This is how chaotic things are going with President trump Elon Musk taking a sledgehammer to the federal government (via Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany at the Washington Post, so it may be paywalled):
The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department left the agency after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.
David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.
Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration...
Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.
The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate...
With the kind of control Musk is seeking, you have to question by what authority Musk can do any of this. He's not a Secretary of the Cabinet, he's the head of a non-approved advisory committee that Congress never budgeted or signed off on. Yet he's out here doing the things a Cabinet member would be doing, and without any accountability to anyone except trump. And even trump might not be in control of this train wreck.
This is what's scaring the experts and people in the know:
The executive order Trump signed creating DOGE also instructed all agencies to ensure it has “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” which would appear to include the Treasury payment systems.
It is unclear precisely why Musk’s team sought access to those systems. But both Musk and the Trump administration more broadly have sought to control spending in ways that far exceed efforts by their predecessors and have alarmed legal experts.
Musk is going after the money: Either to shut down spending in part or in whole - which is unconstitutional and would crash the economy - or to funnel moneys into his and others pockets - which would be the largest bank heist in history and also crash the economy.
All of this is happening on the whims of a person whom NO ONE ELECTED to any office. Musk does not have the approval of the voters, he does not have confirmation from the Senate, he does not have any established legal authority outside of trump's executive orders. What he's doing ought to be illegal as hell.
And yet, thanks to the President First Felon in the White House, all of the checks and balances from the legislature or the judiciary might not be able to hold Musk - or trump - to account here.
If any advocacy groups outside of the federal government have the power to fight these corrupt acts, for the love of GOD do so, please and thank you.
Otherwise, the nation drowns in Grover's Elon's bathtub.
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