The influence also went to the National Park Service. One employee was prepared for a trip to supervise the maintenance of the road in the national monument, when the change entered into force on February 20. “If I don’t want to pay for it, I can’t go. I can’t pay for my hotel, my rented car, fuel for the car. Now I can’t perform a mission – says the employee. “Today, instead of focusing on other works, I focus on three different cases, how to deal with it. Am I going? Am I calling my engineering team and tell them to translate? And if so, when? The project is on indefinite suspension. “
The note written to the National Park Service staff stated that “all travels that are not related to national security, public security or enforcement of immigration law should be canceled if it begins on Wednesday, February 26, until the end of March 2025.” He said that a long -term decision on travel policy would come “later”. Some NPS employees could travel in February, even though they did not receive official consent. They were told that travel would not be allowed in March. Until now, about 75 trips have been canceled or superiors, according to the source marking the situation.
The National Park Service did not respond to the request for comment from Wired.
Some government employees claim that they received a warning before announcing a change on February 20. “We left and bought matters and cases of toilet paper,” says another employee at the National Park Service. “There is a general recognition that everything will break down.”
The employee works in the Pacific West region, which manages the federal land in California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Nevada, as well as parks in Arizona, Montana, Guam and Samoa American. While GSA has allowed the possibility of an exception to the clamp, the employee claims that there are only four purchasing cards with limits of expenditure over 1 USD available for the entire region.
Some of these parks pay for services such as the Internet and Wireless on shopping cards – they remain employees wondering if their work devices may soon be cut off. “Before someone can repair the bathroom, you should spend a job order,” explains the current employee. “This happens electronically. Like every company, we rely on e -mail, bands and talk to do everything. “
Expense limits reflect Musk’s faith in budgeting based on zero. After buying Twitter, he reduced the budget to zero and forced employees to justify each cost. He also employed corporate credit cards.
“With the stopping of payments on Twitter, at some point we were at the meeting at 1am on Saturday and it was like this:” Hey, let’s turn off credit cards to see what reflections and what is happening ” – explained the investor of the angel Jason Calacanis on Everything in Podcast in February. (Calacanis was part of the Musk transition team on Twitter.) “Of course, we started to answer phones … People who are first are probably those who are in the greatest size.”
Employees see it in a different way. “There are so many controls to make sure that the fraud has not happened,” says the current employee of NPS. “I honestly believe that the only fraud is committed by Musk, [Russell] Vought and [Donald] Asset. “
Kate Knibbs and Aarian Marshall contributed to this reporting.