees at every agency," Barr said.

"But the agencies had implemented it improperly through either incompetence or in a handful of cases actual malicious efforts to sabotage and create a public relations problem for DOGE.”

In fact, scores of fired workers are being recalled back to work across the federal agencies. This week, about 180 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were being told they could come back, in an email that said: “Read this email immediately.”

Musk was invited to Capitol Hill this week by Trump’s allies and party leaders to provide more information to lawmakers facing questions about the DOGE cuts. Many Republicans are being hammered at town halls back home, so much so that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has encouraged them to meet with constituents in other venues.

Musk gave his cellphone number to the senators –- though not the members of the House –- and his team is setting up a dedicated phone line the lawmakers can call if they have further questions, complaints or suggestions about his work, and about jobs and agencies that should be spared.

Democrats, and their allies in outside advocacy groups, have been highlighting the way the cutbacks will hurt Americans.

On Thursday, 141 House Democrats led by Virginia Rep. Gerald Connolly, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, urged the OPM to reinstate all the probationary employees who have been unlawfully terminated.

“We write in strong opposition to the expansion of the Trump Administration’s efforts to purge nonpartisan civil servants from the federal workforce, specifically recent unlawful mass terminations of employees in probationary status,” wrote the lawmakers in a letter to the office's acting director, Charles Ezell.

“Indiscriminately firing thousands of these employees threatens the future of the nonpartisan federal workforce and our government’s ability to deliver life-saving services to the American people."

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said that if the White House wants to abolish an entire agency such as the Department of Education, “Bring the bill to Congress. We welcome that fight.”

Jeffries added: "We’ll stand on the side of the American people, and (Republicans will) continue to stand on the side of Elon Musk.”

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.