What Next TBD | The DOGE Resistance

Slate Daily Feed

Slate Podcasts

News, Business, Society & Culture

4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Federal workers in the U.S. Digital Service resigned in protest over what they viewed as indiscriminate, irresponsible firings coming from the DOGE office. While lawsuits are entering the courts and protests are taking to the streets, will any of this make a difference to the chainsaw-minded leaders of DOGE? Guest: Ryan Mac, tech reporter at the New York Times and co-author of “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.” Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Evan Campbell and Patrick Fort. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	On Tuesday, 21 federal workers from the U.S. Digital Service resigned in protest.
0:10.8	The U.S.DS, which was created in the Obama administration, got rolled into the so-called Department of Government efficiency, Doge, earlier this year.
0:20.5	There's been a bunch of legacy employees at that unit that are unhappy. Department of Government Efficiency, Doge, earlier this year.
0:26.4	There's been a bunch of legacy employees at that unit that are unhappy with what's going on.
0:29.7	Ryan Mack is a tech reporter for the New York Times.
0:36.4	They don't agree with the orders they're being given from folks like Elon Musk and his and his associates.
0:40.0	And they resigned very publicly. they signed a letter that number 21 represents about a third of the remaining employees in the unit
0:46.8	about 40 had been previously laid off or fired in rounds of cuts and these folks kind of of just said, you know, we've had enough.
0:56.0	We're not going to stand for this, and we're going to resign.
1:00.0	The 21 workers wrote a letter to the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.
1:05.0	And they also made a website, we the builders.org.
1:09.0	On it, they referenced Doge, writing, if they really wanted to know how to use
1:14.7	technology to build a more efficient country, they would ask us, but they haven't. They are
1:20.7	destroyers. We are builders. It's actually funny. You mentioned that it was addressed to Susie Wiles,
1:26.7	and a large part of that was because they were in the dark as to who this Doge administrator was. Obviously, we all know that Elon Musk has talked about publicly. Donald Trump sings his praises as the head of this effort. But on paper, he is not the Doge administrator. So
1:48.2	they addressed it to Susie Wiles, but it just shows the lack of transparency here. These
1:53.5	folks didn't know who they were reporting to. They didn't know what their responsibilities were
1:59.8	in some cases. And there was very little
2:02.5	kind of explanation as to what they'd be doing. And so they quit, loudly.
2:10.7	They were just a small group of workers, but they're not the only ones. Today on the show,
2:17.3	through protests,
2:18.6	resignations and lawsuits,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.