Tag Archives: resignations

Heroic And Principled

When I was growing up, in a time-frame not all that far removed from the Second World War, it wasn’t uncommon for people to ask ourselves “What would I have done if I’d been an average German citizen during the Nazi era? Would I have had the courage to hide a Jewish person? To protest?”

I’ve always been suspicious of the folks who confidently assert that they’d have stood with the moral minority; when an entire society has decided to go along with power and barbarism –either because they agree that their problems have been caused by “those people” or because it has become very dangerous to object–history tells us it is the rare individual who will risk fiscal or personal harm to resist.

I am gratified to report that–in this dangerous time– America is not devoid of such individuals.

Recent reports confirm the principled resignations of twenty-one workers from DOGE.

More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.

This report follows widespread coverage of the departures of several principled lawyers in the Department of Justice, some of whose scathing letters have been widely circulated. 

And now, the two top designers at Tesla have left the company.

While the linked report didn’t include the reason these two resigned, it did note that the departure of these two pivotal figures comes at a time when Tesla is experiencing huge problems, significantly exacerbated by popular anger at Musk’s efforts to destroy American government.

Last year was terrible for Tesla. Bad financials. Multiple recalls. Abysmal safety record. Lawsuits. The Cybertruck disaster and cratering sales. All of it tied to design problems and lack of innovation. Add to that the dip in brand loyalty thanks to CEO Elon Musk’s toxic political activity, of course.

The article noted that this confluence of problems has led one of Tesla’s biggest market supporters to warn that the company may implode in 2025.

In recent years, Tesla has faced increasing scrutiny because of poor quality, poor design choices, and the poor personal choices of its founder. Until very recently, the Texas-based automaker has been able to ride out those storms by being the only game in town. But as the legacy manufacturers upped their electric vehicle game and stepped into the market, Tesla’s many faults have became more obvious.

The departure of top designers comes as Tesla’s sales are cratering–European sales are down 45% from last year, and the media is filled with reports of Tesla owners–famous and not–returning their cars in order to protest Musk and DOGE. 

Tesla’s problems don’t just diminish Musk’s net worth; they also provide a corrective to the myth that he is a successful entrepreneur. Much like Donald Trump, Musk’s fortune began with a large inheritance from his father. He did not “invent” the Tesla–he bought the company, and contrary to carefully nurtured PR, its early success was largely a matter of timing and lack of competition. While his business operations haven’t been the outright frauds that six-bankruptcy-Donald’s have been, his fortune has been built largely with taxpayer dollars, through billion-dollar contracts with the federal government–contracts that DOGE is protecting by shutting down agencies that were investigating charges of corruption in his companies.

Resignations by principled public servants are admirable. Unlike the billionaires (like Bezos) who immediately bent a knee to our would-be overlords, most of these people lack significant resources to fall back on–and by earning the enmity of the Trumpers, they will face barriers to their prospects for substitute employment 

Quitting their jobs took guts. 

Most of us lack the ability to resist in so public or significant a fashion, but the example provided by these individuals should reinforce our resolve to do those things we can do–join grassroots organizations, call and visit our Senators and Representatives, turn out for demonstrations, engage in boycotts…

If “good Germans” could hide Jews in their attics and principled Americans can quit their jobs, the rest of us can incur some inconveniences.

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An Unsettling Omen…

I vividly remember my first few months on the 25th floor of Indianapolis’ City-County Building. I was the brand-new Corporation Counsel, suddenly responsible for the legal affairs of the city, and getting up to speed was both imperative and disorienting. I especially remember encountering situations where City Legal had previously taken positions that seemed…odd. Situations where I would wonder “Why did they do that?”

Fast-forward three years, to my departure, and I remember thinking “Boy, I wish I could put a memo in several of these files, saying ‘I know this looks strange, but there’s a good reason we did thus and so…'” At least there were long-time employees, civil servants who could explain some of these situations to the next appointee.

In any institution, public or private, institutional memory is incredibly important. (As the salesmen sang in The Music Man, you’ve got to know the territory!) In the federal government, that store of institutional knowledge is most important in the State Department, where understanding foreign cultures, the histories of complex relationships, and the idiosyncrasies of various heads of state can be critical.

So hearing that the State Department’s entire senior administrative team has just resigned was both significant and deeply troubling. As the Washington Post reported,

The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era….All are career Foreign Service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations…

In addition, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired Jan. 20, and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, departed the same day. That amounts to a near-complete housecleaning of all the senior officials that deal with managing the State Department, its overseas posts and its people.

It is difficult to overstate the impact of these mass resignations on the ability of the United States to safeguard critical American interests.

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

As Wade emphasized,

“Diplomatic security, consular affairs, there’s just not a corollary that exists outside the department, and you can least afford a learning curve in these areas where issues can quickly become matters of life and death,” he said. “The muscle memory is critical. These retirements are a big loss. They leave a void. These are very difficult people to replace.”

America has installed a President who–to put the most charitable possible spin on it–doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. And the people who could fill in the blanks–the people with the knowledge and experience to keep us safe and to protect American interests, the people who actually understand what those interests are, have bailed.

Not a good sign.

We really are in uncharted waters.

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