Democrats and protesters rally outside treasury department to protest Elon Musk’s access to sensitive information – live

Democrats and protesters rally outside treasury department to protest Musk’s access

The message from Democrats gathered outside the Treasury building now is focused on the threat not from Donald Trump, but from the man they have identified as the self-appointed “co-president” Elon Musk.

“No one elected Elon Musk to nothing,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, said. “And yet Elon Musk is seizing the power that belongs to the American people. We are here to fight back. This is no longer business as usual.”

Demonstrators rally outside the treasury building after it was reported Elon Musk has gained access to the federal payments system. Photograph: Kent Nishimura/Reuters

“Elon Musk is here to collect on his investment,” in Donald Trump’s election, Warren said. “Musk has grabbed control of America’s payment system.”

That control of payment systems means, Warren said, Musk could decide whether or not to make social security payments to people who criticize him on X, or to doctors who provide treatment he does not approve of.

Earlier, Senator Chris Murphy was even more blunt. “We don’t pledge allegiance to the billionaires,” Murphy said. “We don’t pledge allegiance to the creepy 22-year-olds working for Elon.”

“We are taking back this country from Elon Musk,” Murphy concluded.

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Hundreds of high school students walked out of classes in Los Angeles to protest against deportations and rally outside city hall on Tuesday afternoon.

Here is video from an activist collective of the students, chanting “Sí, se puede!” the Spanish rallying cry of the United Farm Workers union in the 1970s that inspired Barack Obama’s English slogan “Yes we can”.

The students used the same slogan as they marched from Garfield high school in East LA, as seen in video from Centro CSO, a community group fighting for “all oppressed people in Boyle Heights & East LA”.

Ezra Levin, who founded and co-directs the grassroots organizing group Indivisible, has taken the mic at the Treasury rally and is leading the crowd in a chant of “Shut down the Senate!”

Levin demands that senators use all of the tools available to them to prevent the normal functioning of the Senate in response to “stop what Elon Musk and Donald Trump are doing to this country”.

Levin urges Democrats to go and talk to their Democratic senators and say: “Imagine you were Mitch McConnell in the minority, and then do what that asshole would do!”

Protesters remain outside outside the treasury as Democratic lawmakers continue to speak.

A live stream shows that Democrats who were denied entry to the treasury continue to rally against Elon Musk’s control of the US payment system as it gets dark.

“Trump is betraying the American voters when he gives this power to Musk,” Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez of New Mexico told a crowd of protesters.

Here is an image of the crowd from Leah Greenberg, a founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, the grassroots organizing group that urged protesters to come to the treasury.

As our colleagues on the Middle East live blog report, Donald Trump just called for the permanent expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, casting it as a humanitarian move “to resettle people permanently”.

Sitting alongside his long-time political ally, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the White House, Trump was asked how many people he believed should be resettled from Gaza. “All of them”, Trump replied.

Democrats and protesters rally outside treasury department to protest Musk’s access

The message from Democrats gathered outside the Treasury building now is focused on the threat not from Donald Trump, but from the man they have identified as the self-appointed “co-president” Elon Musk.

“No one elected Elon Musk to nothing,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, said. “And yet Elon Musk is seizing the power that belongs to the American people. We are here to fight back. This is no longer business as usual.”

Demonstrators rally outside the treasury building after it was reported Elon Musk has gained access to the federal payments system. Photograph: Kent Nishimura/Reuters

“Elon Musk is here to collect on his investment,” in Donald Trump’s election, Warren said. “Musk has grabbed control of America’s payment system.”

That control of payment systems means, Warren said, Musk could decide whether or not to make social security payments to people who criticize him on X, or to doctors who provide treatment he does not approve of.

Earlier, Senator Chris Murphy was even more blunt. “We don’t pledge allegiance to the billionaires,” Murphy said. “We don’t pledge allegiance to the creepy 22-year-olds working for Elon.”

“We are taking back this country from Elon Musk,” Murphy concluded.

Here is a live feed of Democrats denouncing Elon Musk outside the treasury, from the YouTube channel of Senator Jeff Merkley, of Oregon.

Standing behind a podium with the slogan “Nobody Elected Elon!” and in front of someone holding a sign that reads “It’s a Coup”, Representative Maxine Waters of California just said Musk thinks he is “the co-president of the United States of America”.

Then she was more blunt, saying: “Nobody elected your ass.”

A few minutes earlier, Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas, said: “I know some of y’all have been frustrated and you’ve been saying ‘Where are Democrats.’ Where are the leaders? We ain’t never left all. We are here … we are going to be in your face. We are going to be on your asses. We are going to make sure you understand what democracy looks like. And this ain’t it.”

Democrats rally outside treasury building against Musk and Doge

Democratic members of Congress are attempting to enter the treasury building to perform oversight into the activities of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, which has been granted access to sensitive information, including federal payment systems.

In video posted on Bluesky and X from outside the treasury, Representatives Maxwell Frost, of Florida, and Jasmine Crockett, of Texas, explain that they are there to demand answers.

“We’re here because an unelected billionaire has access to the private information of our constituents, and we want answers”, Frost said.

“Oversight is going to do out job,” Crockett added. “We need to understand why it is that our Department of Treasury has been broken into.”

Representative Seth Magaziner, from Rhode Island, added: “We need to know who is in control of the treasury, what their permissions are, what their intentions are, and what they want to do with your money and your identity. We need answers now.”

“Zero people voted for Elon to run our government,” Frost wrote in an earlier post. “This is about oversight and transparency.”

Wired magazine reported early on Tuesday:

A 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED.

Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a secure mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.

Stop the Steal: Democrats unveil bill to counter Musk's 'shadow government'

Democratic Congressional leaders assailed Elon Musk for operating a “shadow government” of billionaires and unveiled new legislation designed to curb his reach.

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, previewed a bill aimed at preventing “unlawful access” to the treasury department’s payment systems, after staff members at Doge – Elon’s “department of government efficiency” – were granted entry.

The measure, titled the bill Stop the Steal – a tongue-in-cheek reference to Trump’s baseless election fraud campaign, has little chance of passing, but is part of the Democrats’ efforts to push back against the Trump administration.

“Our belief is there’s a real danger, a terrible, terrible danger and a looming danger that they will not only have access to American privacy information, but that they will use that to cut programs left and right,” Schumer said.

The sensitive payment systems are used to pay the government’s bills, including the distribution of social security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal employees, tax refunds, among countless other functions.

“It’s unfortunate that many of our Republican colleagues are determined to stand up a shadow government of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires that will stick it to the American people,” Jeffries said.

Schumer added: “Our message to the president is it’s exactly the opposite of what he’s campaigned on. It’s going to hurt voters, across the board, people who voted for him, people who voted against him, people who didn’t vote. And look, whenever he’s ready to talk to us, we’re ready to talk to him.”

The Democratic leaders appealed to the public for support in pushing back against Trump’s most controversial and potentially unlawful moves: “It’s an all hands on deck effort,” Jeffries said.

Many progressives and community advocates have expressed dismay over the Democratic party’s relatively muted and disjointed response to the Trump administration’s blitz of orders and actions. This week, the leaders have been much more visible and vocal about the measures they are taking to hold the line.

“We are working on this and pushing back on all fronts,” Jeffries said.

They claimed Trump’s decision to rescind a memo freezing all federal funds as an early victory. Public backlash led the administration to hold off after the directive unleashed chaos across the federal government. And Schumer said public outcry helped push Trump to accept a one-month delay in his threat to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

Schumer pledged to use the filibuster – requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation in the Senate – as a backstop and as leverage while also using the authority they have to conduct Congressional oversight. Keeping the public informed will be essential, he added.

“The roots of democracy are still deep,” he said. “And when the public is really outraged by things, there is a response.”

Trump proposes sending US criminals to foreign jails

Donald Trump said he would support sending US citizens to serve time in overseas jails, after El Salvador’s president told secretary of state Marco Rubio he’d be willing to house prisoners from the United States.

“In an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including US citizens and legal residents,” Rubio said on Twitter/X earlier today, after meeting with El Salvador president Nayib Bukele during his visit to the central American country.

Asked about the idea in the Oval Office, Trump said:

These are sick people. If we could get them out of our country, we have other countries that would take them. They could. It’s no different than a prison system, except it would be a lot less expensive and it would be a great deterrent send them to other countries ...

If we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat. I don’t know if we do or not. We’re looking at that right now, but we could make deals where we’d get these animals out of our country.

Trump backs ending education department, wants to 'let the states run schools'

Donald Trump reiterated that his administration would seek to dismantle the US Department of Education and leave standards at schools up to the individual states.

Referring to Linda McMahon, his to-be-confirmed nominee to lead the department, Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office:

I told Linda, Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job. … So we’re ranked number 40 out of 40 schools, right? We’re ranked number one in cost per pupil, so we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, and we’re ranked at the bottom of the list. We’re ranked very badly. And what I want to do is let the states run schools.