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The American folks realized shortly after Elon Musk placed on his DOGE disguise and began ransacking the federal authorities that the rooting of waste, fraud, and abuse was a pretense for a darker, more ideological agenda.
, extra ideological agenda.
When Musk tried to achieve entry to Social Safety knowledge, Judge Ellen Hollander called it out:
The American public might effectively applaud and help the Trump Administration’s mission to root out fraud, waste, and bloat from federal companies, together with SSA, to the extent it exists.
However, by what means and strategies?
The DOGE Crew is actually engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, looking for a fraud epidemic, primarily based on little greater than suspicion. It has launched a seek for the proverbial needle within the haystack, with none concrete data that the needle is definitely within the haystack.
To facilitate the expedition, SSA supplied members of the SSA DOGE Crew with unbridled entry to the private and personal knowledge of tens of millions of People, together with however not restricted to Social Safety numbers, medical data, psychological well being data, hospitalization data, drivers’ license numbers, financial institution and bank card data, tax data, revenue historical past, work historical past, start and marriage certificates, and residential and work addresses.
But, defendants, with so referred to as consultants on the DOGE Crew, by no means recognized or articulated even a single cause for which the DOGE Crew wants limitless entry to SSA’s whole document techniques, thereby exposing private, confidential, delicate, and personal data that tens of millions of People entrusted to their authorities. Certainly, the federal government has not even tried to clarify why a extra tailor-made, measured, titrated method will not be appropriate to the duty.
As a substitute, the federal government merely repeats its incantation of a have to modernize the system and uncover fraud. Its methodology of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer. In my opinion, plaintiffs are more likely to succeed on their declare that such motion is unfair and capricious, and in violation of the Privateness Act and the APA. Plaintiffs have additionally demonstrated that their members will undergo irreparable hurt within the absence of a TRO, the equities tip of their favor, and the TRO serves the general public curiosity.
DOGE is a con. Republicans in Congress are in on the con as a result of the pretense of fraud provides them a chance to intestine beloved packages like Social Safety, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The American folks see by way of the con, and so do the courts.
The court docket rulings matter as a result of they verify what most People consider with info and proof supplied by folks in positions of authority.
Trump and Musk can’t idiot the entire folks if the courts proceed to reveal the reality, and the newest ruling was probably the most blunt shredding of the DOGE pretense but.
What do you concentrate on DOGE being uncovered? Share your opinion within the feedback under.