Technical staff resign rather than help Musk make government cuts
The 21 staff members who resigned en masse worked for what was once known as the United States Digital Service.
More than 20 civil service employees resigned on Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services”.
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staff members wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.
“However, it has become clear that we can no longer honour those commitments.”
The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Mr Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.
The mass resignation of engineers, data scientists and product managers is a temporary setback for Mr Musk and the Republican president’s tech-driven purge of the federal workforce.
It comes amid a flurry of court challenges that have sought to stall, stop or unwind their efforts to fire or coerce thousands of government workers out of jobs.
In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years.
“President Trump will not be deterred from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers.”
The staff who resigned worked for what was once known as the United States Digital Service, an office established during former president Barack Obama’s administration after the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov, the web portal that millions of Americans use to sign up for insurance plans through the Democrat’s signature healthcare law.
All had previously held senior roles at tech companies such as Google and Amazon and wrote in their resignation letter that they joined the government out of a sense of duty to public service.
Mr Trump’s empowerment of Mr Musk upended that. The day after Mr Trump’s inauguration, the staff members wrote, they were called into a series of interviews that foreshadowed the secretive and disruptive work of Mr Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
According to the employees, people wearing White House visitors’ badges, some of whom would not give their names, grilled the nonpartisan employees about their qualifications and politics. Some made statements that indicated they had a limited technical understanding. Many were young and seemed guided by ideology and fandom of Mr Musk — not improving government technology.
“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.”
Earlier this month, about 40 staff members in the office were sacked. The dismissals dealt a devastating blow to the government’s ability to administer and safeguard its own technological footprint, they wrote.
“These highly skilled civil servants were working to modernise Social Security, veterans’ services, tax filing, healthcare, disaster relief, student aid and other critical services,” the resignation letter states.
“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.”
Those who remained, about 65 staffers, were integrated into Doge’s government-slashing effort. About a third of them resigned Tuesday en masse.
“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardise Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” they wrote. “We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimise Doge’s actions.”
The slash-and-burn effort Mr Musk is leading diverges from what was initially outlined by Mr Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. Doge, a nod to Mr Musk’s favourite cryptocurrency meme coin, was initially presented as a blue-ribbon commission that would exist outside government.
After the election, however, Mr Musk hinted there was more to come, posting to his social media site, X, “Threat to democracy? Nope, threat to BUREAUCRACY!!!”
Last week he stood on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference gathering outside Washington, where he boasted of his exploits and hoisted a chainsaw above his head that was given by Argentinian President Javier Milei.
“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,” Mr Musk announced from the stage.
Still, Mr Musk has tried to keep technical talent in place, with the bulk of the layoffs in the Digital Service office focused on people in roles such as designers, product managers, human resources and contracting staff, according to interviews with current and former staff.
Of the 40 people let go earlier this month, only one was an engineer, Jonathan Kamens, who said in an interview with the AP that he believes he was sacked for publicly endorsing former vice president Kamala Harris, a Democrat, on his personal blog and being critical of Mr Musk in chats with colleagues.
“I believe that Elon Musk is up to no good. And I believe that any data that he gains access to is going to be used for purposes that are inappropriate and harmful to Americans,” Mr Kamens said.
US Digital Service veterans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal, recalled experiencing a similar sort of shock about how government processes worked that Mr Musk and his team are discovering.
Over time, many developed an appreciation for why certain things in government had to be treated with more care than in the private sector.
“‘Move fast and break things’ may be acceptable to someone who owns a business and owns the risk. And if things don’t go well, the damage is compartmentalised. But when you break things in government, you’re breaking things that belong to people who didn’t sign up for that,” said Cordell Schachter, who until last month was the chief information officer at the US Department of Transportation.
USDS was established over a decade ago to improve services for veterans, and it helped create a free government-run portal so tax filers did not have to go through third parties. It also devised systems to improve the way the federal government purchased technology.
It has been embroiled in its fair share of bureaucracy fights and agency turf wars with chief information officers across government who resented interlopers treading in their agency’s systems. USDS’s power across government stemmed from the imprimatur of acting on behalf of the White House and its founding mission of improving service for the American people.
