Elon Musk’s DOGE team is targeting the Department of Labor, as Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX are under multiple labor investigations by federal agencies.
The scheduled meeting at DOL this afternoon, an initial step in gaining access to the department’s IT systems, has drawn protests from employees arguing that DOGE's incursions at the behest of Musk are unaccountable and threaten workers’ rights. Officials at more than a half-dozen agencies have raised concerns internally that Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)'s actions are illegal, flouting checks on executive branch power.
In November, SpaceX argued in federal court that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is unconstitutional, a case joined by Amazon. The NLRB, created in 1935, is an independent agency that enforces the National Labor Relations Act and decides labor complaints.
Musk’s companies are facing enforcement actions from a slew of federal agencies, as followed by the nonprofit Public Citizen in its Corporate Enforcement Tracker, many of them over labor protections.
- At the NLRB, Tesla faces seven cases alleging unfair labor practices that would cover more than 140,474 employees.
- Tesla is also under investigation by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), part of the DOL, regarding a workplace death in an Austin, Texas factory.
- At the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Tesla is amid a civil investigation regarding workplace retaliation and racial discrimination at a California factory, where Black employees allege they were subjected to racial slurs and other harassment.
- SpaceX has 10 open cases with the NLRB covering 9,500 employees, and is litigating a complaint that it illegally fired workers who signed letters criticizing Musk.
Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen, says DOGE’s sights on the Labor Department looks like “a billionaire CEO's attempt to seize the means of worker protection.”
“Is Elon Musk so afraid of the cases SpaceX and Tesla face from OSHA, EEOC, and the NLRB that he is willing to corruptly interfere with law enforcement?,” said Claypool. “If so, the reality that the Trump administration is serving the super rich while screwing workers could not be made clearer.”
News of DOGE’s meeting at DOL was posted on X yesterday evening by labor journalist Kim Kelly.
Musk’s DOGE team, which on paper is an office within the Executive Office of the President, is already operating in the Treasury Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and was involved in the sudden shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Government watchdogs like economics writer Nathan Tankus are now attempting to pin down which DOGE employees were given “write” access to Treasury’s closely-protected payments systems, enabling them to change data and write code.
On Feb. 3, the Public Citizen Litigation Group and other groups filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department, seeking a temporary restraining order from the department sharing Americans’ sensitive financial information with DOGE.
Musk has said on X that he also plans to cut or overhaul the General Services Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Education Department. Recently, X launched a partnership with Visa that would enable peer-to-peer payments through X Money, a longtime dream of Musk’s for X to be an “everything app”—one that will contend with less regulatory oversight, now that the CFPB has been effectively frozen by the Trump administration.
Under the Trump White House, the Office of Personnel Management, with direction from Musk, offered nearly all federal workers a buyout of dubious legality. Four federal labor unions filed a lawsuit challenging the purported buyout.
Musk is a “special government employee,” which means he is exempt from some of the financial disclosure and conflict of interest rules that apply to full-time employees.
Musk’s move to shutter USAID prompted some modest questions even from Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). In a comment to The Hill, Murkowski wondered if the president’s authorization gives the billionaire license to supersede Congress’ funding decisions.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, has called Musk’s assault on USAID a “political crisis.” Raskin was previously the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) has gone further in calling Musk’s maneuvers a moment of “constitutional crisis” and saying he’s unwilling to vote for a single Trump nominee. At a protest with Democrats outside the Treasury Department on Tuesday, Murphy said, "I think the United States Senate shouldn’t vote for a single nominee that’s going to participate in this fraud."
Musk backed Trump’s 2024 campaign with over $250 million in spending, including by bankrolling a shadowy super PAC named RBG PAC that claimed Trump would oppose a federal ban on abortion care.
In response to Musk and DOGE’s rapid incursions, the progressive group Indivisible released resources on how Senate Democrats can at least push back through procedural tactics in the chamber like denying unanimous consent, forcing Senate GOP leaders to use hours or days of floor time for roll call votes and debates. On Monday, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) announced he would put a “blanket hold” on Trump’s nominees for the State Department. Yesterday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal told Axios he’d place a hold on Trump nominees with the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said on X of Trump’s wider body of nominees, “No one elected Elon Musk. Dems must vote no on all nominees & fight to stop this.”
This morning, the Senate held two votes: a roll call vote on the nomination of Eric Turner to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and a cloture vote on the nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget. For former House communications staffer Aaron Huertas, today's votes show that Democratic senators do not appear to be blocking unanimous consent on all Trump nominees, despite their latest statements hinting at wider opposition to proceeding with nomination votes.
