Executive Orders
President Donald Trump signed the following Executive Orders:
None.
Congress
National
Government
The White House has confirmed that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will be granted access to an Internal Revenue Service database that contains the personal tax information of millions of Americans. Confusion had escalated over the weekend as to whether the data had already been accessed and by whom.
CNN reports that the new details were released on Sunday, with the White House stating that no access had yet been granted, but that Gavin Kliger, a software engineer working under DOGE, is expected to be granted access to the system “imminently.”
The database, called the Integrated Data Retrieval System, requires special security clearance and can only be accessed by authorized IRS employees to prevent the mishandling of data.
Included in the system are Social Security numbers, bank account information, addresses, tax returns and other private information such as tax credit applications for adoptions, healthcare, disaster relief, etc, business and employment records, and IRS correspondences, such as audit notices.
Also on Sunday, Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced in a post on X that Musk’s DOGE team would be touring the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia on Monday.
Duffy wrote that Trump has tasked him with building an air traffic control system that “will be the envy of the world,” and, apparently sidestepping government procurement practices, issued a direct public request for “advice from the brightest minds in America” and help from “any high-tech American developer or company that is willing to give back to our country.”
The announcement came two days after hundreds of FAA employees were fired by the Trump administration. As reported by the Associated Press, around 400 probationary workers received notices late Friday night, including people working on radar, landing, navigation systems, and cruise missile detection.
One terminated employee, Charles Spitzer-Stadtlander, said in a LinkedIn post, the defense program is “about protecting national security” and he expressed concern for national safety. Employees were fired without any kind of performance review, and he feels he was targeted for political views he expressed on Facebook.
”When DOGE fired me, they turned off my computer and wiped all of my files without warning,” he added.
World
Business
Media
60 Minutes aired a segment Sunday about the drastic cost cutting measures taken by the Trump administration at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), refuting Elon Musk’s claims of widespread waste in the organization.
Musk responded to their promo on X: “60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election. They deserve a long prison sentence.”
String Board Notes
According to a February 7 investigation by Reuters, Gavin Kliger has amplified white supremacists on X and other social media platforms. The 2020 University of California-Berkeley Electrical Engineering and Computer Science graduate is on sabbatical from a data intelligence and AI startup, but has no prior government experience. In a since-deleted Substack post from Friday, titled “Why I Joined DOGE,” Kliger wrote that he believes the government has been stifling conservative viewpoints, and cited influences from white supremacist ideology.
Geek Notes
Kliger’s access cements a serious possibility of complete annihilation of any remaining privacy for American citizens. If this data is merged with the AI intelligence of a company like Databricks, a thorough dossier could be created on every citizen, from their social security numbers to their social media posts. Abuse of the data could include censorship of voices on social media platforms, elaborate personalized identity and financial theft schemes, stalking and harassment, blackmail, AI digital personas/clones, and sales of the data to foreign/dark web agents.
Further Reading
DOGE Worker Says He Was Radicalized by Reading Writer Who Later Denied Holocaust; Mother Jones; February 16, 2025
A former Silicon Valley engineer wrote on Substack about why he left behind ‘staggering’ stock grants to work for DOGE; Business Insider; February 14, 2025
One Of Elon Musk’s DOGE Bros Is Currently An Employee At AI Unicorn Databricks; Forbes; February 7, 2025