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21 Workers At Federal Agency That Became DOGE Resign In Protest; White House: 1m Replies To Government Email Asking For Work Details; How Mass Federal Layoffs May Affect U.S. Economy. Aired 2- 2:30p ET

Aired February 25, 2025 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[14:00:47]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN HOST: It's a DOGE fight. They were supposed to help in Elon Musk's push to overhaul the federal government. But now 21 employees are walking off the job in protest and saying in their resignation letter, we will not lend our expertise to legitimize DOGE's actions.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Plus, sorry, not sorry. The CEO of America's largest bank, Jamie Dimon, apologizes for using salty language when talking about work from home policies, but he's not apologizing for requiring his employees to return to the office.

And it's the sequel nobody asked for, unless you really like sad cheese sandwiches. Nearly eight years after the infamous Fyre Festival, tickets for Fyre Festival 2 are on sale. Some are really expensive. We're following these developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN News Central.

JIMENEZ: All right. This hour, we are learning new details after more than 20 federal employees who had been working for Elon Musk's DOGE just resigned. It's being seen as a mass protest. And these are people who worked for the U.S. digital service before the agency became DOGE.

Meanwhile, we're following changing guidance surrounding Elon Musk's what did you do last week email and whether federal workers can actually be fired if they don't respond. Joining us now is CNN National Security Correspondent Natasha Bertrand. Let's start with these new resignations. What are you learning on that front?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Omar, these are 21 federal employees who were mostly engineers and they were employed at the United States Digital Service, which was the precursor to DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. And they have sent a public letter that they have posted online now saying that they are resigning because they simply can no longer in good faith carry out the kind of work that Elon Musk wanted them to do.

They said that they were being asked to compromise core government systems, jeopardize American sensitive data and dismantle critical public services. Now, also in their letter, they really took aim at DOGE. And they said that DOGE's actions, firing technical experts, mishandling sensitive data, breaking critical systems, contradict their stated mission of modernizing federal technology and software to maximize government efficiency and productivity.

They say that these actions are not compatible with the mission we joined the United States Digital Service to carry out, which was to deliver better services to the American people through technology and design. And finally, they said that we will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize American sensitive data, or dismantle those critical public services.

So clearly taking aim here at the people currently employed by DOGE, saying essentially that they are unqualified, that they're breaking things, and that they are not doing things in line with how the U.S. government should be doing things in order to protect American sensitive data.

JIMENEZ: So that's just within DOGE. But what about this shifting guidance to federal workers at large? Because they got that email saying or asking to justify what it is they do at work, it's changed a lot. Where have we landed at this point? What are we expecting ahead?

BERTRAND: Yeah, and I can tell you, Omar, that defense officials in the building right behind me here, they're extremely confused, as many federal employees across the government currently are, because late last night, OPM issued yet more guidance that appeared to conflict with the guidance that it had issued only several hours earlier, saying that the federal employees, they essentially have to respond to this email, but that if they are going to respond or not, the determination will then be made by agency heads whether to terminate them or whether their answers were satisfactory.

Now, earlier in the day yesterday, OPM had issued guidance saying that responses were completely voluntary. Now, it seems that the White House and OPM are saying, actually this is going to be at the discretion of your agency bosses. Something that clearly takes into consideration the anger and frustration that we heard expressed by agency heads, including the FBI director, over the weekend, that they wanted to continue to control who is actually employed at their agencies. But still a ton of confusion about who they should actually be responding to, Omar.

[14:05:00]

JIMENEZ: Natasha, thank you for the reporting. Even with the plane going overhead, it always happens in the two minutes you're out there doing a report. Appreciate it. Brianna?

KEILAR: That is the DCA flight path there at the Pentagon.

And a short time ago the White house revealing that one million federal workers have now responded to that email demanding they explain what they did last week. And as we hear more about so many federal jobs on the line, there's a question looming. How damaging are these doge job cuts to the overall economy? CNN's Matt Egan is joining us now with some answers. How damaging is it, Matt?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Brianna, we are talking about mass layoffs in what is the nation's largest employer, right? The federal government. There's over three million civilians who work for the federal government. Some context that's basically equal to the U.S. workforces of Amazon, Walmart and UPS combined. And this workforce is now under siege as Elon Musk and DOGE try to find ways to cut costs.

But economists that I'm talking to, they're not overly concerned about a spike in the unemployment rate or an imminent recession caused by these layoffs specifically. That's because even though the federal workforce is big, the overall economy is much bigger, right? Federal civilian workers make up less than 2% of the total U.S. workforce. And we know there's more job openings right now than there are workers to fill those openings. So there is hope that any laid off workers will be able to get work in the private sector.

Of course, just because maybe there's no impact to the unemployment rate or the GDP doesn't mean that there's not real harm done to families who rely on government paychecks and government services, plus the communities that rely on government workers, right? I mean the obvious place is Washington, D.C. consider that almost a quarter of the federal civilian workforce is in Washington, D.C. Virginia and Maryland.

But this is not just about the beltway. Government workers play a key role in a lot of U.S. States, including Ohio and Texas, Georgia as well. And so there's going to be a real domino effect here, right? You could see people have to sell their homes. That could hurt home prices. And you could also see some people who get laid off. They could cut spending, right? That's going to hurt the local stores and restaurants.

And I think the last point here though, Brianna, is that we are talking about real people. I talked to a 24-year-old woman in Iowa who told me that she was shocked to find out on Valentine's Day that she had been laid off by the U.S. geological service. And she said now she's got to figure out a way to pay off her student debt and she's got to go on unemployment, which of course is funded by the government. Brianna?

KEILAR: That's right, American taxpayers. Matt Egan, thank you so much for the report.

EGAN: Thanks.

KEILAR: Omar?

JIMENEZ: Well, Brianna, today President Donald Trump's pick to be the number two at the Pentagon, Stephen Feinberg telling senators during his confirmation hearing there needs to be major cuts to the Defense Department's civilian workforce. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) STEPHEN FEINBERG, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY NOMINEE: I believe that most of the cuts that we will see will be from people that want to retire, people who would like to resign early. And these kinds of reorganizations, there's always turnover. And without some turnover, you can't become an efficient organization.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: Now, Feinberg's comments follow the Pentagon announcing on Friday that it intends to fire between 5% and 8% of its civilian workforce, or about 950,000 people.

Meanwhile, several former top U.S. military leaders are sounding the alarm. In a letter to the editor in the Washington Post, they write, quote, healthy civil military relations require mutual trust and respect. So civilian leaders will seek out the best military advice of the nation's nonpartisan career military leaders, who will in turn be unafraid to provide that counsel. Firing officers for implementing the policies of previous civilian leaders undermines these principles, creating an untenable environment.

Joining me now is one of the authors of the letter, former U.S. Army Secretary Louis Caldera. Thank you for being here. And I just want to start off with some of what we just read of you all's words. You say you're deeply alarmed by Trump's overhaul of military leadership. What are your concerns?

LOUIS CALDERA, FORMER ARMY SECRETARY: Well, we're specifically addressing firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, firing the chief of naval operations, and firing the senior military lawyers in each of the services. This is really unprecedented. Very few, if any senior officers have ever fired before their statutory term was complete and only for performance reasons. No performance reasons were given for why these individuals were fired.

And that just sends a chilling message throughout the entire military that the reason they were fired is inappropriate, that it has to do more with making statements about cultural issues and political issues than it does about national security.

[14:10:07]

And anything that increases risk for our nation actually makes us less safe. Eliminating people who are in senior roles, who've been serving for 35, 40 years in uniform, who can provide that expertise to the President on national security matters --

JIMENEZ: And, you know, your letter --

CALDERA: -- just disrupts our entire military.

JIMENEZ: Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt there, but I just meant to say that your letter reads that abruptly removing general and flag officers without adequate justification disrupts the chain of command, and to your point, weakens morale and exacerbates challenges in an already turbulent global security environment. Just to continue on that thread, what do you expect could be the downstream effects of these changes?

CALDERA: Well, part of the message that it's sending is that the administration only wants yes men, mostly men, not women. Yes men in these positions who are not going to provide the critical information that they need to the President as he's thinking about making national security decisions.

Everybody understands the President gets a set policy about where and how troops will be deployed, but they really need to listen to the military leaders. The President does not have the experience in uniform, neither does his Secretary of Defense across all the branches and across a 35, 40 year career to really understand the relationships between our allies, the security situation in different regions of the world, the impacts of what has been tried and not been tried in the past, and the second and third order effects.

And so listening to the military means you can achieve your goals and you'll do it with less risk to the operations and to the nation. And if you threaten retribution simply because people don't agree with your politics, that's not what this is about. Uniformed officers are nonpartisan. They are not loyal to the President. They are loyal to the Constitution.

And they need to be able to fulfill their duties to the Constitution, to defend its support to the Constitution, including to be able to say to the President when they believe that an action they're proposing is either unconstitutional or unlawful. And if they're just going to fire anyone who dares to say is an inappropriate use of our military, it will harm us in the eyes of our allies.

It could cause our soldiers to commit war crimes. You don't want that. That's going to be terrible in terms of the reputation of our country, our military, and our ability to recruit. And yet that's the kind of officer corp that they're likely to get if there's retribution every time someone disagrees with them.

JIMENEZ: And just really quickly before we go, because Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the shakeup, saying the President deserves to pick his key national security and military advisory team. A lot of presidents have made changes. What is your response?

CALDERA: Uniformed leaders understand the President gets a set policy. And if a new administration comes in and sets policy, they follow the new policy. You change policy, not personnel. And you don't change them in the middle of their tenure when they're working on thousands of things to contribute to our national security that now you've stopped dead in their tracks.

JIMENEZ: Understood. Former U.S. Army Secretary Louis Caldera really appreciate the time and perspective.

CALDERA: Thank you.

JIMENEZ: All right. Still to come. On the eve of a crucial Washington visit, the British Prime Minister says the UK will increase its defense spending. The impact it could have on relations with the Trump administration coming up.

Plus, a new FAA contract to update their IT networks is raising new conflict of interest concerns surrounding Elon Musk.

And later the Supreme Court throwing out the death sentence of an Oklahoma inmate and ordering a new trial. That much more coming up on CNN News Central.

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[14:18:47]

JIMENEZ: All right. Welcome back. This just in. The White House says Elon Musk will attend President Trump's first cabinet meeting tomorrow. Let's get straight to CNN Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny. Jeff goes without saying Musk is not an elected official nor was he Senate confirmed. And yet here we are. How did this happen

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Omar, he will have a seat in the cabinet room for the President's first cabinet of this administration. Of course, the reason that that is significant is largely because of that email that Elon Musk's team sent over the weekend. Those six words, what did you do last week? That really have continued to cause confusion and a chaos throughout the federal workforce, wondering if people should respond to those five bullet points. He asked people to respond.

But I asked the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, if Elon Musk would have a seat at the table and she said yes, he would be attending. So it will be interesting to see the Senate confirmed members of the cabinet in the room as well as Elon Musk.

We will see if there's any back and forth over some of the disagreement that we heard from a lot of the agencies that they were a not aware that their employees would be asked to write that email, what did you do last week? As well as many of the national security type agencies, from the FBI to the DOJ to the Pentagon, telling their employees to ignore it.

[14:20:09]

So Omar, it will be very interesting, but it perhaps is no surprise there are often advisers in the room and there is no bigger adviser than Elon Musk.

JIMENEZ: The first cabinet meeting of this administration. Jeff Zeleny, really appreciate it. Brianna?

KEILAR: Ahead of his crucial visit with President Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announcing today a plan to increase the UK's military spending. President Trump has long demanded European allies contribute more to their own defense. While announcing the defense spending increased, Starmer told members of Parliament that Britain's relationship with America is his country's most important bilateral alliance.

His upcoming visit to the White House on Thursday follows French President Macron's face to face meeting with Trump yesterday. These two are making kind of tag team visits in a last ditch effort to convince Trump not to abandon Ukraine in pursuit of a peace deal in the war with Russia.

I'm joined now by retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. He is a Former Director of European Affairs at the national -- on the National Security Council, I should say. And he also has a new book out. It's called the Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine. I would offer, Alex, the book is great.

I would offer an alternate title of a book that I wish people would have read three to four years ago, because it really is great at explaining how we came to the point that we're at. And you really take us through the miscalculations of the U.S. approach to Russia since the fall of the USSR and how approaching Russia transactionally has yielded these disastrous results for decades and created this environment where Putin invaded Ukraine three years ago. How do you think America should have approached Russia?

LT. COL. ALEXANDER VINDMAN, U.S. ARMY (RET.): First of all, I don't think, unfortunately the book couldn't be more relevant deceiving itself about Russia betraying Ukraine. We see that pattern play out today in the most extreme manner under Trump. We've made mistakes, as I try to point out in the book, over six administrations, none bigger than what we're seeing Trump commitment now to embolden Putin to conduct further aggression.

What we could have done in the past is taken an entirely different approach, a long sighted approach, one that focuses on values. Those values point to the fact that we should have strong alliances, economic, military, security. We should harden democracies because democracies are a bedrock of our relationships. They add stability. And we could have done that throughout the years. Instead, we succumbed to a Russia first policy.

Again, no clearer today than at any point in the past that we're conducting a Russia first policy, succumbing to hopes and fears, hopes that we could do more with Russia. I'm sure that's being dangled in front of Trump at the moment, or fears that the relationship could devolve into an outright confrontation.

We're as close to it as we've been in the -- at any point in the past 35 years, because we continue to appease Russia instead of holding the line, holding to our values. And I hope we could learn that lesson. Right now, we're not -- we're going to learn it the hard way when Trump burns Putin sometime over the course of the next probably, you know, months or years, and we have to recalibrate again.

KEILAR: Yeah. It is relevant because you make this convincing argument that America is making the same mistakes over and over again. You write, the America that was once a stabilizing presence on the global stage looks to retreat into a fortress, closing its doors to the world and inviting a dark vacuum to form in its wake. You go on to say Russia and China in particular, stand ready to reshape the world in their own image, a world where power is absolute, dissent is crushed, and borders are redrawn at the whims of the strong. I mean, you, you know what's at stake here. You were detailed to Kiev, to Moscow, when you were in the military, you are Ukrainian- American. What is at stake in these peace negotiations as President Trump has made clear, he is approaching them transactionally?

VINDMAN: So I think, again, it's -- we're at the stage of U.S.-Russia relations where we're basically drinking poisoned Kool Aid. We're that far and extreme in the way we're conducting our relationship. The stakes couldn't be higher. It's not just about Ukraine.

Ukraine has somehow figured prominently into U.S. national security for decades. Whether it was because they had the third largest nuclear arsenal, whether it was because they were the bulwark against Russian aggression in the 2000s, now actually against Russian military aggression. But it's bigger than that. It's about the message that our adversaries, our enemies, the folks that could -- if they could wipe us off the map, the message that they take, whether that means that they go further, where they aggress against NATO or European allies.

[14:25:10]

Europe is important to us not just because they're part of the team. They will defend us, they'll have our backs when, if and ever we need the help they were there for us in 9/11. It's also because they're the bedrock of our economic prosperity. They're our largest, most important trading partner. And if we don't maintain some stability there, that will have dire economic impacts.

And we're on the cusp of something, you know, frankly, very dangerous. The Russians are potentially getting the signals that the U.S. won't be there for collective defense if one of them is attacked. That means the Russians will probe, the Russians will seek to destroy NATO. And we get drawn into something that we don't want to ever see, another major war in Europe.

And it also translates over to the Pacific, the Indo-Pacific, with the Chinese eyeing Taiwan, an enormously important trading partner, manufacturer of chips that power all our machines and the kinds of messages they take. So the stakes could not possibly be higher. And I see the Trump administration making huge, huge mistakes that are going to drag us into something we don't want to see --

KEILAR: Yeah. And that's -- you see Starmer --

VINDMAN: -- a direct confrontation (ph).

KEILAR: You see Starmer and Macron making -- they're having to make a case for collective defense that is kind of unusual. They have to make it. You, of course, sounded the alarm on the phone call that led to Trump's first impeachment. And as you describe it in the book, Zelenskyy called Trump's bluff and he wasn't expecting that.

But do you think when it comes to what Zelenskyy is facing right now, which is this rare earth minerals deal, that the Trump administration is really pressuring him to agree to, that he has any choice but to take that deal?

VINDMAN: I think some of these things, like burden sharing and this rare earths trade deal actually could be valuable to mutually beneficial to both the U.S. and our allies. The Europeans have clearly underinvested in their own defense. They've in a certain extent been free riders.

The problem is that the way we're going about it is we're burning all the bridges with the Europeans. We want them in our corner, we want them to have our backs, we want them to contribute more. But the way the Trump administration is going about this extremely heavy handed is dangerous.

Same thing with President Zelenskyy. I actually advocated for investments in Ukrainian commodities when I was in the sea in the White House because the Ukrainians could absolutely use that investment. But it's got to be a reasonable, fair deal. It can't compromise Ukraine's national security.

The Ukrainians want the U.S. to be there to invest and help rebuild, but it can't be extortion, trying to take five to one the money that the U.S. provided to Ukraine in our own national security or trillions of dollars when they want Ukraine to cough up half of its rare earths. So those are completely unacceptable criteria.

I think Zelenskyy is going to come up with a deal that's mutually beneficial. He's not going to compromise his country. And if he does, it's with the most kind of calculating short term basis recognizing that Trump is in power for four years. There's only so much harm that, you know, even taking a bad deal could do because it could be reversed. But I think he's going to strike a pretty firm bargain.

KEILAR: And you talked in the book to former Bush administration officials. You paint this picture of how Georgia and Ukraine, they were pushing for NATO membership in 2007 and while the U.S. spoke sort of kindly, they didn't actually give them an on ramp to it. It led to Putin invading Georgia. How do you think the issue of NATO membership should be dealt with in these negotiations?

VINDMAN: I think it's non-starter under the Trump administration. The position, you know, you couldn't have given a bigger gift to Putin even before negotiations start talking about Ukraine being outside of NATO or giving up territory. Those things could have been settled in negotiations in exchange for the end of the war, a path towards peace.

I think the fact is that this will eventually happen. It won't happen on Trump's watch. But I think this is the only way that you really ensure long-term security for those countries on freedom's frontier, on the border with Russia. For Ukraine, long-term, it's going to have to be less than that. In the short-term, we'll get there.

But again, I think the book points out all of these different mistakes that we've made consistently along the way. And more importantly, it points a path forward that allows us to rebalance course correct from this most extreme course of action that Trump is taking that focuses on long-term, our key relationships, our key interests, values as a centerpiece to our interests.

KEILAR: Alex Vindman, thank you so much for sharing the book with us. It's a, you know, it's a quick read for something that is obviously pretty serious material. Thanks for being with us to talk about it.

VINDMAN: Thanks.