Saturday: Emergency Rally to End the Musk Government Takeover

The event is outside Senator Jack Reed’s office at 1 pm outside One Exchange Terrace in Downtown Providence.

From a press release:

Members of the public, community leaders, and state and local elected officials will be demonstrating outside United States Senator Jack Reed’s Providence office to call on the State’s federal delegation to use every tool at their disposal to stand up to what they are calling Elon Musk’s illegal takeover of the United States Treasury.

Organizing groups include Indivisible RI, Climate Action RI, RI Working Families Party, Common Cause RI, and Black Lives Matter RI PAC.

Organizers write:

“The United States is in the midst of a five-alarm fire. Elon Musk has illegally taken over the mainframe of Treasury’s payment systems, and in doing so, is seizing the means of cutting off spending to any federal program. He can delete the file that controls your Social Security payments or the payments to your kid’s Head Start program. He can unilaterally shut down an agency’s funding or cut off all benefits to blue states like Rhode Island. This is an unimaginably dangerous crisis.

“It’s time our Democratic leaders started acting like it. In particular, the U.S. Senate is an institution designed to protect the rights of the minority party. Every senator has the power to grind Senate business to a halt – to deny unanimous consent and force roll-call votes on everything, to max out debate time, to deny a quorum, and more. In this moment of unparalleled danger, Rhode Islanders are asking Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse to use these tools to fight against Musk’s authoritarian takeover.”

Jack Reed has publicly commented on Elon Musk, issuing the following press release:

As New Evidence Shows Trump’s Treasury Officials Misled on DOGE Access to Sensitive Payment Systems, Reed Demands Specific Answers & an End to DOGE Coverup

New evidence indicates Elon Musk’s lieutenants from the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) were, in fact, more involved with attempting to access and suspend payments through the United States Treasury Department’s highly sensitive payment processing system.

The New York Times reported on recently uncovered emails from senior Treasury officials, noting:

“…emails reviewed by The New York Times show that the Treasury’s chief of staff originally pushed for Tom Krause, a software executive affiliated with Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to receive access to the closely held payment system so that the Treasury could freeze United States Agency for International Development payments.

“In a Jan. 24 email to a small group of Treasury officials, the chief of staff, Dan Katz, wrote that Mr. Krause and his team needed access to the system so they could pause U.S.A.I.D. payments and comply with Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order to halt foreign aid.”

Senator Reed and other lawmakers have been seeking answers about how, why, and whether Mr. Musk’s DOGE operatives gained access to highly sensitive personal data and payment information for millions of Americans and businesses.

After sending a letter to new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on February 3 and receiving evasive answers and suspect assurances from Treasury on February 4, United States Senator Jack Reed (Democrat, Rhode Island), the Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) Subcommittee, which oversees funding for Treasury, fired off a follow up letter seeking more specific answers to determine exactly who from DOGE has been given access to what Treasury payment and information technology (IT) and what kind of vetting process those people have undergone.

Reed is particularly alarmed that Treasury officials equivocated in their response that DOGE members “currently . . . will have read-only access to the coded data” of Treasury’s payment systems. Reed wants to know if anyone from DOGE previously had more access.

Senator Reed is also seeking to determine what level of access has been granted to Tom Krause, who is currently a big tech CEO and now serves as Elon Musk’s DOGE commander inside the Treasury Department. Does he have access beyond read-only? While Mr. Krause was apparently granted some type of security clearance, Reed wants to know whether he received any actual vetting and whether other members of DOGE have a similar clearance.

Senator Reed is also seeking to determine exactly what permissions DOGE employees have to review Americans’ most sensitive data, such as tax information. While DOGE employees have access that is “similar” to the permissions provided to others with a need to review this data, such as auditors, that necessarily means that there are “differences,” too, which could have grave consequences for the privacy of all Americans.

Finally, Senator Reed is seeking information about DOGE's attempts to block authorized spending to institutions that Trump and Elon Musk politically disfavor. While Treasury asserts that no payments were “delayed or rerouted,” new reporting indicates that Treasury did, in fact, attempt to block payments.

See the link for the full text of the letter.