Friday, aid to Elon Musk – The Biller’s Bolinsman of Republican President Donald Trump who heads the Ministry of Government’s efficiency – locked career civil servants from IT systems containing the personal data of millions of federal employees The alarms have been raised among the observers who declared that this decision was in accordance with the efforts of the administration to assert authoritarian control over the federal government.
An anonymous official at the Personnel Management Office (OPM) said Reuters That “we have no visibility” in what musk aid “do with computer and data systems” and “this creates a great concern”.
“There is no surveillance,” said the manager, adding that “this creates real implications for cybersecurity and hacking”.
THE Reuters The report came the same day as The Washington Post reported that David Lebryk, who has worked in non -political positions in the US Treasury Department since the George HW Bush administration, will retire in a row with a confrontation with billionaire Elon Musk on access to access to sensitive payment systems ”.
Like the Job note:
Led by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, sensitive systems control the flow of more than $ 6 billions per year to households, companies and more nationally. Dozens, even hundreds, millions of people across the country are counting on systems, which are responsible for the distribution of social security and health insurance, federal personnel wages, payments to entrepreneurs of the entrepreneurs of Government and granting beneficiaries and tax reimbursements, between tens of thousands of other functions.
The confrontation reflects an intensification battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy while the Trump administration approaches the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exercise radical control over the internal functioning of the American government, by installing long -standing substitutes in several agencies, including the staff management office, which essentially manages federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate.
Friday, the Trump administration ordered the General Services Administration to create a plan to cut 50% from the budget of the Independent Agency, according to journalist Ken Klippenstein, who reported that senior officials had been “drowned” by the directive.
Lebryk’s Announce Underscored What Critics Have Warned is an aggressive Push by Musk and other unlect Trump Acolytes to Sideline Civil Servants as Part of an Agenda in Which Magi Sycophants Are Empowered To Weaken Government Checks and Balances and Ensure Total Loyalty to the President flirting with authoritarianism.
In a Friday article, highlighting Lebryk’s announcement, Gizmodo“S Matt Novak reported that” although it is not clear why (the government’s ministry of efficiency) want access, experts are alarmed because there is practically no plausible explanation that does not imply No tinkering critical government functions by bypassing the congress. »»
“Lebryk’s departure is apparently linked to the interference of the henchmen affiliated with Doge to access these payment systems,” said Novak.
Common dreams reported earlier this week than Trump’s Loyalists in OPM and the Budget Management and Budget Office for the 2025 project – the Heritage Plan led by the Heritage Foundation for an extreme right control of the federal government – Direct a radical effort to serve career officials and replace them with civil servants who will make the president’s auctions without any doubt.
Don Moynihan, professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said Reuters Friday that “it makes much more difficult for anyone outside the interior circle of Musk to OPM to know what is going on.”
Despite its name, DOGE is a presidential advisory committee, and not a federal department – and criticism, including Novak, accused the supporter of the billionaire Trump of carrying out “his tentacles in almost all agencies”.
“Congress has the power of the bag,” he wrote. “But it seems that Doge tries to tear it away.”
Earlier this week, the member of the Congress Gerry Connolly (D-VA.), The classification member of the Chamber’s Supervisory Committee and the Government Reform, warned that Trump “tries each trick of which he and his 2025 project Cronies may think about bypass established public service protections. Thus, they can purge the public service of experts and replace them with political loyalists. »»
“The victims here, as is always the case with Donald Trump, are the American people who will see government services and social benefits not allocated by non -partisan officials, but by partisan hacks,” added Connolly.
Mark Mazur, who held senior cash departments during Obama and Biden administrations, said Job Friday that the prospect of government representatives using the federal payment system at the service of personal political reasons is unprecedented.
“It has never been used to execute a partisan program,” said Mazur. “You really have to set up bad intentions to make it the case.”
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