Good morning. Hallam Bullock here, writing to you from London. Our US team is observing Presidents’ Day, so I’m bringing you a shorter version of the newsletter.
In case you missed it, Jamie Dimon’s comments on work-from-home last week went viral. In a leaked recording, the JPMorgan CEO explained to staffers why remote work is a detriment to his company — using language that was at times colorful and confrontational.
However, copies of the audio obtained by BI suggest that remote work was just a sliver of the conversation. Dimon also addressed a wide range of issues, including the impact of AI, reducing corporate bureaucracy, and the bank’s fintech failings.
In today’s big story, many federal workers have expressed outrage and despair at President Donald Trump’s workforce mandates — but what do the ones who voted for him think? BI spoke with four Trump-supporting federal workers to find out.
If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.
The big story
Trump’s workforce blitz
“It shouldn’t have come to this.”
That’s what one federal worker who voted for Trump told BI amid the president’s ongoing efforts to reduce the federal workforce. And no, they haven’t changed their stance on supporting Trump.
As of last Thursday, about 75,000 federal employees had accepted the president’s buyout offer. That’s about 3.75% of the federal workforce, inching closer to the White House’s goal of reducing the federal staff count by 5 – 10%.
It’s a strange position to imagine yourself in: voting for a president who, weeks into his new administration, places your livelihood at risk.
But this is the exact scenario some federal workers are now facing.
Four of those workers spoke to BI’s Ana Altchek and Ayelet Sheffey about how they’re feeling.
“I voted for Trump. I wanted to see some positive change,” one federal employee of 17 years said. But they didn’t know that change could put their job in jeopardy.
Some of the workers BI spoke with are still standing by the overall mission to reduce government waste.
“They’re uncovering a lot of waste and abuse there,” one worker said. “I just can’t believe some of the stuff that they’re finding which is a total waste of taxpayer money.”
Elon Musk’s DOGE has been targeting federal agencies it deems wasteful to lower government spending. In the weeks since Trump took office for the second time, DOGE has applied Silicon Valley’s “slash and burn” mentality to multiple agencies, including USAID.
Following a lawsuit from federal employee labor unions, a federal judge partially blocked Musk and Trump’s attempted shutdown of USAID — which legal experts had told BI is illegal without approval from Congress.
Meanwhile, one of the federal workers who voted for Trump said they supported the president’s approach. “I think overall, we’re going to end up better off with him as president,” the worker said.
Read everything the workers said here.
News brief
Read the full article here
