21 Workers Resign From DOGE as Elon Musk Destroys the U.S. Government

Twenty-one workers at Elon Musk’s DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, resigned on Tuesday over the group’s ongoing destruction of the U.S. government. The workers were all originally part of the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) until a month ago, when the government agency was hijacked and rebranded as DOGE by President Donald Trump.

“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” the group wrote in a letter seen by the AP. “We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.”

The U.S. Digital Service was founded during Barack Obama’s presidency to work on vital government programs on the tech side. But Musk essentially created a Frankenstein agency by giving the USDS a new face and bringing in a bunch of teens and 20-somethings to rummage through the machinery of government, without any care for privacy rights or national security.

DOGE has been taking a chainsaw to the federal government at the behest of Musk, a billionaire who runs the pseudo-agency despite the fact that court filings by the U.S. Department of Justice insist he’s not actually the group’s administrator. Just yesterday a federal judge again asked a government lawyer who was running DOGE, but the lawyer insisted they didn’t know.

DOGE has been unilaterally canceling countless contracts across the government, while Musk tweets hundreds of times per day about how he’s rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. In reality, Musk has never presented evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse, instead highlighting programs he simply doesn’t like and cutting them without the proper authority to do so. And the billionaire continues to make his way through the government to slash and burn in a process that has touched every agency from the Department of Homeland Security to the National Park Service.

About 40 people were laid off from DOGE/USDS shortly after Trump took power, including one politically active worker named Jonathan Kamens, who believes he was fired for endorsing Kamala Harris for president in 2024 and criticizing Musk’s approach with coworkers.

Ironically, the AP notes that many people who worked at the Digital Service were highly critical of the way that government operates and were doing their best to reform the system. But even people who wanted major changes to tech systems within the U.S. government believe Musk is acting recklessly.

The AP spoke with Cordell Schachter, who was working as the CIO at the U.S. Department of Transportation until a month ago when she was roped into the DOGE group of miscreants.

“‘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 compartmentalized. But when you break things in government, you’re breaking things that belong to people who didn’t sign up for that,” Schachter said.