Shannon Bond
speaker
521 appearances
63 recordings
5 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 15 Sep
Shannon Bond’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 53 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 12.
Appearances
And so, yes, if you were going to do large scale reductions in force, like there are actual legal channels you need to follow. There are requirements over things like preference to people who have veteran status or people with disabilities. Like there are things that exist in the government world that may not exist in the corporate world.
And I think that's where we're seeing so many of these clashes. But it is really kind of this like very differing kind of view of what the purpose of government is and really different value system. I think that we're seeing Musk bring in that I think is causing just so much of this like confusion and drama and like honestly heartache for a lot of the workers that we're talking to.
I think that's all true. And I think what's also really important to think about is in the meantime, like Sue, as you said, I mean, he is clearly effectively running this, right? Like he says this email is going to go out. The email goes out. He says people are going to get fired. You know, the agencies say, well, maybe not. But like, I don't know.
He and then Trump also says if people don't respond, they're going to get fired. So, you know, who are you trusting? And I think a lot of the folks that I've been speaking to, the federal workers who are at the receiving end of this are saying, OK, Like, I don't know, but I kind of can't risk my job at this point. I mean, they're also all preparing to be laid off anyway.
But they're saying, you know, at the end of the day, like, yes, there are all these kind of legal questions and that will play out. But it will, as Chris says, take months. And in the meantime, you know, it is effectively Musk calling the shots here.
Right. So this has come after, you know, actually quite a bit of mystery through a lawsuit where the court was asking the government over and over again because they said, well, you know, Musk is not in charge of the U.S. Doge service, which is part of the office of the president that has been renamed from the U.S. Digital Service. And they were like, OK, great. Who is?
And then the government lawyers were like, well, we don't know. We can't tell you. This dragged on for a couple of days, which kind of, you know, pretty unprecedented to just not be able to say who is actually running this. I'm sure judges love that. Yeah. As you can imagine, the judge was not amused.
So the White House has announced that Amy Gleason is, in fact, the acting administrator of the Doge service. She is somebody who is a veteran of the U.S. digital service. She's a former health care investment executive. You know, we don't know a lot about her. We don't really know a lot about what her actual kind of acting role is.
You know, what does it mean, again, for her to be the acting administrator when clearly, effectively, you know, Musk is calling the shots here? But there is a name now. And I'm sure that that will, like, raise a whole new set of court challenges over, you know, what are the directives that Musk is issuing? You know, where does that maybe trample on her territory?
But again, like, you know, at the end of the day, the office of the president of the White House, which is what the Doge service is under, you know, is separate from these agencies. Yes. The president can issue executive orders saying – calling on agencies to prepare for reductions in force, which it has done. The White House itself like can't just go and fire people at agencies.
OPM can't go and fire people at agencies. Like the agencies themselves are doing this. And so that's again where like the kind of what is the chain of command here I think is murky and is why this is being opened up to all of this questioning legally and just practically by the people having to carry out this mission.
I think the thing I would say is, you know, what additional pushback is there sort of from inside the government and especially at the cabinet level? We know that Musk is going to be sitting in on Trump's cabinet meeting today. You know, would love to be a fly on the wall in that room, like what the dynamic is like.
Because, you know, again, I think, you know, it's been really notable, particularly that some of the most powerful cabinet secretaries, you know, the head of agencies that are, you know, very critical to national security are the ones who have kind of come out most aggressively in sort of marking their own territory here.
And again, like you said, it's not that these folks are not on board with the idea of cutting spending and reducing the workforce. But, you know, I think Marco Rubio is going to have a very hard time if he is not the one as secretary of state who is deeply involved in setting U.S. foreign policy. And like, you know, Musk is trying to get involved there.
So I think those sort of turf battles and then how those like resonate through the way the agencies are actually run is going to be the thing we're watching out for.
His name is Marco Ales. He's a 25-year-old Rutgers University graduate who previously worked at Musk's SpaceX and at X. He was a temporary appointee at Treasury who was granted access to this payment system alongside Krauss. Now, on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal identified racist posts from a social media account linked to him.
Those posts have been deleted, but NPR did independently confirm them. And Ales has now resigned, although Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance are saying he should get his job back.
The judge's order allows two special government employees at Treasury who are connected to Musk's Doge team to continue accessing payment records on a read-only basis. But it bars them from sharing information outside the Treasury Department. Musk's Doge team has been seeking access to information and systems across federal agencies, raising worries highly sensitive data could be compromised.
The Treasury system processes trillions of dollars in federal spending every year and including Social Security and Medicare benefits. The judge's order is temporary while the union's lawsuit moves forward. Shannon Bond, NPR News.
White House Secretary Caroline Leavitt said today Elon Musk is what's known as a, quote, special government employee today. That's a temporary appointment to perform limited services. She said she does not have details about Musk's security clearance. And we don't know about the status of others working at Doge, like whether or not they're government employees, what clearances they may have.
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