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USA Today
30-05-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Former federal worker elected to New Jersey local office after leaving DOGE agency
Former federal worker elected to New Jersey local office after leaving DOGE agency About four months after resigning from the federal agency Trump rebranded as the U.S. DOGE Service, this NJ resident won local office by 49 votes. Show Caption Hide Caption How did Elon Musk become so powerful in Washington? As leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk has made major changes, but who is Elon Musk and how did he rise in Washington? Itir Cole tried to take some time off after quitting her job with the federal government early in the Trump administration. "I tried to read books, I tried to watch Netflix. But a day or two of that, and I was like, okay, I'm good. Now, what?" Cole, 40, told USA TODAY. Then her husband mentioned offhand that there was an open seat on her New Jersey town's governing body. No one her age or with her life experience was planning to make a bid for the nonpartisan Haddonfield Borough Commission. So she did. Cole won her mid-May race by 49 votes, about four months after resigning from the U.S. Digital Service ‒ the federal agency President Donald Trump and entrepreneur Elon Musk rebranded as the United States DOGE Service. A ceremonial swearing in was held May 27. Her victory places her at the forefront of a flood of federal workers looking to run for public office. Many say they want to continue serving Americans after leaving the government either voluntarily or through mass layoffs, as Trump dramatically downsizes the federal workforce. Why she left her government job Cole said her year-and-a-half in the federal government was a pivot point in her life. She had spent most of her career working in product management and building health care software for private companies. "The federal government felt like it hit all my check boxes," she said. "I can make a living. I feel good about what I'm doing every day. I'm contributing to the wellness of my community, my nation, and it's something when I look back on, I'm going to feel really proud of having contributed to even as a small part of it." U.S. Digital Service employees were detailed to other agencies to help fix or monitor high priority tech projects. Cole worked with the Centers for Disease Control to improve a cross state infectious disease surveillance system after the COVID-19 pandemic. But the arrival of DOGE employees on Inauguration Day transformed the nonpartisan tech agency, Cole said. "The job changed pretty much overnight," she said. All employees were interviewed with questions she said felt like were asking about loyalty to the new administration. She had been hired as a remote employee, but there was talk of requiring a return to the office. The "fork in the road" email that told federal employees to either get on board with the sweeping changes or leave was the last straw, she said. The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment. Cole quickly chose to resign, as did others. On Feb. 14, her last day, the remaining 40 or so members of her team were fired, she said. 'Okay, I will do it' When she first looked at the Haddonfield Borough Commission race, Cole said she was alarmed that none of the candidates represented the so-called sandwich generation: people with both young kids at home and elderly parents to take care of. She implored friends to run, offering to act as their campaign manager and organize their campaign events, but no one had the time. "I couldn't let go of the fact that … there's no woman with a young family juggling responsibilities of professional life and family life. No one from our phase is going to be there, and there are going to be decisions made that are not in the best interest of the entire community," Cole said. "So I thought, Okay, I will do it." Cole had to move quickly to get on the ballot in her suburban town of 12,500, not far from Philadelphia. She pulled together 100 signed petitions in 3 days ‒ twice the number she needed. There was no time to build a coalition of supporters or get backing from candidate recruitment groups that mentor new candidates and that are getting inundated with requests for help from former federal employees. She had to just wing it. Cole said she started with a handful of regulars she knew at her local coffee shop, then a dozen or so moms she knew from school drop off. The former head of the local soccer leagues sat down with her and made introductions to the Lions Club, the Rotary Club and various nonprofits. Soon people offered to host house parties to introduce her to their neighborhood. "I accepted every invite, and I put myself out there as much as I could," she said. Campaigning as an introvert was painful, Cole said. It helped that the position is non-partisan and she could focus on local issues like affordable housing, crowded schools and new soccer fields. The part-time commissioner job pays $6,000 a year, which Cole said she expects to mostly go toward expenses related to the role. She's still looking for a full time job. Cole said she hasn't given much thought to a political future. She doesn't intend to hold the position past a single four-year term, saying she thinks the post should rotate among community members. "What I'm going to spend the next four years doing is making sure that people see this as a very doable job, that it hopefully encourages others to be like, Oh, she can do it. I can probably do it too," she said.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
With Elon Musk out of the picture – what happens to DOGE now?
On Wednesday evening, Elon Musk announced on X that his time as part of the Department of Government Efficiency was officially at an end. As a Special Government Employee, he is restricted to serving 130 days – a period which was due to finish this week. However, as well as thanking Donald Trump for the opportunity to 'reduce wasteful spending,' Musk wrote that: 'The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.' So what will happen to the controversial government agency now that its de-facto chief is stepping down? Here's what we know: The agency's crusade to slash wasteful government spending isn't going anywhere, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Musk and Trump previously characterized DOGE, formerly the U.S. Digital Service, as 'tech support' to end 'waste, fraud and abuse.' DOGE is not so much an agency as an idea, according to the White House. Employees within federal agencies are doing its work and, despite media perception, Musk has simply functioned as an adviser. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Leavitt said that although Musk was leaving the agency the 'entire cabinet' were still committed to DOGE's core values 'That's why they were working hand in hand with Elon Musk, and they'll continue to work with the respective DOGE employees who have onboarded as political appointees at all of these agencies,' she said: 'So surely, the mission of DOGE will continue.' Leavitt reiterated at Thursday's briefing that the DOGE leaders 'are each and every member of the President's Cabinet and the President himself,' who were all 'wholeheartedly committed to cutting waste, fraud and abuse from our government.' Questions about a specific leader of DOGE had swirled following the additional departure of Musk's right-hand man at the agency, Steve Davis. Davis had been a key leader at the agency and handled day-to-day operations including hiring and firing, staffers told The Wall Street Journal, adding that he had helped guide the work of the DOGE engineers working across various agencies. In addition, The Journal reported that much of the work done by DOGE will now be undertaken by the Office of Management and Budget – which is headed up by director Russell Vought. Vought has worked closely alongside Musk since 2024 and the two have driven the administration's vision of slashing the federal workforce and reducing spending. As far as Musk's underlings were concerned, Leavitt highlighted that many were now 'political appointees and employees of our government.' 'To the best of my knowledge, all of them intend to stay and continue this important work,' she said. While Musk did receive an outpouring of gratitude from fans on his own social media site, who hailed him as 'courageous' and 'a true American patriot,' others were less impressed. 'Finally rooting out waste and abuse,' former Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz joked in response to the news, with Democratic rep. Jasmine Crockett echoing the sentiment. 'Elon came to Washington thinking he could run the government like one of his companies—firing people left and right, gutting essential services, and tearing this s*** up from the ground up,' she wrote. 'It's time for a full investigation into the damage he's caused and for the truth to come to light.' 'Elon Musk in government is completely unprecedented, but there has never been a single person, certainly not a single non-presidential person, who has been as utterly and pointlessly destructive as Elon Musk,' Robert Weissman, co-executive director of Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights advocacy group, previously told The Independent. 'He has commercial motivations,' he said, 'but primarily he's been engaged in an authoritarian wrecking project with no actual purpose, but really deadly impact.' Trump and the White House did not specifically respond to Musk's announcement, but a spokesperson directed The Independent to Leavitt's comments at Thursday's press briefing. Alex Woodward contributed to this report.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Here's what Trump has done since taking office
President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office have shown just how much he likes to act alone. While past presidents used their honeymoon period to get signature legislation through Congress, Trump has signed very few bills. Instead, he's focused on a flurry of executive orders, unilaterally imposed tariffs, and mass firings and spending cuts that Congress did not approve but has, so far, let slide. Here's a look at 100 actions taken by Trump, his administration and the GOP-controlled Congress over his first 100 days: • Signed the Laken Riley Act, which allows federal immigration officers to detain and deport undocumented people who have been charged with crimes, in addition to those who have been convicted. • Signed three Congressional Review Act resolutions that overturn Biden administration regulations and a stopgap funding bill, for a total of five bills — fewer than any president in the last seven decades by this point. • Announced tariffs on Mexico and Canada, sparking a consumer-led 'Buy Canadian' movement that has hurt U.S. companies. • Announced various tariffs on China that collectively add up to 145%, sparking a trade war with the country. • Announced sweeping tariffs on every major U.S. trade partner, ranging from 10% to 54%, to take effect on April 2, which he dubbed 'Liberation Day.' • Included the Heard and McDonald islands, which are uninhabited, on the list of countries getting a tariff. • Admitted that the formula for the tariffs involved looking at the trade deficit with a country and dividing it by the value of goods the U.S. imports from that nation. • Saw the S&P 500 lose $5 trillion in value over two of the worst days for the stock market in modern history in response to 'Liberation Day.' • 'Paused' the sweeping tariffs on nearly every country for 90 days because bond traders were 'getting a little queasy.' • Posted on social media that it would be a 'great time to buy' shortly before announcing the pause, raising questions about insider trading. • Raised the overall average effective tariff rate from 2.5% to around 27%, the highest for the U.S. since 1903. • Named billionaire Elon Musk as a 'special government employee' in charge of a White House team to cut spending. • Renamed the U.S. Digital Service, which advised agencies on technical issues, into the U.S. DOGE Service (also known as the Department of Government Efficiency, which is not in fact a government department) after a Musk joke. • Repeatedly said that DOGE was 'headed by' Musk, including in a joint address to Congress. • Told courts that Musk did not head DOGE — or even work for it — and declined to say who did head it, then later identified a little-known employee as its acting administrator. • Froze billions of dollars in foreign aid and sought to all but dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development. • Attempted mass firings at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from financial fraud. • Dramatically cut spending and staff at the Department of Education, which Trump has vowed to abolish (though this would require an act of Congress). • Slashed staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who handle weather forecasts, among other things. • Used police and private security to enter the U.S. Institute of Peace as part of an effort to take control of the nonprofit and gut it. • Tried to quickly rehire federal workers on critical issues such as bird flu, nuclear weapons and medical devices. • Ordered the General Services Administration to begin ending leases on roughly 7,500 federal offices around the country. • Sent 2 million federal workers an email offering to pay them through September if they resigned. • Required federal workers to write down five accomplishments each week, then didn't do much with the emails. • Rehired a member of Musk's team who resigned after media resurfaced old social media posts in which he said he was 'racist before it was cool.' • Gave some Republican senators Musk's phone number so they could call him to get problematic DOGE spending cuts reversed. • Saw widespread protests at Musk-owned Tesla dealerships, plummeting sales of its cars and a 71% drop in profits. • Promoted Tesla on the White House lawn and said vandalism against the company will be treated as domestic terrorism. • Reduced the amount of money expected to be saved by the Musk effort from a goal of $1 trillion to $150 billion. • Signed an executive order to make it possible to detain migrants at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay. • Sent two groups of migrants to Guantanamo Bay and released a photo of migrants being boarded onto a military plane. • Struck a deal to pay El Salvador $6 million to imprison deportees at its notorious CECOT megaprison. • Invoked the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, last used to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II, to begin deporting people the administration alleges are gang members. • Sent three planes with more than 200 migrants to El Salvador despite a federal judge's orders not to deport anyone under the act until his court had held a hearing on the issue. • Lost two appeals of the continued block on deportations before the Supreme Court, including one released at 12:55 a.m. • Conceded in a court filing that Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was among those deported due to 'an administrative error.' • Fired the Justice Department lawyer who signed that court filing and had been praised by the judge for his candor. • Appealed a judge's order to have Abrego Garcia returned from El Salvador, then lost in a unanimous Supreme Court decision. • Said Abrego Garcia's return is up to El Salvador, even as President Nayib Bukele claimed he doesn't 'have the power to return him.' • Detained Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil over his pro-Palestinian activism. • Detained Tufts University grad student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish citizen, over an editorial she co-authored in the student newspaper. • Deported a 10-year-old U.S. citizen recovering from brain cancer after detaining her family on their way to a medical checkup. • Sent two U.S. citizens, including a four-year-old boy with Stage 4 cancer, on a deportation flight to Honduras with their mother. • Detained 19-year-old U.S. citizen Jose Hermosillo for 10 days over a disputed claim that he had entered the country illegally. • Said that the administration can't give everyone it wants to deport a trial because that would take 'without exaggeration, 200 years.' • Fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other top military officials late on a Friday in an unusual move. • Fired the two Democratic commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission in what appeared to be a violation of a 1935 Supreme Court decision. • Won an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to stop a lower court ruling that restored the two FTC commissioners to their jobs while their case proceeds. • Fired the director of the National Security Agency and other top national security officials after a meeting with far-right activist Laura Loomer. • Fired a pardon attorney who said she believes she was ousted because she refused to restore Mel Gibson's right to carry a gun. • Moved to fire the Democratic chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, who said her firing was invalid and refused to step down. • Threatened to oust Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, leading to a spike in gold prices and a slide in the dollar. • Signed a sweeping executive order to try to bring independent agencies under White House control based on a fringe legal theory. • Stripped security clearances from the law firm Covington & Burling for its work with former special counsel Jack Smith. • Stripped security clearances from Paul Weiss for hiring a lawyer who worked on the Manhattan district attorney's case against Trump. • Stripped security clearances from Perkins Coie for its ties to the Steele dossier during the 2016 election. • Stripped security clearances from WilmerHale for hiring Robert Mueller and a top aide. • Stripped security clearances from Jenner & Block for hiring a lawyer who worked on the Mueller investigation. • Stripped security clearances from Susman Godfrey, which represented a voting machine company that sued Fox News. • Faced lawsuits from four of the law firms over the suspension of their security clearances. • Announced deals with nine law firms to avoid similar sanctions in exchange for providing nearly $1 billion worth of pro bono legal services to the administration. • Canceled $400 million of funding to Columbia University unless it overhauled admissions and ceded control of several academic departments. • Has not, to date, restored funding to Columbia, despite the university agreeing to nearly all of the demands. • Canceled $2.2 billion to Harvard University to punish it for refusing to comply with a similar list of demands. • Suspended $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania for allowing a transgender swimmer to compete. • Notified Brown, Cornell, Northwestern and Princeton of cuts or potential cuts to hundreds of millions in funding. • Faced a lawsuit from Harvard that argued the frozen grants violate the college's First Amendment rights. • Was criticized in a letter signed by 150 university and college presidents for attempting to use funding to influence their policies. • Put 1,300 staffers at the Voice of America on paid leave amid plans to shutter the news agency, which was set up during World War II. • Barred The Associated Press indefinitely from the Oval Office and Air Force One for continuing to use the name 'Gulf of Mexico' to refer to the Gulf of Mexico. • Posted on the Federal Communications Commission website raw footage and transcripts of the CBS interview with Kamala Harris over which Trump sued. • Opened an investigation into San Francisco radio station KCBS for its coverage of immigration enforcement actions. • Took control of a White House press pool that has been run independently by journalists for more than a century. • Briefly allowed a Russian state media reporter into the Oval Office to cover a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. • Invited far-right podcaster Tim Pool, who has allegedly received money from Russia, to a White House press conference. • Argued in a speech to the Department of Justice that reporting by independent news outlets is biased and should be 'illegal.' • Granted sweeping pardons and commutations to more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. • Broadened Jan. 6 pardons to include charges that stemmed from police searches while investigating those cases. • Supported restitution payments for Jan. 6 defendants whose convictions were wiped out. • Launched a review of federal prosecutors' use of an obstruction of justice charge against some Jan. 6 defendants that the Supreme Court said was used too broadly. • Claimed that pardons of House Jan. 6 committee members and some others by then-President Joe Biden were now 'void.' • Pardoned former Nikola Corp. CEO Trevor Milton of federal crimes related to defrauding investors, after he made significant political donations to Trump and his allies. • Pardoned the four founders of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX and the corporation itself of money laundering charges. • Granted clemency to Jason Galanis and Devon Archer, who had given unfavorable testimony about Hunter Biden. • Announced a plan to give the food industry two years to phase out all artificial dyes. • Said (by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.) at a press conference that people with autism will 'never hold a job' or 'go out on a date.' • Began amassing private medical records of people with autism from government and private sources. • Claimed, without evidence, that getting a 'wild infection' of measles boosts the immune system, in an interview with Kennedy. • Cut thousands of scientists and public health staffers amid a dramatic restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services. • Was criticized for inconsistent messaging about vaccines in interviews and public appearances. • Promoted Steak 'n Shake beef tallow-cooked fries in an interview with Kennedy. • Accidentally added a journalist to a group chat of top officials on Signal discussing war plans in Yemen. (National security adviser Mike Waltz.) • Criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his face in a shockingly contentious White House meeting. • Sent Vice President JD Vance to Greenland, where he argued that Denmark has not 'done a good job.' • Loosened restrictions on water flow for showerheads after Trump complained they make it hard to wash his 'beautiful hair.' • Said the U.S. should 'take over the Gaza Strip,' perhaps through military action, and redevelop it as the 'riviera of the Middle East.' • Blamed, without evidence, Federal Aviation Administration efforts to hire a more diverse staff for an air crash near Washington, D.C. • Proposed a 'gold card' visa that would allow people to become lawful permanent residents for $5 million. • Posted an illustration of Trump wearing a crown on social media with the words 'LONG LIVE THE KING!' • Repeatedly floated the idea of running for an unconstitutional third presidential term in article was originally published on
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump pushed out AI experts despite saying he wants to advance AI
Despite saying publicly he wants the U.S. to be a leader in artificial intelligence, President Donald Trump forced out scores of recently hired AI experts in his first few months in office, according to a report Monday. During President Joe Biden's last year and a half in office, his administration convinced more than 200 AI experts to come work for the federal government — despite the more lucrative pay that typically can be had in the private sector — as part of an initiative called the National AI Talent Surge. But according to Time, most of them were quickly fired or forced out as part of the Trump administration's slashing of federal jobs during his first 100 days in office. Many of those firings were part of Elon Musk's efforts as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. Others came as part of cuts to the U.S. Digital Service and the elimination of a technology office at the General Services Administration, both of which Musk oversaw. The firings will lead to an enormous waste of government resources, according to officials who spoke with Time. Trump has signed multiple executive orders about furthering AI; earlier this month, he directed every federal agency to identify and hire more workers with AI experience. 'Agencies should focus recruitment efforts on individuals that have demonstrated operational experience in designing, deploying, and scaling AI systems in high-impact environments,' Russell Vought, Trump's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a memo on April 3. Many of those workers, it turns out, were already working for the federal government, which will now have to spend time and money finding a new cohort of AI experts. Angelica Quirarte, a recruiter hired by the Biden administration to bring on AI talent, told Time she helped onboard about 250 AI experts in less than a year. She estimated that about 10% of those employees still work for the federal government. Quirarte resigned 23 days into the Trump presidency. 'It was not an environment where you assumed good intent — you're operating out of fear,' she told Time. 'That's not an environment where you can get good policy and good governing work done.' Deirdre Mulligan, who directed the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office under Biden, predicted it would be hard to convince AI experts to come work for the Trump administration after the layoffs. 'I'm sure that for many folks, they will think twice about whether or not they want to work in government,' she told the publication. 'It's really important to have stability, to have people's expertise be treated with the level of respect it ought to be and to have people not be wondering from one day to the next whether they're going to be employed.' For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk overhauled the Obama-era Digital Services agency and turned it into DOGE. Ex- employees say it betrays the original mission
'This has to be a joke," a former U.S. Digital Service employee recalled thinking on January 20 after seeing President Donald Trump's executive order renaming her agency the United States DOGE Service—a reference to the Elon Musk-backed Department of Government Efficiency. But when she and her colleagues were told at a meeting the following week that 'the agency you joined no longer exists,' it was clear this was no comedy routine. Just a couple of weeks later, on Valentine's Day, the technology designer and researcher—who had been working on projects with the Veterans Administration—was fired, along with a third of her colleagues, via an email from an anonymous DOGE account. And this week, 21 additional staffers resigned, saying they refused to use their technical expertise to 'dismantle critical public services.' That includes efforts by DOGE to get more than 2 million federal workers to document their work or be fired. The laid-off employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, but whose name is known to Fortune, has been surprised at how much grief she has felt since the firing. The stress and anxiety of the past few weeks, she said, has been 'significantly worse' than after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in her twenties and doing several rounds of failed IVF. 'I have been a total mess,' she said, 'because there's no precedent, it's so uncertain what's going to happen next. And it's happening to everyone around me.' Founding members and both current and former employees of the U.S. Digital Service have told Fortune that DOGE's actions are a 'betrayal' of its predecessor's mission. They say Musk and his allies have 'weaponized' the office, which had been largely apolitical. According to its still-active website, the USDS hired 'mission-driven professionals' mostly from the private sector, including Big Tech companies like Amazon and Google, for limited "tours of civic service" that typically lasted two years. These engineers, designers, product managers, and digital policy experts worked on projects in small teams with agencies including the Social Security Administration, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and the IRS. The office's new incarnation, unofficially led by Musk, however, is devoted to an entirely different mission: rapidly identifying spending cuts, canceling government contracts, and firing federal workers. Its team, staffed with Musk loyalists, has parked employees in federal agencies and demanded access to all the information available about where the money goes. The stated goal is to reduce the nation's annual deficit, redirect some of the saved money to other programs that are a greater priority, and to eliminate bureaucracy. "Just the interest on the national debt exceeds the Defense Department's spending," Musk said this week during a Trump administration cabinet meeting, adding that "If this continues, the country will become de facto bankrupt." DOGE's work has already decimated the U.S. Agency for International Development, among other agencies. Many have complained that it has jettisoned vital programs in the process. In the end, shoehorning an office devoted to helping government into one instead focused on dismantling it has been jarring and disappointing for many insiders. One founding member told Fortune she joined DOGE's predecessor in December 2014 after colleagues at the health care tech company where she was working told her they were kicking off the new unit. They asked whether she would sign on to help, given her expertise in working with health care data—something sorely needed at agencies like Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. 'I was one of the first product and engineering members and helped build that capacity out—best decision ever,' she said. The goal, said the founding member, who left in 2018, was never just about efficiency. It was to help government operate better by solving complex technical challenges. 'It wasn't like you come in and you strip a car for all of its parts,' said the worker, who requested anonymity for fear of blowback at her current private-sector job and whose identity is known to Fortune. Now she feels the U.S. Digital Service, like many federal offices, is a victim of DOGE's efforts to slash government services. The White House press office did not respond to emails seeking comment about DOGE's work and the transformation of its predecessor. Some former U.S. Digital Service employees have spoken out on social media. Anne Marshall, the director of data science and engineering for the USDS, previously spent 13 years in software engineering at Amazon. She announced her resignation this week after over a year in her role, saying on LinkedIn that she did not 'believe that DOGE can continue to deliver the work of USDS, based on their actions so far.' Naveen Eluthesen, a former software engineer at Amazon and Twitter who had been with the agency for a year and a half, was also among the 21 who handed in their resignations this week. He said on LinkedIn he had 'helped millions of Americans retain their health insurance, helped hundreds of thousands of Americans retain their access to food stamps, and in the process saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year without cutting programs or firing government workers.' The team was able to accomplish this before the takeover of DOGE, Eluthesen continued. 'We are now all choosing to leave rather than to participate in the reckless, incompetent, and disrespectful ways DOGE is changing our government, which will result in decades of immeasurable harm done to millions of people at home and abroad.' Itir Cole, who had previously worked in several senior technology product roles in the private sector, also resigned from the USDS this week after a year and a half in her role. She had been assigned to the CDC, working across software systems to track deadly diseases, from Anthrax to Zika. 'Public health experts use the system we built to investigate,' she said in a LinkedIn post. 'The software is where the puzzle pieces come together.' On the day she resigned, she added, 'nearly all of my team was fired, locked out of their computers without time to transition responsibilities. No real cause was given. No one in my chain of command was consulted.' Cole said she was concerned for her colleagues. 'They deserved better,' she wrote. 'A single engineer on my team had more experience than the entire reported expertise of those on the DOGE team—at least of those willing to share their names.' One legacy USDS employee, on staff since 2020, also spoke to Fortune, saying that he planned to tender his resignation later next week, as soon as he is able to wrap up the project at a government agency that he's still working on, but alone. The rest of his team was already fired. The worker, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, recalled a meeting shortly before Trump's inauguration with Steven Davis, a Musk deputy tapped to oversee hiring at DOGE. Davis was previously a cost-cutter at Musk's X and his tunneling venture, the Boring Company. The meeting, at the New Executive Office Building, part of the White House campus, didn't go as expected. 'At the time I was still in this mode of, 'Okay, let's be open-minded,'' he said. But instead of technical questions about IRS computer systems, Davis's questions focused almost exclusively on taxpayer fraud. The current DOGE worker also recalled a meeting where nearly all USDS employees showed up to ask questions of Stephanie Holmes, who had identified herself as an HR representative for DOGE. Her response to an employee's question about future recruiting for USDS staff particularly stood out. 'The only thing Stephanie Holmes wanted to talk about was to encourage people to take the deferred resignation offer and quit immediately,' he said, referring to President Trump's offer to federal employees to quit in exchange for pay through September. Current and former USDS employees Fortune spoke with said that Musk has never interacted with anyone in the unit who had shifted into DOGE. While Musk does not hold an official title, he's DOGE's de facto leader and operates as a senior advisor to President Trump. After recent criticism about the ambiguity surrounding the leadership of the DOGE, this week Amy Gleason, a former senior advisor at the USDS who worked on the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, was named acting administrator of DOGE. In between government stints, she had been working as chief product officer at two health care startups founded by entrepreneur Brad Smith, who worked in the first Trump administration and has since been working with DOGE. The USDS was created as a sort of White House–based startup in 2014, under President Obama, to tackle the complex technology challenges of some of America's most critical public services. Its first big job was fixing after its disastrous launch, when the site crashed as millions of people tried to log on. The current DOGE employee expressed sadness about how things have played out. 'It's a shame to take something that was providing value and providing value cheaply, staffed with people who in many cases took a pay cut from private-sector jobs, doing work because they thought it was valuable and mission-oriented,' he said. 'It seems silly to throw that away.' He pointed to a USDS coffee mug he uses at his home, which lists six values the USDS was founded on—including 'optimize for results, not optics.' 'We are not building careers in federal government,' he said. 'Part of the reason you've never heard of USDS is because we intentionally don't take credit for most of our work and give credit to agencies when they have successes. It's all about results and having a positive impact.' Meanwhile, the technology designer and researcher who was fired earlier this month said she is saddened by what she described as the 'short-sighted' way DOGE is tackling the technology work and the systems the USDS had worked on for a decade. 'There's a part of me that hopes they are successful in improving the efficiencies and delivering more and better services through technology to the American people,' she said. 'That is what we have all been trying to do. We've all been working our asses off to do this for years. Right now it just seems like they're just destroying everything.' This story was originally featured on
