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freedom of information act
Watchdog Launches Probe of Trump-Musk Use of AI for Mass Firings of Federal Workers
"The American people deserve to know what is going on—including if and how artificial intelligence is being used to reshape the departments and agencies people rely on daily."
Mar 03, 2025
A watchdog organization on Monday launched a public records probe to determine the extent to which the Trump administration and its billionaire wrecking ball, Elon Musk, are using artificial intelligence as part of their lawless effort to purge the federal workforce.
"The American people deserve to know what is going on—including if and how artificial intelligence is being used to reshape the departments and agencies people rely on daily," said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, the group behind the new investigation.
"We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to force the Trump-Vance administration to fulfill its obligation to the public and to our system of laws," Perryman added.
The probe comes days after NBC Newsreported that federal workers' responses to Musk's email ultimatum were "expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary."
"The information will go into an LLM (Large Language Model), an advanced AI system that looks at huge amounts of text data to understand, generate and process human language," the news outlet reported, citing unnamed sources. "The AI system will determine whether someone's work is mission-critical or not."
Additionally, according to The Washington Post, Musk lieutenants "have fed sensitive data from across the Education Department into artificial intelligence software."
"For an administration that claimed it wanted to bring about transparency and efficiency in government, the Trump-Vance administration's purge of public servants and sloppy processes have done just the opposite."
Democracy Forward said Monday that it would use Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in an attempt to shine light on the administration's reliance on AI for personnel decisions. The Trump Justice Department argued in a court filing last week that the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is exempt from public records requests—a claim that experts have rejected and condemned as an attempt to skirt oversight.
"For an administration that claimed it wanted to bring about transparency and efficiency in government, the Trump-Vance administration's purge of public servants and sloppy processes have done just the opposite," Perryman said Monday. "DOGE and this administration are operating in a shroud of secrecy, and their 'govern by chaos' tactics have only made government less efficient and caused disruptions to our safety and security."
Democracy Forward said its new FOIA requests were sent to DOGE as well as the Office of Personnel Management, the State Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the General Services Administration, among other agencies.
Wiredreported last month that "Thomas Shedd, the recently appointed Technology Transformation Services director and Elon Musk ally, told General Services Administration workers that the agency's new administrator is pursuing an 'AI-first strategy.'"
"Shedd provided a handful of examples of projects GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian is looking to prioritize, including the development of 'AI coding agents' that would be made available for all agencies," Wired added. "Shedd made it clear that he believes much of the work at [Technology Transformation Services] and the broader government, particularly around finance tasks, could be automated.
Geoffrey Fowler, the Post's technology columnist, noted Monday that "lots of recent evidence shows that relying on automation alone to make critical decisions can lead to big government mistakes."
"Just ask New York City, where last year a government AI chatbot advised businesses to break the law," Fowler wrote. "Or Australia, where a deeply flawed algorithm called Robodebt created the opposite of efficiency: the government had to settle for more than a billion dollars with citizens for wrongly reclaiming benefits."
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Lawsuit Aims to End 'Cruel War on Our Environment' by Trump and Musk
"Musk has shown that he can and will destroy a federal agency in a single weekend," said one advocate. "If his deranged antics are allowed to continue, we might never be able to fix the damage to America's environment."
Mar 03, 2025
A leading conservation group filed suit Monday to stop U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk from "gutting" over a dozen of the federal government's environmental agencies and departments.
This isn't the Center for Biological Diversity's first lawsuit targeting Trump's Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, but it is the first lawsuit in the country "challenging DOGE's efforts to eviscerate the agencies charged with protecting the environment, natural resources, and wildlife," according to a statement from the group.
The suit names as defendants the Environmental Protection Agency and departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, and Transportation, as well as several entities under them: the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Federal Aviation Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and National Park Service.
"The world's richest man has created an alternative power structure inside the federal government for the purpose of controlling spending and pushing out employees."
"Elon Musk and his hacker minions are tearing apart the federal agencies that protect our public lands, keep our air and water clean, and conserve our most cherished wildlife. The public has every right to know why they're waging this cruel war on our environment," said Brett Hartl, the center's government affairs director.
"Musk has shown that he can and will destroy a federal agency in a single weekend," Hartl added. "If his deranged antics are allowed to continue, we might never be able to fix the damage to America's environment."
The suit alleges "a flagrant violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires transparency, open public participation, and balanced representation when the president or executive branch agencies establish or use nonfederal bodies for the purpose of seeking advice or recommendations."
Trump's executive order establishing DOGE directs all agencies to form teams, or what FACA calls advisory committees, controlled by Musk. The complaint argues that "defendants have failed to ensure that the DOGE teams comply with the balance and openness requirements of FACA."
"Mr. Musk and other billionaire and tech executives working with DOGE stand to benefit personally and financially from the DOGE teams' work, including by securing government contracts, slashing environmental rules that apply to their companies, and reducing the government's regulatory capacity and authority, including by targeting specific agencies, statutes, and spending decisions that affect their businesses," the filing warns.
The complaint notes recent reporting that "Musk is using his influence over the DOGE teams to rapidly consolidate control over large swaths of the federal government, sideline career officials, gain access to sensitive databases, and dismantle agencies and regulatory systems."
"Since President Trump assumed office—and without any congressional approval—the world's richest man has created an alternative power structure inside the federal government for the purpose of controlling spending and pushing out employees," the document adds. "Meanwhile, Musk has been named as a special government employee, which subjects him to less stringent rules on ethics and financial disclosures regarding his role overseeing DOGE and the DOGE teams."
The new case calling on the court to require compliance with FACA comes after the center filed another federal suit in Washington, D.C. last Thursday with the aim of using the Freedom of Information Act to unveil details about what Hartl said "should be called the Department of Government Evisceration."
It also follows U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, launching a probe last month into Musk's official title. The congressman demanded answers from the White House by this coming Thursday.
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Green Group Sues to Expose Musk and 'Department of Government Evisceration'
"The public has every right to know what kind of rogue agency Elon Musk and his tech-bro army have created."
Feb 27, 2025
A U.S. conservation group sued the Trump administration in a Washington, D.C. federal court on Thursday to reveal details about the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its apparent leader, billionaire Elon Musk.
"The public has every right to know what kind of rogue agency Elon Musk and his tech-bro army have created," said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement about the group's suit.
"Musk's wrecking ball outfit should be called the Department of Government Evisceration because he's destroying critical federal agencies that keep us and the environment safe and healthy," Hartl declared. "The reality is that rebuilding functioning federal agencies will cost far more in the long run than any trivial savings gained."
"The center and its members are deeply interested in, and affected by, how the stated mission for DOGE and its related activities could harm, undermine, or negate the center's long-standing efforts to protect the environment and the livability of our planet."
The center noted that its case "appears to be the first contending that DOGE itself is an 'agency' for purposes of" the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a federal law that gives the public—including reporters—the right to request government records.
As Musk and his minions have attempted to gut government agencies and obtained Americans' sensitive data, journalists and other observers have sounded the alarm over difficulties accessing information about DOGE and its billionaire leader—whose companies have gotten at least $38 billion from the U.S. government since 2006, according toThe Washington Post.
Trump announced just after his reelection that Musk, the richest person on Earth, would chair an initiative designed to slash federal spending and regulations. On his first day back in office, the Republican signed an executive order establishing the DOGE Service Temporary Organization and rebranding the United States Digital Service (USDS) as the U.S. DOGE Service.
A Trump official has since claimed in a declaration to a federal court that Musk is neither the administrator nor an employee of USDS or the temporary organization—he is officially a White House Office employee serving as "a senior adviser to the president," allegedly with "no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself."
Given how those claims conflict with Trump and Musk's comments and behaviors over the past few months, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, launched an investigation last week and demanded answers from the White House by March 6.
The conservation group aims to reveal similar information: the identities of DOGE's workers and volunteers, meeting details, communications involving Musk's businesses, and directives from the White House. The complaint names Musk, DOGE, USDS, Amy Gleason—the acting administrator of those two entities, according to the White House—and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Fuck the broligarchy keychain on the ground
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— Tierra Curry (@savelifeonearth.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 10:42 AM
The records that the center is requesting "are subject to FOIA, and their relevance is extremely time-sensitive given DOGE's ongoing efforts to refashion the federal government and workforce in fundamental ways with no or minimal transparency," the complaint states. "FOIA was designed to ensure that monumental and consequential undertakings such as this could not take place without transparency. Yet that is what is occurring as defendants are engaging in wholesale disregard for FOIA's pro-disclosure mandate."
"In the absence of judicial intervention, they will continue to do so," the suit warns. "Specifically, President Trump established DOGE to repeal, rescind, and otherwise eliminate various facets of the federal government in the name of cost-cutting."
"Given the substantial protections for air and water, wildlife and nature, climate, public lands, and the environment generally implemented through federal staff and regulations," the complaint adds, "the center and its members are deeply interested in, and affected by, how the stated mission for DOGE and its related activities could harm, undermine, or negate the center's long-standing efforts to protect the environment and the livability of our planet."
The filing follows the center's January suit against OMB seeking DOGE documents. The group said Thursday that "to date, the government has failed to provide any records in response to the center's Freedom of Information Act requests."
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