Reporting Friday that aides to Elon Musk — the billionaire backer of Republican President Donald Trump who runs the Division of Executive Potency — locked profession civil servants out of pc programs containing the private knowledge of tens of millions of federal workers raised alarms amongst observers who mentioned the transfer is in keeping with the management’s efforts to say authoritarian keep watch over over the government.
An unnamed professional on the Place of job of Group of workers Control (OPM) instructed Reuters that “we haven’t any visibility” into what Musk aides “are doing with the pc and information programs,” and “this is developing nice fear.”
“There’s no oversight,” the professional mentioned, including that “it creates actual cybersecurity and hacking implications.”
No person elected Musk and he holds no professional place—and but:“Aides to Elon Musk charged with operating america govt human assets company have locked profession civil servants out of pc programs that include the private knowledge of tens of millions of federal workers”www.reuters.com/global/us/mus…— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T20:50:07.564Z
The Reuters file got here at the similar day that The Washington Publish reported that David Lebryk, who has labored in nonpolitical positions on the U.S. Treasury Division for the reason that George H.W. Bush management, will retire following “a conflict with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over get admission to to delicate cost programs.”
Because the Publish famous:
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Patel has additionally written a sequence of youngsters’s books depicting a king who strongly resembles Trump.
Run via the Bureau of the Fiscal Carrier, the delicate programs keep watch over the float of greater than $6 trillion every year to families, companies, and extra national. Tens, if now not loads, of tens of millions of folks around the nation depend at the programs, which can be liable for distributing Social Safety and Medicare advantages, salaries for federal team of workers, bills to govt contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, amongst tens of hundreds of alternative purposes.
The conflict displays an intensifying struggle between Musk and the federal forms because the Trump management nears the belief of its 2d week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping keep watch over over the internal workings of the U.S. govt, putting in longtime surrogates at a number of businesses, together with the Place of job of Group of workers Control, which necessarily handles federal human assets, and the Common Services and products Management, which manages actual property.
On Friday, the Trump management ordered the Common Services and products Management to create a plan to slash 50% from the unbiased company’s price range, in keeping with journalist Ken Klippenstein, who reported senior officers have been left taking a look “‘shell-shocked’” via the directive.
🚨Trump management simply ordered the Common Services and products Management to expand a plan to chop 50% of its present price range, a couple of officers inform me. “Our SES [senior executives] appeared shell bowled over,” one professional instructed me. “I be expecting this was once a results of Musk’s talk over with to HQ…— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) January 31, 2025
Lebryk’s announcement underscored what critics have warned is an competitive push via Musk and different unelected Trump acolytes to sideline civil servants as a part of an time table through which MAGA sycophants are empowered to weaken govt assessments and balances and make sure general loyalty to the president, who has many times flirted with authoritarianism.
In a Friday article highlighting Lebryk’s announcement, Gizmodo’s Matt Novak reported that “whilst it’s now not transparent why [Department of Government Efficiency] desires get admission to, professionals are alarmed as a result of there’s principally no believable rationalization that doesn’t contain tinkering with important govt purposes via sidestepping Congress.”
“Lebryk’s departure is it sounds as if associated with the interference via DOGE-affiliated goons to get admission to those cost programs,” Novak asserted.
Not unusual Desires reported previous this week that Trump loyalists within the OPM and Place of job of Control and Price range related to Venture 2025 — the Heritage Basis-led blueprint for a far-right takeover of the government — are main a sweeping effort to purge profession civil servants and substitute them with officers who will do the president’s bidding with out query.
Don Moynihan, a professor on the College of Michigan’s Ford Faculty of Public Coverage, instructed Reuters Friday that “this makes it a lot more difficult for someone outdoor Musk’s internal circle at OPM to grasp what’s happening.”
Regardless of its title, DOGE is a presidential advisory committee, now not a federal division — and critics together with Novak have accused the billionaire Trump supporter of attaining “his tentacles into nearly each and every company.”
“Congress famously has the facility of the handbag,” he wrote. “But it surely looks as if DOGE is attempting to grasp it.”
Previous this week, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the score member of the Space Committee on Oversight and Executive Reform, warned that Trump “is attempting each and every trick he and his Venture 2025 cronies can call to mind to bypass established civil carrier protections so they may be able to purge the civil carrier of professionals and substitute them with political loyalists.”
“The sufferers right here, as is all the time the case with Donald Trump, are the American individuals who will see govt products and services and advantages allotted now not via nonpartisan civil servants, however via partisan hacks,” Connolly added.
Mark Mazur, who served in senior Treasury Division roles right through the Obama and Biden administrations, instructed the Publish Friday that the possibility of presidency officers the use of the federal bills machine in carrier of private political motives is with out precedent.
“It’s by no means been utilized in a solution to execute a partisan time table,” Mazur stressed out. “It’s a must to truly put unhealthy intentions in position for that to be the case.”
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