Elon Musk has created his own fake government agency—the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—to aid him in his plutocratic plan to break the federal bureaucracy. DOGE continues to rip through the government, attacking and threatening the agencies tasked with protecting Americans’ rights and well-being. A lawsuit filed Wednesday by America’s largest federation of labor unions says that Musk’s DOGE will imminently infiltrate the Department of Labor and that a court should halt this process, noting that DOGE has no legal standing to make operational decisions at the agency.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington D.C. by the AFL-CIO and a host of other unions and organizations, states that DOGE’s access to the U.S. Labor Department could allow him access to sensitive data about the myriad probes into his own companies. It further notes that Musk’s organization needs to follow the law in regard to its purview (which, the litigation says, it is currently exceeding).
“The speed of these efforts is core to the project,” the lawsuit states. “At every step, DOGE is violating multiple laws, from constitutional limits on executive power, to laws protecting civil servants from arbitrary threats and adverse action, to crucial protections for government data collected and stored on hundreds of millions of Americans.” As such, the litigation asks a court to halt DOGE’s invasion of the DOL.
On Wednesday, a separate but related litigation effort unfolded in D.C., where a lawsuit filed Monday by many of the same unions over DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s computer systems sought to clarify what data DOGE could legally look at. Much concern has been had over DOGE’s infiltration of the Treasury, where the personal and financial information on millions of Americans can be found.
Problematically, the Treasury recently just brought in two new officials from DOGE. The two new Treasury “employees” are Thomas Krause and Marko Elez, young tech industry guys, one of whom has previously worked at companies owned by Musk. Business Insider reports that the judge in the case, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, of D.C., said she was likely to block outside access to Treasury system data—a prohibition that extended to Musk as well. That would mean that Krause and Elez could still observe data but wouldn’t be able to share it with Musk or others outside the agency. It was unclear at the time of this reporting whether Kollar-Kotelly had gone through with it.
BI also provides an in-depth look at the back and forth between the judge and the government’s lawyer, Bradley P. Humphreys, in which Humphreys seems to not really know whether the Treasury Department is sharing information with Musk or not:
“Only those two individuals have been given any access,” Humphreys said, adding that as special government employees of the Treasury Department, both are subject to federal ethics and confidentiality requirements.
“Have they disseminated any of that information to anybody else?” the judge asked Humphreys.
“As far as we are aware, no they have not, outside of the Treasury Department,” including to Musk, Humphreys said.
“So he has nothing to do with the records, if he’s not at Treasury?” the judge asked of Musk.
“He is associated with the United States DOGE Service, and with the executive office of the president, as a special government employee” Humphreys answered.
“However, our understanding is that the information derived from the systems at issue in this case is not being transmitted to him outside of the Treasury Department,” Humphreys added of Musk. “He is not in the Treasury Department.”
“Does he have access to it? Can he go look at it? Has he gone and looked at it?” the judge asked.
“No, your honor. To our knowledge he has not,” Humphreys answered.
As an answer to Musk’s unhinged effort, the AFL-CIO has also launched its own unofficial agency: the Department of People Who Work for a Living. The new “department” was announced via a press release and a new website and promises to keep Americans abreast of DOGE’s activities as Musk’s org seeks to “slash government services working people depend on like meals for children in need, roll back protections for workers, and cut programs like Social Security and Medicare.”
“The government can work for billionaires or it can work for working people—but not both,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, in the press release published Wednesday. “Elon is just getting started. And he has already tried to force workers doing essential services—including at the FAA and air traffic controllers even after the tragedy at Washington National Airport—to retire, gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system with everyone’s private data, and is declaring entire government agencies like USAID shut down and blocking workers from accessing the building and their email.” The organization pledged to doggedly report on how DOGE’s policies are impacting American workers.
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