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Musk changes bio to troll Dem DOGE haters, faces first legal battle to shut him down

February 6, 2025 | | Print Article

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) boss Elon Musk trolled his critics Wednesday even as DOGE faced its first major legal defeat.

Musk updated his Twitter/X biography to read “White House Tech Support.”

Look:

While obviously designed to troll, the move did indicate how much power Musk commands within the Trump administration.

Power, however, that was throttled slightly on Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee.

Kollar-Kotelly is overseeing a lawsuit filed by several federal government employees’ unions over DOGE’s access to confidential Treasury Department information.

She ruled Wednesday that either the Department of Justice could agree to a temporary injunction blocking DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department intel or she’d decide the matter herself.

She’s the same judge who previously imprisoned an elderly pro-life protester:

The Trump administration ultimately chose the former option, with the DOJ agreeing late Wednesday to block most of DOGE from accessing the Treasury Department’s confidential information.

The only catch is the agreement still allows two DOGE staffers access to the Treasury Department’s intel.

“The agreement allows two individuals associated with Musk but employed by the Treasury Department – called special government employees – to have ‘read-only’ access to the sensitive data,” according to ABC News.

“The two special government employees allowed to continue seeing Treasury Department data are Tom Krause and Marko Elez, according to the filing. Krause is the former chief executive of Cloud Software Group, a Silicon Valley tech company. Marko Elez is a 25-year-old engineer who used to work for Musk’s X and SpaceX,” ABC’s reporting continues.

Kollar-Kotelly agreed to the proposal while she considers the unions’ broader request — that a court order block all of DOGE’s activities within the Treasury Department.

In the suit, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees, and the Service Employees International Union claim that DOGE’s work inside the Treasury Department may have exposed the confidential records of millions of federal employees.

“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented,” the lawsuit reads.

The suit goes on to pin the blame for everything on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for granting DOGE access in the first place.

“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,” the lawsuit reads.

“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,” it continues.

DOGE faces one more lawsuit, this one reportedly brought by two anonymous Office of Personnel Management (OPM) employees.

This suit claims that “Musk and his top allies have been using private email servers to collect sensitive information about federal workers in violation of privacy laws,” according to Politico.

However, this suit has so far gone more in the Trump administration’s favor, with a “privacy impact analysis” by OPM Chief Information Officer Greg Hogan finding that the risk to employee data posed by DOGE was minimal.

The next hearing in the case is set for Thursday morning.

Vivek Saxena
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