The SAVE Act would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to first “provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” in person, like a passport or birth certificate.
The House already passed an identical bill in July 2024, also along partisan lines, with the GOP largely supporting the legislation. At that time, the Senate killed the bill. With a now GOP-controlled Senate, and a Republican in the White House, the SAVE Act could become law before 2025 ends.
Voting rights experts and advocacy organizations have detailed how the legislationcould suppress voting. In part, they say it would particularly create barriers in low-income and minority communities. People in such communities often lack the forms of ID acceptable under the SAVE Act for a variety of reasons, including socioeconomic factors.
As of now, at least 9% of voting-age American citizens – approximately 21 million people – do not even have driver’s licenses, let alone proof of citizenship. In spite of this, many legislators support the bill as a means of eliminating noncitizen voting in elections.
As a legal scholar who studies, among other things, foreign interferencein elections, I find considerations about the potential effects of the SAVE Act important, especially given how rare it is that a noncitizen actually votes in federal elections.
Yet, it is equally crucial to consider a more fundamental question: is the SAVE Act even constitutional?
The SAVE Act would forbid state election officials from registering an individual to vote in federal elections unless this person “provides documentary proof of United States citizenship.”
So, should the SAVE Act become law, if a person turns 18 or moves between states and wishes to register to vote in federal elections in their new home, they would likely be turned away if they do not have any such documents readily available. At best, they could still fill out a registration form, but would need to mail in acceptable proof of citizenship.
For married people with changed last names, among others, questions remain about whether birth certificates could even count as acceptable proof of citizenship for them.
The Constitution says little about voting rights
Despite the national conversation the SAVE Act has sparked, it is unclear whether Congress even has the power to enact it. This is the key constitutional question.
The U.S. Constitution imposes no citizenship requirement when it comes to voting. The original text of the Constitution, in fact, said very little about the right to vote. It was not until legislators passed subsequent amendments, starting after the Civil War up through the 1970s, that the Constitution even explicitly prohibited voting laws that discriminate on account of race, sex or age.
Who, then, gets to decide whether someone is qualified to vote? No matter the election, the answer is always the same – the states.
Indeed, by constitutional design, the states are tasked with setting voter-eligibility requirements – a product of our federalist system. For state and local elections, the 10th Amendment grants states the power to regulate their internal elections as they see fit.
States also get to decide who may vote in federal elections, which include both presidential and congressional elections.
When it comes to presidential elections, for instance, states have – as I have previously written – exclusive power under the Constitution’s Electors Clause to decide how to conduct presidential elections within their borders, including who gets to vote in them.
The states wield similar authority for congressional elections. Namely, according to Article I of the Constitution and the Constitution’s 17th Amendment, if someone can vote in their state’s legislative elections, they are entitled to vote in its congressional elections, too.
Conversely, the Constitution provides Congress zero authority to govern voter-eligibility requirements in federal elections. Indeed, in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling on the Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council case, the court asserted that nothing in the Constitution “lends itself to the view that voting qualifications in federal elections are to be set by Congress.”
Is the SAVE Act constitutional?
The SAVE Act presents a constitutional dilemma. By requiring individuals to show documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register for federal elections, the SAVE Act is implicitly saying that someone must be a U.S. citizen to vote in federal elections.
In other words, Congress would be instituting a qualification to vote, a power that the Constitution leaves exclusively to the states.
Indeed, while all states currently limit voting rights to citizens, legal noncitizen voting is not without precedent. As multiplescholarshave noted, at least 19 states extended voting rights to free male “inhabitants,” including noncitizens, starting from our country’s founding up to and throughout the 19th century.
Today, over 20 municipalities across the country, as well as the District of Columbia, allow permanent noncitizen residents to vote in local elections.
Any state these days could similarly extend the right to vote in state and federal elections to permanent noncitizen residents. This is within their constitutional prerogative. And if this were to happen, there could be a conflict between that state’s voter-eligibility laws and the SAVE Act.
Yet, in this instance, where Congress has no actual authority to implement voter qualifications, the SAVE Act would seem to have no constitutional leg on which to stand.
When it comes to the constitutionality of the SAVE Act, though, proponents simply assert that Congress is acting within its purview.
Specifically, many proponents have cited the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections, as support for that assertion. Sen. Mike Lee, for example, explicitly referenced the Elections Clause when defending the SAVE Act earlier in 2025.
But the Elections Clause only grants Congress authority to regulate election procedures, not voter qualifications. The Supreme Court explicitly stated this in the Inter Tribal Council ruling.
Congress can, for instance, require states to adopt a uniform federal voter registration form, and even include a citizenship question on said form. What it cannot do, however, is implement a non-negotiable mandate that effectively tells the states they can never allow any noncitizen to vote in a federal election.
For now, the SAVE Act is simply legislation. Should the Senate pass it, President Donald Trump will almost assuredly sign it into law, given, among other factors, his March 2025 executive order that says prospective voters need to show proof of citizenship before they register to vote in federal elections. Once that happens, the courts will have to reckon with the SAVE Act’s legitimacy within the country’s constitutional design.
Can voters use Real ID to satisfy SAVE Act voting rules, as Byron Daniels said?
Grace Abels – April 21, 2025
Even Rep. Byron Donalds’ state of Florida does not show citizenship on its Real ID driver’s licenses, so they wouldn’t provide the proof of citizenship that would be needed to register to vote under the proposed SAVE Act.
Byron Donald’sStatement: Under the SAVE Act, “as long as you have a Real ID … it should be easy for you to register to vote.”
Responding to concerns about a bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote, some Republicans have said an eligible voter needs only a Real ID.
But in 44 states, that’s not a solution.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, passed the U.S. House on April 10 by a 220-208 vote. A priority of House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump, it would require in-person proof of citizenship, such as a U.S. passport or a combination of a driver’s license and birth certificate, to register to vote.Republicans say the SAVE Act — which has a high 60-vote hurdle to clear in the Senate — is necessary to ensure that noncitizens don’t vote in U.S. elections. Federal laws already prohibit noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and cases of noncitizens voting are extremely rare.
Democrats denounced the bill as a threat to voting rights, criticizing the required paperwork as burdensome; about half of Americans don’t have passports, for example. Republicans accused Democrats of exaggerating the burden.
“To the people who are concerned about married women being able to register (to vote) there’s this thing in the United States, every state does it now, called Real ID,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., in an April 10 NewsNation interview. “As long as you have a Real ID, which virtually every American has to have today, it should be easy for you to register to vote.”
Real IDs are federally compliant, state-issued driver’s licenses or identification cards that require documentation including a Social Security card and proof of citizenship or legal immigration status to obtain. Congress passed a 2005 law requiring state-issued IDs to meet federal minimum security standards following a 9/11 Commission recommendation.
A Real ID card is typically marked with a black or gold star. About 56% of American IDs were Real ID compliant in January 2024, but many people are rushing to get Real IDs before a May 7 deadline after which a non-Real ID driver’s license, for example, won’t be sufficient to board domestic flights. (Some states, such as Illinois, are saying “Real ID can wait” because of high demand.)
However, not every Real ID meets SAVE Act requirements to prove citizenship. The SAVE Act accepts only Real IDs that indicate whether a person is a citizen, which most do not.
Further, Real IDs can be issued to noncitizens with lawful status, including permanent residence, temporary protected status, refugees, asylum applicants and people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the Homeland Security Department’s website says.
Five states — Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington — offer a version of Real ID that indicates whether a person is a U.S. citizen, called an enhanced driver’s license. These licenses are offered at an additional fee, so not every Real ID in those states is compliant with the SAVE Act. Homeland Security officials have been working since 2008 to bring the enhanced ID program to all states.
Another state, Idaho, in 2023 began offering IDs with an optional citizenship marker, although it’s unclear whether all are Real ID compliant.
PolitiFact found no evidence that the remaining states issue Real IDs that comply with the citizenship proof required by the SAVE Act.
Thirty-six states already have some form of voter ID law requiring identity verification at the polls, but the SAVE Act would implement hurdles in every state at an earlier step — voter registration. For most states, that is new terrain.
“There is only one state in the U.S., Arizona, that has experience with proof-of-citizenship to register to vote,” said Lori Minnite, a Rutgers University political science professor and expert on voter fraud.
For state and local elections, Arizona accepts state IDs as proof of citizenship after comparing the driver’s license number to existing information in its Department of Transportation database. The physical IDs are no different than those issued to noncitizens. It is unclear whether such an ID, only distinguishable from a noncitizen ID when referenced against internal state data, would count as “indicating” citizenship under the SAVE Act.
The SAVE Act’s author, Central Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy acknowledged in a recent hearing that only a few states offer compliant licenses, and he hoped more would follow: “We believe, right, that the structure is put in place now that allow — I think there’s at least five states that do have the citizenship status as part of the Real ID — encourage more states to do so, right? That would be part of the goal here.”
In 2023, Ohio passed a law to offer enhanced driver’s licenses, but it is not yet accepting applications. Iowa and Montana are considering bills to add a citizenship marker on IDs.
Neither Donalds nor Roy responded to requests for comment.
Beyond Real ID, other ways to verify identity pose challenges
For the majority of Americans who don’t live in Idaho or one of the few states with enhanced IDs, the SAVE Act says they can prove citizenship with a valid U.S. passport; a military ID card and a military service record showing place of birth; or a government issued photo-ID that shows place of birth.Those documents, or a Real ID that indicates citizenship, are the only ones that can prove citizenship on their own under the bill. Without one of those, a person must show a driver’s license or identification along with another document showing birthplace, such as a birth certificate, naturalization certificate, consular report of birth abroad or final adoption decree.
All documents must be presented in person.
Any mismatch between documents and someone’s current identification cards could disrupt voter registration. Mismatches are common for people who change their names following marriage.
In the same hearing, Roy said the SAVE Act would not affect people currently registered to vote.
He added: “If they have an intervening event or if the states want to clean the rolls, people would come forward to register to demonstrate their citizenship so we could convert our system over some reasonable time to a citizenship-based registration system.”
Jonathan Diaz, director of voting, advocacy and partnerships at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization that supports voting rights, said he believes the SAVE Act would apply to any updates to current registration or reregistration.
As prominentDemocrats warned that the billwouldmake voting harder formillions of married women, SAVE Act supporters said the bill addresses the needs of people with name changes by leaving it up to the states to decide what documentation would be required to resolve document discrepancies. It directs each state to “establish a process under which an applicant can provide such additional documentation” to establish citizenship if the person’s documents don’t include matching information.
Minnite called this language ambiguous: “Could a married woman who does not have a passport and who changed her name use a marriage certificate to prove her citizenship? The SAVE Act is not clear.”Diaz said, “Different states could have different standards and different degrees of proof needed, which will be really hard for voters to navigate.”
PolitiFact’s ruling
Donalds said under the SAVE Act, “as long as you have a Real ID … it should be easy for you to register to vote.” Most Real IDs are not compliant with the citizenship proof required under the SAVE Act. PolitiFact identified just six states that offer Real IDs that show citizenship, and five of them require an additional fee for that.
People in the remaining 44 states would need other forms of documentation to register to vote under the SAVE Act, such as a U.S. passport, a military service ID and record, or a birth certificate with a driver’s license.
Donalds’ statement has an element of truth because in a handful of states, people have access to Real IDs that would be sufficient to register to vote under the SAVE Act. But he ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate the statement Mostly False.
PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
Musk’s DOGE Goons Hit With a Major Blow in Bid to Raid Social Security Secrets
Tom Sanders – April 18, 2025
Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
Elon Musk’s DOGE efforts to burrow into the private data of millions of Americans has been thwarted after a judge issued a temporary injunction banning the billionaire’s goons from getting “unfettered access” to Social Security servers.
The case, brought against DOGE by two labor unions and an advocacy group for retirees, accused the Musk lackeys of accessing sensitive personal information in a way that could cause “irreparable harm” to individuals if mishandled.
Government attorneys argued that the way DOGE accesses private information does not deviate significantly from Social Security Administration (SSA) employees, who are routinely allowed to search its databases.
But plaintiffs argued the way DOGE employees have acted signals a “sea change” in how the agency handles sensitive data, which includes information on mental health, children, physical disabilities, and “issues that are not only sensitive but might carry a stigma.”
Granting DOGE unfettered access to this information is a privacy violation that “causes an objectively reasonable unease,” argued Alethea Anne Swift, an attorney for the legal group Democracy Forward, which filed the lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander, who is overseeing the case, agreed with the plaintiffs that DOGE had failed to demonstrate why it needed “unprecedented, unfettered access” to SSA servers, and issued a temporary injunction against the agency extending a ban on them from accessing personal information.
Demonstrators gathered in front of the Social Security administration building to protest DOGE’s attempts to cut social security(Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu via Getty Images) / Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu via Getty ImagesMore
The ruling follows a temporary restraining order previously imposed by Hollander in March that was set to expire Thursday.
The judge asked, “What it is we’re doing that needs all of that information?” DOGE argued it was necessary to root out instances of Social Security fraud.
Hollander asked whether the sensitive data could be anonymized, which government attorneys argued was technically possible but would significantly slow down their cost-cutting efforts.
Delivering her order, Hollander said the injunction was necessary to protect against privacy violations and that the plaintiffs would likely be victorious in any further claims brought against DOGE.
“For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records. This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation,” she wrote in her 145-page ruling, Reuters reports.
A judge ruled that allowing DOGE access to Social Security servers was a violation of privacy (Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu via Getty Images) / Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu via Getty Images
Justice Department attorney Bradley Humphreys responded by telling the court that the ruling was starting to “feel like a policy disagreement.”
But Hollander admonished him, saying, “I do take offense at your comment because I’m just trying to understand the system.”
The ruling was met with cheers outside the courthouse, where demonstrators had gathered to protest what they say is an overreach of DOGE’s authority that threatened the future of Social Security benefits, according to CBS.
Democracy Forward said the injunction marked an important step in its case, with president Skye Perryman calling the ruling “a significant relief for the millions of people who depend on the Social Security Administration to safeguard their most personal and sensitive information.”
Nearly 300 scientists apply for French academic program amid Trump cuts in U.S.
Alana Wise – April 18, 2025
Students, researchers and demonstrators rally during a protest against the Trump administration’s funding cuts on research, health and higher education at the University of California Los Angeles on April 8.Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
More than 2,500 scientists fled russia after putin invaded Ukraine.
A French university courting U.S.-basedacademics said it has already received nearly 300 applications for researchers seeking “refugee status” amid President Trump’s elimination of funding for several scientific programs.
Last month, Aix-Marseille University, one of the country’s oldest and largest universities, announced it was accepting applications for its Safe Place For Science program, which it said offers “a safe and stimulating environment for scientists wishing to pursue their research in complete freedom.”
This week, Aix-Marseille said it had received 298 applications, and 242 of them are eligible and currently up for review. Of the eligible applicants, 135 are American, 45 have a dual nationality, 17 are French and 45 are from other countries, the university said.Sponsor Message
“I am pleased that this request for the creation of scientific refugee status has found both media and political traction,”university President Éric Berton said in a statement.
The public research university said there is an even split between male and female applicants, with backgrounds from various prestigious U.S. institutions including Johns Hopkins University, NASA, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Yale and Stanford. About 20 Americans will be accepted into the program to begin in June.
“We at Aix-Marseille University are convinced that mobilization to address the challenges facing scientific research must be collective in France and Europe,” Berton said.
The Trump administration has prioritized aggressive spending cuts and federal workforce reduction, leading to a battle for America’s best and brightest.
Already, for example, universities and medical research facilities are set to lose billions in federal funding under the National Institutes of Health. And rollbacks on federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs have compromised research ranging from climate change to biomedical research.
Aix-Marseille is not the only European institution hoping to capitalize on America’s brain drain.
Last month, France’s CentraleSupélec announced a $3.2 million grant to help finance American research that had been halted in the states. And Netherlands Minister of Education, Culture and Science Eppo Bruins wrote in a letter to parliament that he requested to set up a fund aimed at bringing top international scientists to the Netherlands.
There is some evidence that these entreaties are reaching curious ears.
Last month in the journal Nature, more than 1,200 respondents identifying as scientists cited Trump’s funding cuts as reasons they were considering moving to Canada or Europe.
Thousands of federal workers would be easier to fire under Trump rule change
Shannon Bond – April 18, 2025
President Trump speaks in the Oval Office on Friday.Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
The Trump administration is moving forward with efforts to make it easier to fire some federal workers from their jobs, as part of its push to both shrink the federal government and exert more control over it.
On Friday the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) proposed a rule reclassifying tens of thousands of career civil servants as “at-will” employees, the White House announced in a statement. Removing civil service protections would make workers easier to fire.
The White House said the proposed rule would address “unaccountable, policy-determining federal employees who put their own interests ahead of the American people’s.”
President Trump and his allies, including billionaire Elon Musk, have said they want to “dismantle government bureaucracy,” which they criticize as a “deep state,” and root out what Trump has called “rogue bureaucrats.” They’ve claimed, without presenting evidence, that the government is rife with corrupt employees and non-existent workers. Trump has long argued that his administration should have greater flexibility in appointing people who will faithfully carry out his agenda and firing those who won’t.
“If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job,” Trump wrote in a post about the proposed rule on his Truth Social platform on Friday.
The effort to strip civil service protections from some workers began on Trump’s first day back in office, with an executive order reinstating an order Trump signed at the end of his first term, in 2020. (That order was rescinded by then-President Biden days after he took office.) The latest Trump order creates a new category of political appointees in the federal workforce, originally called Schedule F.
OPM estimates 50,000 positions, or about 2% of federal workers, will be reclassified under the new rule, which renames Schedule F as Schedule Policy/Career. According to the White House statement, it would apply to “career employees with important policy-determining, policy-making, policy-advocating, or confidential duties.” It said once OPM issues its final rule, another executive order would actually reclassify specific positions as Schedule Policy/Career.
“This rule empowers federal agencies to swiftly remove employees in policy-influencing roles for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of Presidential directives, without lengthy procedural hurdles,” the White House statement said.
It added that Schedule Policy/Career jobs “are not required to personally or politically support the President, but must faithfully implement the law and the administration’s policies.” They will continue to be filled by “existing nonpartisan, merit-based hiring processes,” the White House said.
The American Federation of Government Employees has sued the administration to protect civil service workers, and in a statement Friday its president, Everett Kelley, said that this latest action “will erode the government’s merit-based hiring system and undermine the professional civil service that Americans rely on.”
Friday’s proposed rule comes as Trump continues making sweeping changes to the federal government, shuttering some agencies and moving ahead with mass firings.
How DOGE may have improperly used Social Security data to push voter fraud narratives
Stephen Fowler – April 11, 2025
Investor Antonio Gracias at a town hall rally held by Elon Musk in Green Bay, Wis., on March 30. Gracias, who is part of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, has been working at the Social Security Administration. Scott Olson/Getty Images
One of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency lieutenants working in the Social Security Administration has been pushing dubious claims about noncitizens voting, apparently using access to data that court records suggest DOGE isn’t supposed to have.
The staffer, Antonio Gracias, made the claims as part of larger misleading statements about the SSA’s enumeration-beyond-entry, or EBE program, which streamlines the process for granting Social Security cards to certain categories of eligible immigrants.
Gracias said in an April 2 appearance on Fox and Friends that “5-plus million” noncitizens who “came to the country as illegals” received Social Security numbers “through an automatic system” and proceeded to “get into our benefit systems.”Sponsor Message
“And just because we were curious, we then looked to see if they were on the voter rolls. And we found in a handful of cooperative states that there were thousands of them on the voter rolls and that many of them had voted,” Gracias said.
State-levelaudits of voter data have found few examples of noncitizens voting, which is a federal crime punishable with prison and deportation.
Later that week, Gracias furthered his claims on a podcast. “I think this was a move to import voters,” he said, echoing a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump and Musk elevated during the 2024 campaign season and Republican lawmakers are invoking to push for stricter voting policies.
While Musk and some Republican lawmakers are now amplifying Gracias’ claims online, experts familiar with Social Security say Gracias is mischaracterizing the program, and voter registration experts say they doubt the accuracy of his claims about noncitizens voting.
From “no access granted” to data shared by Musk
Using Social Security data to imply that noncitizens are breaking the law also could have violated a court order that prevents DOGE staffers from handling sensitive SSA systems.
It’s the latest example of concerns among privacy activists that DOGE’s sweeping access to personal and financial information of millions of Americans may violate privacy laws and may be used for inappropriate purposes.
It does not mention his analysis of how noncitizens are given Social Security numbers. Gracias is also not supposed to see or share personally identifiable information, or PII, within agency data, according to earlier court filings.
“Appointee shall not share any Personally Identifiable Information accessed or obtained through the use of SSA systems or work performed for SSA, with any external entity, organization, or agency federal or state,” an addendum to his appointment request reads.
A sign in front of the entrance of the Social Security Administration’s main campus in Woodlawn, Md.Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
In a March 12 declaration from the SSA’s then-Chief Information Officer Michael Russo, Gracias is one of two SSA DOGE employees listed as not having access to sensitive databases or PII.
“No SSA data or personally identifiable information access, or access to systems containing such information, has been granted to Employee 6 and Employee 4,” the document reads. Employee 6, listed in the record as a “Growth Equity Vice President,” appears to be Jon Koval, an associate of Gracias at his venture capital firm, who is also detailed to DOGE.Sponsor Message
On March 20, a federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order blocking DOGE employees from accessing SSA data. Gracias first publicized his claims alongside Musk at a rally in Wisconsin on March 30, ahead of the state’s special Supreme Court election.
A federal appeals court dismissed the Trump administration’s effort to lift that temporary restraining order April 1.
A few days after his Fox News interview on April 2, Gracias joined the All-In podcast on April 4 and offered more details on the data he says he used and the conclusions he drew, which has been subsequently shared by conservative media outlets and amplified by Musk on his social media site X for several days.
Neither Gracias nor a DOGE spokesperson responded to NPR’s questions about when and how any Social Security data was accessed and whether it complied with the court order.
NPR reached out to Social Security and initially spoke to acting press officer Nicole Tiggemann. In a subsequent email from a generic press account, the agency declined to answer detailed questions about DOGE’s data access. It did confirm that a chart Gracias publicized showing totals of noncitizens with Social Security numbers through EBE was taken from an SSA dashboard — but claimed that the restraining order prevented them from responding to NPR’s request for additional data from the program. The agency did not respond to inquiries asking to confirm who gave the emailed answer.
That leaves many questions still unanswered about the Social Security data behind DOGE’s claims. It’s possible the analysis was conducted before the March 20 TRO or that Gracias is not the DOGE employee who accessed any personal Social Security information. So far, there has been no evidence provided of any states sharing public or private voter data with the DOGE team at SSA either.
It’s also possible that the data about noncitizens comes from non-DOGE activities. The judge overseeing the case wrote on March 21 that the TRO only applies to “SSA employees working on the DOGE agenda. It has no bearing on ordinary operations at SSA.”
One clue about the data’s potential provenance comes from this week’s court filing: a March 17 email exchange from someone identified as Employee 7 who copied Gracias and Koval on a request for access to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, which SSA uses to verify the immigration status of EBE applicants.
“This access is absolutely critical to get detailed immigration status for non-citizen SSNs to detect fraud and improper payments,” the email reads.
Employee 7 appears to be DOGE staffer Marko Elez, who resigned from his post at the Treasury Department over past racist tweets — and who shared a spreadsheet of personal information in violation of data-sharing policies, an audit found — before being rehired at multiple federal agencies.
Gracias puts the EBE program at the center of his account about how his team decided to check voter rolls. The program started in 2017 during the first Trump administration but grew dramatically under the Biden administration, which allowed millions of asylum-seekers to enter the U.S. and expanded the categories of immigrants who could stay on a temporary basis.
Until recently, under the EBE program, noncitizens applying for work permits, green cards or naturalization with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could apply for Social Security cards without visiting a field office. The Washington Post and other outlets reported that the EBE program was paused in mid-March, citing an internal email. NPR has not independently confirmed the reporting.
A sign directs voters to cast their ballots at a polling station set up at the Flagler County Public Library on April 1 in Palm Coast, Fla. People associated with DOGE are using Social Security data to advance debunked claims that large numbers of noncitizens are voting.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Lawfully present immigrants who are authorized to work get Social Security numbers to ensure they are “paying their taxes into the Social Security trust funds as required by law,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.Sponsor Message
Since immigrants in the process of naturalizing could use the EBE program, those individuals could be expected to appear on voter rolls once they became U.S. citizens.
It remains unclear which state records the DOGE team checked for noncitizens. On the All-In podcast, Gracias described checking the public voter rolls of four “friendly” states to find noncitizens on the rolls. He then said “we went even further with those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted.”
Later in the program, he said “well over a thousand voted” in one state. He has said his team has referred those cases for federal prosecution. In the same unsigned email, the unnamed SSA spokesperson declined to respond to NPR’s questions about the inquiry into individuals who allegedly were identified as illegal voters using Social Security data, citing “ongoing criminal investigations on this matter.”
But voting experts say the data cross-checking Gracias describes raises legal questions and can be prone to many kinds of errors.
“There are huge accuracy questions here,” said Charles Stewart, the director of MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab.
Typically, states’ public voter rolls would not include Social Security numbers, which would make data matching far less precise. There are known issues with false matches when just using names and birthdays.
Furthermore, it is common for states to find voters who have since naturalized and become citizens when cross-checking databases of noncitizens against their voter rolls.
“DOGE has repeatedly made massive data errors,” said David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “I have some doubts that they’ve discovered anything more than maybe just some poor government data quality tracking or they don’t understand the data they’re looking at.”
It’s also not clear if the DOGE effort to combine Social Security data with other sources inside and outside the federal government runs afoul of data sharing and privacy laws that are designed to limit access to sensitive information to those who have a need to use it.Sponsor Message
“The use has to be consistent with the reason that you’re asking for the records in the first place, which has to be consistent with your own agency’s mission,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School and a voting policy adviser in the Biden administration. “‘Because I’m curious’ is not a thing when the federal government comes to data.”
President Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 6.Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Gracias appeared to attribute some of his team’s access to an executive order signed by the president last month that directs agencies to facilitate “both the intra- and inter-agency sharing” of records.
“President Trump had the courage to allow us to go across databases, he signed an executive order,” he said on Fox News. “It’s never been done before where agencies could talk to each other and databases can talk to each other. That allowed us to connect all this data to find these people across the system, across the benefits system, all the way to the voting records.”
Another executive order, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” directs the Department of Homeland Security and DOGE to “review each State’s publicly available voter registration list” among other requests, similar to Gracias’ effort at SSA.
Both presidential actions include the caveat that any sharing must occur “consistent with law.”
The latest in DOGE data concerns
Multiple federal judges have found the DOGE effort has likely broken the law in its effort to comb through agencies to find “waste, fraud and abuse.” Court records have also shown the Trump administration is unable to account for the scope of DOGE’s data access, or the need for a small number of staffers to have virtually unfettered access to sensitive, compartmentalized data across the government.
The claims made by Gracias and Musk about Social Security data underscores growing questions around how DOGE is using the data it has gathered. In a ruling blocking DOGE access to Treasury systems, Judge Jeannette Vargas warned that “a real possibility exists that sensitive information has already been shared outside of the Treasury Department, in potential violation of federal law.”Sponsor Message
But Gracias’ latest claims about noncitizens voting continue to have an impact on policy in the Trump administration and with the Republican-controlled Congress. During Thursday’s House debate over the SAVE Act, Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., mentioned DOGE’s allegations and the claim that the Biden administration had “imported” noncitizens as a reason to pass the bill.
“We have evidence that they’re participating in our elections,” Bean said. “The DOGE team just announced millions of illegals now have Social Security numbers. It’s happening and it ends today when we vote on this SAVE Act.”
Have information you want to share about DOGE access to government databases, Social Security, immigration and IT systems? Reach out to these authors through encrypted communication on Signal. Stephen Fowler is at stphnfwlr.25, and Jude Joffe-Block is at JudeJB.10.
This trumpusk administration is first of all, not civilized. And if it were, it wouldn’t make any difference. vladimir putin and the money laundering trump aligned russian oligharchs, want to destroy America’s Constitutional Democracy, just at they’ve destroyed their own nation. And trump and a large number of MAGANAZI republi-cons in our congress are paid operatives of this fascist, evil, autocratic cabal. WTFU merica www.tarbabys.com
Inside Elon Musk’s Gleeful Destruction of the Government
Miles Klee, Andrew Perez, Asawin Suebsaeng and Meagan Jordan – April 10, 2025
Ben Vizzachero had his dream job, working as a wildlife biologist with the Los Padres National Forest in California. He was moving up the ladder, had recently received a positive performance review, and was “making the world a better place,” he says.
Yet, over Presidents’ Day weekend in February, Donald Trump’s administration told Vizzachero he was being let go for his “performance.” Vizzachero was one of many thousands of “probationary” federal workers who were baselessly fired by Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency as part of Trump’s effort to purge the federal workforce and make it more MAGA.
It was crushing. “My job is my identity,” Vizzachero says. “How I’ve defined myself since I was five years old is that I love birds and bird-watching.” Talking with Rolling Stone in March, following his firing, he wondered what would happen to his health insurance and whether he would need to move in with his parents.
When a Democratic lawmaker invited Vizzachero as a guest to Trump’s joint address to Congress in March, he found himself seated near Musk. He took the opportunity to confront the world’s richest man. According to Vizzachero, he described his job to Musk and asked: “Am I waste?”
He says Musk, “with a very condescending smirk,” hit him with a line from the 1999 movie Office Space: “What would you say you do here?”
It was a dubious callback to the scene in which a pair of management consultants interview a worker and force him to justify his job before he’s fired. Like countless Wall Street traders who took the wrong lesson from Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” speech, Musk missed the point of Office Space: that corporate culture is dehumanizing, and bosses like him are odious cretins.
Soon after Trump’s and Republicans’ 2024 wins, which Musk supported with $290 million in political spending, the Tesla CEO publicly mused about using this line from Office Space on federal workers. He posted it in November on X, the social media platform he owns, with a laugh-crying emoji, resharing his earlier post of an AI-generated image in which he’s seated at a conference table behind a placard that reads “DOGE.” Two weeks later, Musk announced, “I rewatched Office Space tonight for the 5th time to prepare for @DOGE!” The billionaire reportedly had a DOGE T-shirt made, emblazoned with his favorite line. And one weekend in February, Musk threatened to fire every federal worker who failed to respond to an email asking them, “What did you do last week?”
Musk and the White House did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
“The American people are saying, you know what, Elon Musk? We believe you to be a liar.”
Everett Kelley
With DOGE, Musk has gleefully banished tens of thousands of federal employees, canceled lifesaving aid, and repeatedly threatened America’s safety-net programs, all as part of a purported hunt for waste, fraud, and abuse. He’s governed as an out-of-touch corporate villain, laughing about this carnage while partying, posting, delivering big payments to voters (although the amounts mean virtually nothing to him), and cashing in on new contracts and business opportunities — sometimes appearing high out of his mind. Even administration officials and Trump loyalists on Capitol Hill joke about the latest outrages of “Prime Minister Musk.” At every turn in his crusade of destruction, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has dared the courts and a weak Democratic opposition to stop him.
But it didn’t take long for ordinary Americans to get pissed off, with protests against DOGE, Musk, and his companies erupting nationwide. “The American people are saying, you know what, Elon Musk?” says Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a federal labor union that has brought legal challenges against the Trump administration on behalf of the more than 820,000 workers across government agencies it represents. “We’re not buying what you’re selling. We believe you to be a liar.”
Organizers have mounted a “Tesla Takedown” campaign, with tens of thousands around the globe showing up at dealerships to condemn DOGE, according to the group. They have encouraged Tesla owners to sell their cars and stockholders to dump their shares, since much of Musk’s wealth comes from his stake in the electric-vehicle manufacturer.
“People have asked, ‘What is DOGE?’ ” says a retiree at an anti-Tesla protest in Los Angeles in March, explaining that she and her husband are trying to “educate people” about the harm Musk’s pet project is causing. Passing motorists honk in support of the approximately 25 people gathered at a Tesla center despite the rain. Some hold signs denouncing Musk as a Nazi (he has denied any association with Nazism), while another poster at the rally simply reads: “Not Sure About This Elon Guy.”
“There is a growing movement to divest, Tesla stock is in a precipitous decline,” says actor and writer Alex Winter, who launched Tesla Takedown with other activists in February. “Things are moving in the right direction.”
‘Crazy Uncle Elon’
Prior to Trump’s inauguration, observers weren’t sure how seriously to take the idea of a Musk-led government-efficiency commission, but the billionaire and DOGE have been at the vanguard of Trump’s shockingly lawless second administration.
Musk has spearheaded the president’s purge of the federal workforce and his efforts to consolidate information and power over federal funds — despite never being elected, appointed, or confirmed to hold such a pivotal role. Musk is technically a “special government employee,” a designation that allowed him to bypass a Senate confirmation process and avoid publicly reporting his financial holdings.
DOGE was created by renaming the U.S. Digital Service and moving it under the executive office in an apparent bid to circumvent public-record laws. The ethics watchdog American Oversight has sued to force the group to comply with those laws and preserve materials subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. “The public deserves to know the full extent of the damage,” said interim Executive Director Chioma Chukwu in a statement on an April court order requiring DOGE to fulfill this legal obligation.
Trump and Musk have tried to grant the new office expansive authorities never envisioned by Congress, including the ability to “impound,” or freeze, funds appropriated by lawmakers. Experts say the arrangement is unconstitutional on several levels — as are DOGE’s mass firings and its attempts to shutter or pause the work of whole government agencies. A lawsuit brought by personnel of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) laid out many of these arguments, contending that “Musk has acted as an officer of the United States without having been duly appointed to such a role,” and that DOGE “acted to eliminate USAID, a federal agency created by statute, where only Congress may do so.” A federal judge in Maryland agreed, finding that Musk and DOGE likely violated the Constitution as they dismantled the office. Another judge ordered the Trump administration to rehire thousands of probationary employees terminated by DOGE. (As of publication, the legal battle is ongoing.)
Vizzachero, the wildlife biologist, was among those rehired. The administration is still moving ahead with even larger mass firings.
“I am become meme. There’s living the dream, and living the meme, and that’s what’s happening.”
Elon Musk
Musk and his lieutenants — many pulled from his own companies, others young techie college dropouts lacking in government experience — have demanded unprecedented access to sensitive personal information and government payment systems, leading to still more legal challenges. Federal judges havefound that Trump’s administration likely violated privacy and administrative laws when it gave DOGE sweeping access to personal, private data held by the Social Security Administration, the Treasury Department, and the Education Department. Regardless, DOGE has continued to operate with the same playbook Musk used after acquiring Twitter, showing a zeal for speedy terminations and little regard for how departments function.
Throughout the chaos and confusion of Trump’s return to power, Musk also strove to cultivate the image he’s long maintained as a workhorse, showman, and expert in varied fields. He reportedly told friends he was sleeping at DOGE offices, rehashing claims he previously made about sleeping on a Tesla factory floor. He’s continually posted grandiose and often inaccurate estimates of how much money DOGE has saved.
And he seemed to relish his role as an all-powerful agitator. Musk began regularly smearing his enemies as “retards” on X and targeting judges who ruled against the administration or blocked DOGE’s incursions. He grew bold enough to describe Social Security, long considered untouchable, as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
Onstage at Trump’s post-inauguration event, Musk threw a straight-armed salute to the crowd, then responded to the ensuing backlash with a series of puns on names of high-ranking Nazis from Adolf Hitler’s inner circle. Speaking virtually to the far-right German political party Alternative für Deutschland, Musk argued that Germany had placed “too much of a focus on past guilt.”
At the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Musk waved around a chain saw he said would slice through “bureaucracy” — this on the same day that his former partner Grimes publicly begged him on X to respond to her about a medical crisis experienced by one of their three children.
“I am become meme,” he said onstage. “I’m living the meme. You know, it’s like, there’s living the dream, and there’s living the meme, and that’s pretty much what’s happening.”
The bizarre CPAC appearance prompted speculation about Musk’s state of mind and recreational drug use, as he was wearing sunglasses inside and had difficulty stringing sentences together. People close to Musk have told The Wall Street Journal they have known him to use illegal drugs, including LSD, cocaine, Ecstasy, and mushrooms — a source of concern for some of the board members overseeing his companies. (Musk has denied using illegal drugs, though he has spoken about his use of prescription ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic.)
Some senior Trump administration officials and Cabinet members have found themselves deeply annoyed by Musk. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, three people familiar with the matter say, hasn’t hidden his disdain for Musk, with some State Department officials nicknaming the Tesla billionaire “Crazy Uncle Elon,” two of those sources tell Rolling Stone.
“I have been in the same room with Elon, and he always tries to be funny. And he’s not funny. Like, at all,” says a senior Trump administration official. “He makes these jokes and little asides and smiles and then looks almost hurt if you don’t lap up his humor. I keep using the word ‘annoying’; a lot of people who have to deal with him do. But the word doesn’t do the situation justice. Elon just thinks he’s smarter than everyone else in the room and acts like it, even when it’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Musk has gnawed at the patience of an array of high-ranking administration officials, to the point that — according to this official and two others — Trump lieutenants have walked out of meetings and earnestly asked one another if they thought Musk was high. Administration officials joked to one another about subjecting Musk to mandatory drug testing, which Musk himself has said would be a “great idea” for federal employees. (A lawyer for Musk has said he’s “regularly and randomly drug-tested at SpaceX and has never failed a test.”)
“Talking to the guy is sometimes like listening to really rusty nails on a chalkboard,” says the senior Trump administration official, who adds that Musk is not much of a team player, either. “He’s just the most irritating person I’ve ever had to deal with, and that is saying something.”
‘Why Do These Fucking Kids Know This?’
With Trump’s blessing, Musk has engineered a climate of fear that has infected nearly every corner of the U.S. executive branch. When DOGE’s “nerd army” has moved to take over federal agencies, if their demands are not immediately met, Musk’s minions have snapped at senior government officials: “Do I need to call Elon?”
The emails that Musk has had sent to federal employees have been so intentionally dickish that several have produced an avalanche of what one Trump administration official called “very rude” pranks and replies. Some of these crass responses include — per messages reviewed by Rolling Stone — graphic sexual images, including content involving urine and feces.
“I know Elon probably won’t see it, but I hope he sees it,” says one now-former federal employee, who says they replied to one such email with an image of a human butthole.
Musk is apparently amused by the unrest. Aside from his public memeing, when he has privately messaged associates and confidants about reports from federal staffers about how their lives have been wrecked, the Tesla CEO has been known to react with laugh-crying emojis, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
The tech oligarch has repeatedly warned that millions of Americans over the age of 100 are receiving benefits — a flagrant misrepresentation of agency data. Trump has run with this falsehood, too, even as his acting Social Security commissioner has acknowledged that these people “are not necessarily receiving benefits.”
Musk has claimed there are “extreme levels of fraud” in Social Security — though he and DOGE haven’t provided any evidence. He’s argued, without basis, that hundreds of billions in fraud per year are going to undocumented immigrants from entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The constant griping about entitlements is making an impact: When people lose their Social Security benefits, they are blamingMusk and DOGE.
Two administration officials and another Trump adviser tell Rolling Stone that when Musk has publicly decried Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,” some close to Trump have tried to diplomatically remind Musk that this could be damaging politically.
“He’s the most irritating person I’ve ever had to deal with, and that’s saying something.”
Senior Trump Administration Official
“We like winning elections, and you may have noticed that a lot of our voters are elderly,” the Trump adviser notes. The complaint from Trumpland brass about Musk’s inability to absorb or entertain new information is a common one.
According to the Trump adviser and an administration official, the DOGE captain has stubbornly responded with comments like, “It is a Ponzi scheme, though.” (It is not.)
As Musk and his minions claim they’re hunting for wasteful spending, the tech mogul is vying for new contracts at agencies that regulate his many business interests — a situation that poses obvious conflicts of interest. The Trump White House has asserted that Musk can police his own conflicts, and excuse himself from DOGE’s work overseeing certain contracts if he believes it’s necessary.
As part of their purge, Musk and DOGE fired hundreds of probationary employees at the Federal Aviation Administration, which last year proposed fining Musk’s SpaceX for regulatory and safety violations. Musk also pressured the last FAA administrator to resign, leaving it without leadership when an Army helicopter and commercial jet collided over the Potomac River near D.C. in January, killing 67 people.
The agency has started utilizing Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet service, to help upgrade the systems it uses to manage America’s airspace. Musk has tried to spin this as charity, posting that “Starlink terminals are being sent at NO COST to the taxpayer on an emergency basis to restore air-traffic-control connectivity.” However, as Rolling Stone has reported, FAA officials quietly directed staff to quickly locate tens of millions of dollars to fund a Starlink deal.
The New York Times separately reported in March that Starlink is now being used on the White House campus, despite security concerns. Trump’s Department of Defense just awarded SpaceX billions more in contracts to put sensitive military satellites in space. DOGE is reportedly using Musk’s Grok AI chatbot liberally as it slashes the government.
Two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that Musk’s DOGE staffers have grilled DOD employees about the Golden Dome project, Trump’s fantastical proposal to build a space-based missile-defense system to protect the entire United States — an idea ready-made for Starlink. Their questions were so specific that Pentagon officials wondered if the DOGE staff had access to highly sensitive and guarded information.
“Why do these fucking kids know this?” is how one of the sources describes their bewilderment at the time.
With DOGE, Musk has effectively infiltrated agencies that are supposed to oversee his businesses. This situation creates risk, experts say — as officials may not feel like they can scrutinize Musk’s businesses too closely. Case in point: In late February, the FAA cleared SpaceX to launch another unmanned test flight of its Starship rocket, a month after one exploded. Starship exploded again midair, raining debris over Florida and the Caribbean and disrupting nearly 500 flights.
The FAA’s probe of the first explosion concluded that the probable cause was “stronger than anticipated vibrations during flight.” The agency noted that SpaceX had “implemented corrective actions” prior to launching the second rocket, which exploded too.
‘Nobody Elected’ Musk
Musk’s unprecedented attack on the government has not gone without answer from average Americans, who have mobilized mass protests focused on DOGE and Tesla. Republican lawmakers holding town-hall events have had constituents show up to berate them over Musk, booing his name and denouncing his cuts. By early March, House Speaker Mike Johnson was telling his GOP colleagues to skip such events.
Demonstrations, meanwhile, spilled into the streets. “DOGE is illegitimate. Congress has not authorized them,” a federal worker at a March protest on the National Mall told Rolling Stone. The action saw significant support from veterans due to DOGE’s cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs. “Fuck Musk,” says another attendee, whose relative is a government contract worker. She notes that “nobody elected” Musk.
As Musk’s DOGE continues to slash jobs, a protest movement against him is brewing.
The White House and Trump law-enforcement officials have moved to crack down on Tesla vandals. At a Tesla showcase that Trump held on the White House driveway with Musk, the president said the attackers should be considered domestic terrorists. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that three individuals suspected of carrying out arson attacks on Tesla properties were facing sentences of up to 20 years. The FBI launched a task force to look at anti-Tesla violence.
Trump also suggested that individuals arrested for these crimes should be sent to prison in El Salvador.
What’s $1 Million?
Amid rising public anger about his role and influence, Musk held a town hall in late March in Green Bay, Wisconsin. More than 1,000 supporters joined him, as hundreds protested outside in the ice-cold rain.
The protesters were there to vent their anger about Musk’s attempts to buy a state Supreme Court seat. The tech billionaire — through his Super PAC, America PAC — had been offering voters $100 to sign a petition decrying so-called activist judges. Only petition signers could attend the town hall. Musk had announced he would give away checks for $1 million to two event attendees.
One protester, holding a sign that said “X-LAX needed to eliminate Musk,” told Rolling Stone that Musk had “no business in Wisconsin trying to influence votes.” Another held a sign declaring, “Packer fans don’t like Nazis,” with a picture of Musk’s straight-armed salute.
Inside, Musk appeared onstage donning a Packers-style cheesehead hat before signing it and throwing it into the crowd.
Shortly afterward, he brought two winners out to collect the $1 million checks. He admitted to the audience that the point of them is “just to get attention.” He laughed about how paying voters this way “causes the legacy media to kind of lose their minds.”
While $1 million would be a life-changing sum for most people, it means shockingly little to a man who was reportedly worth $316 billion at the end of March. One of these checks is equivalent to just over 60 cents for him, when you compare his net worth with that of the median American. (The $290 million that Musk spent to elect Trump and Republicans was equivalent to roughly $214 for him at the time — less than an average family’s weekly grocery bill.)
“I would thank him for radicalizing me. I had never attended a protest until I was fired.”
Ben Vizzachero
At his town hall, Musk — an immigrant — launched into a tirade about noncitizens receiving Social Security numbers, standing in front of a chart purporting to show a big spike under Democrats. In reality, legal immigrants are given Social Security numbers so they can pay taxes; this process was in fact made automatic during Trump’s first term. The crowd gasped as Musk gave them the false impression that DOGE had finally found real fraud in Social Security.
When Musk was interrupted by protesters, he joked that they were operatives funded by Democratic mega-donor George Soros — yes, inside the event filled with people he was paying $100 to sign his petition, where he also gave away $2 million.
Throughout the night, Musk argued that the Wisconsin Supreme Court election would have major implications not just for the state or the country, but possibly the world — if Democrats won, he argued, Republicans could lose two congressional seats.
Two days later, Wisconsin voters convincingly rejected Musk’s candidate, Brad Schimel, by 10 points. The election was a referendum on Musk — and he lost big.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly, a Wisconsin OB-GYN who serves on the board for the Committee to Protect Health Care and campaigned against Schimel, tells Rolling Stone, “Authenticity is incredibly important to Wisconsinites, and that is what Elon Musk completely lacked: any sense of authenticity.”
After Musk’s epic fail, word trickled out that he could soon leave the Trump administration. It wasn’t a surprise — special government employees are supposed to serve for 130 days or less per year. Musk’s effect on the government and its workers will linger.
On April 5, as a wave of “Hands Off!” protests coalesced against Trump and Musk in every state and cities around the world, Rolling Stone spoke again with Vizzachero. He was getting ready to speak at one of these rallies in California. (Now that he’s been rehired, he says, “the statements that I’m making to you are my personal opinions.”)
He reads his planned speech over the phone. He talks about how environmental and conservation laws brought back the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon, and restored America’s public lands. “The Trump administration wants to exploit and abuse our public lands so that they can make billionaires like Elon Musk even richer,” he says.
It’s been a month since his run-in with Musk. He says he’s “kind of grateful.”
If he saw Musk again now, Vizzachero says, “I would thank him for radicalizing me, because I had actually never attended a protest until a week after I got fired. I spent a long time sitting on the sidelines thinking there’s so much bad stuff happening. He gave me the push that I needed to use my voice to speak up and speak out.”
Elon Musk’s DOGE Gives Tesla Massive Helping Hand With Newest Purge
Hafiz Rashid – April 10, 2025
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency fired car safety experts in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who directly regulated Tesla.
The Financial Timesreports that DOGE fired 30 employees from the agency back in February, including several from the office of vehicle automation safety, which is in charge of regulating self-driving vehicles, a key part of Musk’s car company.
The layoffs made up 4 percent of the agency’s 800-person staff, including employees who were due for promotions and workers who had just been hired. The automation safety staff were disproportionately affected because the office had only been formed in 2023 and was predominately made up of probationary hires.
In a Valentine’s Day email announcing the firings, poor performance was cited as the reason, although this was rejected by an unnamed senior employee still at NHTSA who spoke to the Times.
The NHTSA has eight active investigations against Tesla, including five focusing on Musk’s claims about the company’s Autopilot system and Full Self-Driving software, and has published over 10,000 complaints about the company from the public. The agency has also ordered multiple recalls of Tesla cars and delayed the rollout of the company’s self-driving and driver-assistance software.
Musk has promised to launch a driverless ride-hailing service in Austin, Texas, in June, and to start building a fleet of autonomous “cybercabs” next year, which would require an NHTSA exception because the cybercabs don’t have a steering wheel or pedals.
“Letting DOGE fire those in the autonomous division is sheer madness—we should be lobbying to add people to NHTSA,” one Tesla manager told the Times. They “need to be developing a national framework for [autonomous vehicles], otherwise Tesla doesn’t have a prayer for scale in FSD or robotaxis.”
And, much like DOGE’s other firings at agencies across the government that regulate or deal with Musk’s companies, the NHTSA layoffs have major ethical implications.
“There is a clear conflict of interest in allowing someone with a business interest influence over appointments and policy at the agency regulating them,” a former NHTSA employee told the Times.
Doge’s attack on social security causing ‘complete, utter chaos’, staff says
Michael Sainato – April 6, 2025
The Arthur J Altmeyer Social Security Administration building in Woodlawn, Maryland, on 19 February.Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Office closures, staffing and service cuts, and policy changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) have caused “complete, utter chaos” and are threatening to send the agency into a “death spiral”, according to workers at the agency.
The SSA operates the largest government program in the US, administering social insurance programs, including retirement, disability and survivor benefits.
An average of almost 69 million Americans per month will receive a social security benefit in 2025, totaling about $1.6tn in benefits paid during the year and accounting for 22% of the federal budget. While expensive and challenged by an ageing population, social security remains overwhelminglypopular with Americans. But the agency has been dubbed a “Ponzi scheme” by Elon Musk, the billionaire whose so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is currently slashing its staff and budgets.Advertisement
“They have these ‘concepts of plans’ that they’re hoping are sticking but in reality, are really hurting American people,” said a longtime SSA employee and military veteran who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “No one knows what’s going on. They’re just coming up with ideas at the top of their head.”
The SSA website has crashed several times this month. Wired reported Doge staff want to migrate all social security data and rewrite code in months, which could cause system collapse and further outages.
The agency plans to eliminate the jobs of 7,000 workers at the agency through voluntary buyouts, resignations or firings, though the union representing SSA employees anticipate even more firings beyond cutting staff to 50,000 workers.Advertisement
Acting commissioner Leland Dudek has acknowledged to staff that Doge are making the decisions at the agency. Musk, Donald Trump and others have claimed action is being taken to tackle widespread fraud at the agency.
Dudek was appointed acting commissioner after he reportedly secretly shared information with Doge staff. He has threatened to shut down the agency in response to a court order barring Doge from accessing the data.
“It’s just been a lot of craziness, a lot of foolishness. Until they get rid of Doge and the person in office right now, and the Republicans actually get a backbone and stand up for something for once in their lives, things are just going to be complete chaos. That’s really the best word to describe SSA right now, just complete, utter chaos,” the worker added. “They couldn’t understand the coding, so everything they said SSA was doing illegally, they weren’t. Common sense is something they lack. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Rich Couture, a spokesperson for the American Federation of Government Employees’ Social Security Administration general committee, the union representing roughly 42,000 social security workers, said Doge’s public targets for cuts make no sense.Advertisement
Why are they cutting 7,000 jobs, asked Couture. “It has never been explained with any degree of clarity how they came up with that figure. What’s being served by that by a loss of 7,000 jobs? How does any of that supposedly makes this operation more efficient? How does it improve service? How does it improve productivity? Our position is that losing 7,000 people doesn’t do any of those things,” he said.
“I don’t think they’re going to stop at 7,000 people lost. If they lose 10,000 or 12,000, they’re running up their high score. They’re able to brag about it.”
Departments at the agency have been closed and reorganized, with workers forced to take reassignments or risk firings, and all workers have been ordered to return to the office five days a week.
Couture noted the return to office order occurred a day before a buyout offer was set to expire, in violation of union contract agreements, and the offices were not prepared or equipped to handle it, as many workers had no desks or equipment to work.Advertisement
Phone services for the public have also been cut, and field and regional offices are slated for closure around the US.
“There is no safe office in this country,” added Couture. “It’s a concerted attack on the legitimacy of social security itself. The promise that this country has made to the public with respect to income security is being broken.”
The cuts come as staffing is already at a 50-year low despite the agency serving a record number of recipients as the US population above the age of 65 is growing.
The office of the inspector general at SSA reported in August 2024 that a record backlog of payment actions impacting social security beneficiaries was due to lack of staffing, increased workloads, and decreased funding for the agency, driving improper payments because staff weren’t available to update records.Advertisement
Couture noted the operating overhead of the agency, as a share of benefits paid out, has shrunk by 20% over the last 10 years and is now less than 1%. He disputed any claims of inefficiency or waste at the agency, claiming the agency is already a model of efficiency and as effective as possible under its fiscal and staffing constraints.
He said he was concerned the situation was creating a “negative feedback loop” where, as more employees leave, more work is put on those remaining, depressing morale and inducing more to leave “until the agency ends up in a death spiral with staffing, inducing office closures”.
“You’re going to see a wholesale collapse in the agency’s service structure. Call wait times will skyrocket, wait times for appointments, processing times, all of it going to skyrocket because there won’t be enough people to do the jobs, which opens the door to privatization.”
Musk has called social security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and has consistently pushed false claims and conspiracies about the program.Advertisement
On senator Ted Cruz’s podcast last month, Musk repeated a white supremacist conspiracy theory that Democrats use entitlements to “attract and retain” undocumented immigrants as voters.
This week, Musk shared a chart of immigrants receiving social security numbers, falsely claiming they were receiving benefits, though the program of providing social security numbers to legal immigrants began under Trump’s first term as part of program to facilitate employment. He’s also falsely claimed dead people are receiving benefits, despite the acting commissioner of the SSA has dispelled the claim.
In 2024, social security direct deposit fraud was at a rate of 0.00625% and less than 1% of social security payments had been found to be incorrect.
US commerce secretary and billionaire Howard Lutnick claimed in an interview on a podcast earlier this month that only a “fraudster” would complain about missing a social security benefit check.Advertisement
“I worked there for 32 and a half years, and I rarely saw cases of fraud,” said John Oertel, a retired SSA employee for over 32 years in Redding, California.
“Because the agency is so understaffed that people who report their income, that’s not getting reported into the system. Musk and his group are saying look at all these people who are being overpaid, they must be committing fraud. They’re not committing fraud. They’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but because there are so few employees, none of that information is getting into the system.”
Oertel also dismissed false claims from Trump and Musk that dead people are getting social security benefits.
“They don’t understand or they don’t care. Those people aren’t collecting benefits, but the numbers are still technically active, because you can’t just erase social security numbers,” he said, noting that the numbers began being issued in the 1930s and are not deleted or reused, so they still remain in the system. “President Trump, Elon Musk and whoever the next commissioner is going to be, I really think their ultimate goal is just to destroy social security.”Advertisement
A spokesperson for the SSA deferred to press releases on the cuts and reorganization of the agency.
“We have listened to our customers, Congress, advocates and others, and we are updating our policy to provide better customer service to the country’s most vulnerable populations,” said Dudek, the SSA’s acting commissioner. “In addition to extending the policy’s effective date by two weeks to ensure our employees have the training they need to help customers, Medicare, Disability and SSI applications will be exempt from in-person identity proofing because multiple opportunities exist during the decision process to verify a person’s identity.”
They said in regard to office closures, that “to use our space more efficiently, we provided [the General Services Administration] a list of leases for termination,” and claimed that the return-to-office mandate was ordered to ensure “maximum staffing is available to support the stronger in-person identity proofing requirement”.
On claims of waste, fraud and abuse, a spokesperson said in an email: “The agency will continue to monitor and, if necessary, make adjustments to ensure it pays the right person the right amount at the right time while safeguarding the benefits and programs it administers.”
