Here is the result from the feed in plain text:
Last week, Michelle King, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, sought to reassure Democrats on Capitol Hill about the presence of two of Elon Musk’s allies at her agency.
The Social Security Administration keeps medical information, bank account numbers and other sensitive personal data about the roughly 70 million Americans it provides with more than $1 trillion in benefits annually. In the Feb. 11 letter to Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, Ms. King said that the two representatives, from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, had not yet seen personal information — and said any disclosures would follow established procedures.
“I share your commitment to protecting sensitive personal and financial information from improper disclosure and misuse,” she wrote in the letter, which was viewed by The New York Times. “We follow all relevant laws and regulations when granting access to S.S.A. systems.”
Days later, Mr. Musk’s team sought access to the agency’s data. Ms. King resisted the request, and by Monday night she and her chief of staff, Tiffany Flick, were out of their jobs, according to three people familiar with their departures. The Trump administration elevated Leland Dudek, a relatively low-level staff member who had previously collaborated with DOGE, to temporarily lead the agency.
The episode at the Social Security Administration, which did not respond to requests for comment, has played out repeatedly across the federal government. In its stated quest to root out fraudulent government spending, Mr. Musk’s team of software engineers has repeatedly sought unfettered access to the wide range of personal information the US government collects about its residents.
At the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Musk’s team is seeking to give at least one of its members, a software engineer named Gavin Kliger, broad access to the data included in the roughly 270 million tax returns that American individuals, businesses and nonprofits file each year.
Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, said that allowing DOGE into the taxpayer systems was necessary to prevent improper payments. “We are talking about performing a basic anti-fraud review to ensure that people are not engaging in a large-scale theft of federal taxpayer benefits,” he said in an interview on Fox News on Monday.
I.R.S. officials have questioned how much information Mr. Kliger and other DOGE staff would need to accomplish that, according to three people familiar with the matter, given that unmitigated access could allow Mr. Kliger the ability to view details about Americans’ work, investments and families. The I.R.S. has been crafting a memorandum of understanding that would establish parameters around Mr. Kliger’s duties at the tax agency, where he is expected to be detailed from the Office of Personnel Management. An I.R.S. spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
If you’re interested in whether the I.R.S. program and computer systems are efficient, you don’t need taxpayer information to make that determination, said Nina E. Olson, the executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, a group that sued the I.R.S. over the issue of DOGE access on Tuesday. “You can use anonymized data to do that.”
The episode at the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, and the I.R.S. are part of a wider struggle playing out across the federal government, as the Trump administration seeks to give allies of Mr. Musk access to sensitive government data.
