Musk says he will bring back DOGE staffer who resigned after report of racist postings
Washington (AP): Elon Musk said on Friday he is re-hiring a staff member at the Department of Government Efficiency who resigned a day earlier after he was linked to social media posts that espoused racism.
Musk, in a post on his social media network X, said he would bring back Marko Elez after Vice President JD Vance called for him to be rehired. President Donald Trump later endorsed his vice president's view.
Marko Elez resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal linked the 25-year-old DOGE staffer to a deleted social media account on X that posted last year, “I was racist before it was cool” and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” among other posts.
The account in September included a post that said, “Normalize Indian hate." The vice president's wife, Usha Vance, is the daughter of Indian immigrants.
Vance, in a post on Musk-owned X, said Elez should be brought back and blamed “journalists who try to destroy people.”
“I obviously disagree with some of Elez's posts, but I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life,” Vance said.
“I'm with the vice president,” Trump told a news conference Friday.
A few hours later, Musk posted: “He will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a message Friday confirming if Elez had been rehired. The administration earlier in the day had confirmed Elez' resignation.
The vice president said Elez should be fired “if he's a bad dude or a terrible member of the team.”
Elez did not respond to a message seeking comment Friday.
Elez was among two DOGE employees who were at the center of a controversy this week when they accessed the US Treasury Department's payment system, prompting a court challenge and a judge's decision to restrict their access.
In its report, The Wall Street Journal found a since-deleted account under the handle @nullllptr with a user described as an employee at SpaceX and Starlink, two of Musk's companies. The account previously went by the username @marko_elez.
Elez, in archives of his personal website, said he worked for SpaceX and on its Starlink satellites, and at X.
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Raj Thackeray questions need for NEET, demands Pradhan’s resignation
Mumbai (PTI): Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray on Thursday questioned the need for NEET-UG and demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi seek the resignation of Union Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan.
Thackeray's demand comes amid massive protests over the cancellation of the examination following allegations of paper leak.
The MNS chief said the government is so “obsessed” with bringing everything under a centralised authority that it appears to make no difference if the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are thrown into “disarray”.
In a post on X, Thackeray said that for several years now, a single individual (Pradhan) has remained entrenched in the position of Union education minister. Despite numerous “irregularities” and “scandals” within the NEET framework during his tenure, this “gentleman” continues to occupy the post, he said.
“One wonders: has he been rewarded with this continued tenure because he is so zealously pursuing the agenda of imposing the Hindi language across the entire nation? I earnestly appeal to the Prime Minister: please demand the immediate resignation of this Minister of yours, who has repeatedly toyed with the lives and future of 22 lakh students,” Thackeray said.
The National Testing Agency on Tuesday cancelled the NEET (UG) 2026 exam held on May 3 amid allegations of paper leak, with the government asking the CBI to carry out a comprehensive inquiry into the “irregularities”. The examination for students seeking admission to undergraduate courses in medical colleges will now be held afresh on dates to be notified separately.
Thackeray said the Centre continues its tradition of creating “chaos” in every matter and holding the public to ransom. The “NEET paper leak” has proved this once again, he said.
Thackeray sought to know what the Centre did when it found out the alleged malpractice. It merely cancelled the examination and ordered a CBI inquiry, he said.
In 2024, a CBI inquiry was ordered in a similar case, but nothing substantial was achieved through it, he said.
The government projects an air of having fulfilled its duty in all of this. But what about the lives of 22 lakh students and their families, who have been left hanging in the balance, he asked.
Thackeray said fundamentally, there was no need to “impose” NEET (National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test)-UG back in 2016.
“However, this government’s obsession with bringing everything under a single, centralised authority is so intense that, to them, it seems to make no difference if the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are thrown into disarray,” he said.
The MNS chief also asked ministers within the Maharashtra government to show some “spine” and join voices with those of the southern states and oppose this system.
Thackeray said leaders from the southern states have voiced their opposition in much the same way as he. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay has also demanded the cancellation of NEET. The reason for this is that the five southern states, combined with Maharashtra, collectively possess over 350 medical colleges, whereas the large states in the north have only 180 medical colleges, he said.
Consequently, this persistent push that began in 2016 is essentially an attempt to facilitate the “entry of students from the north into medical colleges in the south”, alleged Thackeray. To ensure this, the largest network of coaching classes has been established in the northern states, he claimed.
