There are more workforce woes in Washington, as over 20 staffers from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have reportedly resigned from their positions.
The head of the DOGE has been taking Donald Trump's request to be 'more aggressive' seriously, and after already gutting departments like USAID, he's demanded that federal workers return to in-office work AND sent over 2.3 million employees an email asking, "What did you do last week?"
After departments like the FBI told its staff to ignore Musk's email, the tech billionaire issued a fresh ultimatum telling government workers he'll give them one more chance to reply.
As reported by the Associated Press, over 20 DOGE workers have made their feelings clear and resigned in spectacular fashion.
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The letter was signed by 21 staffers, who had various roles, including engineers, data scientists, designers, and product managers.
In the scathing resignation, they jointly wrote: "We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations.
"However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments."
Calling out plans to "dismantle critical public services," they added the accusation that those who've assisted Musk and President Trump in slashing the government workforce are 'political ideologues' who don't have the right skills to take on the task ahead of them.
The 21 come from an office that was established during Barack Obama's administration and was formerly known as the United States Digital Service. All had high-ranking roles at tech companies like Amazon and Google before joining the government out of a sense of duty to the public.
Apparently, the former staffers were called into interviews the day after Trump's January 20 inauguration, having to undertake interviews with a series of young and unknown individuals wearing White House visitors' badges.
The staffers suggest these people had limited technical knowledge and continued: "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. This process created significant security risks.”
This follows backlash to general complaints that Musk has employed a legion of young staff who aren't equipped to slash $2 trillion of government spending in the right way.
As for the 21 resignations, this is just the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Over 75,000 federal employees have apparently taken the 'deferred resignation' offer, while the United States Office of Personnel Management reports that over 220,000 who were in their probationary period have also been laid off.
That's without taking into account layoffs in the Energy Department, Department of Homeland Security, at least 17 inspectors general, and more.
There were recent jokes that an NSFW AI video involving Musk and Trump was able to play on screens at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because the DOGE had fired the tech staff.
Responding to the DOGE resignations, Musk posted X and called the story 'fake news'. The DOGE head referred to them as “Dem political holdovers” and said they "would have been fired had they not resigned."
Cue the jibes about it soon just being Musk and Trump left running things in Washington.