Representatives of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency fanned out across several agencies Wednesday, sending representatives to the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and meeting with the Labor Department, seeking access to sensitive data. The moves came on the heels of the DOGE team gaining access to sensitive health payment systems at the Department of Health and Human Services.
As federal workers braced for possible layoffs after a Thursday deadline that has led to at least 40,000 employees taking a buyout, DOGE staffers met with agencies facing sweeping cuts in a project that has gutted whole programs and given Musk’s team broad access to private data. In a little more than two weeks, the Trump megadonor - acting as a “special government employee” while still running the companies that have made him the richest man in the world - has probed all over for cuts and begun enacting some, helping to effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and suggesting that other departments could be next.
The speed and scope of DOGE’s work have stunned many in government and raised widespread legal concerns. On Wednesday, several labor unions sought a restraining order to keep Musk’s team away from the Labor Department, arguing that DOGE’s work was illegal and has “already been catastrophic.” DOGE staffers met virtually with Labor staff Wednesday afternoon, after a protest drew hundreds to the front door of the agency’s headquarters in Washington.
But critics have struggled to keep up with DOGE’s overhaul, and the Republicans who control Congress have largely applauded its work and declined to seek more input. Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee blocked Democrats’ bid to subpoena Musk, with the panel’s GOP leaders dismissing Democrats’ protests that an unelected billionaire should not be able to dismantle the bureaucracy without lawmakers’ consent.
“It’s a naked power grab consistent with what Trump’s advisers have persuaded him to do, which is to flood the zone with as much unconstitutional activity as possible, with the hope that they get away with some or all of it,” said Ty Cobb, who served as a White House lawyer during President Donald Trump’s first term but is now a critic.
[How Elon Musk’s deputies took over the government’s most basic functions]
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Musk’s work, telling reporters that Trump “campaigned across this country with Elon Musk, vowing that Elon was going to head up the Department of Government Efficiency, and the two of them - with a great team around them - were going to look at the receipts of this federal government and ensure it’s accountable to American taxpayers. That’s all that is happening here.”
A White House official added that DOGE leaders are overhauling the government “in full compliance with federal law,” with appropriate security clearances and as “employees of the relevant agencies.”
In recent days, officials affiliated with DOGE have visited the offices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), according to five people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interactions. DOGE officials have also sought access to payment and contracting systems across the Department of Health and Human Services that control hundreds of billions of dollars in annual payments to health-care providers, and they appear to have gained access to at least some of those systems, the people said.
The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that DOGE aides had been granted access to the CMS grant-management system.
Appearing to confirm his interest in the agencies, Musk posted on X on Wednesday afternoon that Medicare “is where the big money fraud is happening,” without offering evidence or specifics.
“CMS has two senior agency veterans - one focused on policy and one focused on operations - who are leading the collaboration with DOGE,” Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, wrote in an email. “We are taking a thoughtful approach to see where there may be opportunities for more effective and efficient use of resources in line with meeting the goals of President Trump.”
A spokesperson for DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Wednesday, Musk’s team also reached out to engage with the Labor Department. Senior department leaders told staffers who handle sensitive data that they would begin working with DOGE in the coming weeks, beginning with an in-office meeting Wednesday, according to an agency staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. DOGE assignments would override the team’s normal duties, the staffer said.
But senior leadership moved Wednesday’s meeting from in-person to virtual after labor unions, including the AFL-CIO, announced a protest of DOGE outside the Labor Department.
The agency manages huge amounts of sensitive data related to unemployment claims, health insurance plans, disability insurance, workplace health and safety investigations, wage theft, and child labor. It was unclear Wednesday which parts of the Labor Department and its data DOGE officials intended to access.
Hundreds of union activists gathered outside the department’s headquarters Wednesday afternoon holding signs that said “Hands Off Workers Data” and chanting “Elon Musk has got to go.”
“This squarely affects workers,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of unions, told The Washington Post at the rally. “We want to make sure that we have transparency, that we know what access data they’re accessing.”
David Casserly, a Labor Department employee who protested outside the agency’s offices Wednesday, said he opposed “people who have no experience with labor, and who don’t know what we do, coming in and making random cuts.”
Musk’s team played a key role in the buyouts offered across the federal workforce last week as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to drastically shrink the government. The offer expires Thursday and would allow workers to resign with pay through Sept. 30. Most of the federal government’s 2.3 million civilian employees are eligible, according to the White House, and a General Services Administration official said this week that layoffs could follow. As of Wednesday evening, 40,000 federal employees had agreed to take the buyout, according to a person familiar with the figures who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The contact with the health-care agencies comes as emissaries of DOGE fan out across the federal government in what they say is a pursuit of waste and fraud in payments.
The health department spends nearly $2 trillion per year, mostly on health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, making it a top target for lawmakers and watchdogs who say the programs are rife with abuse. Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, his former partner in the DOGE effort, have publicly mused about cracking down on HHS spending as part of a broader goal to cut at least $1 trillion in federal spending.
Bipartisan efforts to restrain Medicare spending in the past have frequently faced political backlash, with health-care providers and patient groups warning about the effect on delivering care and other services.
Over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent granted a DOGE associate access to a critical payments system responsible for disbursing trillions of dollars annually. Bessent later said that access had been granted on a “read only” basis and that the DOGE associate had been made a Treasury official. Musk affiliates have also been placed in leading roles at the Office of Personnel Management and other key agencies.
These efforts have caused alarm in some parts of the civil service, with workers fearing that Musk’s team is going around traditional safeguards. Musk and his allies, including Trump, have defended the push as necessary to root out waste.
“Nonpartisan experts have long believed that more than 10 percent of Medicare and Medicaid spending is improper. It’s essential to identify and root out these improper payments in order to direct more funding to patient care for seniors and vulnerable populations,” said Avik Roy, founder of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank that promotes free markets.
The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog, has concluded that Medicare and Medicaid represent more than 40 percent of improper payments across the federal government. “Both Medicare and Medicaid are susceptible to payment errors - over $100 billion worth in 2023,” the GAO wrote in April 2024.
DOGE officials have asked for access to federal systems such as the Unified Financial Management System and the Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System, said the people with knowledge of their requests.
The HIGLAS system, which is tightly controlled, contains sensitive financial information about all of the hospitals, physicians and other organizations that have financial relationships with programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act - a vast database that touches nearly every corner of American health care.
Current and former federal officials said personnel who access those systems are required to undergo specialized training to comply with privacy protections under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. It was not immediately clear if DOGE officials have undergone that training.
DOGE has also requested that the CDC provide lists of employees who have less than a year of service and those who are in two-year probationary periods, said the people familiar with the requests.
In Congress on Wednesday, lawmakers fiercely debated Musk’s powers, preceding a House Oversight Committee vote on a subpoena for Musk.
“Who is this unelected billionaire that he can attempt to dismantle federal agencies, fire people, transfer them, offer them early retirement and have sweeping changes to agencies without any congressional review, oversight or concurrence?” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (Virginia), the ranking Democrat on the committee. Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky) said the motion was “not debatable.” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-New Mexico) said it was “outrageous that this committee will not even entertain a motion.” Then the lawmakers began to talk over one another before a roll-call vote to table the motion passed 20-19.
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Danielle Abril and Jeff Stein contributed to this report.