Laura Barron-Lopez:
A federal judge in Washington paused a takeover by billionaire Elon Musk and his team, blocking their access for now from a sensitive Treasury Department payment system. That system holds personal information on millions of Americans, from Social Security numbers to bank account details.
A group of unions argued the agency was illegally sharing information with Musk’s team, known as the Department of Government Efficiency. Also today, an effort to purge the federal government of workers has been paused until Monday by a federal judge in Massachusetts.
In an unprecedented move, Musk’s team directly e-mailed two million civilian federal workers, urging them to take a deferred resignation offer by midnight tonight, promising pay through September. But unions representing workers who sued warned of a dangerous one-two punch, a loss of expertise and the rise of partisanship over truth.
