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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, extra ideological agenda.
, extra ideological agenda.
When Musk tried to achieve entry to Social Safety knowledge, Choose Ellen Hollander known as it out:
The American public could properly applaud and assist 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 Workforce is actually engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, seeking a fraud epidemic, based mostly 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 offered members of the SSA DOGE Workforce with unbridled entry to the non-public and personal knowledge of thousands and thousands of People, together with however not restricted to Social Safety numbers, medical information, psychological well being information, hospitalization information, drivers’ license numbers, financial institution and bank card info, tax info, earnings historical past, work historical past, delivery and marriage certificates, and residential and work addresses.
But, defendants, with so known as consultants on the DOGE Workforce, by no means recognized or articulated even a single cause for which the DOGE Workforce wants limitless entry to SSA’s complete document methods, thereby exposing private, confidential, delicate, and personal info that thousands and thousands of People entrusted to their authorities. Certainly, the federal government has not even tried to elucidate why a extra tailor-made, measured, titrated strategy shouldn’t be appropriate to the duty.
As an alternative, the federal government merely repeats its incantation of a must modernize the system and uncover fraud. Its technique of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer. For my part, 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 endure 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 offers them a possibility 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 courtroom rulings matter as a result of they affirm what most People consider with info and proof offered by folks in positions of authority.
Trump and Musk can’t idiot the entire folks if the courts proceed to show the reality, and the newest ruling was probably the most blunt shredding of the DOGE pretense but.
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