Another lawsuit v Trump 2.0

Donald Trump’s administration has been hit with a lawsuit over allegedly collecting federal employee information and directing it to an employee of Elon Musk.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Monday, alleges that employee data is going to Amanda Scales, who, according to LinkedIn, works for xAI, a private corporation of which Musk is the CEO. This would violate federal laws on transparency and put the sensitive information of federal employees into the hands of a private corporation.

[...]

The lawsuit states that Trump administration officials created an email address, hr-at-opm-.gov, and directed federal employees, through the Office of Personnel Management, to treat it as legitimate. OPM is the agency tasked with managing the federal workforce and could be described as Human Resources for federal employees.

A Reddit post to r/fednews, a subreddit dedicated to the federal workforce, alleged on Monday that the address is based at an email server that was recently set up at the OPM offices. The post was later deleted, but a copy of its contents were cited in the lawsuit.[ed: embedded in article]

[...]

Last week, the new OPM email address sent out test emails to every single federal employee, catching many workers off-guard, some of whom even flagged the emails and address as spam.

The lawyer behind the lawsuit is Kel McClanahan, the executive director of National Security Counselors, which also brought legal challenges against Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency last week. He told CNN that OPM has been hacked in recent years and a new email server without proper oversight would put employees’ personal data at risk.

“Plugging in a new email server for the sole purpose of sending messages directly to every federal employee is an invitation to be hacked, and every employee out there needs to know how much of their data is at risk,” McClanahan said. He added that it should be shut down “until OPM treats this data with the security it warrants.”

  New Republic

In the meantime, while the lawsuit is underway, the problem stands.

Also, from a Public Citizen email:

Public Citizen is suing Donald Trump.

We filed our lawsuit just moments after Trump was sworn in on January 20.

• Our lawsuit is about Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (a.k.a. DOGE).

• The suit explains that DOGE is what’s known as an advisory committee, which means it is subject to a 1972 law called the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

• The law requires that such committees be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed” and that they operate transparently.

• DOGE is most definitely not fairly balanced and most definitely not set up to operate transparently.

• DOGE is being run by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, putting him in a position to drive policy recommendations in Trump’s second term.

• And although Trump says that DOGE is about “efficiency,” the true intent is to spike corporate profits by rolling back vital regulatory protections — on things like clean air, safe food, and workplace safety — and to slash government spending on vital programs like nutrition assistance and Medicaid.

Forcing DOGE to comply with the law is one way to shine light on the Trump regime’s conflicts of interest and to fight back against its extremist, pro-corporate agenda.

But winning a legal battle like this will not be easy.

If you can, please donate today to help Public Citizen continue standing up to the Trump regime.

Anything you can chip in — $5 or $25, $50 or $100, $500 or even more — will help at such a critical moment.

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- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen