Member of Musk's Doge resigns after reports of racist posts

A young member of Elon Musk's newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) unit has resigned after being linked to a racist social media account.

The White House confirmed on Friday that Marko Elez, 25, had resigned, though it did not specify why.

Media reports tied Elez, 25, who had previously worked for Musk's SpaceX company, to a now-deleted social media account that promoted racism and eugenics.

Musk himself acknowledged the departure, posting a poll on X, the social media platform he owns, asking followers whether he should bring back the Doge staffer who made "inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym".

Doge has played a significant role in the dizzying start to Donald Trump's second term, including dismantling America's foreign aid agency.

On Friday, President Trump said he had instructed Musk and his agency to look into cuts at the Pentagon and the Department of Education.

At a press conference with the Japanese prime minister, he said "everything's fertile" for Doge oversight and cost cutting.

Asked about Mr Elez's resignation from the agency, Trump said didn't know much about the posts but that he trusted Vice-President JD Vance on the matter.

The vice-president said earlier in the day the young employee should be given a second chance.

Writing on X, Vance said that while he disagrees "with some of Elez's posts... I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life".

The account connected to Mr Elez - first reported by the Wall Street Journal - posted a variety of incendiary comments which were verified as authentic by the BBC.

"Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool," read one post from the pseudonymous account in July.

Another post from the account in September said: "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity."

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"Normalize Indian hate," another post that month said.

All of the posts have since been deleted.

As of Friday morning, more than 385,000 people appear to have participated in Musk's poll about re-hiring Mr Elez, though it did not mention him by name.

So far, 78% have voted in favour of his return.

Responding to one user who said Musk should have a talk with Mr Elez "about the racist stuff. Not cool", the billionaire replied: "True."

Mr Elez's resignation comes amid growing scrutiny of Doge, the government cost-cutting advisory group established by Trump.

On Thursday, a US judge threw up a roadblock to one of those initiatives, halting a plan to offer incentives to millions of federal workers to voluntarily resign this month.

Musk has championed an effort to dismantle USAID, the government agency responsible for international development. All but a handful of essential staff - from a workforce of about 10,000 people - are set to be put on administrative leave at midnight on Friday, including thousands based overseas.