Fight Against Elon Musk’s Government Takeover

UPDATE (02/02/25): Musk and his DOGE team of personal allies have also now gained access to classified material including high-security intelligence reports for USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development.

After spending $288 million to help elect Trump, billionaire and Nazi sympathizer Elon Musk has begun to influence various parts of the federal government through the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump established DOGE via an executive order renaming the existing U.S. Digital Service agency, which previously managed government websites like the health insurance enrollment site healthcare.gov and the new IRS Direct File system. The EO also moved the agency from the Office of Management and Budget to the Office of the President and tasked it with upgrading government IT systems. However, the moves that Musk and his aides have since made go far beyond that mandate.

— Musk requested, and has since been granted by the newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, full access to the government’s payment systems that control disbursement of over $6 trillion and contain sensitive information pertaining to millions of Americans’ tax refunds, Social Security payments, salaries, and more. It is unclear why Musk and his DOGE team desire access to these system, but the implications are alarming as this access allows Musk to block payments for anything he opposes.

— Musk installed allies - former employees from Musk’s other businesses and other political loyalists - in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), a typically nonpartisan operation that serves as the government’s HR. This new team locked out senior career employees from the department’s system and sent out a memo to the entire federal workforce offering bogus buyouts to people who “don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again.” Musk used a similar tactic when he took over Twitter.

— Similarly, Musk has installed allies in the General Services Administration, the agency that manages government offices and technology. These allies have been using White House credentials to access GSA computers and internal infrastructure, systems that could be used to gather sensitive data and surveil government employees.

Elon Musk is an unelected oligarch with no legal authority to access our government’s most sensitive data, payment and communication systems, yet he now has the untethered ability to use these systems however he pleases. This alarming takeover endangers all aspects of our government and must be met with forceful public resistance.