JD Vance defends DOGE staffer who promoted eugenics 

Vice President J.D. Vance urged a government committee to rehire a staffer who was sidelined for making racist remarks.

Marko Elez, 25, left the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Friday after the Wall Street Journal reported that he was the proprietor of a now-deleted X account that made bigoted statements and promoted eugenics.

“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 posted on X the same day. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.”

In subsequent posts, Vance said that “kids” should be allowed to make “stupid jokes” or have problematic views that they grow out of.

But many of Elez’s posts were recent. In September he wrote “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” The same month he wrote, “Normalize Indian hate.”

Vance’s wife, Usha, is of Indian descent.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who is leading DOGE, responded to Vance’s post with a saluting emoji and said Elez would be rehired.

DOGE was created by Musk and President Donald Trump to identify and recommend spending cuts in the federal government. The committee is now aggressively auditing several government agencies despite potentially lacking the legal authority to do so.

Elez was involved in another DOGE scandal. 

On Feb. 1, Elez and another DOGE staffer seized control of the Treasury Department’s internal payment system, which houses private taxpayer data and processes trillions of dollars in payments each year.

Public outcry about the breach led U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to limit DOGE’s access to “read only.” In other words, DOGE can view data within the payment system but not edit or save it.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.