WASHINGTON — Elon Musk’s surrogates on the Division of Authorities Effectivity might have been on the Division of Veterans Affairs’ headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, a key Democratic senator mentioned, elevating issues about their entry to the non-public information of each veterans and company workers.
“We should all be deeply concerned about what it could mean to give Elon Musk and his cronies free rein at VA—I am already hearing that DOGE may have barged into VA today,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) mentioned in an announcement.
“Musk and his associates already have the personal financial information of every veteran receiving disability or education benefits because of their illegal data mining at the Department of Treasury,” she mentioned. “Will they now look at private health records of veterans? What else will they do that could put the health and safety of our veterans at risk?”
The obvious go to comes simply days after Musk’s workforce reportedly accessed hundreds of thousands of individuals’s private and monetary info on the Workplace of Personnel Administration and individually on the Treasury Division.
It’s not clear if Musk himself might have been on the VA or simply members of his workforce. A VA spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark.
DOGE, which Trump designated as a substitute for the U.S. Digital Service, is concentrated on reducing prices throughout the federal authorities, however to this point has been transferring recklessly, politically and presumably illegally. Musk claims it’s on a mission to root out fraud and shrink the deficit.
Lawsuits have been flying this week after President Donald Trump’s administration granted Musk and his surrogates entry to large quantities of non-public info in governmental databases. Musk, the world’s richest man, is working as a “special government employee,” a designation permitting him to work for 130 days with out being topic to sure ethics and disclosure guidelines.
On Monday, a coalition of union teams sued the Treasury Division and Secretary Scott Bessent for giving Musk and his workforce “full access” to the federal authorities’s cost methods. These methods embrace the private information of hundreds of thousands of individuals, together with names, Social Safety numbers, start dates, start locations, house addresses, telephone numbers, electronic mail addresses and checking account info.
That lawsuit got here days after federal workers on the Workplace of Personnel Administration sued the federal government for permitting Musk to put in a non-public server on the company and entry delicate information with out being vetted or accredited. OPM’s methods embrace private information for tens of hundreds of thousands of present and former federal staff,
There are many causes to fret about Musk’s workforce probably accessing the VA’s non-public well being care information. They might, for instance, entry information about veterans who’re on contraception, for instance, or who’ve had abortions.
Murray mentioned she voted in opposition to confirming VA Secretary nominee Doug Collins on Tuesday particularly as a result of she hasn’t seen any of Trump’s cupboard picks, together with Collins, stand as much as the president’s “illegal power grab” — her time period for referring to Musk’s actions, together with his efforts to purge the federal authorities of profession civil servants.
“If this administration continues to press VA doctors, nurses, and support staff to resign—will Collins push back?” the Democratic senator requested. “I cannot confidently say he would.”
