In other news, DOGE team nopes out of Elon Musk’s public service overhaul

As Elon Musk takes a chainsaw to the federal government, his own employees are fleeing the forest.

Dozens of civil service workers at the Department of Government Efficiency have resigned in protest of Elon Musk’s policies, refusing to use their skills to help the billionaire “dismantle critical public services” in an effort to cut federal costs.

According to a resignation letter obtained by Associated Press, the employees wrote “we swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” but they can “no longer honor those commitments” due to the danger that they believe Musk’s budget cuts pose.

Musk has attempted to downplay the letter as “fake news,” writing that the departing employees were “political holdovers” who would have been fired anyway.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took a similar tack, saying that “anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years,” and that the president “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.” Remaining DOGE employees follow suit, with DOGE staffer Katie Miller writing that the departing employees were “full remote workers who hung Trans flags from their workplaces.”

Though its higher-ups are chalking up the resignations as growing pains, the loss of talented federal workers could stymie Trump administration in its legal battles to come. Since Trump took office in January, his administration has been met with countless lawsuits combating his stances on birthright citizenship, trans rights, and DOGE’s cost-cutting powers. Before their agency was assimilated into DOGE, the departing employees worked for the United States Digital Service, which was established during the Obama years in order to facilitate the workings of government. The Trump administration may soon find itself lacking the necessary resources to handle its own processes and respond to legal challenges.

According to the departing employees, the writing was on the White House wall since the Trump administration’s beginnings. After Trump took office, former USDS employees wrote that they were subjected to an unnerving interview process by “individuals wearing White House visitor badges” who refused to identify themselves. The interviewers “asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability” and that the grueling process created “significant security risks” in the federal government. Before the staffers quit, DOGE fired around 40 veteran USDS workers whose duties included “working to modernize Social Security, veterans’ services, tax filing, health care, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services,” and their termination jeopardized “millions of Americans who rely on these services.”

Musk’s breakneck blitz to dismantle and rebuild the federal government has stoked anxieties across multiple federal agencies, and created an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia across the government. Fearful of being watched, many federal employees are choosing to talk in person, print out digital documents, and even shield their personal devices in electromagnetic dampening Faraday Bags in order to combat the threat of electronic surveillance.

While Musk and the Trump administration tout DOGE’s effectiveness, the agency has failed to withstand basic scrutiny. Musk recently claimed that his agency uncovered a critical clerical error that was causing Social Security benefits to go to millions of long-deceased Americans, but that turned out to be a significant exaggeration of the truth. DOGE also fired hundreds of workers responsible for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, before scrambling to rehire them. Evidently, the USDS employees who resigned are refusing to go down with Musk’s ship.