#doge staffers resign

[usanewscorner]

Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, 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 President 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, designers 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.

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[robertreich]

Friends, Since I offered you 10 reasons for modest optimism last week, discontent with the Trump-Musk regime has surged even further. America appears to be waking up. Here’s the latest evidence — 10 more reasons for modest optimism. 1. Trump’s approval ratings continue to plummet. The chief reason Trump was elected was to reduce the high costs of living — especially food, housing, health care, and gas. A new Pew poll shows these costs remain uppermost in Americans’ minds. Sixty-three percent identify inflation as an overriding problem, and 67 percent say the same about the affordability of health care. That same poll shows the public turning on Trump. The percent of those disapproving of Trump’s handling of the economy has risen to 53 percent (versus 45 percent who approve). Disapproval of his actions as president has risen to the same 53 percent versus 45 percent approval, which shows how essential economic performance is to the public’s assessment of presidents these days. The Pew poll also shows 57 percent of the public believes that Trump “has exceeded his presidential authority.” By making the world’s richest person his hatchet man, Trump has made more vivid the role of money in politics. Hence, a record-high 72 percent now say a major problem is “the role of money in politics.” Other polls show similar results. In the Post-Ipsos poll, significantly more Americans strongly disapprove of Trump (39 percent) than strongly approve of him (27 percent). Reuters, Quinnipiac University, CNN, and Gallup polls show Trump’s approval ratings plummeting (ranging from 44 percent to 47 percent). In all of these polls, more Americans now disapprove of Trump than approve of him. 2. DOGE is running amusk. DOGE looks more and more like a giant hoax. This week, reporters found that nearly 40 percent of the contracts DOGE claims to have canceled aren’t expected to save the government any money, according to the administration’s own data. As a result, on Tuesday DOGE deleted all of the five biggest “savings” on its so-called “wall of receipts.” The scale of its errors — and the misunderstandings and poor quality control that appear to underlie them — has raised questions about the effort’s broader work, which has led to mass firings and cutbacks across the federal government. DOGE has also had to reverse its firings. On Tuesday, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas A. Collins celebrated cuts to 875 contracts that he claimed would save nearly $2 billion. But when veterans learned that those contracts covered medical services, recruited doctors, and funded cancer programs as well as burial services for veterans, the outcry was so loud that on Wednesday the VA rescinded the ordered cuts. After hundreds of nuclear weapons workers were abruptly fired, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire them. After hundreds of scientists at the Food and Drug Administration were fired, they’re being asked to return. On Wednesday, Musk acknowledged that DOGE “accidentally canceled” efforts by the U.S. Agency for International Development to prevent the spread of Ebola. But Musk insisted the initiative was quickly restored. Wrong. Current and former USAID officials say Ebola prevention efforts have been largely halted since Musk and his DOGE allies moved last month to gut the global-assistance agency and freeze its outgoing payments. The teams and contractors that would be deployed to fight an Ebola outbreak have been dismantled, they added. DOGE staff are resigning. On Tuesday, 21 federal civil service tech workers resigned from DOGE, writing in a joint resignation letter that they were quitting rather than help Musk “dismantle critical public services.” The staffers all worked for what was known as the U.S. Digital Service before it was absorbed by DOGE. Their ranks include data scientists, product managers, and engineers. According to the Associated Press, “all previously held senior roles at such tech companies as Google and Amazon and wrote in their resignation letter that they joined the government out of a sense of duty to…

Read the full list here: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/more-reasons-for-moderate-optimism

[nothorses]

The staffers who resigned appear to have started with USDS before the Trump administration.

"As civil servants, we remained committed throughout the Presidential Transition to delivering better government services through technology and stood ready to partner with incoming officials," they write. "Each of us left senior private sector technology positions to pursue nonpartisan public service. 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 at the United States DOGE Service."

[saywhat-politics]

[mariacallous]

Federal employees are seeking a temporary restraining order as part of a class action lawsuit accusing a group of Elon Musk’s associates of allegedly operating an illegally connected server from the fifth floor of the US Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) headquarters in Washington, DC.

An attorney representing two federal workers—Jane Does 1 and 2—filed a motion this morning arguing that the server’s continued operation not only violates federal law but is potentially exposing vast quantities of government staffers’ personal information to hostile foreign adversaries through unencrypted email.

A copy of the motion, filed in the DC District Court by National Security Counselors, a Washington-area public-interest law firm, was obtained by WIRED exclusively in advance. WIRED previously reported that Musk had installed several lackeys in OPM’s top offices, including individuals with ties to xAI, Neuralink, and other companies he owns.

The initial lawsuit, filed on January 27, cites reports that Musk’s associates illegally connected a server to a government network for the purposes of harvesting information, including the names and email accounts of federal employees. The server was installed on the agency’s premises, the complaint alleges, without OPM—the government’s human resources department—conducting a mandatory privacy impact assessment required under federal law.

Under the 2002 E-Government Act, agencies are required to perform privacy assessments prior to making “substantial changes to existing information technology” when handling information “in identifiable form.” Notably, prior to the installation of the server, OPM did not have the technical capability to email the entire federal workforce from a single email account.

“[A]t some point after 20 January 2025, OPM allowed unknown individuals to simply bypass its existing systems and security protocols,” Tuesday’s motion claims, “for the stated purpose of being able to communicate directly with those individuals without involving other agencies. In short, the sole purpose of these new systems was expediency.”

OPM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If the motion is granted, OPM would be forced to disconnect the server until the assessment is done. As a consequence, the Trump administration’s plans to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce would likely face delays. The email account linked to the server—HR@opm.gov—is currently being used to gather information from federal workers accepting buyouts under the admin’s “deferred resignation program,” which is set to expire on February 6.

“Under the law, a temporary restraining order is an extraordinary remedy,” notes National Security Counselors’ executive director, Kel McClanahan. “But this is an extraordinary situation.”

Before issuing a restraining order, courts apply what’s known as the “balance of equities” doctrine, weighing the burdens and costs on both parties. In this case, however, McClanahan argues that the injunction would inflict “no hardship” on the government whatsoever. February 6 is an “arbitrary deadline,” he says, and the administration could simply continue to implement the resignation program “through preexisting channels.”

“We can't wait for the normal course of litigation when all that information is just sitting there in some system nobody knows about with who knows what protections,” McClanahan says. “In a normal case, we might be able to at least count on the inspector general to do something, but Trump fired her, so all bets are off.”

The motion further questions whether OPM violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which prohibits federal agencies from taking actions “not in accordance with the law.” Under the APA, courts may “compel agency action”—such as a private assessment—when it is “unlawfully withheld.”

Employees at various agencies were reportedly notified last month to be on the lookout for messages originating from the HR@opm.gov account. McClanahan’s complaint points to a January 23 email from acting Homeland Security secretary Benjamine Huffman instructing DHS employees that the HR@opm.gov account “can be considered trusted.” In the following days, emails were blasted out twice across the executive branch instructing federal workers to reply “Yes” in both cases.

The same account was later used to transmit the “Fork in the Road” missive promoting the Trump administration’s legally dubious “deferred resignation program,” which claims to offer federal workers the opportunity to quit but continue receiving paychecks through September. Workers who wished to participate in the program were instructed to reply to the email with “Resign.”

As WIRED has reported, even the new HR chief of DOGE, Musk’s task force, was unable to answer basic questions about the offer.

The legal authority underlying the program is unclear, and federal employee union leaders are warning workers not to blindly assume they will actually get paid. In a floor speech last week, Senator Tim Kaine advised workers not to be fooled: “There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work.” Patty Murray, ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, similarly warned Monday: “There is no funding allocated to agencies to pay staff for this offer.”

McClanahan’s lawsuit highlights the government’s response to the OPM hack of 2015, which compromised personnel records on more than 22 million people, including some who’d undergone background checks to obtain security clearances. A congressional report authored by House Republicans following the breach pinned the incident on a “breakdown in communications” between OPM’s chief information officer and its inspector general: “The future effectiveness of the agency’s information technology and security efforts,” it says, “will depend on a strong relationship between these two entities moving forward.”

OPM’s inspector general, Krista Boyd, was fired by President Donald Trump in the midst of the “Friday night purge” on January 24—one day after the first HR@opm.gov email was sent.

“We are witnessing an unprecedented exfiltration and seizure of the most sensitive kinds of information by unelected, unvetted people with no experience, responsibility, or right to it,” says Sean Vitka, policy director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, which is supporting the action. “Millions of Americans and the collective interests of the United States desperately need emergency intervention from the courts. The constitutional crisis is already here.”

[fuck-u-maga]

https://www.wsj.com/tech/doge-staffer-resigns-over-racist-posts-d9f11a93

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ilana Berger at MMFA:

As President Donald Trump’s administration orders mass layoffs and cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, local meteorologists and influencer storm chasers — including some weather experts who previously claimed to avoid politics or expressed right-leaning views — are speaking out in support of federal employees and the essential information provided by the agency. 

Trump’s funding cuts and layoffs will hobble NOAA and the National Weather Service, potentially restricting access to a vital public good that costs taxpayers very little

NOAA and its subsidiaries, including the National Weather Service, employ thousands of scientists, engineers, and other experts to conduct vital research that is shared with the public. NOAA’s products and services range “from daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings, and climate monitoring to fisheries management, coastal restoration and supporting marine commerce.” The NWS estimates that the critical information it provides costs just $4 per U.S. resident per year. [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, accessed 3/14/25; The New York Times, 2/8/25]  

Project 2025 — the right-wing plan for a second Trump administration organized by The Heritage Foundation with over 100 conservative partner organizations — called for NOAA to be “broken up and downsized” and urged the National Weather Service to “fully commercialize its forecasting operations.” Weather experts across the country have expressed alarm at Project 2025’s plans to dismantle NOAA under the new administration. Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, who now heads Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, has promised, “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.” [Media Matters, 5/31/24, 9/27/24, 2/28/25; ProPublica, 10/28/24]  

Starting on February 27, the Trump administration has laid off more than 800 NOAA employees, plus another 500 who resigned if the agency promised to pay them through September. According to The New York Times, “The two rounds of departures together represent about 10 percent of NOAA’s roughly 13,000 employees.” On March 12, NOAA announced in an email to its staffers that the agency would be laying off another 1,029 employees, or roughly 10% of the agency’s remaining workforce. [The New York Times, 2/27/25, 2/28/25]  

The Associated Press: “After this upcoming round of cuts, NOAA will have eliminated about one out of four jobs since President Donald Trump took office in January.” “This is not government efficiency,” said former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad. “It is the first steps toward eradication. There is no way to make these kinds of cuts without removing or strongly compromising mission capabilities.” [The Associated Press, 3/12/25]  

The NWS’ National Hurricane Center has made great strides in tracking dangerous storms, but Trump’s layoffs are threatening that progress. A February preview of a report from the National Hurricane Center concluded that for the first time, the center managed to “explicitly forecast a system that was not yet a tropical cyclone (pre-Helene potential tropical cyclone) to become a 100-kt (115 mph) major hurricane within 72 hours.” However, experts fear that funding cuts and layoffs at NOAA’s Office of Aircraft Operations will impact the ability of the agency’s specialized “Hurricane Hunters” to collect data used for tracking and predicting destructive storms. [National Hurricane Center, 2/24/25; Yale Climate Connections, 3/6/25]

Meteorologists and storm chasers of all political persuasions issue dire warnings that the Project 2025/DOGE-inspired cuts to the NOAA and the NWS threaten public safety and forecast accuracy.

[nudityandnerdery]

And in another post the same month, according to the Journal, the account wrote, “Normalize Indian hate,” in reference to another post on the large population of people from India in Silicon Valley.

Vance's wife is from India, but apparently he's on the side of people who want to normalize hating her.

[allthegeopolitics]

A group of civil service employees in the United States have announced their resignation from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), in the latest sign of discord within the administration of President Donald Trump. The 21 employees issued a joint letter to DOGE leadership, which was also obtained by media outlets including The Associated Press. In their statement on Tuesday, they accused DOGE of carrying out ideological attacks and risking the integrity of government systems.

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[darkmaga-returns]

Acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Michelle King has reportedly stepped down from her post, after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) requested access to recipient data, sources told CNN on Monday.

The two unidentified sources claimed that King refused to give the information to DOGE staffers at the SSA, and the White House has replaced her with new acting Commissioner Leland Dudek. 

King's exit comes as the new Trump administration moves to drastically reorganize and restructure the federal government. Thousands of probationary federal employees have been axed over the weekend, and others left voluntarily after accepting a federal buyout option.

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said the agency will be led by a "career Social Security anti-fraud expert" until President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Social Security Administration is confirmed.

“President Trump has nominated the highly qualified and talented Frank Bisignano to lead the Social Security Administration, and we expect him to be swiftly confirmed in the coming weeks," Fields said. "In the meantime, the agency will be led by a career Social Security anti-fraud expert as the acting commissioner.

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

Twenty-one staffers of the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have resigned, saying in a letter sent Tuesday to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles that they "will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE's actions." ..... These officials wrote that they "will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services." ... In their letter, the staffers noted that the day after Inauguration Day, they did 15-minute interviews with individuals wearing 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 letter said. "This process created significant security risks and was designed to intimidate government employees."

[follow-up-news]

More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, 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 President 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, designers 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.

[saywhat-politics]

The joint resignation letter was addressed to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and uploaded to a webpage called WetheBuilders.org.

Feb. 25, 2025, 12:37 PM MST / Updated Feb. 25, 2025, 1:03 PM MST

By Lora Kolodny, CNBC, Allan Smith and Daniel Arkin

Twenty-one civil service employees resigned en masse from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, according to a letter posted online and shared with media outlets Tuesday. The letter said they refused to use their technical expertise to "compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services."

"We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations," wrote the staffers, who joined when the agency was known as the United States Digital Service (USDS). "However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments at the United States DOGE Service."

A person familiar with the letter confirmed its authenticity to NBC News.

The staffers behind the joint letter did not sign their names but listed their job titles, including “Engineer,” “Product Manager” and “Designer.” NBC News has not confirmed their identities.

[mariacallous]

Employees at the Social Security Administration (SSA) were informed on Thursday morning that new rules forbid them from accessing “general news” websites, including those that have been at the forefront of the reporting on Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort.

In an email reviewed by WIRED and addressed to “all SSA employees” from a mailing list called “internal communications,” the agency informed employees that it was “implementing additional restrictions to the categories of websites prohibited from government-furnished equipment. Effective today, March 6, 2025, the categories include: Online shopping; General News; and Sports.” The headline read “Internet Browsing from Government Equipment.”

The email did not specify which websites in particular were to be blocked. However, WIRED has confirmed with two sources inside the SSA that Wired.com is no longer accessible today, though it was accessible previously.

The sources also confirmed that the websites of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and MSNBC were inaccessible. However, the sources were able to access other news websites including Politico and Axios.

“Local news blocked,” says one source at SSA, who was granted anonymity over fears of retribution. “So if there was a local shooting or something, I wouldn’t be able to see.”

It’s unclear who has implemented the block list or what criteria were used to populate it, but it appears not to be based on ideological grounds, as Fox News and Breitbart are also blocked.

On Friday, weeks after DOGE engineers were installed at SSA, the agency announced plans to cut 7,000 employees. Many of the agency’s most senior staff have resigned. This includes former SSA commissioner Michelle King, who has decades of experience within the agency. She was replaced by acting commissioner Leland Dudek, a mid-level staffer who claimed in a LinkedIn post, reviewed by WIRED, that he had been punished by King for helping DOGE engineers when they first arrived. Musk and Donald Trump have also continued to push the conspiracy theory that millions of dead people are continuing to collect social security benefits, despite the fact those claims have been debunked.

In the hours after the initial email was sent about blocking news sites, some employees received another email from their managers providing instructions on how to disable news showing up on the Edge landing page. This was not a requirement but a recommendation to help employees resist the temptation to click on news links, a source who had received the email told WIRED.

Those trying to visit Wired.com were greeted with a page replicating much of what was in the initial email. It also listed a “URL Reputiation” score, though it was unclear where that score was being sourced from, or if it has a bearing on site access. Different blocked news websites were given different scores, according to screenshots viewed by WIRED.

SSA employees typically use computers with Microsoft’s Edge installed as the internet browser. The default landing page on that browser is set to show news headlines, according to several sources at SSA.

“Employees with a legitimate business [sic] should submit an exception SAM request for their supervisor's review,” the email continued. “These additional restrictions will help reduce risk and better protect the sensitive information entrusted to us in our many systems.”

On Reddit, multiple members of the FedNews subreddit who said they worked at the SSA claimed that accessing news in a timely manner was an essential part of their job. Others pointed out that being able to make purchases online was a core component of their work.

After this article was published, an SSA spokesperson told WIRED that it implemented the restrictions because “employees should be focused on mission-critical work and serving the American people.”

It did not respond to requests for comment on why some news websites were blocked and others were not.

Employees at several other US government agencies contacted by WIRED said similar blocks on news pages had not been implemented on their networks.

[star-pound-star]

21 DOGE staffers resign, saying they won't help 'dismantle' public services

[uplift-daily]

The staffers who resigned had worked for the United States Digital Service, but said their duties were being integrated into DOGE. In a joint resignation letter, the staffers refused 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. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”