Musk’s 25-year-old DOGE staffer resigns after racist posts emerge: report

turns out people do not like having the world's richest unelected man tearing through the Departments and agencies that administer our federal government yesterday we started seeing some real push back with protests in state capitals and large cities Across the Nation we saw signs like this on an overpass in the most populous County in New Jersey reading musk rated Treasury and musk stole your tax data in addition to these citizen protests lawmakers have been speaking out holding events of Treasury outside the department of labor today at the EPA and after a few days of this we

are seeing that Pressure Works in just the past few hours Wall Street Journal reported that Marco ell a 25-year-old Doge staffer who was given access to treasury files the most sensitive payment system in the entire government resigned after he was con connected to racist posts from a now deleted social media account earlier today a federal judge limited Doge from accessing information at the treasury Norm Eisen served as ethics Chief under President Barack Obama he's now executive chair of State democracy Defenders fan Defenders fund a nonpartisan Watchdog group that filed that law so to limit the

musk team's access to treasury data and he joins me now um Norm first of all this seems like a big win and significant what did the judge order and what was your case um Chris um our case was that Elon Musk and others like him have no business pawing over sensitive data inside of Treasury affecting every American Financial records IRS records uh and um the judge uh wrote an order urged the parties to consider it ask some very intelligent probing questions about access to this data and uh building on the foundation that she gave us

we agreed and she entered an order uh that um essentially no one outside of Treasury can have access to these records and even within treasury the access must be severely limited so uh and now we'll have a schedule for a uh preliminary injunction a more permanent relief we think we have a strong case that this information is protected under federal law uh and we're going to argue that case to the judge but getting that order signed by the judge today was one of a number of significant wins Trump's autocratic shock and a Chris is being

met with democracy shock and awe and a series of Court wins in big cases across the country uh proving that the Constitution and laws can still counteract this authoritarian push we should we should just know some of that reporting today I just to to enter into the record of the individual at issue here who was apparently the one with access to the most sensitive payment system um this is from The Wall Street Journal report reporting of this account connected to him uh just for the record I was racist before it was cool the account posted

in July according to journal's review of archiv post you could not pay me to marry outside my ethnicity the account wrote in September according to Wall Street Journal normalize Indian hate the account wrote the same month in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley so that's the some of the views of the individual that has now been jut blocked by a judge's order and then resigned you mentioned other um other wins in court and I want just entered the record two of those that are important the the federal

worker buyout appears to have been halted um by a judge as well today that that's a big deal it's a little unclear though Norm are you confident they're going to adhere to the orders because it's they seem to be making noises that they're interpreting the orders in ways they don't have to adhere to them well Chris they're going to have to deal with some very angry federal judges if they don't uh there's been uh no instance so far uh and if they show their true face in that way I think the Democratic push back that

we're seeing already is only going to intensify I wrote for the New York Times right before Inauguration Day asking are we sleepwalking into autocracy but these Court wins uh I filed with our wonderful Partners the public citizen the very first lawsuit saying that doa's operations were illegal first of any kind in the country against the Trump Administration on January 20th I'm litigating Trump's unconstitutional effort to change the citizenship rules written into the Constitution uh with our with our partners at the ACLU today I was in court all day long uh arguing for a trro and

we got an overnight administrative State we're going to be back tomorrow morning that Donald Trump can't release the names of to 6,000 FBI agents dox them so they're going to be attacked um I believe we have the best of the argument there and I think when you add it up when you see those crowds Gathering when you see Congress starting to get into the ACT you know these legal wins wins in the court of law carry over to the court of public opinion and this is exactly how popular movements have started in the past they've

in other countries they' faced autocrats like Donald Trump Poland Brazil Czech Republic where I was Ambassador in recent years they've all ousted autocrats that energy is what's going to make it possible so I think it's great that you're not just focusing on Donald Trump's autocracy shock and awe but the shock and awe of rule of law coming back atam and very proud of course to be a part of that here at State democracy Defenders fund for