Washington – over 20 civil service employees gave up on Tuesday from billionaire adviser Trump Elon Musk Department of GovernmentSpeaking, they refused to utilize their technical knowledge to “break down critical public services”.
“We swore to serve the American nation and maintain our oath of the Constitution as part of the presidential administration”, 21 employees wrote in a joint resignation letter, whose copy was obtained by the Associated Press. “However, it became clear that we can no longer respect these obligations.”
Employees also warned that many people enlisted by Musk to help him reduce the size of the federal government under the president Donald Trump The administration was political ideologists who had no necessary skills or experience for the task before them.
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Mass resignation of engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers is a transient failure for musk and republican president Cleansing the federal workforce based on technology. He comes among the avalanches of court challenges that tried to get stuck, stop or relax efforts to release or fatigue Thousands of government employees Apart from work.
In a statement, the press secretary of the White House Karoline Leavitt He disregarded mass resignation.
“Everyone who thinks that President Trump has had to sleep under the stone for the last few years,” said Leavitt. “President Trump will not refrain from making the promises that our federal government is more efficient and more responsible before hard -working American taxpayers.”
Musk published on his social media website X that history was “false messages” and suggested that employees were “political attitudes” who “were released if they had not given up.”
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Employees who gave up worked for United States Digital ServiceBut he said their duties were integrated with Doge. Their former office, USDS, was founded under the leadership of President Barack Obama after unsuccessful implementation Healthcare.govThe internet portal, which millions of Americans utilize to sign up to obtain insurance plans through signed healthcare law of Democrats.
Everyone has previously played older roles in such technology companies as Google and Amazon and wrote in a resignation letter that they joined the government with a sense of public service.
The objectification of Trump’s musk raised it. Next day Trump inaugurationEmployees wrote, they were called to a series of interviews that announced the mysterious and destructive work of the government department or Doge.
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According to employees, people bearing badges visiting the White House, some of whom would not give their names, play employees on their qualifications and politics impartially. Some statements that have indicated that they have confined technical understanding. Many They were newborn and seemed to be guided by ideology and musk fandom – does not improve government technology.
“Several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, tried to raise colleagues against themselves and showed limited technical skills,” wrote employees in their letter. “This process has created a significant risk of security.”
At the beginning of this month, about 40 employees were released in the office. The burning was a devastating blow to the government’s ability to manage and protect their own technological trace, they wrote.
“These highly qualified officials worked on modernizing social security, veterans’ services, tax notification, healthcare, assistance in the case of disasters, student assistance and other critical services,” says a resignation letter. “Their removal threatens millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technological knowledge makes America’s critical systems and data less secure. “
About a third of 65 employees who remained in USDS resigned on Tuesday, and not take fresh duties at Doge.
“We will not use our skills as technologists to expose basic government systems, threats to confidential American data or dismantling critical public services,” they wrote. “We will not borrow our specialist knowledge to carry out or legitimize Doge activities.”
The musk effort from cutting and inflammation leads from what Trump initially outlined during the presidential campaign in 2024 Doge, a nod to the favorite coin with a cryptocurrency meme, was initially presented as a Blue-Ribbon commission that would exist outside the government.
However, after the election, Musk suggested that there would be more, publishing his social media site X, “a threat to democracy? No, threat to bureaucracy !!! “Since then, he leaned aggressively in this role.
Last week he was standing on stage at a conservative political conference, at a meeting outside Washington Chinese chain saw Above his head, which was given by the Argentine President Javier milei.
“This is a bureaucracy chain saw,” Musk roared from the stage.
Despite this, Musk tried to maintain technical talent on the spot, and most of the dismissals at the Digital Services Office focused on people such as designers, product managers, human resources and contract employees, according to interviews with current and former staff.
Of the 40 people, they went off the beginning of this month, only one was an engineer – a candid and politically busy employee of Jonathan Camens, who in an interview with AP said that he was released for the public support of the vice president Kamala HarrisDemocrat, on his personal blog and criticizes muscles on chats with colleagues.
“I think Elon Musk has nothing good. And I think that all data to which he acquires access will be used for purposes that are inappropriate and harmful to Americans, “said Camens.
Veterans from digital services in the US, who spoke provided anonymity in fear of repression, remembered a similar shock in how government processes worked, which Musk and his team discover. With time, many decided why some things in the government had to be treated with more caution than in the private sector.
“” Move quickly and break “can be acceptable to someone who owns the company and is the owner of the risk. And if everything is not going well, the damage is divided into division. But when you break things in the government, you break things that belong to people who have not enrolled in it, “said Cordell Schachter, who until the last month was the information director in the US transport department.
USDS was created over ten years ago to do things such as improving services for veterans, and helped create a free portal run by the government so that taxpayers do not have to go through third parties such as Turbotax. He also developed improving systems in which the federal government bought technology.
He was involved in a fair participation in the fighting of the agency’s bureaucracy and wars with the main information officers throughout the government who were not similar to their agency systems. The power of USD throughout the government resulted from the imprimatures of action on behalf of the White House and its founding mission to improve the service for the American nation.
Leavitt, the press secretary of the White House, is one of the three administrative officials who are facing the lawsuits from the Associated Press based on the first and fifth anme. AP claims that all three punish the press agency for editorial decisions that they oppose. The White House claims that AP does not comply with the executive order to call the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
