An employee at Elon Musk’s DOGE has called it quits after his racist social media posts have come to light.
Musk was appointed as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by President Donald Trump.
While it’s not technically a governmental department, the president revealed that it will act as an outside advisor for federal spending.
Elon Musk is now the head of DOGE (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
DOGE was recently granted full access to the Treasury payment system but now one of the two staffers on the team who were given this access has quit his job.
This was after the White House was questioned about his history of racist social media posts.
These posts included supporting eugenics and the idea of repealing the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
According to a report made by The Wall Street Journal, programmer Marko Elez, 25, had an account on Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
This is where he made controversial posts stating that he was in support of a ‘eugenic immigration policy’ along with other racist remarks.
In one post, Elez wrote: “I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.”
In another, the former DOGE employee encouraged X users to ‘normalize Indian hate’, in reference to the large number of Indian immigrants that work in Silicon Valley’s tech sector.
The White House was quizzed about these posts which led to press secretary Karoline Leavitt revealing that Elez had quit his role.
There have been growing concerns over the level of access Musk’s DOGE has, including the possibility that it may have access to confidential information including social security numbers and Medicare benefits payments.
The employee used Elon Musk’s social media platform X to make the racist posts (Anna Barclay/Getty Images)
Lindsay Owens, who is the executive director of economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative, previously shared her thoughts on the possible routes Musk could go down.
In an op-ed for MSNBC, she said: “Musk could also get his hands on the ‘Do Not Pay’ system that lists individuals or contractors the government has blacklisted, theoretically granting him control over whom the government does business with.
“Government contracts have been central to Musk’s $400 billion net worth; his companies have signed billions of dollars’ worth of government contracts.
According to another report by Reuters, DOGES staff members have taken over the headquarters of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), leaving other employees shut out of the computer system, and have moved sofas onto the fifth floor so workers can sleep on site.
They have also used the access of the OPM systems to offer federal employees a ‘deferred resignation’ program.
This means they would resign from government service but remain on the payroll for six months.
However, the buyout program has been put on pause for now by a federal judge pending a hearing.
Luke Farritor, one of the few employees at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, rose to fame in the tech world after solving a 2,000-year-old riddle that has stumped every historian and archaeologist so far – and he did it with the power of artificial intelligence.
‘Wonderkids’ in the technology world are certainly not a rare occurrence, as often the best and brightest begin honing their skills from an early age, but young ‘genius’ Luke Farritor separated himself from the rest by achieving something that many had wrestled with for over 2,000 years.
For centuries historians and archaeologists had wrestled with one particular papyrus scroll from the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum, which alongside Pompeii was laid to rubble by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
While many aspects of both towns have been miraculously preserved, including a recently discovered bathhouse, this particular scroll was charred enough to make the writing supposedly unreadable – that is until Farritor came along.
Farritor used AI to decipher 2,000-year-old text that had baffled historians (YouTube/University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Using complex AI algorithms, Luke managed to decipher the text upon the blackened scroll, earning himself not only a cash prize of $700,000 but all the fame you’d need to start a burgeoning career in the world of tech, as reported by the Times of India.
Farritor opted to drop out of his course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and instead opt for the Thiel Fellowship which grants young people $100,000 to “build new things instead of sitting in a classroom.”
He also linked up with Elon Musk, friend of Peter Thiel, through an internship at SpaceX, and there’s a strong likelihood that this led to his current role in the White House at the Department of Government Efficiency.
Farritor is one of the few people working at the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk (Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)
While it’s unclear what exactly this role would comprise, the broader mission of Musk’s private advisory board is to cut federal funding by $2,000,000,000,000 before the stated expiry date of 2026.
Even Musk himself has admitted that this will be a challenging task, and they have initially begun by targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion funding across all facets of government, and have announced further plans to dismantle the Department of Education.
Controversy has also surrounded reports that Musk and the DOGE team have gained access to confidential information – including social security numbers – of every individual in the country after infiltrating the Treasury’s federal payment system.
As per an announcement from Musk on X, Farritor will also be one of the ‘lucky’ few to be working 120 hour weeks across all seven days in order to complete the department’s necessary tasks, and it has been stated that this is their ‘superpower’ over typical bureaucratic institutions.
There is a shocking possibility that Elon Musk could now have your social security number after a controversial move was made by a member of the Trump administration.
Yep, you read that right – the world’s richest man might now be able to access confidential information about every single taxpayer in the country.
This is according to The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, who revealed that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has granted Musk full access to the Treasury’s federal payment system.
Elon Musk has now been given access to the Treasury’s payment system (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
This is because President Trump has appointed Musk as the head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
While DOGE isn’t actually a governmental department, it has been said that it will act as an outside advisor on federal spending, with Musk claiming that he will make trillions of dollars worth of cuts.
According to The New York Times, David Lebryk, a top civil servant in the Treasury Department, was removed from his position after refusing to give DOGE access.
It is not yet known what Musk might do with this new power and he has already been making claims about the department on his own social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
The Tesla boss wrote: “The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.
“They literally never denied a payment in their entire career.
“Not even once.”
Lindsay Owens, who is the executive director of economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative, shared her thoughts on the possible routes Musk could go down.
The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once.
The highest ranking Treasury official, David A Lebryk, is resigning rather than complying with a request by @DOGE for access to audit where they’ve spent trillions of dollars a year. Why would career bureaucrats fear an audit by @elonmusk and @doge to see where we can save money?
In an op-ed for MSNBC, she said: “Musk could also get his hands on the ‘Do Not Pay’ system that lists individuals or contractors the government has blacklisted, theoretically granting him control over whom the government does business with.
“Government contracts have been central to Musk’s $400 billion net worth; his companies have signed billions of dollars’ worth of government contracts.
“He could easily place his rivals on the Do Not Pay list or turn the spigot back on for friends who have been blacklisted.”
Writing for Tusk, political scientist Seth Masket warned: “There are many disturbing aspects of this. But perhaps the most fundamental is that Elon Musk is not a federal employee, nor has he been appointed by the President nor approved by the Senate to have any leadership role in government. The ‘Department of Government Efficiency,’ announced by Trump in a January 20th executive order, is not truly any sort of government department or agency, and even the executive order uses quotes in the title.
“It’s perfectly fine to have a marketing gimmick like this, but DOGE does not have power over established government agencies, and Musk has no role in government. It does not matter that he is an ally of the President. Musk is a private citizen taking control of established government offices. That is not efficiency; that is a coup.”
Elon Musk has finally offered his reaction to the banning of X links in many of the most popular subreddits, seemingly waging another war just shortly after his public spat with Wikipedia’s owner.
It’s been a clear fact for years that Elon Musk is no stranger to conflict on social media, having had spats with countless celebrities, infamous hacking groups, and even foreign governments.
He even recently pushed back publicly against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman after US President Donald Trump announced a $500,000,000 AI-powered program, despite holding a powerful position adjacent to government himself as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
What was most surprising about his recent comments regarding Reddit was simply how long it took him to speak out, as it has been nearly two weeks since many of the largest subreddits on the platform enacted a blanket ban on content from X within their communities.
It all stems from Musk’s alleged Nazi salutes at the presidential inauguration, which also spurned on another spat with Wikipedia owner Jimmy Wales, after Musk’s page was updated to include reference to these gestures.
Musk advised his followers to “defund Wikipedia until balance is restored,” while Wales responded, outlining that he hopes Musk’s “campaign to defund us results in lost of donations from people who care about the truth,” reiterating that “Wikipedia is not for sale.”
Following on from this, Musk then responded to a post on X where someone was banned from the r/comics subreddit after declaring that Tesla CEO’s gesture at the inauguration was not a Nazi salute, stating: “This is insane.”
Reddit continues to be anti-free speech. I just got a lifetime ban from the “comics” subreddit. Yesterday I posted a humor comic that got over 5,400 upvotes. Then I noticed that there was a pinned post from the moderators saying that comics linked from X could no longer be…
The story, posted by Cedric Hohnstadt, involved him posting an image to the subreddit, then realizing that the moderators had made the community one of many that has banned posts from X.
Hohnstadt commented underneath this post: “Respectfully, Musk is not a Nazi and it was not a Nazi salute,” leading him to a lifetime ban for ‘Nazi apologia’ with no appeal possible.
Many in the replies to Musk’s quoted post have decried these actions, implying that X is now the only place to have ‘free speech’. How much you believe this appears to depend on what side you land on, as journalists have been banned under Musk’s ownership at the same time as the reinstating of users who had been banned for posting child sex abuse on the platform.
There also appears to be a larger misunderstanding in regards to what Reddit is as a platform, as while it does have an overarching ownership team – who have asserted, as per Newsweek, that “Reddit Inc. has no ban on X links,” and the company “also has no ban against the particular user mentioned in the X post,” – most of the content and user control is performed by individual subreddit moderators.
Reddit is by definition a hub of communities that have their own rules, it just so happens that many agreed upon banning links and content from X at the same time.
It was Musk’s alleged Nazi salute that caused many subreddits to ban content from X (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
While Musk was previously somewhat of a darling for the site, many users have since turned on the richest man in the world as he has pushed into the politically far right.
“Dude won’t be happy until he owns everything and everyone,” argues one user on r/technology, adding that “he won’t be happy then either, but that’s his aim.”
Another outlines: “Actually Elon, Reddit is NOT banning X links. THE PEOPLE of Reddit are banning X links. Usually after VOTING. That’s how democracy works.”
With Musk’s seemingly growing influence in US politics it’s unlikely that many subreddits will change their stance any time soon, so he’ll either have to accept that others have their own rules and opinions or continue a social media tirade as usual.
A Reddit community was banned this week after Elon Musk claimed the participants of the subreddit had broken the law.
Not content with being the world’s richest man, CEO of SpaceX, and head of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency in Washington, Elon Musk is now flexing his power on Reddit.
While Musk has already had a pretty public spat with the founder of Wikipedia, he’s continuing to put another online community in his crosshairs. Reddit is currently in the Top 10 most-visited sites worldwide, with over 100,000 active subreddits reported as of January 2025. Sadly, it’s currently down to at least 99,999 as one popular subreddit has been slapped with the ban hammer.
As reported by Engadget, Elon Musk’s complaints have seemingly led to the r/WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit being temporarily banned.
While it’s only a 72-hour ban, Redditors have been warned to cool it with their vitriol toward Musk and his DOGE employees.
The r/WhitePeopleTwitter is currently offline (Reddit)
If you currently head to the r/WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit, you’re greeted by a message that reads: “This subreddit has been temporarily banned due to a prevalence of violent content. Inciting and glorifying violence or doxing are against Reddit’s platform-wide Rules.”
The outlet says it comes after identities of those who reportedly helped DOGE take over federal government systems began to leak and the Reddit community turned against them. With the names revealed, there were comments that included the likes of, “Drag their f**kin bodies, cuz,” “This Nazi stooge needs to be shot,” and, “Pink mist them all’ – referring to the act of obliterating someone with a rocket or an IED.
One post on X shared screenshots and wrote: “r/WhitePeopleTwitter is now calling for the public execution of the DOGE software developers.”
This was then reshared by Musk himself, with the tech billionaire adding: “They have broken the law.”
There’s been much controversy online amid reports that a largely young group of engineers, some fresh out of college, has helped Musk take control of secure systems in the likes of USAid and the Treasury Department.
While Engadget says that revealing the names of DOGE employees is not a crime, Reddit is clearly taking these threats of violence seriously.
It comes after interim US Attorney Ed Martin wrote a letter to Musk and vowed to keep DOGE staff ‘safe’. Sharing a screenshot of the letter, its content reads: “We must keep all of our American government employees safe and we must protect the American people’s property.”
Martin asks Musk to utilize him and his staff to keep the DOGE workers safe, throwing shade at the Biden administration and calling out its handling of the Atifa and BLM movements.
