The staffers refused to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services”.
More than 20 US government employees resigned on Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
“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 honour those commitments,” they added.
The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him cut the size of the US government 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, designers, and product managers is a temporary setback for Musk and President Donald Trump’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.
In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was dismissive of the mass resignation.
“Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years,” Leavitt said.
“President Trump will not be deterred from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers,” she added.
We will not ‘dismantle critical public services’
Musk posted on his social media site X that the story was “fake news” and suggested that the staffers were “Dem political holdovers” who “would have been fired had they not resigned”.
The staffers had worked for the United States Digital Service but said their work was integrated into the new group DOGE.
The digital service was established under former president Barack Obama.
Roughly one-third of the 65 staffers who remained at USDS quit on Tuesday rather than take on new duties under DOGE.
“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardise Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” they wrote.
“We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimise DOGE’s actions”.
