One day after Trump’s inauguration, staffers at the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) agency were forced into interrogations by a group of White House visitors. The group consisted of many young-looking people and some obvious fans of Elon Musk.
The visitors demanded to know each employee’s qualifications and political leanings. In return, most of the interrogators refused to tell the staffers so much as their name.
The group also attempted to turn the USDS staffers against each other and requested information that posed “significant security risks,” according to a letter signed by multiple staffers the following month.
In the days that follow, about half of the USDS team is terminated. The agency is transformed into Elon Musk’s DOGE, the Dept. of Government Efficiency, which otherwise would have required Congress to become an actual department of the government. (The official government name of the DOGE team becomes USDS – the United States DOGE Service.)
Nearly two dozen of the remaining USDS specialists resign in late February.
