ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In his address to Congress tonight, President Trump is expected to tout the cost savings his administration has created as it's slashed federal jobs. One of the teams recently targeted for firing includes more than 80 people whose job was to make government digital services more user-friendly and efficient. Government efficiency is one of Trump's explicit goals. NPR's Frank Langfitt talked to several of those workers. Hi, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Tell us more about this team and what they did.
LANGFITT: Yeah, it's a little-known group called 18F. They're named for the office. Their offices are at 18th and F Street here in Washington, D.C. And I talked to them today. They're passionate about what they do. They felt like they were really helping make government better. But when I talked to them, they didn't want to use their names because they are afraid of retaliation.
SHAPIRO: Can you tell us about specific projects they worked on that people might be familiar with?
LANGFITT: You know, they helped develop software for the IRS. So this is a software that allows eligible taxpayers in 25 states to deal directly with the IRS. They can file returns. They don't have to pay, necessarily, a tax preparer to do that. There's other software that they helped develop so that people can file civil right complaints directly to the Justice Department. And they've also been working on a new weather.gov site. It's not up yet, and it allows people to interact directly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, you know, NOAA. So they don't have to pay for information from a third-party app.
SHAPIRO: Those sound like useful projects. So why was the team fired?
LANGFITT: Well, the team got an email from a guy named Thomas Shedd. He runs the technology division inside the government's General Services Administration. And they were told, you know - as we've been reporting - they were being eliminated as part of a broad workforce reduction and, quote - this is what it said - "a broader strategy to improve efficiency." That's from an email that I've been able to see. Now, Shedd does not work for the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, but he did used to work for Tesla which, as we know, is owned by Elon Musk, who leads DOGE.
SHAPIRO: And what have 18F team members told you about this?
LANGFITT: Yeah, they were really saddened and perplexed by this. You know, they say this was their job. It's why they came to the government. They felt they were making a difference and improving efficiency. And one team member that I talked to, Ari, said he thinks, in the long run, that the government's going to lose money 'cause it's not going to have as many people working inside, in places like 18F, to be able to look at outside contracts, make sure that they can be - you know, that they're worth it, that it's the right technology and maybe, you know, be able to do it more cheaply inside the government. And one last thing, Ari, on this is - that is some team members said they thought politics had played a role in this decision.
SHAPIRO: Did they point to any evidence of that?
LANGFITT: They did. I mean, members say 18F was very inclusive and diverse as a workforce, but it did come under fire from conservatives. I'll give you an example. Back in 2016, there was this inspector general's report that said someone and 18F had created a bot to, quote, "police people's uses of pronouns on Slack." That's the messaging app. This was cited by conservative media back in 2023. Last month, somebody on X referred to 18F as a far-left office. Elon Musk retweeted that saying, quote, "that group has been deleted."
SHAPIRO: Have you been able to reach anybody to explain why the team was eliminated?
LANGFITT: Yeah, I talked to a spokesman today at the General Services Administration - said that the assertion that 18F was eliminated because it was very inclusive was flat out false. He was emphatic that the elimination was a business decision. And what he said is the team was supposed to pay for itself by doing consulting work for other federal agencies and then billing them. He said it never really was able to pay for itself. And team members disputed that and said they had a full book of work for the coming year.
SHAPIRO: And did the GSA spokesperson address Elon Musk's comment about the 18F team?
LANGFITT: He did not on the record, but I will note this - you know, if Elon Musk suggests that this decision might have been made because employees seemed too liberal, it makes it hard for the government to argue otherwise.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Frank Langfitt. Thank you.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Ari.
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