A little over a month after his return to power, Donald Trump is holding his first cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the star of which will not be a minister, strictly speaking, but billionaire Elon Musk, whose mission to reform the federal apparatus continues to shake up Washington.

The "cabinet meeting" is not really comparable to a weekly council of ministers such as takes place in France, since in the United States, in the absence of a Prime Minister, the President is the head of government.

This is a rarer meeting, during which the head of state sets out his strategy and boasts of his achievements.

The meeting is scheduled for 11am local time, or 4pm GMT.

It will already allow Donald Trump to show that most of his ministers, even the most criticized, have been confirmed without problem by the Senate, for example the Minister of Health and vaccine skeptic Robert Kennedy Junior, or the Minister of Defense and former TV host Pete Hegseth.

Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla and Space X and owner of the social network X, will be present as head of the "Department of Government Efficiency" (Doge), responsible for laying off thousands of civil servants and drastically reducing administration spending.

Despite the name "department", normally reserved for ministries, Doge is an advisory body reporting directly to the president, and the richest man in the world is not a minister, a position that would create specific legal and ethical obligations.

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At a time when the American press is reporting the first tensions between the hyperactive entrepreneur and other members of the executive, the Republican president saw fit to show him strong support on his Truth Social network, writing on Wednesday, in capital letters: "All the ministers are very happy with what Elon is doing."

The latter will serve as a "special government employee" and "senior adviser to the president."

A few nominations are still awaiting the Senate's green light, including those of Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a former congresswoman, to the post of Secretary of Labor, and Linda McMahon, already a minister during Donald Trump's first term (2017-2021), then in charge of small businesses, to the post of Secretary of Education.

But the Republican president has already established himself as the main driving force behind government action, signing decree after decree, with a clear intention of extending his prerogatives as much as possible, particularly in relation to Congress.

Elon Musk is facing his first difficulties within the Doge. A third of his staff, or about twenty employees, presented their collective resignation on Tuesday in protest, a few days after sending mass emails to about two million American civil servants, ordering them to describe their past work week or be fired.

After the emails were sent, most of the targeted administrations told their staff on Monday to ignore the Doge's message or downplayed the risks of not responding.

Beyond the presence of Elon Musk, this first ministerial council of Trump's second term has another particularity: it takes place after the White House has completely taken back control of press access, breaking with a system managed for decades by journalists themselves.

Since Tuesday, it is no longer, as was previously the case, the White House Correspondents' Association that decides which journalists are admitted closest to the president via the presidential "pool", but the executive branch's communications team.