gotchanewsdaily.com 
CNN
—
After nearly three weeks in the minority, Democrats have finally settled on a target to rally against: Elon Musk.
The party and allied groups this week have shown up at the doors of agencies impacted by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, held rallies and press conferences calling the president’s ally an “unelected billionaire,” and introduced legislation to push back on the administration’s efforts to eliminate agencies and force out federal employees.
The coordinated effort comes after weeks of Democrats grappling with how to oppose the new administration after a bruising election in which President Donald Trump made gains with key parts of the Democratic base and Republicans flipped the Senate and held the House.
For Democrats, Musk has become both an ideal boogeyman and the face of billionaire influence in the Trump administration.
A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 53% of voters disapproved of Musk playing a prominent role in the administration, including 90% of Democrats, 56% of independents and 19% of Republicans.
In the weeks leading up to Trump’s inauguration, Democrats mockingly referred to Musk as the president after he helped torpedo a bipartisan spending package while President Joe Biden warned of the “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people” and the beginnings of an oligarchy in the United States. Democrats have also noted that the Tesla CEO – who spent $290 million boosting Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 election – was given a prime seat at the inauguration, along with other billionaires such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Now, after less than three weeks, Musk’s aggressive approach to scaling back the federal government has given Democrats the showdown they have been seeking.
“This fight isn’t just about USAID or the Department of Education, it’s about whether the people and their elected representatives should govern, or whether the richest man in the world gets to call all the shots,” Rep. Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat, told CNN in an interview. “This is exactly the fight the Democrats need to pick to win back undecided voters.”
A lack of oversight
Democrats had been “sluggish” in their response to Trump until this week, said Leah Greenberg, the co-executive director of the grassroots Indivisible Project.
“Our ask for Democrats right now is, if this is a crisis, you should act like it’s a crisis,” Greenberg said. “We have to do things to make clear that this is absolutely not normal.”
Democratic lawmakers, liberal groups and watchdog organizations have condemned Musk’s efforts to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development and reduce the size of the government by offering to pay federal workers who agree to quit through September as part of a deal Congress has not authorized. They have also railed against access by Musk’s associates to the Treasury Department’s payment system, which disburses funding on behalf of the federal government.
Critics of Musk’s efforts have warned that DOGE workers now have access to the private financial data of millions of Americans and could interfere with key federal payments, including tax refunds and Social Security checks. Many have decried the lack of congressional oversight into its work, arguing that Musk and his allies could be misusing the data they have accessed.
“Is he using his access to extraordinary amounts of confidential and sensitive data to advantage his own personal interests? We don’t know,” Greenberg said. “We have no reason to presume good faith on the part of any of these people because they are simultaneously working to remove every possible check or balance that could assure us that this is above board.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who has long criticized the role billionaires play in US politics, said that he was most concerned by the administration’s efforts to gut programs unilaterally, which he said was “illegal and unconstitutional.”
“The president wants to shut down USAID? He can have one of his Republican friends introduce legislation to do that, and it will be debated,” Sanders said. “It will not pass, but will be debated. He does not have the unilateral power, especially through an unelected official like Mr. Musk.”
A House Oversight Committee vote to subpoena Musk, led by Democrats, was blocked by Republicans Wednesday.
“It’s letting a small group of unelected people, secret, run rampant through the executive branch accessing the private data millions of Americans need, and God knows what they’re going to do with it,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said of DOGE Tuesday.
Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday introduced the “Stop the Steal” Act, legislation aimed at DOGE and Musk that would “prevent unlawful meddling in the Treasury Department’s payment systems and protect Americans across the country,” Schumer said.
Administration officials have said DOGE workers have “read-only” access to the data. A White House official said Musk and his team are working “in full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances, and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisors or entities.”
“The ongoing operations of DOGE may be seen as disruptive by those entrenched in the federal bureaucracy, who resist change,” the official said in a statement.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that Musk would recuse himself in areas where he has conflicts of interest. She added that Trump was elected with a mandate to make the government more efficient.
“He campaigned across the 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,” Leavitt said.
Other Republicans have pushed back on Democrats’ framing. In response to Democrats’ rallying cry that “No one voted for Elon Musk,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X that: “They did however vote for Donald Trump who promised repeatedly to have Elon Musk root out wasteful spending in our government.”
‘Not on the bingo card’
For some Democrats, particularly those in GOP-leaning districts, Musk serves as a foil in ways the president can’t.
“My constituents, and a majority of this country, put Trump in the White House, not this unelected, weirdo billionaire,” Rep. Jared Golden of Maine – one of about a dozen Democrats in a seat Trump won – wrote on Musk’s site X. “Musk is stepping on the president’s toes — making decisions without his approval, pursuing his own agenda. If I had an employee that sidelined me the way Musk is sidelining Trump, I don’t think I’d just sit back and take it.”
Pat Dennis, the president of the American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic super PAC focused on “opposition research” into Republicans, said that while Trump is still the prime motivator, Musk seemed poised to cause damage to the administration.
“Musk is acting like you essentially gave Paul Ryan a whole bunch of stimulants and then set him loose in the government,” said Dennis, referring to the former House speaker and deficit hawk. “This is a level of cost-cutting with no regard for the impact on everyday people, that Trump allegedly set himself in opposition to.”
An advisor to multiple Democratic donors told CNN that Democrats should continue to focus on Musk.
“We need to be going to places and say, ‘Elon Musk now has your Social Security number,’” the advisor said.
They acknowledged, however, that Democratic elected officials are still absorbing the rapidly unfolding moves of the new Trump administration. While Democrats envisioned a range of scenarios for the first 100 days of the Trump administration, “Elon Musk taking over the government payment systems was not on the bingo card,” the person said.
“It has only been two weeks, and it’s worse than we thought,” they added.
Organized labor is attempting to zero in on Musk’s work as well. The AFL-CIO, the nation’s major federation of unions, on Wednesday launched a new campaign billed as “The Department of People Who Work for a Living” to push back on DOGE’s work.
“If Elon Musk can make up his own government department, so can workers,” Liz Shuler, the president of AFL-CIO, told CNN in an interview. “This is just unprecedented. We’ve never seen this kind of influence by billionaire CEOs on the norms of our government.”
The campaign, which is expected to include digital ads and mailers, will aim to hold Musk “accountable,” Shuler said, and amplify the stories of workers who may be impacted by DOGE’s efforts – from air traffic controllers that play a key role in the flying public’s safety to mine workers dependent on worker safety standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
“What we’re trying to do is put a human face right on the fact that these are not just bureaucracies. These are not sleepy, tired, old, outdated, outmoded agencies. These are real people,” Shuler said.
