Layoffs and Job Reductions

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      Officials Are Fired at Traffic Safety Agency Investigating Musk’s Company

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      The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has raised questions about crashes involving Tesla’s self-driving technology.The federal agency responsible for traffic safety, which has been investigating whether self-driving technology in Tesla vehicles played a role in the death of a pedestrian, will fire a “modest” number of employees, an agency spokesman said late Friday.The agency did not say whether any of the fired employees were involved in investigations of Tesla, whose chief executive, Elon Musk, is leading the Department of Government Efficiency established by President Trump.The efficiency department has been forcing layoffs at numerous government agencies as part of an effort to reshape the federal bureaucracy. Mr. Musk has retained control of Tesla while spending much of his time in Washington.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has three active investigations of Tesla, according to agency documents, including one examining whether the company’s autonomous driving software is prone to failure when visibility is poor.The layoffs at the traffic safety agency, which has less than 1,000 employees, were reported earlier by The Washington Post. Even after the layoffs, the agency continues to employ more people than at the beginning of the Biden administration, the agency said in a statement.“The last administration grew NHTSA by a whopping 30 percent,” the agency said in a statement.“We have retained positions critical to the mission of saving lives, preventing injuries, and reducing economic costs due to road traffic crashes,” the agency said. “We will continue to enforce the law on all manufacturers of motor vehicles and equipment.”Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.One of the traffic safety agency’s investigations into Tesla is based on four accidents involving technology that the carmaker calls supervised full self-driving.James Stukenberg for The New York TimesOne of the investigations into Tesla is based on four accidents involving technology that the carmaker calls supervised full self-driving, which can steer, brake and navigate Tesla cars in some situations. In one of the crashes, a Tesla struck and killed a pedestrian, according to agency documents. In another of the accidents, a person was injured.Tesla’s self-driving technology relies on cameras to survey a car’s surroundings, in contrast with competitors like Waymo, a unit of the same company as Google, that also uses lasers and radar to recognize objects.The traffic safety agency has been looking into whether Tesla’s technology failed when visibility was poor because of glare from the sun, fog or dust.Mr. Musk has often argued that Tesla self-driving technology is safer than human drivers.The technology is also crucial to Tesla’s future and share price. As Tesla sales have flagged, falling 1 percent last year even as the global market for electric vehicles rose 25 percent, Mr. Musk has shifted the company’s focus to autonomous driving technology and plans for a self-driving taxi.The technology will help make Tesla the most valuable company in the world by far, Mr. Musk told investors last month. More

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      Comparing Elon Musk and Jack Welch as Influential Cost-Cutters

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      Elon Musk’s hyperfocus on the bottom line has made him influential in Washington and Silicon Valley. How does that compare with the last famous cost-cutter, Jack Welch?Elon Musk is perhaps the most influential corporate cost-cutter since Jack Welch led General Electric.Eric Lee/The New York TimesA tale of the cost-cutting tapeThere’s no disputing that Elon Musk is one of the leading businessmen of our era. He has a net worth of around $400 billion these days and leads prominent businesses including Tesla, SpaceX, X, Neuralink and xAI. And he has become known for moving fast, cutting costs and pushing the workers who remain beyond what they thought possible.In many ways, that recalls a previous titan of industry, Jack Welch, who 25 years ago was considered the greatest businessman of his generation. It raises an intriguing question: Is Musk as influential a business leader as the former General Electric chief? Are the two men even comparable?By some lights, the two aren’t remotely the same. Welch was no entrepreneur but instead was the ultimate corporate chameleon, the son of a train conductor who started his career in G.E.’s plastics division and spent his whole career at the conglomerate.Musk, on the other hand, hailed from a prominent South African family, before emigrating to Canada and then to the United States as a serial entrepreneur.And while the two were both politically conservative, Welch was more of a country-club Republican, partial to golf and no fan — at least earlier on — of Donald Trump. While a savvy political operator, Welch was unlikely to have decamped to Mar-a-Lago to personally and intensely cozy up to the president-elect, as Musk did. (In 2016, Welch withdrew his support for Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, writing on social media, “Unfortunately, wrong messenger…Party must change nominee now.”)But the two shared a common business philosophy: Cut as much fat as possible.Welch believed G.E. had become too bureaucratic and bloated. He slashed billions of dollars in costs, and prided himself on weeding out employees who just weren’t making it. He became an apostle of the Six Sigma approach, inspiring other C.E.O.s. Corporate profits — and G.E.’s stock price — exploded under his watch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      DOGE’s Only Public Ledger Is Riddled With Mistakes

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      The figures from Elon Musk’s team of outsiders represent billions in government cuts. They are also full of accounting errors, outdated data and other miscalculations.Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency say they have saved the federal government $55 billion through staff reductions, lease cancellations and a long list of terminated contracts published online this week as a “wall of receipts.”President Trump has been celebrating the published savings, even musing about a proposal to mail checks to all Americans to reimburse them with a “DOGE dividend.”But the math that could back up those checks is marred with accounting errors, incorrect assumptions, outdated data and other mistakes, according to a New York Times analysis of all the contracts listed. While the DOGE team has surely cut some number of billions of dollars, its slapdash accounting adds to a pattern of recklessness by the group, which has recently gained access to sensitive government payment systems.Some contracts the group claims credit for were double- or triple-counted. Another initially contained an error that inflated the totals by billions of dollars. In at least one instance, the group claimed an entire contract had been canceled when only part of the work had been halted. In others, contracts the group said it had closed were actually ended under the Biden administration.The canceled contracts listed on the website make up a small part of the $55 billion total that the group estimated it had found so far. It was not possible to independently verify that number or other totals on the site with the evidence provided. A senior White House official described how the office made its calculations on individual contracts, but did not respond to numerous questions about other aspects of the group’s accounting. But it is clear that every dollar the website claims credit for is not necessarily a dollar the federal government would have spent — or one that can now be returned to the public.A screenshot of the DOGE site’s “wall of receipts” on Friday. More

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      Pete Hegseth Fires Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Navy’s Top Officer

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      Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that he was firing Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female officer to rise to the Navy’s top job of Chief of Naval Operations, and would be looking for her replacement.The announcement came in a statement emailed to reporters Friday night, shortly after President Trump said he was firing Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.Mr. Hegseth said in his statement that he would also replace Gen. James C. Slife, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, as well as the top uniformed lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force.Both Admiral Franchetti and General Slife “have had distinguished careers,” Mr. Hegseth said, adding “We thank them for their service and dedication to our country.”“Under President Trump, we are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars,” he added.According to her official biography, Admiral Franchetti received her commission in 1985 through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Northwestern University, just seven years after the Navy ended its prohibition on women serving on ships at sea.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Team Plans Cuts at HUD Office That Funds Disaster Recovery

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      The Trump administration plans to all but eliminate the office that oversees America’s recovery from the largest disasters, raising questions about how the United States will rebuild from hurricanes, wildfires and other calamities made worse by climate change.The Office of Community Planning and Development, part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, pays to rebuild homes and other recovery efforts after the country’s worst disasters, such as Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and Hurricane Milton in Florida.The administration plans to cut the staff in that office by 84 percent, according to a document obtained by The New York Times. The number of workers would be cut to 150, from 936 when Mr. Trump took office last month.Those cuts could slow the distribution of recovery money to North Carolina and other recent disasters, depending how quickly they happen.“HUD is carrying out President Trump’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government to serve the American people at the highest standard,” a spokeswoman for the department, Kasey Lovett, said in a statement. The primary responsibility for rebuilding communities after major disasters falls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps state and local governments pay to repair or rebuild damaged roads, bridges, schools, water treatments plants and other public infrastructure. The agency also provides money to help repair damaged homes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      DOGE Cuts 9/11 Survivors’ Fund, and Republicans Join Democrats in Rebuke

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      After 20 percent of the World Trade Center Health Program staff was terminated last week, Democratic lawmakers were outraged. On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers joined them.In a rare pushback against President Donald J. Trump, a coalition of congressional Republicans from the New York area rebuked the president for cuts to a federal program that administers aid to emergency workers and others suffering from toxins related to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.In a letter to Mr. Trump, seven Republicans urged Mr. Trump “as a native New Yorker who lived in New York City as it recovered from the 9/11 terrorist attacks” to reverse the cuts to the World Trade Center Health Program and rehire staff members who were fired several days ago.They echoed the immediate outcry from Democratic lawmakers and advocates when the cuts were made beginning late last week, as part of Elon Musk’s so-called department of government efficiency, or DOGE, which is cutting spending and eliminating jobs across a wide swath of federal agencies. On Monday, New York’s Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, issued a letter demanding the cuts be restored.The initial reaction from Republicans was more muted, but by Wednesday, as it became clearer that the blowback to the firings was widespread, the Republican resistance grew more vocal, especially from districts in and around New York City, where the memory of 9/11 still resonates powerfully.“This staff reduction will only make it more difficult for the program to supervise its contracts and to care for its members who are comprised of the brave men and women who ran towards danger and helped in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” the congressional members wrote in the letter.It was largely written by Representative Andrew R. Garbarino, a Republican from Long Island, and co-signed by five other Republican congressional colleagues from New York and Representative Chris Smith from New Jersey. The other congressional co-signers were Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Claudia Tenney, Nicole Malliotakis and Nick Langworthy, all supporters of Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Courts Force a Window Into Musk’s Secretive Unit

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      When President Trump signed an order imbuing the so-called Department of Government Efficiency with even more power over the federal work force, Elon Musk was there, championing the work as an exercise in transparency.“All of our actions are maximally transparent,” Mr. Musk said last week, standing in the Oval Office. “In fact, I don’t think there’s been — I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.”But in case after case, federal judges have begged to differ.The work of Mr. Musk, who Mr. Trump has said is the leader of the operation tasked with making “large scale” reductions across every department, has been largely shrouded in secrecy. Team members have spent weeks burrowing into multiple federal agencies, demanding access to data for undisclosed purposes.Anxious career employees have received little direct information, leaving them reliant on office rumors and news reports for updates. The identities of the members of Mr. Musk’s team, too, have been closely held.Court filings in the torrent of lawsuits challenging the incursions have offered a crucial, though limited, window. As some of the only firsthand accounts of what Mr. Musk’s associates are doing across a number of departments, they paint a picture of a tightly managed process in which small groups of government employees have swept in and out of agencies, grabbing up data in apparent pursuit of larger political projects.The filings have also offered revelations about what information security and ethics trainings those employees have undergone. But many questions remain, frustrating the judges trying the cases.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Southwest Layoffs Will Take 15% of Its Work Force

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      The company said the cuts, the first round of broad layoffs in the airline’s 53-year history, would affect mostly corporate employees.Southwest Airlines on Monday announced plans to cut 15 percent of its work force, the first round of broad layoffs in the airline’s 53-year history.The company said it planned to cut about 1,750 jobs, with the cuts mostly focused on corporate positions. The layoffs will include 11 senior leaders with titles of vice president or higher, the airline said. Most of the cuts will be carried out by the end of June.In a statement, Southwest’s chief executive, Bob Jordan, called the decision “unprecedented.”“We are at a pivotal moment as we transform Southwest Airlines into a leaner, faster and more agile organization,” he said. “I arrived at this decision thoughtfully and carefully, knowing how hard it will be to say goodbye to colleagues who have been a significant part of our Southwest culture and accomplishments.”Mr. Jordan’s own job was under threat last year after the hedge fund Elliott Management amassed an approximately 10 percent stake in the airline and began to push for widespread change, including Mr. Jordan’s ouster. Elliott had accused Mr. Jordan and the airline’s board of complacency and failing to control costs, eroding profit margins that were once the envy of the industry.In response, Mr. Jordan laid out a three-year plan to make sweeping changes, including dropping the airline’s seat-yourself policy in favor of assigned seating, adding seats with extra legroom and introducing red-eye flights — the first of which began last week — to make more use of its planes.Southwest also agreed to add board members recommended by the investment firm, and Elliott ultimately dropped its demand for Mr. Jordan’s departure.The job cuts announced on Monday will save Southwest about $210 million this calendar year and $300 million next year, the airline said. But those figures do not include a one-time cost of $60 million to $80 million to pay out severance and other benefits to laid-off workers.Southwest had an unrivaled 47-year streak of annual profits until 2020, when it lost money along with the rest of the industry during the Covid pandemic. It has reported profits each year since and remains the only one of the four largest U.S. airlines to have never filed for bankruptcy protection, though its costs have outpaced those of some of its peers.Still, the airline, which offers only limited international flights, is a behemoth: Southwest carries more passengers and operates more flights in the United States than any other carrier. The airline is also beloved by fliers, who have routinely given its economy class the highest customer satisfaction scores of any carrier, according to J.D. Power, a market research firm. More