Elon Musk’s Doge team granted ‘full access’ to federal payment system

Privacy
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I feel you have an overly expansive impression about what can be legally done through executive action, or maybe just somewhat more cynical than I am.

There is no actual Department of Government Efficiency in the US Federal Government, and the EO doesn’t create one as far as I can see (What it appears to do is takeover and rebrand what was an existing non-political, technical service within the executive branch (the United States Digital Service) [1] which was (ironically) created during the Obama Administration. The EO (setting aside questions of legality/presidential power) creates something that it calls a “department”. But that does not make it so.

A President asserting something to be true, doesn’t supersede the constitution (assuming the legal system and institutions are robust enough to push back against executive overreach). It is likely many of the recent flurry of executive actions will be found to be partially or fully unconstitutional, even with an extremely friendly Supreme Court, but the justice system is slow and EO’s are fast.

You are right that this administration is pushing the limits of executive power as far as they can, I believe that you are wrong that it is legal and constitutional.

It needs no senate confirmation since it is similar to other agencies that come under President’s direct control

Can you give a specific example of a specific agency or department that supports this assertion, it seems like you are talking about advisory roles [2] not governmental Departments or Agencies.

NASA, CIA, USDA, and FDA are some examples of agencies, their leadership are appointed by the President, but must be confirmed by the senate. Department heads (e.g. State, Defense, HHS) are also appointed by the President, confirmed by the senate.

The laws very clearly allow it.

Which law are you referring to? The “Advice and Consent Clause” (of Article 2, Section 2 of the US constitution):

Simple version: The president has the power to appoint but the Senate has the power to confirm (or not)

Actual language:

[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

US has really lax setup for actual accountability from the president.

That’s true.

It is time to make strict norms to control the office

Very true. A longterm possible silver lining of the Trump presidency is that his flagrant disregard for rules, norms, ethics, and guidelines, that 200 years of executives have at least to some degree respected, has helps us see the flaws, and weaknesses, that need shoring up. No president, regardless of politics, should be able to act unilaterally or without checks and balances. We are in extremely strong agreement on this point.

  1. The United States Digital Service is a technology unit[1][2] housed within the Executive Office of the President of the United States. It provides consultation services to federal agencies on information technology. It seeks to improve and simplify digital service, and to improve federal websites ↩︎

  2. ↩︎

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Which is perfectly legal, and is a brilliant way to bypass some checks.

The President’s reorganization authority allows easy changes to offices president himself creates. The senate confirmation only protects the fundamental executive structure.

Yes, surely the Supreme Court filled with trump supporters will take the narrow interpretation. It anyway is still legal, just read heritage foundation’s guide on how they will push through appointments.

Any senator going against Trump will lose the GOP endorsement (want to see a funny display? Watch Gabbard confirmation hearing), so even for posts which require confirmation, I don’t think much resistance will be found.

It does not need to be to have a right to demand data it needs for its functioning.

Again, none of this is illegal or a privacy violation. It is simply US citizens discovering the ToS of the social contract they signed.

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Did the AI advisory committee have complete, unrestricted access to the entire financial and personnel databases of the federal government?

People are free to do whatever they want. But if you can’t understand why people are alarmed by a bigtech billionaire and his subordinates having unrestricted access to the federal government’s database of PII then I don’t think you understand the community you’re in.

Sure, I’ll give one example.

Per Article I of our constitution, Congress has the power to appropriate funding. Per the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 the executive branch is not allowed to refuse to spend money that has been appropriated by Congress.

This is why the total pause that the administration put on grants and funds to states was quickly overturned in the courts:

“The Executive’s action unilaterally suspends the payment of federal funds to the States and others simply by choosing to do so,” the judge wrote.

“The Executive cites no legal authority allowing it to do so; indeed, no federal law would authorize the Executive’s unilateral action here,” McConnell added, granting the coalition’s request for a temporary restraining order.

Since that order, however, the funds still have not been unpaused. That is illegal.

Additionally, now the executive branch, at the urging of Musk, is abolishing USAID, which is an agency backed by Congressional action. They do not have the authority to do so:

In short, Congress established USAID as its own agency and asserted its role in transfers of functions between USAID and State. It authorized the president to abolish or reorganize USAID for a moment in time, in accordance with the plan it authorized the then-president to provide in 1998. That reorganization occurred, with USAID’s independence retained. And there is no additional authority granted by Congress to the president to abolish USAID as an agency.

Since giving him total access to Treasury’s systems both the Treasury secretary and Trump have insisted his role is merely advisory or “read-only” and he has no unilateral ability to interrupt payments. Musk himself, however, has seemingly indicated that’s exactly what he’s doing. We’ll have to see over the upcoming weeks how far that goes and whether it’s found to be illegal.

He’s also, even as a ‘special government employee,’ supposed to be subjected to federal conflict of interest regulations. Of course that is supposed to be enforced by the executive branch which, as I outlined above, isn’t keen on following established law.

Whoops, that turned into more than one example. That’s two illegal actions that Musk is involved in so far, at least one of which is unconstitutional, alongside two more to watch for in the weeks and months ahead.

Surely you can understand why people are concerned about their privacy when that individual has unfettered access to the government’s entire database of financial and personnel PII. Otherwise I really don’t know what you think the function of this community is.

Please note that I’m not disputing that executive power is too broad, or that our systems are strong, or that there hasn’t been abuse previously, or whatever. I’m quite aware of all of those things.

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No no no no. Again, you lose the nuance for the “gotcha”. I don’t care about the aid thing, not relevant. I did not ask if Trump broke “any” law, just “any law by creating DOGE and allowing them access to the financial data”.

What law is broken? “Indicated”, “implied”, etc. are not grounds for stating a law has been broken. If the role is read only, and Musk somehow implies its not, it doesn’t make it illegal. Until he actually violates the mandate, its not a broken law.

First of all, the link you gave has no original source. Its all speculation, which if I take it as true (it isn’t until proved) means you gave the reason yourself why this is not a violation of law. The institution with the power to decide the legality of conflict of interest has lent its support to DOGE. So the enforcer agrees its not a violation of the law.

There is a keen difference between speculation and reality, and they haven’t broken any law as long as 1) they don’t violate their mandate, 2) it is not proved in a court that they are violating their mandate.

Its very easy to disprove all my points. Link me the law they broke. Not a news article speculating, just the law itself. Like how I can point to Citizen United to show corporations have free speech too.

Thread locked despite the other user repeating bad faith arguments. :rofl: Giving final word to the side of the arguments mods like is so nice.

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Again, you did not respond to me clearly spelling out for you why people in this community are worried about this individual having unrestricted access to the government’s database of PII. Why?

You also dropped the false equivalence of the AI commission. Why?

I clearly outlined two laws that Musk has been involved in breaking recently, and reason to think that additional laws are being broken as we speak.

As I said in my original post, the President is not a king, and he doesn’t have the legal authority to make a “mandate” that someone can override Congressional laws and judicial verdicts.

This is a spurious argument. A law not being enforced doesn’t mean it isn’t being broken. If I go 50MPH in a school zone it’s not legal just because a police officer declined to enforce it.

Here’s Article I of the Constitution, and here’s the Impoundment Act of 1974, both specific bits of law I referenced in my post that both Trump and Musk have violated and are currently trying to further violate.

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Exclusively discussing the hypotheticals of whether the executive actions taken by the current US administration are legal is both off-topic and largely irrelevant. The fact is that “Elon Musk’s Doge team [has been] granted ‘full access’ to federal payment system[s],” and the privacy / security concerns regarding the potential mishandling of that data is on topic.

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