Chuck Darwin<p>More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday <br>from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, <br>saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”</p><p>“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” <br>the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. <br>“However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”<br>The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were <a href="https://c.im/tags/political" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>political</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/ideologues" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ideologues</span></a> who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.</p><p>The mass resignation of engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers is a temporary setback for Musk and the Republican president’s tech-driven purge of the federal workforce. <br>It comes amid a flurry of <a href="https://c.im/tags/court" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>court</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/challenges" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>challenges</span></a> that have sought to stall, stop or unwind their efforts to fire or coerce thousands of government workers out of jobs.</p><p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/doge-elon-musk-federal-government-resignations-usds-6b7e9b7022e6d89d69305e9510f2a43c" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">apnews.com/article/doge-elon-m</span><span class="invisible">usk-federal-government-resignations-usds-6b7e9b7022e6d89d69305e9510f2a43c</span></a></p>