WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House has installed two Trump loyalists at the federal HR agency after allies of billionaire Elon Musk blindsided top Trump officials with a surprise government-wide email last month demanding workers summarize five things they achieved at work in the previous week.
Billy Long, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Internal Revenue Service, and Douglas Hoelscher, a former aide to Trump during his 2017-2021 presidential term, are now serving as senior advisors at the Office of Personnel Management, the agency confirmed to Reuters.
Two sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the men had started earlier this month.
They were brought in to ensure better policy coordination between the White House and the agency, which is playing a central role in Trump’s overhaul of the federal bureaucracy, a third source said.
One of the sources said the arrival of the two men was due in part to an OPM email sent on February 22 titled “What did you do last week?” that demanded all civilian government employees account for what they had done the previous week.
The Saturday email, which was accompanied by a post on X by Musk warning workers they risked termination if they did not respond, caused consternation among civil servants and tensions within Trump’s cabinet. It also frustrated White House officials, who had not signed off on the email, as Reuters previously reported.
OPM did not respond to a request for comment on the reason behind Long and Hoelscher’s appointments but said in a statement it is “continuing to bring in top talent to support President Trump’s mission and the federal workforce” and ensure “strong leadership” at the agency.
Hoelscher, Long and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on details of the story laid out by Reuters, but said the Trump administration was committed to executing the President’s agenda.
“We want to rid the federal government of waste, fraud and abuse,” the spokesman said.
OPM CENTRAL TO OVERHAUL
Musk moved swiftly to take over OPM after Trump was sworn in on January 20 and appointed the tech billionaire to lead an unprecedented effort to reshape and downsize the government. Musk, a top donor to Trump, has elevated the once-obscure agency and made it the engine room of his sweeping cost-cutting drive.
The agency, led by Acting Director Chuck Ezell on paper, is informally overseen by Musk allies including Anthony Armstrong, a former Morgan Stanley banker who helped him acquire Twitter, according to two of the sources. Amanda Scales, who oversaw human resources work at Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI, serves as chief of staff.
Ezell said in a statement that he was proud to lead OPM and took that responsibility seriously, having been appointed by Trump.
“Under my leadership, we’ve taken decisive action to remove bureaucratic barriers, strengthen interagency collaboration, and ensure that federal employees are supported and empowered to serve the American people,” he said.
Scales and Armstrong did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A January 28 OPM email offering buyouts to all federal workers blindsided White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and led to a push for better communication between the agency and the White House, Reuters previously reported.
However, the February email demanding workers account for what they had done on a weekly basis caused new tensions and fueled confusion among government workers over how to handle it. Leaders at several agencies, including the State Department, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security told employees to ignore the email.
The disquiet among some cabinet secretaries forced Trump to clarify Musk’s role at a cabinet meeting, where he said they, not Musk, had the final say on staffing and policy at their agencies. The White House has denied that Trump was surprised by Musk’s “five things” email and said he had signed off on it.
Long, a former auctioneer and a Republican congressman from Missouri, was an early supporter of Trump. He is still awaiting Senate confirmation to lead the IRS.
Hoelscher, who served as director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs during Trump’s first term, is chair of the American Leadership Initiative at the America First Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank that produced a blueprint of conservative policies for Trump’s second term.
Among the policy recommendations is a plan to strip federal workers of virtually all employment protections to make it very easy to fire poor performers.
“Quite frankly, one rogue bureaucrat is one too many,” Hoelscher said in a video promoting the project.
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper and Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing By Ross Colvin and Nia Williams)
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