DOGE's Tentacles Aim to Squeeze Department of Education

"They want to destroy public education," wrote one observer.


Eloise Goldsmith
Feb 04, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


The U.S. Department of Education is reportedly the next agency in the crosshairs of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an Elon Musk-led White House team tasked with slashing government regulation and spending.

Roughly 20 people with DOGE are working inside the Department of Education with the aim of cutting spending and staff, The Washington Postreported Monday, citing three unnamed sources familiar with the situation and records the outlet obtained. The Wall Street Journal also reported that representatives from DOGE are working out of the Department of Education building, and sources told the outlet that DOGE is eyeing the agency as a target for its efforts to slash bureaucracy.

But in the long term, the Trump administration has even more drastic plans for the department that was established by Congress back in 1979. Both papers report that the administration is prepping an executive order aimed at dismantling the agency entirely.

According to the Journal, officials are discussing the an executive order that "would shut down all functions of the agency that aren't written explicitly into statute or move certain functions to other departments" and would also "call for developing a legislative proposal to abolish the department," according to people familiar with the matter. Timing and specifics are still being hammered out.

Because the agency was created by Congress, it therefore can only be fully eliminated by Congress, according to the Post.

Musk on Monday night wrote on his platform X that U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to fully dismantle the Department of Education "will succeed." Trump pledged to get rid of the Department of Education on the campaign trail and the priority was also listed among the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" policy proposals.

"They want to destroy public education," wrote Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, in response to the Post's reporting.

Since Trump's inauguration, Musk and his lieutenants at DOGE have moved swiftly to gain influence over multiple government agencies. Last week, DOGE fired officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development and earlier this week Musk said he intended to shut it down completely. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that he's now in control of the agency.

DOGE representatives were also given access to a Treasury Department payment system that processes trillions of dollars worth of financial transactions and holds personal financial data on millions of Americans. Two unions and an advocacy group sued Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Treasury Department in federal court Monday for giving DOGE access to the system, citing privacy concerns.

Federal Workers Sue Over Musk-Led 'Exfiltration' of Data Using Illegal Server

"Millions of Americans and the collective interests of the United States desperately need emergency intervention from the courts," said a supporter of the new lawsuit. "The constitutional crisis is already here."

Protesters gather outside of the headquarters of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on February 3, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Feb 04, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

A pair of unnamed federal employees filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to stop lackeys of billionaire Elon Musk from using an illegally connected server to "ingest and store vast quantities" of highly sensitive personal information about government workers and contractors.

The complaint and request for a temporary restraining order, first reported by Wired, was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and it marks the latest in a flurry of high-stakes legal actions aimed at countering Musk's lawless and hostile takeover of key federal agencies and operations.

The new lawsuit was filed against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), an obscure but important agency that has effectively been seized by Musk associates.


"At some point after 20 January 2025," the complaint states, "OPM allowed unknown individuals to simply bypass its existing systems and security protocols and install one or more new systems to ingest and store vast quantities of [personally identifiable information] about Executive Branch employees (as well as an unknown number of contractors and Judicial Branch employees) for the stated purpose of being able to communicate directly with those individuals without involving other agencies."

"In installing these systems, OPM ignored entirely the rules Congress established in the E-Government Act of 2002 which would safeguard the personal data being transferred into and stored by these systems," the lawsuit continues. "In utilizing these systems to send numerous email messages to individuals across the Executive Branch and beyond, and then insisting that Executive Branch employees must reply by email to the same systems, OPM further exacerbated the situation."

"We are witnessing an unprecedented exfiltration and seizure of the most sensitive kinds of information by unelected, unvetted people with no experience, responsibility, or right to it."

The complaint points to reporting from Caleb Ecarma and Judd Legum, who wrote Tuesday that "a new server being used to control [government databases] has been placed in a conference room" at OPM "that Musk's team is using as their command center."

An anonymous OPM worker described the server as "a piece of commercial hardware they believed was not obtained through the proper federal procurement process," Ecarma and Legum reported.

According toReuters, "some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department's data systems" including "a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers."

Sean Vitka, policy director at the Demand Progress Action Fund—an advocacy group that's supporting the new lawsuit—said in a statement Tuesday that "Elon Musk and his team's incompetent and rapid efforts are putting millions of Americans in danger."

"We are witnessing an unprecedented exfiltration and seizure of the most sensitive kinds of information by unelected, unvetted people with no experience, responsibility, or right to it—all orchestrated by the richest man in the world, with billions on the line in other countries, including ones that have recently hacked exactly this kind of sensitive data," said Vitka. "Millions of Americans and the collective interests of the United States desperately need emergency intervention from the courts. The constitutional crisis is already here."

As the two federal employees brought their lawsuit, top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee demanded answers about the "server of unknown nature and origin" that was reportedly installed on OPM premises by Musk associates.

In a letter to Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell, Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) demanded the names of "the individuals who installed and/or accessed the equipment" and information on "whether they were OPM employees at the time of their installation/access of the equipment."

"At best, the Trump administration's actions at OPM to date demonstrate gross negligence, severe incompetence, and a chaotic disregard for the security of our government data and the countless services it enables our agencies to provide to the public," Connolly and Brown wrote. "At worst, we fear that Trump administration officials know full well that their actions threaten to break our government."