More than 20 Musk staffers resign over Doge’s ‘dismantling of public services’

More than 20 civil service employees resigned on Tuesday from Elon Musk’s so-called “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 staffers 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 honor those commitments.”

The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under 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 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.

The staffers who resigned worked for what was once known as the United States Digital Service, an office established during 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.

Meanwhile, New York’s Democratic governor wants to hire federal workers fired by Doge. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday welcomed recently laid-off federal workers to apply for state jobs using an online portal.

“The federal government might say: ‘You’re fired,’ but here in New York, we say: ‘You’re hired.’ In fact, we love federal workers,” Hochul said in a videotaped statement.