A group of 21 civil servants whose team was folded into DOGE resigned on Tuesday, saying in a publicly posted letter that they refuse to use their skills to put Americans’ data at risk and “dismantle critical public services.”
In the letter, addressed to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the former federal employees wrote that they swore an oath to the Constitution to serve the American people but that “it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments at the United States DOGE Service.”
The letter also noted that about 40 staffers in the office were laid off last week. They had been working on improving the technical systems behind Social Security, veterans’ services, disaster relief and other government functions.
One of those laid off staffers was Jonathan Kamens, a DOGE engineer who said he believes he was targeted for publicly endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
“The U.S. Digital Service spent more than a decade making government better to serve normal, everyday people,” Kamens told NPR. “Elon Musk doesn’t care about any of that. All he cares about is seizing power and making his obscene fortune even larger.”
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the 21 DOGE workers resigning en masse, in a statement: “Don’t let the door kick you on the way out,” she said.
The group, comprised of mostly software engineers and product managers, was formerly under the U.S. Digital Service, which was later renamed DOGE.
In Other DOGEbag News:
An earlier version of the DOGE “wall of receipts” posted online was shortened with the deletion of the five biggest spending cuts it was celebrating last week.
The “wall of receipts” is the only public ledger DOGE has produced to document its work.
- Among the deleted line items was an $8 billion cut at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The actual contract in question was worth $8 million.
- Also in the deleted bin were three $655 million USAID cuts, which was actually a single cut that was erroneously counted three times. The wall of receipts now lists only $18 million in total cuts.
- Another erroneous $232 million cut at the Social Security Administration was replaced by an actual $560,000 cancellation of a contract that allowed users to mark their gender as “X.”
Also, there’s a new name to learn as administrator at DOGE after the White House DODGED the question for weeks: Amy Gleason.
The White House today announced the name of the acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency: Amy Gleason, the US government’s problem solver in the early days of the data-starved response to the Covid pandemic and a seasoned worker in the health space. The White House named Gleason after it argued in court that Elon Musk is not really the head of DOGE, and faced pressure from a federal judge to say who is. How long Gleason has been the acting administrator, and if Musk was an unofficial one before today’s announcement, is unclear.
