(This is part three of a multi-part series proposing how to form an effective opposition to President Donald Trump’s regime. Click the links to read parts one and two.)
It is not hyperbole to say that the world’s richest man has now illegally seized control of America’s checkbook and the entire federal workforce. This is a coup and the media shouldn’t be shy about calling it that.
Elon Musk — the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of social media platform X — was not elected to any political office and has not sworn any oath to uphold the laws of the United States or abide by the Constitution. He has not been confirmed by the Senate to oversee any government agency. And yet, he has managed to gain control over the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which houses the federal government’s human resources functions, along with the US Treasury’s payment systems that handle roughly $6 trillion in annual payments. This should be the sole, singular focus of the anti-Trump opposition for the foreseeable future.
WIRED magazine initially reported on the hostile takeover of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is the agency responsible for the roughly 2.1 million employees on the federal government’s payroll. Several of the people who now have direct access to millions of federal workers’ sensitive personal data are under 26 years old. One graduated high school in 2024.
Elon Musk’s apparatchiks are blatantly violating federal law in their commandeering of the OPM. According to Popular Information’s Musk Watch newsletter, his employees being in charge of the massive federal worker database means they can view Social Security numbers, dates of birth, contact information, and even medical histories. The latter expressly violates the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which prohibits the disclosure of health information without a patient’s consent and could result in civil and criminal penalties.
Additionally, Musk’s employees reportedly connected a commercial server to the organs of the OPM’s systems, keeping it in a “conference room that Musk’s team is using as their command center,” according to an unnamed OPM source. The source additionally said that the server “was not obtained through the federal procurement process,” and was not subjected to a legally required formal review of any hardware to look for security vulnerabilities. This means that the sensitive personal data of millions of government employees – including their medical records — is at risk of being obtained by hackers via the illegally installed commercial server.
As I’ve written previously for Occupy.com, Donald Trump may be president of the United States, but he should be treated almost as an afterthought. The Constitution prohibits presidents from running for a third term, and the twice-impeached 78 year-old billionaire who beat dozens of criminal charges (and evaded all penalties for the 34 felonies he was convicted on) is largely occupying his time by sleeping in and golfing in Florida, and spends his time in Washington signing executive orders that rarely pass judicial muster. It’s obviously important to oppose his appointees to lead federal agencies and any judges he appoints, but any “resistance” campaigns like those that sought to drive Trump from the White House in his first term via impeachments and criminal charges are a dead end.
However, Republicans in Congress can be ousted from power as soon as the 2026 midterms. And people outside of the administration like Musk can still be reined in by Congress and the courts. Those close to Trump have talked repeatedly about plans to “flood the zone” with a maelstrom of executive orders and proclamations in order to distract and fatigue the opposition. But the recent emergence of Musk as a singular villain and the new visibility of his campaign to pilfer public coffers should be seen by the opposition as a blessing, as it gives us the ability to focus on him and his lackeys with laser-like precision.
The fact that Musk has accumulated so much power in such a short amount of time is a significant cause for alarm, but it’s not too late to stop him. If the opposition to the Trump regime organizes itself with a singular focus of both calling attention to and halting Musk’s illegal and unconstitutional coup, and if Democratic elected officials weaponize the power of their office, they can stop the plundering of the commons.
A South African oligarch is waging total war on the working class
According to the New York Times, Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is not yet an actual federal agency authorized by Congress, has been granted access to the payment systems run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). The BFS’ systems make billions of payments each year totaling in the trillions of dollars. Musk’s lemmings had reportedly been demanding access to those systems since December, and were specifically interested in the technical details of how to stop certain payments.
The hijacking of the BFS was initially unsuccessful due to longtime career civil servant David Lebryk — who served under 11 Treasury secretaries appointed by presidents from both parties — refusing to allow Musk’s employees to access the Treasury’s payment systems. But after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was confirmed, Lebryk was forced into retirement, and Bessent handed the keys over to Musk’s team. The payment systems control everything from Social Security payments, Medicare benefits, federal income tax returns, grants, small business loans, and government contracts, among other things the federal government typically pays for without political interference.
Musk defended his actions on X by saying without evidence that his team simply wanted to stop payments to “known fraudulent or terrorist groups.” But as journalist Nathan Tankus wrote in his Notes on the Crises newsletter, The BFS already has a “payments integrity unit” that works in conjunction with federal agencies to make sure all payments are proper.
Last year alone, the BFS proposed five legislative solutions Congress could pass to cut down on improper payments. This included giving the Treasury Department authority to make federal agencies require bank account matching practices, greater access to data-sharing by federal agencies and credit bureaus, and others. Tankus emphasized that the proposed solutions were presented to Congress and not enacted unilaterally, as anything governing the US Treasury’s payment systems must be done by statute.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk’s representatives’ control of the Treasury Department’s payment systems were on a “read only” basis. This means that while they can view the billions of payments being made and the trillions of dollars being spent, they do not yet have the ability to cut off the money spigot. Former Treasury official Don Hammond — who ran payment systems in the 1990s and 2000s — told the Journal: “Legally, if you want to stop a payment from taking place, the place to do that is at the agency level.”
But Talking Points Memo reported that not only were Musk’s employees given administrator-level access, they had reportedly already started making changes to the source code. It remains unknown whether the recent court decision locking Musk and his team out of the payment system came too late, and if his engineers already created a “backdoor” allowing access via different means.
Tankus noted that this is precisely what makes Musk’s hostile takeover so alarming: He wrote that while there is currently “bureaucratic trench warfare” happening within federal agencies, with Trump appointees attempting to wrest power and longtime career civil servants doing their best within their roles to fight back against them, none of that would matter if Musk’s team managed to capture the source of all federal payments:
“[I]f Musk and Trump can reach into the choke point, the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, they could possibly not need agency cooperation. They can just impound agency payments themselves,” Tankus wrote. “They could also possibly stop paying federal employees they have forced on paid administrative leave, coercing them to resign.”
One central pillar of the far-right Heritage Foundation’s authoritarian Project 2025 playbook is “impoundment,” in which a president halts the disbursement of federal funds already appropriated by Congress. This is a violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which explicitly requires that any Congressional appropriations be paid without political interference. What’s happening now is merely the first salvo in the impoundment fight, which may make it all the way to the Supreme Court.
The key underlying fact about Elon Musk’s coup is that it is not only illegal, but unconstitutional. Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power of the purse, not the executive branch (Article II) or any of its appointees. This is the key reason that federal courts rejected the gambit by the Trump White House Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) to halt the disbursement of federal grants and loans following an executive order announcing the funding freeze.
US District Judge Loren AliKhan (appointed by former President Joe Biden) paused the order on Monday following a lawsuit filed by the National Council of Nonprofits, and US District Judge John McConnell did the same, siding with 22 Democratic state attorneys general. AliKhan wrote in her 30-page ruling halting the order from taking effect that the funding freeze “potentially run[s] roughshod over a ‘bulwark of the Constitution’ by interfering with Congress’s appropriation of federal funds.”
“OMB ordered a nationwide freeze on pre-existing financial commitments without considering any of the specifics of the individual loans, grants, or funds,” Judge AliKhan wrote. “It did not indicate when that freeze would end (if it was to end at all). And it attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it.”
AliKhan’s central point is key: Both the Trump regime, and the unelected far-right South African billionaire leading it by the nose, are simply not allowed to seize the federal government’s purse strings from Congress, and attempts to halt the disbursement of funds authorized by Congress is a flagrant violation of America’s founding document. This is a cold, hard fact that should be stated often by the opposition.
But aside from statements, the American public needs action from lawmakers. What’s stopping Elon Musk from coding the BFS’ payment systems to allow him to access them remotely, preventing anyone else from accessing them, and effectively giving himself a $6 trillion taxpayer-funded slush fund to use at his disposal? The current moment requires far more urgency than Democratic lawmakers are currently showing.
Democratic lawmakers need to throw everything at Musk
Currently, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) are working on legislation aimed at preventing “unlawful meddling in the Treasury Department’s payment systems.” But Democrats are in the minority, and Trump is in the White House, so any conventional legislative solution is a dead-end. Democrats have to think outside the box.
Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs have oversight over the Treasury Department and the OPM, respectively. Progressive firebrands like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) both sit on the Finance Committee. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who is the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, recently announced he’s not seeking another term in office, meaning he has nothing to lose by using his powers to their fullest extent before he leaves the Senate.
While subpoenas usually have to be approved via majority vote or by the chair of a legislative committee, and because Republicans are complicit in Elon Musk’s coup, Democrats can’t compel Musk and his minions to testify before committees. But Democrats like Peters, Sanders, and Warren can be creative. Senators could bring camera crews with them inside the OPM and Treasury buildings to shine light on Elon Musk’s illegal and unconstitutional raiding of the public sector’s wealth. They can hold press conferences outside of the offices where Musk’s cronies have illegally set up an unsecured server to access the federal worker database. They could even conduct civil disobedience and force building security to arrest them when they’re inevitably asked to leave and refuse.
As members of the public, we have a duty to make our members of Congress sick of hearing from us. The Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121, and all you have to do is mention the name of the lawmaker you want to contact and you’ll be connected. If your member of Congress or US senator is a Democrat, call them every day and tell them you expect them to do everything they can to stop Elon Musk from hijacking control of our tax dollars.
Alternatively, if your member of Congress or senator is a Republican, and if you live in a state or district where there is a competitive election in 2026, you have the ability to subject your representatives to significant public pressure as a citizen. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), and Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) are considered the most vulnerable Republican senators of the 20 up for reelection in the midterms. Their offices are open to the public, which means you can stage public demonstrations at their offices and demand they stand up to Elon Musk’s hijacking of our federal tax dollars. Spreading the word about your protest on social media and calling local media outlets ahead of time can aid in your pressure campaign.
Chuck Schumer’s recent prediction to Semafor that “Trump will screw up” has come true. Elon Musk’s illegal and unconstitutional attempt to pillage our Social Security money could be seen when reviewing this part of history as the moment Trump overplayed his hand. We owe it to ourselves and our communities to do everything we can to rage against the billionaire takeover of the commons and those who are enabling it. Future generations will never forgive us if we don’t stand up now.
Carl Gibson is a journalist whose work has been published in CNN, USA TODAY, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, the Louisville Courier-Journal, Barron’s, Business Insider, the Independent, and NPR, among others. Follow him on Bluesky @crgibs.bsky.social.
