DC is waking up to the biggest theft in American history
The CEO of the Treasury Department was a hacking nut. Does the U.S.A.I.D. have an executive branch?
The U.S.A.I.D. Musk seems to hold a vendetta against the agency. He called it a psy op, criminal organization and a viper’s nest of Marxists who hate America. He bragged that he and his allies had spent the weekend feeding the Agency for International Development into a wood chipper. He hates an agency for reasons that are still undisclosed, but he also believes that cutting government spending is the only way to reduce inflation.
The Treasury was committed to protecting the integrity and security of the system after Warren demanded information about Musk. Blum said that staff of Tom Krause, a Treasury employee and tech executive connected to DOGE, would have “read-only access to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems” that is similar to what the department would provide auditors. This description doesn’t tally with reports from Wired and TPM, which say that Musk associates have administrative privileges allowing them to write code and potentially modify payment systems.
One of the most serious examples of executive branch malfeasance in American history happened over the past week, and it had nothing to do with anyone being elected to anything.
What do we (don’t) know about Democrats unless we listen to them? The reaction of protesters in front of the Treasury building
The crowd dispersed after the comments were over. The doors to the Treasury building remained closed to lawmakers. It was not certain if someone was listening beyond the doors.
Politicians’ speeches seemed to provide some comfort to protesters. They want Democrats to be more disruptive and also to make it harder for Republicans to confirm Trump’s nominees. Lawmakers, meanwhile, say there’s only so much they can do on their own. Blumenthal says we have to reach beyond the crowd. You are also losing your country if you reach beyond the Democrats to the Republicans.
The comment was somewhat surprising from a lawmaker who’s been known to critique her own party for inaction. But on a livestream on Tuesday, she assured constituents that they’d be likely to see more action from Democrats now that House members have returned from their districts to Washington and advocated that the Senate block all of Trump’s nominees. She said that they need to be a pain in the ass.
Democratic lawmakers have declared that their tools are limited. Without a majority in both chambers, they cannot stop actions that seem to be mostly aligned with Republicans. Some hope to take advantage of the slim Republican lead in Congress to stall operations or deny them a winning vote. “While there are absolutely things Democrats can and must do to slow, obstruct, etc, GOP hold both House and Senate majorities, severely limiting our options,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) wrote on Bluesky.
In a statement, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee said Trump’s attempts to cut funds that have already been approved are unconstitutional. An appropriations bill is a law and Donald Trump has a constitutional duty to follow it. We will use every tool at our disposal to force them to follow the law, but if Trump or Elon are under any illusions about what the law already requires, I would encourage them to read Article I of the Constitution.”
The rally in front of the Treasury happened because of the whole ball game, which is what Moore said. “If they can just do stuff like this with no accountability at all, how can we stop anything they’re trying to do? I don’t believe people outside of DC have a good idea of how big a deal this is.
Many of them were not employees of the federal government. All of us are the subject of this argument. “The information that they have access to includes people who file taxes online.” Reports say the systems include information like student loan data and Social Security numbers. Moore thinks someone like Muskinfiltrating the federal government is the thing that we can’t fix easily.
“What we’re witnessing here is the biggest heist in American history,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) told the tightly packed crowd, which was peppered with signs, surgical masks (a common protest security measure), and an orange mylar balloon that resembled a cartoon of President Donald Trump. The vibe was enjoyable. Protesters started chanting “lock him up” after some signs called for Musk’s arrest.
In a few weeks, Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency created a new organization that consolidated power and targeted a growing number of federal departments. He’s taken it upon himself to shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and reportedly locked out civil servants at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) from their own computer systems. Van Hollen believes that taking over the government is necessary to advance the interests of billionaires like Musk and the rest of America.
A policy reporter at The Verge, she covers Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley. She covered techpolicy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.
