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The American people realized shortly after Elon Musk put on his DOGE disguise and started ransacking the federal government that the rooting of waste, fraud, and abuse was a pretense for a darker, more ideological agenda.
, more ideological agenda.
When Musk tried to gain access to Social Security data, Judge Ellen Hollander called it out:
The American public may well applaud and support the Trump Administration’s mission to root out fraud, waste, and bloat from federal agencies, including SSA, to the extent it exists.
But, by what means and methods?
The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.
To facilitate the expedition, SSA provided members of the SSA DOGE Team with unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, drivers’ license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses.
Yet, defendants, with so called experts on the DOGE Team, never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government. Indeed, the government has not even attempted to explain why a more tailored, measured, titrated approach is not suitable to the task.
Instead, the government simply repeats its incantation of a need to modernize the system and uncover fraud. Its method of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer. In my view, plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that such action is arbitrary and capricious, and in violation of the Privacy Act and the APA. Plaintiffs have also demonstrated that their members will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a TRO, the equities tip in their favor, and the TRO serves the public interest.
DOGE is a con. Republicans in Congress are in on the con because the pretense of fraud gives them an opportunity to gut beloved programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The American people see through the con, and so do the courts.
The court rulings matter because they confirm what most Americans believe with facts and evidence provided by people in positions of authority.
Trump and Musk can’t fool all of the people if the courts continue to expose the truth, and the latest ruling was the most blunt shredding of the DOGE pretense yet.
What do you think about DOGE being exposed? Share your opinion in the comments below.
