More than 20 civil servants have resigned from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), saying they refuse to use their technical expertise to dismantle critical United States government 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 honour those commitments.”
The mass resignations included engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers previously employed by top technology firms including Amazon and Google.
“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardise Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” they said.
“We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimise DOGE’s actions.”
The employees also warned that many Musk enlisted to slash government departments in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues without proper skills or experience for the task ahead of them.
This comes as Musk and Trump attempt a tech driven purge of the government and attempt to coerce thousands of government workers out of the job.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the mass resignations.
“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.”
In a post to X, Musk also claimed that the story was “fake news”.
“They would have been fired had they not resigned,” he posted.
