Another day, another government workforce reduction
More than 20 employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have reportedly quit their jobs, adding to Washington’s staffing problems.
After previously dismantling agencies like USAID, the head of DOGE has been taking Donald Trump’s call to be “more aggressive” seriously. He has written an email to nearly 2.3 million employees asking, “What did you do last week?” and requested that government employees resume in-office work.
The tech mogul gave federal employees a new ultimatum, saying he would give them another time to respond, after agencies like the FBI instructed its employees to disregard Musk’s email.
More than 20 DOGE employees have expressed their opinions and resigned in a spectacular manner, according to the Associated Press.
Twenty-one employees, representing a range of positions, including engineers, data scientists, designers, and product managers, signed the statement.
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” they wrote together in the blistering resignation.
“But it is now evident that we are unable to fulfill those obligations.”
They also accused individuals who have helped Musk and President Trump cut the government workforce of being “political ideologues” who lack the necessary abilities to handle the task at hand. They further called out attempts to “dismantle critical public services.”
Previously known as the United States Digital Service, the 21 are from an office that was founded under the administration of Barack Obama. All joined the government out of a feeling of public responsibility after holding senior positions at internet firms like Google and Amazon.
Evidently, the day following Trump’s inauguration on January 20, the former staff members were summoned to have interviews with a number of unidentified and youthful people donning White House visitor badges.
“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 staffers added, implying that these individuals lacked technical expertise. There were serious security dangers associated with this technique.
This comes after widespread allegations that Musk has hired a large number of youthful employees who lack the necessary skills to properly cut $2 trillion in government spending.
The 21 resignations are only the beginning of a much larger problem. According to the US Office of Personnel Management, approximately 220,000 federal employees who were in their probationary term were also laid off, and it appears that over 75,000 federal employees accepted the “deferred resignation” offer.
Not include the layoffs at the Department of Homeland Security, the Energy Department, at least 17 inspectors general, and other agencies.
Recently, there were jokes that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s tech personnel had been dismissed by the DOGE, which allowed an offensive AI movie featuring Musk and Trump to appear on displays.
Musk referred to the DOGE resignations as “fake news” in his article X. Referred to as “Dem political holdovers,” the head of DOGE stated that they “would have been fired had they not resigned.”
Cue the taunts that Musk and Trump will soon be the only ones left in charge of Washington.
