Washington DC - Roughly a third of staffers at Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have resigned in protest, saying that they will not push through demanded changes that put the country at risk.

"We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations," 21 staffers of DOGE wrote in a letter, seen by AFP on Tuesday, to White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles.

"However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments," they added.

The workers initially worked for the US Digital Service, which was transformed into DOGE after President Donald Trump took office on January 20, with Musk effectively taking over the department.

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Musk is the political force behind DOGE, with a small group of employees faithful to the multi-billionaire being dispatched across government and working toward gutting federal staffing and spending.

While Musk is not the formal administrator of DOGE, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO is nonetheless directing operations and will even attend Trump's first cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

The world's wealthiest person and a top Trump donor, Musk has no ministerial portfolio or formal decision-making authority but has status as a "special government employee" and "senior adviser to the president."

He downplayed the significance of the departures, saying that the workers were "political holdovers" who worked remotely and refused to return to the office as ordered by Trump.

"They would have been fired had they not resigned," he added on X, the platform he owns.

The signatories describe a chaotic transition process that began on January 21 with hastily conducted interviews by unidentified individuals wearing White House visitor badges.

The interviewers questioned staff about political loyalty, attempted to create division among team members, and displayed "limited technical ability."

Tensions escalated on February 14 when approximately one-third of USDS staff were abruptly terminated via anonymous email.

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The dismissed employees had been working on modernizing critical government systems, including Social Security, veterans' services, tax filing, healthcare, and disaster relief platforms, the letter said.

"Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems and Americans' data less safe," the letter stated.

The employees explicitly refused to participate in what they described as efforts to "compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services."

The USDS was established in 2014 during Barack Obama's administration and has historically operated as a non-partisan technology unit tasked with improving government digital services.

The mass resignation came days after Musk engineered a mass email to the federal government's two million workers, ordering them to justify their work in an email or risk being fired.

Government departments on Monday largely told staff to either ignore the DOGE-inspired email or downplayed the risks of not answering it.

According to Wired magazine, engineers at DOGE are working on new software that could assist mass firings of federal workers across the government.

So far, thousands of mainly probationary workers – employees who are recently hired, promoted, or otherwise changed roles – have been terminated since Trump's inauguration.

The new software would streamline the dismissal process, known as a reduction in force, for firing federal workers with stronger civil service protections.