"It sounds like the plot of a bad Bond movie but it's real and the American people are the real victims."
By Julia Conley
Consumer advocates on Friday called on allies to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency after reports indicated DOGE personnel had entered the agency's office and possibly obtained access to its online databases.
Members of the CFPB Union NTEU 335, part of the National Treasury Employees Union, published a press release, later deleted from their website, noting that the names of three staffers of DOGE appeared in the consumer protection agency's internal staff directory Thursday evening—signaling that the CFPB is the latest target of Musk's illegal plunder of numerous federal offices.
Numerous outlets—including Wired and Punchbowl News—confirmed that the DOGE personnel had been granted access to CFPB offices and databases. Politico, citing people familiar with the developments, also reported the three individuals had been added as "senior advisers" to the agency.
The CFPB Union, in the now-deleted statement, identified the DOGE staffers as former Big Pharma lobbyist Chris Young; former Tesla and X employee Nikhil Rajpal; and Gavin Kliger, an "Elon fanboy" who graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 2020.
"When he's not stealing Americans' private information with DOGE, Kliger enjoys writing lengthy essays defending rapists and retweeting white supremacists," said the union's statement, citing the staffer's Substack where he has written positively about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), both accused of sexual abuse. "Kliger's lawyer daddy works at Experian, which is the same company CFPB sued in January for covering up errors on credit reports with sham investigations."
"CFPB Union members welcome our newest colleagues and look forward to the smell of Axe Body Spray in our elevators."
The union further mocked Kliger's "alleged" coding career and said that in contrast to the "zero to three git commits" he made in the last year, "workers at the CFPB returned $1.3 billion to scammed Americans in that time."
"CFPB Union members welcome our newest colleagues and look forward to the smell of Axe Body Spray in our elevators," said the workers.
"While acting Director [Scott] Bessent allows Musk's operatives to bypass cybersecurity policies and wreak havoc with their amateur code skills inside CFPB's once-secure systems, CFPB Union members fight to protect our jobs so we can continue protecting Americans from scammers with conflicts of interest like Musk," they said.
According to Wired's reporting:
In an email early Friday morning, CFPB staff were told that several people from DOGE—including [Rajpal, Kliger, and Young]—entered the agency building Thursday evening. The email stated that they would require access to CFPB data, systems, and equipment, following a message sent Thursday by CFPB chief operating officer Adam Martinez confirming that the DOGE employees were to receive "read-only access."
"DOGE arrived tonight and will be back tomorrow. They are going to need read-only access to our HR (HR Connect/NFC), procurement (PRISM), and finance (Discoverer) system," said Martinez. "I let them know that we utilize BFS/ARC so if they already have access, then they should be able to pull our data. Otherwise, if they do not have access to BFS/ARC, then we will need to work with them to fill out the necessary forms to gain access." BFS/ARC is the Bureau of the Fiscal Service's Administrative Resource Center, which provides administrative services, like timekeeping travel days or benefits, for a number of government agencies.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich noted that DOGE's targeting of the CFPB comes days after Trump dismissed former Director Rohit Chopra.
"American's financial privacy and safety [is] at risk as DOGE arrives at CFPB," said the Center for Digital Democracy, in response to various reporting. "The CFPB has saved American taxpapers and consumers billions... Undermining American financial security must be stopped."
In recent days, DOGE employees have arrived at the Departments of Labor, Education, and the Treasury, among other federal agencies, seizing access to data about millions of Americans, setting up illegal servers, and placing employees on administrative leave.
The White House and Musk have claimed the effort is aimed at reducing "waste" and improving "efficiency" within government, but comments from U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this week signaled the administration is searching for ways to slash spending for numerous public services in the interest of extending the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthiest earners.
The union suggested Musk wants to take over the CFPB, which he called to "delete" late last year, to clear the way for a partnership between his social media platform, X, and Visa. The credit card company wants to offer payments on the platform, and "notably, the CFPB recently obtained the authority to supervise major payment apps," said the NTEU.
Earlier this week, DOGE staffers arrived at the Department of Labor, which has filed multiple complaints against Musk's companies.
"The world's richest man just dispatched his minions to root around the systems of a government watchdog responsible for policing payment schemes like the one just announced for his own company," Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director of the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in response to the union's account. "It sounds like the plot of a bad Bond movie but it's real and the American people are the real victims."
"Musk’s dreams of an 'everything app' that reaches into people's bank accounts paired with his sweeping, unchecked access to the levers of government opens up the potential for breathtaking corruption," said Peterson-Cassin. "His intrusion into CFPB systems also sends a clear message that he has no interest whatsoever in policing his own conflicts of interest. Musk must be stopped from dismantling the very mechanisms of the federal government that can prevent him from looting the American people."
"Work requirements are simply another way to cut Medicaid," wrote the authors of an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
By Eloise Goldsmith
As right-wing lawmakers pursue imposing conditions on Americans' ability to access Medicaid and other social services, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities this week published analysis warning that work requirements for Medicaid recipients could put 36 million Americans, or 44% of all Medicaid enrollees, at risk of losing their health insurance.
"Research shows that work requirements do not increase employment," according to the authors of the CBPP report, which was published on Wednesday. The authors argue that these types of requirements are based on the premise that Medicaid enrollees do not work, when data shows that they do.
"Nearly 2 in 3 adult Medicaid enrollees aged 19-64 already work, and most of the rest would likely not be explicitly subject to the requirement based on having a disability, caring for family members, or attending school," the report states.
The group estimates that of those 36 million people who could be impacted, 20 million are enrolled through the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion.
While almost all Medicaid enrollees either work or would qualify for an exemption under most Medicaid work requirement proposals, according to CBPP, the report points to multiple past examples that indicate many enrollees still lose coverage with the imposition of work requirements due to "administrative burden and red tape."
For example, when Arkansas in 2018 temporarily implemented a policy that placed work requirements on Medicaid recipients, about 25% of enrollees subject to the requirements, some 18,000 people, lost coverage before a federal court paused the program seven months later.
As another example, New Hampshire implemented a short-lived Medicaid work requirement program in 2019 with more flexibility in reporting requirements and "more robust outreach efforts" in order to avoid Arkansas' mistakes, according to CBPP, but 2 in 3 enrollees who had to comply with the requirements "were likely to be disenrolled after just two months, amid reports of widespread confusion among enrollees about how to comply with the requirements."
The analysis—which the authors say is not an estimate of the number of people who will be impacted by a specific policy proposal—defines the population at risk of losing their coverage as adults between ages 19 and 64 who are not enrolled in Medicaid through disability pathways, i.e. a wider net of people than are specifically targeted in some recent GOP proposals.
The 36 million number is a larger group of enrollees compared to a previous CBPP estimate that was in response to a specific proposal whose work requirements would have targeted fewer people.
Multiple recent GOP proposals regarding Medicaid work requirements target "able-bodied" workers, though they vary in other specifics.
The far-right policy blueprint"Project 2025" calls for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to "clarify that states have the ability to adopt work incentives for able-bodied individuals" on Medicaid. And in late January congressional Republicans passed around a list of ideas for how to fund a bill full of GOP priorities that included imposing Medicaid work requirements for "able-bodied" adults without dependents, modeled after the Limit, Save, Grow Act, a bill passed by the House in 2023.
On Thursday, Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.)reintroduced the Jobs and Opportunities for Medicaid Act, a bill that would require "able-bodied adults without dependents who receive Medicaid benefits to work or volunteer for at least 20 hours per week."
Because the Kennedy and Schmitt bill includes an exemption for adults with dependents, it would impact a smaller number of people than the CBPP's Thursday analysis. But still, as a general matter, "work requirements are simply another way to cut Medicaid," according to the authors of the analysis. Republicans' January list of cost cut options estimated that adding Medicaid work requirements along the lines of what was specified in the Limit, Save, Grow Act would yield $100 billion in 10-year savings.
In a Friday letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), all 47 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus wrote: "We urge you to reject proposals that use Medicaid as a piggy bank for partisan priorities and continue to defend the importance of this vital program."
"If Wired's reporting is accurate, the Treasury Department deliberately misled or outright lied to Congress to cover up DOGE's handling of the nation's most sensitive financial system," wrote Sen. Ron Wyden.
By Jake Johnson
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden on Friday demanded answers from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent after reporting contradicted the department's narrative about the level of payment system access granted to lieutenants of unelected billionaire Elon Musk.
In a letter to Bessent, Wyden (D-Ore.) pointed to a Thursday Wiredstory revealing that a Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) operative had "write access" to critical Treasury payment systems, despite the Treasury Department and Trump White House's insistence to the contrary.
According to Wired, 25-year-old Marko Elez—who resigned from his position Thursday after The Wall Street Journal inquired into his racist social media posts—"was granted privileges including the ability to not just read but write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the U.S. government: the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS)."
"Reporting from Talking Points Memo confirmed that Treasury employees were concerned that Elez had already made 'extensive changes' to code within the Treasury system," Wired added. "The payments processed by BFS include federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits, and veterans' pay."
"These mission-critical systems are not to be manipulated or subject to the whims of unelected billionaires or software engineers with fantasies of destroying the federal government from within."
Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote Friday that "if Wired's reporting is accurate, the Treasury Department deliberately misled or outright lied to Congress to cover up DOGE's handling of the nation's most sensitive financial system."
"Treasury's refusal to provide straight answers about DOGE's actions, as well as its refusal to provide a briefing requested by several Senate committees, only heightens my suspicions," Wyden added. "It now appears Mr. Elez has resigned his position, not due to the flimsy and transparent cover-up of his ability to alter Treasury Department payment system code, but due to his links to a social media account that advocated racism and eugenics."
In a February 4 letter to Wyden, the Treasury Department claimed that DOGE staffers would "have read-only access to the coded data of the Fiscal Service's payment systems in order to continue this operational efficiency assessment."
Wyden demanded Friday that the Treasury Department identify any officials other than Elez who were given "read-write" access to the Treasury payment system. The senator also specifically demanded to know whether Musk himself has been granted access to the system's data.
"Reports make clear that Musk and his DOGE functionaries have sought access to the payments system not for an audit, but instead to manipulate the system in order to enact a political agenda," Wyden wrote. "The Treasury Department's payment systems facilitate nearly 90% of all federal payments and more than $6 trillion annually. These mission-critical systems are not to be manipulated or subject to the whims of unelected billionaires or software engineers with fantasies of destroying the federal government from within."
"As Israeli aggression obliterates Palestinian homes and guns down children in Jenin, as unspeakable suffering continues in Gaza, and as America descends further into fascism, we ask—what type of institution does Bowdoin want to be?"
By Brett Wilkins
Activists at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine have launched what is believed to be the first Palestine solidarity encampment since President Donald Trump took office, occupying the first floor of the liberal arts school's student union to protest the U.S. leader's proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and expel its native Palestinian population.
Bowdoin Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) occupied the first floor of Smith Union on Thursday night and erected tents there, The Bowdoin Orient reported. They named the encampment after Sha'ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old computer engineering student at al-Azhar University in Gaza who burned alive in a refugee tent encampment bombed by Israel last October.
The protesters—who reportedly number around 50—acted in response to Trump's Tuesday press conference with fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which the president floated U.S. ownership of Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of its Palestinian population, and the construction of the "Riviera of the Middle East" there following 15 months of Israel's genocidal war on the coastal enclave.
Demonstrators also condemned Israel's ongoing assault on the illegally occupied West Bank, where the killing and injury of thousands of Palestinians since October 2023 has been overshadowed by the annihilation of Gaza.
"As Israeli aggression obliterates Palestinian homes and guns down children in Jenin, as unspeakable suffering continues in Gaza, and as America descends further into fascism, we ask—what type of institution does Bowdoin want to be?" Bowdoin SJP said in a statement Thursday. "One that cowers to authoritarianism, that chooses cowardice in the face of injustice? The choice is Bowdoin's."
The Orient reported that a Bowdoin College security official began asking student protesters to identify themselves around 1:00 am on Friday morning while Dean of Students Michael Pulju informed students about the disciplinary repercussions of their action, including the possibility of expulsion.
On Friday morning, more Bowdoin students showed up outside the student union to protest and try to enter the building, chanting, "Open Smith!"
According to the Orient:
The encampment... comes nearly a year after Bowdoin students voted in favor of the SJP-organized Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum, a resolution demanding that the college take an institutional stand against the scholasticide and stop future investments in defense-focused funds. At the beginning of the fall semester, the college established its Ad Hoc Committee on Investments and Responsibility in response to the referendum but has yet to alter its investment practices or offer an institutional statement.
Lead SJP organizer Olivia Kenney told the Orient that the protesters plan to occupy Smith Union "until the demands of the Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum are met" by the school's Board of Trustees.
Staff and students at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank recorded a message of solidarity with the "beautiful and wonderful" Bowdoin encampment.
"We woke up this morning to... the news of your encampment, and we've been following the news of the solidarity encampment at Bowdoin and Students for Justice in Palestine," they said in the message, which was posted on Instagram. "We see you, we love you."
"Thank you, from occupied Palestine in the West Bank, where students and faculty and employees alike can barely if at all get to campus because of the checkpoints and roadblocks," the message continued. "From all of Palestine, from the river to the sea, all of the universities that were actively destroyed in 471 days of genocide. Universities throughout the occupied West Bank, which are being surrounded and isolated."
"We are in this together," the message added. "We see you and thank you for raising your voices and screaming loudly that the space of a university is our space. It is a space where knowledge is exchanged. It is the space where we imagine and work to achieve the world that we want to live in, not the world that has been thrust upon us."
"Working-class people cannot afford to pay for these outrageous billionaire tax breaks," said a new ad targeting Republican tax proposals.
By Julia Conley
As the White House attempted to push the claim that U.S. President Donald Trump's tax agenda is aimed at reducing financial burdens for working families, a fair taxation advocacy group on Friday issued a reminder about the rich corporations and CEOs who have aligned themselves with the administration—funding Trump's election campaign and attending his inaugural events.
"Remind me, who was front and center at the inauguration? Oh right, billionaires," said the group, Unrig the Economy, in an ad that was launched in Nebraska on Friday, referring to the tech moguls who were seated steps away from the Republican president as he was sworn in.
The ad was one of two unveiled by Unrig the Economy on Friday, with the group targeting Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.)—both of whom have pushed for the Republican tax plan to include lifting the $10,000 limit on the state and local tax deduction (SALT), a move that would benefit wealthy households.
Both Bacon and Lawler won highly competitive reelection campaigns last year, and the ads targeting them "call on constituents to demand that their elected leaders oppose tax breaks for billionaires that will be paid for on the backs of working families," said Kobie Christian, spokesperson for Unrig Our Economy.
"Many American families are already struggling with rising costs, and Trump's tariffs and Republican-backed cuts to necessary programs that everyday people rely on would just make things worse," said Christian. "Working-class people cannot afford to pay for these outrageous billionaire tax breaks supported by Rep. Lawler and Rep. Bacon."
The ad targeting Lawler warns that the swing-district congressman's proposals would "cut taxes for billionaires and make the middle class pay for it."
Along with lifting the cap for the SALT deduction, the priorities Trump laid out for Republican leaders in a meeting on Thursday included an elimination of taxes on tips, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits; an end to tax breaks for sports team owners; the closing of the "carried interest loophole," which benefits private equity and investment firm executives; and a renewal of expiring provisions on the GOP's 2017 tax cuts—whose benefits primarily went to corporations and the wealthy.
The carried interest tax deduction was also proposed in 2017, but was watered down in the final tax plan amid opposition from Wall Street—pushback that Republicans are likely to face again.
Chuck Marr, vice president of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)—which released a policy brief on the extension of the 2017 tax law this week—posted a chart on social media showing how tax cuts for the top 5% of earners would make up nearly half of the cost of extending the law.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday emphasized Trump's proposal to end taxes on tips as a provision in the plan that would help make it "the largest tax cut in history for middle-class, working Americans."
But at One Fair Wage, which advocates for an end to the subminimum wage for restaurant industry workers, co-founder and president Saru Jayaraman said the proposal mainly benefits people "making over $300,000" per year—not the working class.
"What we are going to need to see as working people across this country is elected officials, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, actually delivering for working people, not through empty promises or false solutions like 'no tax on tips,'" said Jayaraman.
According to CBPP's analysis, an extension of the 2017 tax cuts would reduce tax payments by about $61,000 per year for the top 1% of households—those who make $743,000 per year or more—and by about $400 for those in the bottom 60%, who make about $96,000 or less.
On "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) admitted that extending the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy would "blow a hole in the deficit" without offsetting the loss of revenue.
"But we're definitely going to get that extended, so we've got to find those savings," he said. "The tariffs are going to bring in revenue, we're going to have massive savings by making government more efficient and effective."
At Unrig the Economy, Christian said the House speaker had let slip an "outrageous admission" and confirmed "what we already knew."
"Congressional Republicans' top priority is enriching the wealthy on the backs of working families," said Christian. "Even as Americans continue to face higher prices nationwide, Republicans insist on further increasing costs for regular people by imposing tariffs on everyday items and cutting federal funding for essential programs such as healthcare and childcare to pay for billionaires' tax breaks. It goes to show that Speaker Johnson and Republicans are determined to keep putting the megarich first and the American people last."
Johnson's comments came as Trump's billionaire backer, tech mogul Elon Musk, was making his way through a takeover of federal agencies through the advisory body the president set up and appointed him to lead, the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE).
The president is preparing to try to close down the Department of Education, and DOGE has seized control of a Treasury Department payment system that oversees the disbursement of Medicare and Social Security benefits, among other payments.
For American households making less than $96,000 per year, said Americans for Tax Fairness, the Republicans are "going to cut your healthcare, education, Social Security, housing, and more to pay for tax breaks for the rich and corporations."
"In return, you get about $1 a day," said the group. "What more could you ask?"
"We're in a right-now hour-by-hour constitutional emergency and they have a duty to be at their posts."
By Jake Johnson
Senate Democrats spent much of this past week warning of the authoritarian threat posed by President Donald Trump and his unelected billionaire wrecking ball, Elon Musk, and vowing to dispense with business as usual in the face of an escalating constitutional crisis.
But when Thursday night rolled around, not one Democratic senator objected to the GOP's request for unanimous consent (UC) to adjourn the chamber for a three-day weekend, infuriating advocates who are pushing the minority party to use every opportunity to obstruct Trump's nominees and far-right policy agenda.
"Letting an adjournment for the next four days go uncontested isn't just missing an opportunity to be annoying and waste time, though that's reason enough," Andy Craig, an election policy fellow at the Rainey Center, said Thursday. "It is granting the principle of the matter: We're in a right-now hour-by-hour constitutional emergency and they have a duty to be at their posts."
"The Senate adjourning for a long weekend right now isn't just some mundane procedural question," Craig added, "it is an act of cowardice and abdication, and it should be opposed as such in a way that clearly communicates that."
Under intensifying grassroots pressure to act like a real opposition party, Democratic senators did begin to slow-roll the chamber's procedures this week, including by using up all 30 hours of floor debate on the nomination of Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect confirmed with only GOP votes on Thursday to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), also objected to several unanimous consent requests Thursday evening, forcing the chamber to hold procedural votes to move forward with additional Trump nominees. Democrats also successfully delayed consideration of Kash Patel, Trump's nominee to lead the FBI.
Those are the kinds of tactics that progressives, including members of the party, are imploring Democrats to deploy at every turn as Trump and Musk continue their lawless rampage through the federal government with the approval of Republicans in Congress.
"No business as usual. No handshakes with extremists. Democrats must use every tool available to delay and defy the Trump-Musk coup. Anything less is complicity."
Democrats don't have the votes to tank Trump nominees in the Senate, but they do have myriad tools at their disposal to grind the chamber to a halt.
"That means doing more than engaging in performative acts of Resistance before heading home for a long weekend," Vanity Fair's Eric Lutz wrote Thursday. "Mitch McConnell didn't spend his time as minority leader conducting half-assed chants outside the halls of power; he was inside, scheming and maneuvering and using whatever power he had to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. That's how you turn we will win from a rally slogan to a reality. McConnell got a Supreme Court seat out of it. Have Schumer and the Democrats been doing anything nearly as politically productive to this point?"
Craig acknowledged Thursday that forcing a roll-call vote on a motion to adjourn for the weekend would not, in itself, have done "much more than annoy" the Republican majority.
But, he asked, "would forcing a roll-call vote on everything usually handled by UC grind the Senate to a standstill?"
"Yes, and that's not just something Schumer is refusing to do," Craig added. "Every single Democratic senator is refusing to do it."
As Senate Democrats relented without objection to the GOP's motion to adjourn for a three-day weekend, Republicans reportedly planned to work through the weekend on a sweeping reconciliation bill that's expected to propose massive tax cuts for the rich and devastating cuts to Medicaid and other critical programs.
"Speaker Mike Johnson said he'll be working Saturday and through Sunday's Super Bowl taking place in New Orleans—in his and Majority Leader Steve Scalise's home state of Louisiana," Roll Call reported Thursday. "Trump, who hosted House GOP leaders for several hours to discuss reconciliation earlier in the day, is slated to attend the game Sunday."
Sarah Dohl, chief campaigns officer for the progressive advocacy group Indivisible, warned in the wake of Vought's confirmation vote Thursday that "Senate Republicans just handed the power to slash essential programs—like school lunches for hungry kids, Medicaid that keeps nursing homes open, and food assistance that helps families put dinner on the table—to a man whose entire mission is economic sabotage in service of billionaires like Elon Musk."
"But let's be clear: This fight doesn't end today," said Dohl. "The next wave of extremists—including Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, RFK Jr., and Linda McMahon—must be met with even stronger resistance. No business as usual. No handshakes with extremists. Democrats must use every tool available to delay and defy the Trump-Musk coup. Anything less is complicity."
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Trump will undoubtedly attempt to enhance his authoritarian aspirations by subordinating other branches of power to his will, inspire his base in civil society, and then, in turn, employ it to increase pressure on governmental institutions in his behalf.
Trump, in positioning himself as both a political leader and a real estate mogul, offers a disturbing vision of the future in which state power is wielded to clear land for private enterprise.
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