Molly Beck
MADISON – Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is joining Wisconsin to a multi-state lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk from accessing restricted government records on millions of federal employees.
In a statement, Evers said the lawsuit is aimed at protecting Wisconsinites' personal details. “Wisconsinites expect the federal government to treat their Social Security numbers, bank account information, and other sensitive personal details with the highest level of protection and confidentiality — and that obligation doesn’t go out the window just because Elon Musk says it should," Evers said.“Giving political appointees access to our most personal information like this is illegal. That’s plain as day.”
Personnel Management, the Washington Post reported Thursday, citing four U.S. officials with knowledge of the developments.
The records accessed by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, dubbed DOGE, included Treasury and State Department officials in sensitive security positions, according to the newspaper.
The Post cited records it had obtained showing several members of the DOGE team run by the South African-born billionaire were granted "administrative" access to OPM computer systems days after Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.
A White House official told Reuters the people who are doing this work have the proper clearances at the respective agencies, went through onboarding and have read-only access. Asked why they are looking at the records of security officials or staff at all, the official said looking at the organizational charts is part of every restructuring.
On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the Treasury Department to limit who could access its information systems, in response to a lawsuit by unions and a retiree group that alleged Musk's team was violating privacy laws.
Musk, the Tesla owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-member civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency.
OPM systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.
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