Elon Musk bragged this group had been 'deleted' when DOGE shut it down - now they're appealing

Former employees of the US government's 18F tech modernization team have filed an appeal of their termination, arguing that the DOGE-led shuttering of their entire unit was illegal.

The 18F team argued in an appeal [PDF] to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) filed Wednesday that all 80 of them deserve to be reinstated because they were terminated as retaliation for their failure to get in line with Trump's policies, their resistance to DOGE's attempts to gain access to information at the General Services Administration's (GSA's) Technology Transformation Group, and "their perceived political affiliations or beliefs."

Nominal DOGE leader Elon Musk took public glee in shuttering the 18F office, according to the appeal, posting on X that the group "has been deleted." The move followed reports from conservative news outlets that 18F was "defiantly left-wing" and "engaged in far-left self-indulgence," apparently because it did things ...