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uS Insights Federal workers get a new ultimatum from Elon Musk Plus Ukraine's allies try to convince President Trump to offer Kyiv an American security guarantee as the war enters its fourth year and German elections deliver a win for the center right alongside a historically strong showing by anti establishment nationalists.
The meta picture here is that the whole country has lurched to the right in a way much like the whole of Europe has.
It's Monday, February 24th.
I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of what' News the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.
U.S. federal government employees are beginning the week with a weighty message in their inboxes.
Reply by the end of the day with details about what you got done at work last week.
We report that email came together in a matter of hours on Saturday after President Trump directed Elon Musk to get more aggressive in his government cost cutting efforts.
And by that evening the message had been sent to more than 2 million federal workers, with Musk adding on social media that failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.
Journal reporter Scott Patterson in Washington says that compared with other recent actions by Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, this one is being met with more pushback from top administration officials, including Trump's recently approved FBI Director Kash Patel.
The heads of multiple agencies, including the FBI, are telling their employees to hold off on responding to this request request.
Or maybe they might give them like a form email to use because a lot of these employees do very sensitive and often secretive work.
Another issue that some people pointed out is the agency that sent this request, the Office of Personnel Management doesn't really have the management ability to tell employees and other agencies what to do.
So that's created another level of confusion and pushback over this latest demand.
Musk and a representative for DOGE didn't respond to a request for comment.
An OPM spokeswoman declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the US Military and Congress are processing a sweeping overhaul of top Pentagon leadership announced by President Trump on Friday, which included the firing of the military's highest ranking officer, the admiral leading the Navy and several other senior figures out are Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Air Force General C.Q. brown Jr.
The military's highest ranking black officer, and its top woman, commander, Admiral Lisa Frankhetti.