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.
Musk effectively took over the USDS after President Donald Trump authorized him to oversee a sweeping push to shrink the federal bureaucracy. It was then renamed the U.S. DOGE Service, using the acronym for Musk’s cost-cutting initiative.
In their traditional roles, the USDS employees had been tasked with helping federal agencies improve information technology systems, websites and digital services, among other job responsibilities.
The news of the mass resignations was first reported by The Associated Press. Musk derided the article as “more fake news” in a post on X that also seemed to confirm the resignations.
“These were Dem political holdovers who refused to return to the office,” Musk wrote. “They would have been fired had they not resigned.”
In a separate post on X, DOGE employee Katie Miller appeared to mock the staffers who resigned, saying: “These were full remote workers who hung Trans flags from their workplaces.”
In an interview, a former USDS employee who worked for the agency during the first Trump administration and under former President Barack Obama said they were not surprised by the mass resignations.
“USDS did work towards making the government work more efficient, and that used to mean ensuring every tax dollar that came in was doing the most for the American public, a high return on investment,” said the former employee, who spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity.
“DOGE seems to think ‘efficiency’ just means doing less, no matter how good the return is,” the ex-employee added. “That scorched earth approach is driving away the people who actually have the skills to fix the government’s problems.”
The joint resignation letter was addressed to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and uploaded to a webpage called WetheBuilders.org. The website was recently set up by federal employees dismayed with DOGE, one of the people who created it told The Verge.
In the letter, the 21 employees laid out three specific grievances against DOGE and the White House.
They claimed they were “subjected to 15-minute interviews by individuals wearing White House visitor badges” on Jan. 21, the day after Trump took office. The people “refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability.”
Then, on Feb. 14, according to the employees, “one-third of our USDS colleagues were indiscriminately terminated by an anonymous email.” The employees said those employees were working on services such as Social Security, tax filing and disaster relief, and “their removal endangers millions of Americans.”
DOGE representatives started “integrating us into their efforts” on Feb. 16, the employees said. “DOGE’s actions — firing technical experts, mishandling sensitive data, and breaking critical systems — contradict their stated mission of ‘modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,'” the workers wrote in part.
“The original USDSers who are still there have basically been locked away in a room to go play with Legos like they’re being set off into a corner and being told, ‘Don’t do anything, we’ll get back to you when we need you,'” Amy Paris, a former USDS staffer who was recently fired from her job at the Health Resources and Service Administration amid the targeting of probationary employees across the government, told NBC News late last week.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In recent days, some Republican lawmakers and Trump allies have raised concerns about DOGE’s bid to remake the federal bureaucracy, with some suggesting that the cost-slashing push should be carried out more methodically.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, told NBC News on Tuesday that any reductions in the federal workforce “need to be done in a respectful way.”
“We want to do everything we can — and I think this has been long overdue — to try and figure out how we can make government work more efficiently, cost the taxpayers less, and make sure that they get a good return on the tax dollars that they spend in this country,” Thune said. “But I would also argue again that in anything that they do, they need to be respectful of people that are involved in these agencies and departments of government.”
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said Tuesday that Republicans need to adjust their messaging around DOGE. McCormick’s comments came after people in his district lashed out at him last week over the mass terminations of federal workers.
“I’m all for trimming the government, but I am all for also doing it in a deliberate manner that allows people to adjust in their lifestyle,” McCormick told reporters on Capitol Hill when asked about the confrontation at his town hall.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., called some of DOGE’s moves “rash” in an interview with CNN.
“We need to do this with a scalpel, I’ve said this repeatedly, not a sledgehammer,” she said in the interview. “Some of the rash decisions that I’ve seen coming out of DOGE — which I do support finding efficiencies.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s joint fundraising committee showed no signs of backing down.
The email, blasted out Tuesday, referenced Trump’s demand for Musk to be more “aggressive.” It also highlighted Musk’s weekend social media post saying that a failure to respond to an Office of Personnel Management email asking all federal workers to list five accomplishments from the week prior would be taken as a resignation.
“Did you see what Elon Musk sent out to all federal employees? I TOLD HIM TO RAMP THINGS UP!” the email said. It then encouraged respondents to participate in a poll: “Should Elon Musk and I FIRE anybody that doesn’t respond? YES or NO?”
