In early February, President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), shutdown the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the world’s largest supplier of foreign assistance, propelling the Department’s desire to stop “waste and fraud.” Some students at UTEP are concerned about the employment cuts.
While a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration must return funding to USAID, DOGE– a renaming of the previous United States Digital Service– has kept pushing the boundaries of law, causing debate over whether America is in a constitutional crisis.
DOGE’s actions include and are not limited to, cutting $900 million from the Department of Education, voiding 2,300 government contracts, a number of which were research grants for universities, and eliminating roles for over 200,000 federal workers.
“I originally wanted to work for the government but these steps that they are taking, makes me think twice,” freshman Felix Castañon, an aerospace engineering major at UTEP said. “The limited amount of positions, it’s limiting my chance as a person who wants to be an employee for the government.”
In regard to employees and the government, The White House came out publicly at the beginning of February and stated that Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, is now serving as an adviser role to the president, also referred to as, “a special government employee” by Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary.
Elon Musk also appeared at this year’s CPAC, where he wielded a chainsaw and said, “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,” referring to the slashes DOGE has made to the government employees laid off.
Tim Abdirshin, an international student from Kazakhstan says there is going to be less space for corruption to occur and agrees with Musk as a government employee.
“He will probably let more international [students] into his companies, he’s pretty wealthy, so he won’t probably act more negative about it.”
When DOGE gained access to sensitive information from the treasury, alarms were sounded for Democrats, and constituents in red counties. According to Trump’s executive order, DOGE was described as “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
Shortly after a federal judge stopped DOGE’s access to the federal payment system, DOGE cut 5,400 probationary workers from the Department of Defense, and over 1,000 employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Park Service. Federal workers also received an email that requested them to list what they did in the past week, adding that “failure to respond will be taken as resignation.”
Secretary of State, Marco Rubio and FBI Director, Kash Patel told their employees to not respond to the email. Pete Hegseth, leader of the department of defense, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, and Kristi Noem, leader of the Department of Homeland Security, all followed suit in telling their employees to ignore the message.
On Tuesday, Feb.25, hours after Musk’s deadline for replies to his email, 21 DOGE employees resigned from their positions, leaving a letter for White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles.
The workers cited their want to uphold the constitution, their disdain in their colleagues who were working to “modernize Social Security, veterans’ services, and tax filing.” The letter said a third of their colleagues were “indiscriminately terminated” and how the departments firing of technical experts, paired with “mishandling” of sensitive data is not compatible with the “mission we joined the United States Digital Service to carry out.”
“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” As the government undergoes changes, aspiring employees debate whether to pivot their future or still join the federal workforce.
Sebastian Perez-Navarro is the multimedia editor for the Prospector and can be reached at [email protected].
