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U.S. President Donald President Trump speaks after it was announced Bahrain has joined the United Arab Emirates in striking an agreement to normalize relations with Israel during a brief appearance in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 11, 2020.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

DOGE deal and funding deadlines create chaos in Washington

Thursday is the deadline for federal employees to accept the Trump administration’s offer of eight months of pay and benefits in exchange for abandoning their posts. As of Wednesday, more than 40,000 employees, less than 2% of the federal workforce, had reportedly accepted the buyout.

The offer has pitted the Office of Personnel Management – which is working in conjunction with Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency – against unions and lawmakers who are advising people against taking the offer, citing its vagueness, that it waives employees rights to challenge the terms of the deal in the future, and questions about where the money for a new, expensive buyout program will come from – especially since the government is only funded through mid-March.

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A view of the USAID building in Washington, DC, on Feb. 1, 2025.

REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon

Musk says USAID is being shut down

The website for the US Agency for International Development, aka USAID, went dark without explanation Saturday following President Donald Trump’s freeze on foreign aid and a cryptic post on X by Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “Watch USAID tonight,” he wrote Friday.

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Elon Musk departs the office of Senate Minority Whip and incoming Senate Republican Leader-elect John Thune (R-SD) after a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. December 5, 2024.

REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo

GZERO Explains: How will DOGE work?

What is it? Donald Trump used an executive order to turn the little-known US Digital Service, a unit created within the Executive Office of the President under the Obama administration to enhance government technology, into the Department of Government Efficiency – or DOGE. Led by billionaire Elon Musk, DOGE intends to gut what he views as a bloated, ineffectual federal bureaucracy and to recommend budget cuts. The department also plans to improve government software and technology. The executive order includes a termination date of July 4, 2026 – America’s 250th anniversary.
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Then-President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, in November 2024.

Brandon Bell/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

GZERO Explains: You’re Fired! “The Apprentice” comes to Washington

It’s not a reality TV show, but it sure feels like one. On Tuesday, the US government kickstarted a plan to slash the public service by offering a “deferred resignation program” to approximately two million civilian full-time federal employees. The offer came in the form of an email from the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, with the subject line, “A Fork in the Road,” similar to one sent by X CEO Elon Musk to Twitter employees after he acquired the company in 2022. Musk was behind the effort, which reportedly blindsided some of President Donald Trump's advisers and budget officials.

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