- cross-posted to:
- BackTo1985@lemm.ee
- cross-posted to:
- BackTo1985@lemm.ee
Summary
Twenty-one staffers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) resigned, citing ethical concerns over dismantling public services and compromising sensitive data.
Formerly part of the U.S. Digital Service, they criticized Musk and Trump’s overhaul, which included layoffs and politically charged interviews.
Their letter warned that removing skilled technologists endangers essential services like Social Security and veterans’ benefits.
The resignations add to growing concerns over Musk’s aggressive federal cuts, amplified by his recent CPAC speech where he symbolically wielded a chainsaw against “bureaucracy.”
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In their resignation letter, the former USDS staffers recounted how they were interviewed the day after Trump’s inauguration by figures wearing White House visitors’ badges who “demonstrated limited technical ability.”
“Several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other,” the workers, all of whom previously worked at tech companies such as Google and Amazon, recounted. “This process created significant security risks.”
Forty USDS staffers were laid off following these interviews as part of Trump and Musk’s ongoing slashing of the federal government’s workforce. Around 65 remaining workers were then incorporated into DOGE, 21 of whom have now resigned from their positions.
Well thats 44 assholes
I thought they were just like 6 white dudes. How did they ever hire over 20 people?
Ignoring the people who worked there previously, Elon hired more than 6 white college kids (but the media just focused on the juniors because clicks)
DOGE is a restructuring of the existing US Digital Service. The people leaving are mostly people who worked there before Elon took over.
Doge is not even a real agency. As you said, it is the US digital service. The executive order Trump signed admits that Trump does not have the authority to rename an agency, and that Doge is only the “public, alternative name.”
So fucking cringe.
Well, the article says these people were software devs who were modernizing software for the IRS, etc
I would love to see posts like this end up on right leaning spaces like critical posts about left leaning issues end up on left leaning spaces.
Trumps base has such a sycophant army that they just swarm spaces and post this stuff every minute of every day. But the opposite doesn’t happen. Having even 100 people posting stuff like this across their space would do more than a 10 000 person protest ever could but it amazes me that 10 000 would take time off work, go stand in the rain for a week instead of shit posting effectively.
Yeah, but right leaning spaces block people critical of the right. Just look at the cesspool that is /r/conservative
If all people did was post things online then there is no chance in hell anything would change.
This is based on the faulty liberal assumption that fascists are only fascists because they have yet to be shown all of the facts and logic.
Let’s just speed run the scenario where you post this article on a right space: you post the article, every trumper comes out and says the resignations were good because the staffers were woke, and then you scratch your head wondering why your appeal to facts and logic didn’t work on fascists. At this point you might just start spamming right spaces and have all your posts go directly to spam.
It’s honestly kind of disturbing how you write off actual protests in favor of online activism, and I couldn’t think of a more liberal take tbh. Anyone, at this stage of the game, who is taking the position of “less protests, more…” should be evaluated extremely critically - especially if your alternative is spamming r/conservative with liberal thinkpieces.
Be the change you want to see
might be a good idea to make a sub dedicated to organizing your efforts
Holy shit you guys are proper fucked. America went full retard
We are proper fucked. No need to bring ableist slurs into it, though.
Ehh, pretty sure he’s going off the movie Tropic Thunder so it’ll slide
Relevant bit from the article, because some of y’all apparently comment before reading:
The staffers who resigned were all originally employees of the United States Digital Service, a technology unit established during President Obama’s second term in 2014. The unit was renamed and reorganized in January via executive order by Trump into the Musk-headed DOGE.
My understanding is: Founding a new Department can only be done by Congress, so they had to “redefine” (more like corrupt) an existing one.
I have seen some news sites giving this with headlines like “DOGE Goons resign” without the part you just quoted of course. top notch newsmanship
Yeah, they renamed it to DOGE, presumably because using the term duke would be off putting to their drone followers. Then they gave the organization a fuck ton more authority and ignored judicial rulings. What does any of it have to do with Obama though?
The agency that got renamed was formed during his presidency?
It has nothing to do with Obama. Is that a trigger word for you or something? It’s because of comments like this.
Trigger word? I was asking why they are trying to tie an authoritarian move to a president who left office in the way a democratic Republic set up over 2 terms ago.
Have fun with your buzzwords.
As an end run around constitutional checks and balances, instead creating a new agency l they corrupted and took over an existing agency set up by obama
The president had no authority to create a new agency but seems to be getting away with a technicality
Notice you said a president can’t create a new agency, then said Obama did. He didn’t create it, the 114th Congress did. Both the Senate and the House were Republican majority when it was created. So it is true if Obama didn’t want it he could have tried to veto it, but the only way it could have been created was by a majority vote.
Something possibly worth noting as well: “This bill directs the President to continue to operate, for FY2017-FY2026, the United States Digital Service as such program operated using funds made available under the Information Technology Oversight and Reform account in division E of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2016.” -H.R.5372
DOGE may be auto defunded after Fiscal Year 2026 unless the Congress/Senate push through a continuation which undoubtedly they should be able to get approved being that they hold the house and Senate majority again.
You seem very confused about the text quoted by the previous poster.
How so?
Because you seem to imply that there’s something nefarious about citing Obama to describe that the US Digital Service office was established during the Obama presidency, when it’s just what happened.
The point of the copied text was to point out those workers were not newly hired and realizing they didn’t want to participate in bad acts, they were employees that existed prior to this administration and quit because they didn’t want to take part in bad acts.
At no point do we hear that the employees worked for that company for at least 9 years, meaning that Obama starting the US Digital Service office is irrelevant. They could have started 2 years ago, 7 years ago or 9 years ago, that information is unknown so to tie it to the Obama Administration was chosen for a reason. I don’t say the IRS started by the Abraham Lincoln has seen the O’Donnell resignation unless I am specifically trying to call attention to Lincoln.
It’s just a weird choice to bring it up
They weren’t. They were responding to the FAFO comments about the people who resigned in protest.
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It’s not uncommon to mention the president who started an agency in little blurbs describing their history. Like with the Environmental Protection Agency & Nixon.
Those are the ones you want to stay. They have ethics.
It’s a tough decision. People are afraid of retaliation. No one wants to end up in the Nuremberg trials
to me, it seems like a good thing if lots of people refuse to cooperate, refuse to be made instruments of this regime. enough people refuse and the regime is disempowered.
Then they get replaced by loyalists. It’s what Trump has been doing for weeks. Installing loyalists in every part of thr government.
No, no, that’s the point. This is a feature, not a bug.
And 21 loyalists (yes, america, you’re heading to monarchy) will be hired to fill those spots and nobody is left to resist.
They were doge staffers, wouldn’t they already be loyalists? Edit: nvm, down the thread explanations that it was a department already that got converted to doge
TBH it’s interesting that there are always staffers available when the previous trump admin had staffers go very long times without a job as a result of their affiliations.
Working with the fascists is a huge negative on your resume, kids.
Putin will not be pleased.
I am always confused why they don’t just sabotage the efforts? Like it would be so easy and they definitely aren’t paying attention…
One aspect is that working in that kind of system destroys your mental health. Having to play games to hide the good things, trying to mitigate the bad things. It’s pressure.
My state has been basically been doing Project 2025 for the past five years. I had a friend in an important position in a fascist overtaken state organization who held on for a long time, fighting the good fight - but it drains. She fought her fucking hardest, but a human being can only fight for so long.
The kurds have been fighting a war from the desert for decades, but Americans get whipped by paperwork and call it a day
Well, we can’t shoot our fascists yet. It would probably be pretty helpful with the mental health part.
We actually shot him once. But he survived
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I feel like there will be a “How To Count To 10 In American” video coming out in the next 4-8 years.
Different people are able to take on different levels of risk.
Just because these people resigned doesn’t mean that some other people aren’t staying in for the purposes of being subversive, and you shouldn’t ever hear about the latter.
That’s the thing, though. They’re not really taking risks.
Much of what DOGE does is completely illegal and does not go through the proper channels and processes. By simply doing their jobs and forcing everything through the proper processes, they can slow down everything, maybe even to a halt, while being completely in the right and thus can’t be fired.
Yes, it takes a mental toll, but these guys have a responsibility.
They’re unemployed government workers, there are less government jobs now than ever, and their resume literally says DOGE on it. They are taking a risk.
No. They resigned from a job. They were not fired. And as long as they don’t break any rules, it’s hard to fire them.
I never said they were fired, but since you brought it up, when you’re fired, you’ll usually get a severance to help during the job search, they won’t, they’re just unemployed.
… because they resigned. Seriously, what’s your point?
If they wouldn’t have resigned, they would still have a job. And since they couldn’t have been fired easily, they would have continued to have a job for quite a while.
That’s not a complex concept, what’s so hard to understand about that?
Sabatoge can carry extremely harsh legal penalties, particularly if it has any type of lasting impact. Beyond that, just phoning it in and doing a bad job can slow things down but doesn’t actually stop it. If you’re then let go it’s on their pace, it looks worse for you and it’s less noticeable.
A mass resignation can be the only thing some people can do. It sends a message, it gets noticed outside the organization, and it lets objective news reporting share your motivation, which would normally fall under opinion.
It also leaves a big gap in the organization that isn’t getting anything done.Not if you make an Italian strike. You are following every single step of the process, taking the time needed, all by the book. And when the higher rank says something then everyone working resigns all at once.
but… he who saves his country can not break the law. right??!
Guys, dumping tea in the harbor is illegal, just pay your taxes to the crown. It’s just a king, everyone has one
The American revolutionary war was difficult enough with an entire ocean separating us from a king. Now the self appointed king is here.
Lol getting fired doesn’t look bad. It doesn’t look like anything because you aren’t legally required to tell a future employer if you were fired, and they can’t ask the previous employer
I’m pretty sure any future employee that saw you were fired after Trump took power (because you didn’t express loyalty to a fascist) would see this as a good thing.
It’s public information if a government employee is terminated, and there’s nothing stopping them from reaching out to the previous employer.
State laws determine exactly what a potential employer can ask, and divulge
Yes and no one ever violates those
And do you think that that prevents them from disclosing that they terminated an employee for unprofessional conduct or unsatisfactory job performance?
Further, for government employees certain details about their jobs are simply considered matters of public record. It’s not something they divulge, it was simply never private in the first place.
Mostly the risk of jail, probably.
Or execution.
Or stochastic terrorism
Because they don’t disagree with it, they only can’t bring themselves to be the ones with the blood on their hands. Otherwise they don’t care what happens.
I know everything is bad now, but not everyone is bad all the time.
HOLY SHIT HELL YES!! Finally someone with some backbone god damn. Best news I’ve heard in a month!
Propbably tired of getting cussed out and the partners leaving them.
It’s tiresome to deal with a boss who is on drugs all the time
who did they submit their resignation? musk and trump can’t lead so it’s not them.
Probably had to tweet a poop emoji at Musk.
I just want to know what these people were thinking when they took the jobs in the first place.
I think the ones resigning were part of the old department that Musk took over and converted into DOGE, so they didn’t actually join DOGE originally.
They already worked there.
Musk took over the US digital Service and they were preexisting employees
Well… one of the doges is the USDS skinsuit one. There’s actually several iterations. And it’s not clear Elon works for any of them?
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Needed a job to pay that ridiculous rent, I suppose.
They probably thought they were actually gonna make shit more efficient.
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Naiveté knows no bounds.
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Hmmm… TIL some incels actually have morals. Who knew?
The people who resigned originally worked for the US Digital Service, which was established in 2014 by Obama.
Twenty-one staffers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) resigned
The staffers who resigned were all originally employees of the United States Digital Service, a technology unit established during President Obama’s second term in 2014. The unit was renamed and reorganized in January via executive order by Trump into the Musk-headed DOGE.
And they should have left then.
