Donald Trump is provoking a US constitutional crisis, claiming sweeping powers to override or bypass Congress’s control over spending in a brazen attempt to centralise financial power in the executive branch. If he succeeds, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman warns, it would be a 21st-century coup – with power slipping from elected officials’ hands. The real story hidden behind the president’s trade war, he says, is the hijacking of government. And Mr Krugman’s right.
By usurping the authority to shut down government programmes at will – even those funded by Congress – Mr Trump could slash federal spending and taxes while pretending to balance the books. In reality, he’d be robbing the poor to enrich the wealthy. In a world where economic jargon has been corrupted to depict exploitation as “wealth creation”, the audacity of Mr Trump – and his lackeys – to personally profit is breathtaking. Mr Trump’s philosophy is simple: let the uber-rich do whatever they want, with little or no oversight. The result will be vast wealth for a select few while life grows nastier and shorter for the many.
His plan took shape last weekend when Mr Trump removed a top-ranking Treasury official who had been blocking his billionaire crony, Elon Musk, from accessing the federal payment system – exposing the sensitive personal data of millions of Americans, as well as details of public contractors who compete directly with Mr Musk’s businesses. The system disburses over $5tn annually, and Mr Musk and his allies, wrote analyst Nathan Tankus, are “clearly aiming to redesign” it to serve the Trumpian agenda – opening the door for the US president to seek retribution against his political opponents.
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The American Prospect — Feb 3, 2025
One of the most important lawsuits in the history of the United States has been filed by one advocacy group and two unions, seeking to halt Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team’s access to the Treasury Department’s payment system. The lawsuit primarily alleges that the disclosure of hundreds of millions of personal financial records that are part of the system is unlawful and must be stopped.
As discussed earlier, Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS) handles more than one billion financial transactions annually for the U.S. government, both outgoing grants and payments and incoming tax receipts. While serving as the largest cash management operation in the world, BFS collects personal and financial information about the people and businesses on the other side of the transactions, including “names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, birth places, home addresses and telephone numbers, email addresses, and bank account information.” This is all kept inside government databases governed by federal privacy laws, both the Privacy Act of 1974 and, in the case of taxpayer information, statutory IRS rules governing disclosure.
[...]
Under the Privacy Act, no disclosure of any record can be given unless “the individual to whom a record pertains” (in this case, practically every American) consents, or an exception applies. The exceptions would be if officers and employees of the agency “have a need for the record in the performance of their duties,” or if there’s a “routine use” stipulated in the SORN [system of records notice]. For IRS records, only statutory authorization allows disclosure of returns to those who are not involved in tax administration.
[...]
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Plaintiffs:
Alliance for Retired Americans
815 16th Street NW, 4th Floor
Washington, DC 20006
American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO
80 F Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20001
Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO
1800 Massachusetts Ave. NW,
Washington, DC 20036
vs
Defendants:
Scott Bessent, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20220
Department of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20220
Bureau of the Fiscal Service,
3201 Pennsy Drive, Building E
Landover, MD 20785
— pg 3 —
6. The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented. Millions of people cannot avoid engaging in financial transactions with the federal government and, therefore, cannot avoid having their sensitive personal and financial information maintained in government records. Secretary Bessent’s action granting DOGE-affiliated individuals full, continuous, and ongoing access to that information for an unspecified period of time means that retirees, taxpayers, federal employees, companies, and other individuals from all walks of life have no assurance that their information will receive the protection that federal law affords. And because Defendants’ actions and decisions are shrouded in secrecy, individuals will not have even basic information about what personal or financial information that Defendants are sharing with outside parties or how their information is being used.
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Sutton’s Law is now fully in effect ...
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The law is named after the bank robber Willie Sutton, who reputedly replied to a reporter's inquiry as to why he robbed banks by saying "because that's where the money is."
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Hands off our data! STOP breaking everything!
It’s passed time to sound the Alarm.
NO ONE Voted for Project 2025.
