A group of staffers has resigned from Elon Musk’s rogue “Department of Government Efficiency” in a joint protest against the billionaire’s coup and indiscriminate slashing of the federal government.
In a joint resignation letter reported by The Associated Press, the 21 workers said that they refuse to use their expertise to “compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services.”
“We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions,” the group wrote.
The group is made up of engineers, data scientists and product managers, the AP reported, who formerly held senior roles in major tech companies. They said that the lackeys hired by Musk lack the experience and knowledge that they and other federal bureaucrats fired by DOGE applied to their positions.
The staffers were carryovers who worked for the U.S. Digital Service, which Trump reorganized and renamed as “DOGE” in an executive order on his first day in office.
Experts have said it’s unclear if DOGE is a formal agency, as major offices and agencies can only be created by Congress, while numerous lawsuits, politicians and experts have said that Musk and the group are acting unlawfully. The White House itself has admitted that Musk “has no actual or formal authority” — even as it allows him to exercise wide authority over the government.
In their letter, the former staffers said that people wearing White House visitors’ badges raided the agency to grill the Digital Service employees the day after Trump’s inauguration.
The goal seemed to be to disrupt the agency from the start, with the visitors seemingly “guided by ideology and fandom of Musk,” AP reports.
“Several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability,” the letter says. “This process created significant security risks.”
The letter goes on to say that, earlier this month, the Trump administration laid off 40 workers from the office, whose mission is to improve and modernize government services.
“These highly skilled civil servants were working to modernize Social Security, veterans’ services, tax filing, health care, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services,” the staffers said. “Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems and American’s data less safe.”
The resignation is the latest sign of unrest within the federal government as Musk, an unelected official, targets numerous agencies, enacting major cuts to crucial health research, Medicare and Medicaid, and life-saving foreign aid, among many others.
Most recently, Musk has attempted to carry out a huge round of layoffs by sending an email to all federal employees demanding that they document their productivity over the past week or be laid off. This has caused some rifts within the administration as heads for the FBI, State Department, and other agencies have told employees to ignore the email.
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