(The Epoch Times)—After reporters revealed the names of multiple Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees, threats have proliferated against them and the department’s head, Elon Musk.
Sources familiar with DOGE staff described a mood of resilience among those working to fulfill President Donald Trump’s pledge for government reform.
“The young DOGE engineers seemed surprised and initially unprepared to be personally targeted by so much animus,” one source familiar with DOGE’s operations, speaking on the condition of anonymity as they were unauthorized to speak to the media, told The Epoch Times. “But they are energetic and dug in.”
Even as DOGE faces criticism from many congressional Democrats and is beset by lawsuits seeking to restrict its access to government data, its early results—including billions in cuts identified to The Epoch Times by the White House—may just be the tip of the iceberg.
DOGE aims to deliver $2 trillion in federal spending cuts during its 18-month lifespan. It ends in 2026 on the 200th anniversary of July 4th, 1776.
As DOGE seeks to overcome hurdles, billions could be just the beginning.
The Mood Amid Threats
The Epoch Times has reviewed numerous posts on the social media platform Bluesky that are aimed at DOGE and its reported staff members. Many disseminated personally identifiable information, including names, ages, and home addresses.
A source told The Epoch Times that federal law enforcement was dispatched to protect family members of DOGE employees after their names were leaked. As of publication time, the Department of Homeland Security had not confirmed that with The Epoch Times.
On Bluesky, an anonymous user called DOGE workers “Nazi scum,” adding, “The only good nazi is a dead nazi.” The post listed the reported names of several DOGE workers.
A Bluesky user whose name matched that of an employee at Boston University’s business school posted a “Wanted” graphic with DOGE employees’ names, faces, and the words “Dead or Alive.”
A statement from the university described the post as one from “an employee on his personal social media account,” adding, “the views expressed do not reflect the values of Questrom School of Business.”
Members of Congress, including DOGE oversight leaders, voiced shock and anger at the threats.
“That’s horrible,” Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), co-chair of the House DOGE Caucus, told The Epoch Times. “I haven’t really seen the severity of it, but that’s horrible.”
On the other side of the aisle, a spokesperson for DOGE critic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) told The Epoch Times that she “strongly opposes political violence toward anyone, for any reason, in all forms.”
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), who is also concerned about DOGE’s impact, told The Epoch Times, “I unequivocally condemn violence of any kind.”
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), who oversees the House DOGE Caucus’s defense and veterans’ affairs portfolio, told The Epoch Times that “if those people broke the law by doxxing these folks and doing that and threatening them, they should be thrown into prison.”
“I don’t mean jail. I don’t mean a fine,” he added. ”People that are doing these death threats need to go to prison, or it’s not going to stop.”
Under the Privacy Act, agency officials or others who disclose the personally identifiable information of federal employees could be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined up to $5,000. Threats on social media may also cross the line into threatening interstate communications, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Ed Martin, the new U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote in an open letter to Musk and DOGE recruiter Steve Davis that those “discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically” against DOGE would be pursued “to the end of the Earth” in the name of accountability.
A source familiar with DOGE said its employees were somewhat surprised by the “murderous and very personalized targeting.”
DOGE is a temporary organization repurposed from U.S. Digital Services. Trump and Musk previewed the idea to prospective voters on the campaign trail.
The president created the department through a day-one executive order, establishing DOGE teams across the federal government. A February executive order from Trump directs the heads of agencies to cooperate with DOGE with the aim of reducing the government workforce by removing nonperforming employees.
Many individuals publicly associated with DOGE are very young and highly technically accomplished.
One reported DOGE staff member won part of a $700,000 prize after he used artificial intelligence to help decipher an ancient Greek scroll. The scroll was scorched nearly two millennia ago when Mount Vesuvius erupted.
Another source described the DOGE workers as different in kind from typical employees of the modern federal apparatus—a government far removed from the days of the Manhattan Project and the Apollo missions to the moon, when many great scientists and engineers devoted their lives to public service.
The source attributed the hostile reaction to DOGE workers to “a reflexive skepticism of and hostility toward the modern archetype of the great man.”
The source said the highly personal attacks appeared to be part of a conscious strategy to tear that image down.
Just weeks into DOGE’s inception, unnamed sources within federal agencies are leaking details about it and its employees to journalists—a phenomenon reminiscent of what occurred during the first Trump administration.
Meanwhile, the temporary organization has documented its funding cuts on social media platform X, the platform owned by Musk.
A barebones DOGE webpage at doge.gov promises full details on the savings it has achieved “no later than Valentine’s Day.”
“These DOGE guys are completely action-oriented and totally unfamiliar with the landscape of narrative and media,” a source told The Epoch Times. “They’re just pure doers in a century of bureaucratic uselessness.”
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