Congressional Democrats were barred from entering the Department of Education's headquarters on Friday morning as they tried investigate billionaire Elon Musk’s “DOGE” takeover of sensitive data within.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., shared a video of an unidentified, non-uniformed individual preventing a delegation of elected officials from entering the building in Washington, DC. Inside the building a group of men linked to Musk's DOGE operation are reportedly accessing student data, ostensibly to suggest spending cuts.
ELON IS ALLOWED IN THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION. NOT YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES OR STUDENTS & PARENTS. I WILL BE BACK.
— Maxwell Frost (@maxwellfrost.bsky.social) February 7, 2025 at 10:40 AM
“They’ve called armed federal officers to the scene. We aren’t dangerous. We are here to represent our people. To defend public education,” Frost wrote in another post to Bluesky. “This is an authoritarian regime.”
The salvo is the latest in Congressional Dems’ quest to intervene in Musk’s unprecedented and broad access to sensitive government systems and the Trump Administration’s potentially illegal attempts to shrink the federal bureaucracy.
On Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers penned a letter to acting Secretary of Education Denise Carter demanding answers on Musk’s reported takeover and the Trump administration’s apparent intent to shutter the cabinet-level department without congressional approval.
Earlier this week, Democrats were similarly denied access to the U.S. Treasury Building, outside of which a group gathered to protest Musk’s actions.
In addition to the in-person oversight effort from House Democrats, the University of California Student Association is suing the Department of Education over DOGE staffers’ access to sensitive federal aid information. A complaint filed Friday in federal court accuses DOGE of “feeding sensitive data from ED’s systems into artificial intelligence systems maintained by third parties and subject to significant security risks,” per Bloomberg.
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