Over 20 U.S. federal tech workers who were forced into President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency resigned in protest on Tuesday,
according to a joint letter obtained by The Associated Press.

The 21 data scientists, engineers, and product managers were initially part of the United States Digital Service, established during the Obama administration. However, one of Trump’s first executive orders
states that it “is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.”

As the
AP detailed, “earlier this month, about 40 staffers in the office were laid off,” leaving about 65 employees who “were integrated into DOGE’s government-slashing effort.” About a third of the spared workers—who previously worked for companies such as Amazon and Google—joined the mass resignation.

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” wrote the 21 staffers, according to the news agency. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” they explained. “We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.”

Their resignation letter sounds the alarm about recent interviews conducted by Musk loyalists that “created significant security risks,” noting that “several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability.”

The letter also criticizes the recent USDS layoffs that “focused on people in roles like designers, product managers, human resources, and contracting staff,” according to the
AP, which cited interviews with current and former staff.

“These highly skilled civil servants were working to modernize Social Security, veterans’ services, tax filing, healthcare, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services,” the letter states. “Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems and American’s data less safe.”

The firings at USDS are just part of Musk and Trump’s sweeping effort to slash government spending and the federal workforce.

“Musk clearly loves to depict DOGE as a lean, mean efficiency machine,”
Intelligencer columnist Ed Kilgore wrote last week. “But it seems increasingly obvious that its efforts to reduce personnel levels and spending mostly reflect an ideology that treats whole areas of government as illegitimate and completely arbitrary reductions in force as a valuable end in themselves.”

Fueling such arguments, the
APrevealed Tuesday that nearly 40% of the federal contracts the Trump administration has canceled won’t save any money. The Musk-led effort “published an updated list Monday of nearly 2,300 contracts that agencies terminated in recent weeks across the federal government,” the news agency reported. “Data published on DOGE’s ‘Wall of Receipts’ shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 794 in all, are expected to yield no savings.”

Reporting on DOGE’s failures and the mass resignation came amid mixed messaging about a Saturday email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the government’s human resources agency, ordering federal workers to respond by the end of Monday with five bullet points listing what they did last week. Musk
said on his social media platform X that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Then,
Politico and The Washington Post reported Monday that the Trump administration had told federal department heads that they could direct staff to ignore the list requirement and Musk’s threat, and emails from agency leaders informing workers they should not respond began circulating on social media.

Further adding to the confusion, the president told reporters Monday afternoon that anyone who doesn’t reply would be “sort of semi-fired—or you’re fired,” and Musk later
wrote on X: “Subject to the discretion of the president, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”

Meanwhile, a Monday guidance from OPM
states in part that responses to the initial Saturday email “should be directed to agency leadership,” who “may exclude personnel from this expectation at their discretion and should inform OPM of the categories of the employees excluded and reasons for exclusion.”

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that has pushed back on DOGE initiatives,
said in a Monday statement that “Elon Musk’s latest email fiasco is yet another example of the chaotic and callous treatment of federal employees that has been the hallmark of Trump’s second term.”

“It was nothing but a cynical attempt to demean federal workers and terrorize them into quitting,” Kelley continued. “To be clear, federal employees report to the agencies who employ them through established chains of command. They do not report to OPM, ‘DOGE,’ and definitely not to Elon Musk.”

“I’m glad reality is teaching them the lessons they refuse to teach themselves on how to run a functional civil service,” the union leader added. “Make no mistake we will continue to hold Elon Musk and the entire Trump administration accountable for their illegal actions.”

While DOGE has
hit some legal snags thanks to challenges from unions and other critics, the Trump administration has demonstrated a willingness to defy court orders and congressional Republicans are already targeting some federal judges with articles of impeachment for impeding the president’s agenda.