Feb. 23 (UPI) — A group of current and former federal workers have launched a platform to combat the Department of Government Efficiency, a temporary organization established through an executive order by President Donald Trump and led by controversial billionaire Elon Musk.
The initiative, titled We the Builders, offers government employees a platform to share anonymous stories about the actions of DOGE, as well as their expertise on what the actions mean and how they will impact people.
Technically, DOGE, as it is now known, is a rename for the previously existing U.S. Digital Service — which was tasked with streamlining and optimizing the performance of the federal government. With Musk at the helm, his critics view it as “disruption without understanding.”
“Under the guise of efficiency, DOGE pursues cost-cutting measures and sweeping technology overhauls without fully considering their downstream effects,” the group said.
“The consequences of DOGE’s approach are severe: broken systems, wasted taxpayer dollars, and public services that fail the very people they are meant to serve. Rather than making government more efficient, their actions dismantle agencies’ ability to perform the very services they were designed to provide to help the American public.”
Its most recent posting hits back at a declaration Musk made Saturday that all federal employees, about 2.3 million people, would receive an email demanding that they account for their work the previous week or face being fired.
“Consistent with President Donald Trump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk had said. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The federal workers said some employees started receiving the email Saturday afternoon but encouraged employees not to respond, pointing to a dispute of whether the Tesla boss is legally in charge of DOGE or not. Trump has said he put Musk in charge of DOGE, but court filings specify that Musk has an advisory role with no authority over its actions.
“First of all, we don’t take orders via X,” the workers said. “Second, let’s get practical. There are 2 million federal employees. Elon and his operatives aren’t going to read 2 million emails this week. Let’s assume it takes 2 min to read each email, that’s 66,667 hours of reading!”
We the Builders added that Musk’s team “lack the background and experience” to even understand what most of them do in their jobs.
“Even if they review a random sample of 1,000 emails, they won’t grasp it or be able to assess whether it’s ‘efficient,'” they said. “The indiscriminate, uninformed firings they’ve already carried out are proof of this — they didn’t know what those employees were doing before they let them go and then had to scramble to rehire them.”
The group urged federal workers to follow their agency’s guidance on how to reply to the emails and the calling lawmakers to demand they take action against DOGE.
Musk responded by putting an unofficial poll up on X, previously Twitter, which has so far received nearly 350,000 votes from people around the globe. In it, the South African businessman asked if federal employees should be required to submit a self-evaluation of their performance to DOGE. So far, 82% of respondents agreed with him.