Also sent to my 2 Senators…
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Dear Representative Huizenga,
I want to express my deep concern and even outrage that Elon Musk has been allowed to stage a coup on the Federal government. For example, the USAID agency established by Congress as an independent agency and yet Trump has suspended its funding (illegally, without permission of Congress) and put the lives of the people that this agency helps at risk. In the meantime, Musk has invaded the physical premises, taken over their computer systems and locked out employees with no legal authority to do so. He is a private citizen taking over federal agencies with the blessing of a president. These are illegal, unconstitutional attacks on our government. It is clear after only two weeks that neither Trump nor Musk care anything about the law, the constitution, or what Congress or the courts think. When will you act to stop this assault on our government?
Sincerely,
Rev. Kenneth Arthur
Response from Senator Slotkin, received May 2, 2025:
Dear Mr. Arthur,
Thank you for reaching out to my office to share your thoughts on Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) actions. I’ve been setting up our D.C. and Michigan offices, so I apologize for the delayed response to your message. As your new Senator as of January 2025, I appreciate hearing from you.
Since January, I have heard from tens of thousands of Michiganders deeply concerned about Elon Musk’s actions. These concerns range from his access to sensitive tax and health information, to disruptions to critical programs like Social Security and Medicare, to unlawfully dismantling agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education.
First off, I want to be clear that I believe in the mission of rooting out wasteful spending in the U.S. government. I served in the Pentagon and at the CIA — I saw waste in the system with my own eyes.
But Elon Musk’s approach is chaotic, overly broad, and in a number of cases, leaves Michiganders less safe. It is reckless, for instance, to indiscriminately fire the workers protecting our nuclear weapons, keeping our planes from crashing, testing our air and water quality, and conducting the scientific research that could find the cure for cancer.
In addition, I have real concerns with Musk’s invasion of Michiganders’ privacy. Musk and his team of inexperienced DOGE employees are using their own private servers to access our private and personal information with no oversight, no protections against cyber-attacks, and no guardrails on what they do with your private data. It raises all kinds of legal and ethical questions about the use and abuse of that information for targeting of citizens for legal or financial gain. The Michiganders I hear from have been very clear: they don’t want DOGE to have their private data, all their tax information, their Medicare healthcare records, and more.
Beyond that, I don’t believe that Elon Musk’s personal interests — from his vast investments in Communist China, to his opposition to Michigan’s auto industry, to the $38 billion in government contracts he currently receives — align with the interests of the average Michigander.
In response to all of this, I have done the following:
• Joined in a letter to the Social Security Administration’s Acting Commissioner urging him to cease any activities that threaten Social Security benefits, and to provide detailed steps the Administration is taking to ensure customer service remains uninterrupted due to any reduced staffing or office closures.
• Joined dozens of colleagues in a letter to Russell Vought, the Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, and Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury, asking that they “remove Mr. Musk’s operatives from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), restore all internal and external systems and operations, and allow the CFPB to continue to do its job of protecting American consumers.”
• Pressed the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, with fellow members of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, to detail the effects of recent mass layoffs on providing the services our farmers and rural Michiganders rely on and responding to the ongoing bird flu outbreak. I also successfully secured a vote on an amendment to ensure that these cuts do not happen again. Unfortunately, that amendment failed to receive enough support.
• Called on the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Doug Collins, to reinstate the VA employees that have already been terminated. In addition, the proposed termination of more than 80,000 VA employees by the Trump Administration, in coordination with DOGE, will put our veterans, their care, and their benefits in Michigan and across the country at risk. I joined my Senate and House colleagues in requesting immediate answers from the Secretary on this proposal.
• Called on the Department of Health and Human Services to reverse DOGE’s indiscriminate cuts in the workforce at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) among other agencies. These cuts will harm children and seniors, make it more difficult to conduct life-saving treatments and health research, and put patients at risk.
• Wrote to the Acting Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) requesting information about how recent mass layoffs will affect critical programs protecting the Great Lakes and the constituents who call them home.
• Requested that DOGE cease all work until the White House is able answer questions on the department’s compliance with all ethics, national security, and privacy laws and regulations.
• Filed amendments in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to combat DOGE and Elon Musk’s significant conflicts of interest and to protect people’s private data.
• Asked President Trump’s nominees during their committee confirmation hearings to publicly commit, under oath, to not sharing sensitive U.S. government data with DOGE.
• Engaged in constant ongoing outreach to senior officials in the Administration to protect Michigan’s interests and jobs, including private phone calls and personal meetings.
In addition to using the tools available to me as a Senator, I’ve also been working to support the important litigation against Musk and DOGE happening in the courts. This is particularly true for the cases in which Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is participating in lawsuits. As of this date, there are over 100 court cases filed against the Administration and DOGE, almost 30 of which resulted in temporarily stopping the Administration’s actions. The lawsuits filed by AG Nessel and others pushed back on DOGE’s mass federal firings, unconstitutional government power grab, dismantling of the CFPB, the federal grant funding freeze, and more. On the cases AG Nessel is working on, my office is sending her team firsthand accounts from Michigan federal workers and organizations experiencing direct harm from these cuts.I hope this gives you a sense of how seriously I take this issue and your concerns. Our federal government, our system of checks and balances, and our democracy are being tested by the reckless and unprecedented activities of Musk and DOGE, and it forces a response from all of us, and certainly me as your Senator.
Once again, sincere thanks for reaching out. I believe that engaging your elected officials is a critical component of our democracy and allows me to better represent you, so thank you for taking the time to get in touch.
Last thing: if you want to keep up with my work for Michigan in the U.S. Senate, you can visit my website at https://www.slotkin.senate.gov/services/newsletter/ and sign up for my newsletter, which is the single best way to stay in touch. You can also find regular updates on social media by following me on Facebook, X, Threads, Bluesky, or Instagram. Please do not hesitate to contact me for this or any other matter of concern to you.
Sincerely,
Elissa Slotkin
U.S. Senator for Michigan