Trump abdicated power to Musk. And now a 25-year-old may get access to your tax return.
Hear this story
I'm guessing when you cast your ballot in the 2024 presidential election, you weren't voting to give a 20-something acolyte of billionaire Elon Musk unfettered access to your tax information or your business' finances.
Well, oops. As you read this, a young software engineer named Gavin Kliger from the largely imaginary Department of Government Efficiency either has or will soon have access to wildly sensitive taxpayer information via one of the Internal Revenue Service's most heavily guarded computer systems, according to CNN.
You likely don't know Kliger, nor should you, and 0% of Americans voted to hand control of the U.S. government to a billionaire chaos agent like Musk. But President Donald Trump has largely abdicated his job and handed power to President Musk. So now we're on the precipice of a 25-year-old mucking about in our tax returns and having access to the kind of data most people work hard to keep private.
Why should a 25-year-old with no IRS experience access taxpayer data?
According to The Washington Post, the Trump White House asked the IRS to give Kliger access to 'the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IDRS, which enables tax agency employees to access IRS accounts – including personal identification numbers – and bank information. It also lets them enter and adjust transaction data and automatically generate notices, collection documents and other records.'
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
NO, THANK YOU!
I don't know Kliger. He might be a perfectly decent fellow, though Reuters recently reported that in 'social media posts between October 2024 and January, Kliger has voiced controversial views and reposted content from white supremacist Nick Fuentes and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate.'
So … you know … I have questions.
Opinion:Trump bans AP and words he doesn't like. 'Free speech' was never about First Amendment.
But the main issue here is that the federal government is considering granting a young person with zero IRS experience, someone whose vetting I know zilch about, permission to see everybody's tax returns and all the personal and financial data that go with them.
Our 'incredibly personal' taxpayer data is in jeopardy, thanks to Musk
Former IRS internal consumer watchdog Nina Olson told The Post: 'The information that the IRS has is incredibly personal. Someone with access to it could use it and make it public in a way, or do something with it, or share it with someone else who shares it with someone else, and your rights get violated.'
Opinion:Trump thinks he's above the law. Republicans will ignore it until it's too late.
Yeah. What she said.
When it comes to data privacy, this is a five-alarm fire on a swiftly sinking ship.
Two Democratic senators raise 'serious concerns' about DOGE
Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Douglas O'Donnell, acting commissioner of the IRS, on Monday saying that Musk and Co.'s request for access raises 'serious concerns that Elon Musk and his associates are seeking to weaponize government databases containing private bank records and other confidential information to target American citizens and businesses as part of a political agenda.'
The senators noted there are statutes in place that 'have long prevented political appointees in previous administrations from accessing the private tax records of hundreds of millions of Americans, and allowing DOGE officials sweeping access these systems may be in violation of these statutes.'
Taxpayers should know exactly who is handling their personal information
Responding to all this, White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said: 'Waste, fraud and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long. It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.'
OK, but again, I have questions. Who's the kid you're tasking with finding all this waste, fraud and abuse, and what are his exact qualifications to do so? Shouldn't he be vetted publicly so Americans can feel better about who will have access to their bank account numbers? How exactly will any personal taxpayer data be handled, will any of it be transmitted electronically and, if so, how do we know it will be secure?
At this point, the answer to any and all questions is basically: 'Oh, don't worry, the unelected billionaire who somehow became president, the one whose electric cars and rocket ships occasionally burst into flames, has everything under control. Trust Elon!'
Let me state very emphatically that I do not trust Elon. I do not think President Musk has my best interests at heart, or yours, and I do not think his little buddy does, either.
Unless you voted for President Musk, consider voicing your concerns
If you're OK with these unelected, not-approved-by-Congress goobers accessing your tax returns and everything else, fine. I have a subprime mortgage you might be interested in, and I can also get you a great deal on a bridge owned by a friend of mine who was once a Nigerian prince.
But for those out there who didn't ask for any of this, regardless of how you voted, it might be time to let your voice be heard. Tell your elected representatives they need to put a leash on Musk and his bros, quickly. Before it's too late.
We don't know much of anything about these intrusive DOGE fellows. But they're poised to know virtually everything about us.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
32 minutes ago
- USA Today
Former Biden press secretary is ready to tell Americans the truth? Give me a break.
Former Biden press secretary is ready to tell Americans the truth? Give me a break. | Opinion The knives are now out inside the Democratic Party. And the party is bleeding, not only Americans' support and trust but also its last remaining drops of honesty and truth. Show Caption Hide Caption Karine Jean-Pierre talks exit from Democratic party in new book Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre talks about leaving the Democratic party in her upcoming book slated for release in October. The Democratic Party continues to self-destruct, and I am here for it. Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has teased a tell-all memoir about former President Joe Biden and the administration she served for nearly three years. 'Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines' is stoking claims that Jean-Pierre is a grifter, profiting off her time in the administration by trashing the former president and the political party that gave her prominence. Knives are out among Democrats for one of their own who has now betrayed them. Like other books that have recently exposed details about Biden's poor health, Jean-Pierre's book raises questions about the White House cover-up that attempted to hide the president's mental and physical decline from voters. It also calls into question Jean-Pierre's honesty: Why did she wait until now, when she can profit from it, to tell the truth about the former commander in chief? Former White House colleagues turn on former Biden press secretary Democrats are now a minority party in America. The GOP controls the White House, the Senate and the U.S. House along with a majority of governor's offices and state legislatures. The Democratic Party has lost Americans' trust because of its leaders' penchant for gaslighting, not just about Biden's health but also on issues like immigration, border security and the economy. Jean-Pierre, who now claims to be an independent, certainly isn't helping her former colleagues rebuild that lost trust. Details from the book are still sketchy, but Jean-Pierre should provide readers with an inside look at what happened after Biden's disastrous debate with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a year ago this month. Jean-Pierre's coworkers have already reacted to the book with contempt. "Former colleagues expressed confusion at how Jean-Pierre seemingly intends to paint Biden as a victim while pinning her own decision to leave the party on his 'broken' White House," Politico reported, citing multiple former Biden administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Opinion: Biden's cancer diagnosis raises the question: Was he ever in good enough health? Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Commerce Department's communications team during Biden's presidency, took umbrage with Jean-Pierre's assertion that the Democratic Party betrayed Biden. 'Kamala Harris and the entire Biden/Harris campaign did hero's work to avoid losing 400 electoral votes and giving Republicans a supermajority in Congress, which is what would have happened if he stayed on the ticket,' Legacki told Politico. 'It's more productive to focus on that, and thank Biden for doing the responsible thing by stepping aside, than it is to pretend this was an unwarranted act of betrayal.' But party insiders continuing to squabble over whether a now former president was or was not betrayed by fellow Democrats entirely misses the larger point. Opinion: Guess who Americans want to run the economy? Hint − it's not Democrats. Far too many Democrats, Jean-Pierre included, worked hard to deceive Americans. Their willful lack of self-awareness about their gaslighting and dishonesty is why the party has shown no signs of recovering from the last disastrous election cycle. Karine Jean-Pierre's book about Biden isn't the first Jean-Pierre's book will be far from the first to address the deception at the heart of the Biden White House. On May 20, journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson released "Original Sin," which describes in detail Biden's cognitive decline and the mind-boggling efforts with which his inner circle and the Democratic Party tried to hide the truth from Americans. Opinion: Texas woman's death would have been prevented if Biden had secured the border Conservatives had long been suspicious about Biden's health, but journalists with White House access failed to ask tough questions then. Now that it's too late to make a real difference, those who were silent when it mattered most are more than ready to profit from belated exposés about the former president's failing health. The knives are now out inside the Democratic Party. And the party is bleeding, not only Americans' support and trust but also its last remaining drops of honesty and truth. Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.
Business Insider
33 minutes ago
- Business Insider
The rise of layoff culture
Shaffan Mustafa was laid off for the first time in 2020. Four years later, in January 2024, the software engineer in Ohio was laid off again. Then, in September, he was let go from a contract job. "I wish I could say I didn't have experience with layoffs, but unfortunately, I have a bit too much," he tells me. The first time, he found it depressing. It took him 10 months of scouring job boards and hundreds of unanswered applications before he landed his next role at a local consulting company. The second time, says the 29-year-old, "I was still sad about it, but at that point it wasn't as unexpected." His third layoff in five years has been different. In the middle of yet another job search a few months ago, he came across a Substack called Laid Off. "I probably typed something like 'being laid off sucks' and found it that way," he says. After reading several people's layoff stories on the Substack, he felt less alone. He became a paid subscriber and joined the dedicated Discord group where members went into more detail about their layoffs, shared job updates, and ranted about the state of the economy. Mustafa checks the group daily, sometimes every few hours. The Substack is the brainchild of Melanie Ehrenkranz. After being laid off herself from her role as a newsletter editor at a financial technology startup in 2023, she wanted a way to process the experience. "I felt like there wasn't really a lot of spotlight on the individual experience of a layoff outside of a LinkedIn post or a tweet or a group chat with a couple of your friends," she says. Ehrenkranz, 35, found a job nine months after being laid off, but she decided to launch the newsletter anyway. In August 2024, she shared her first post, an interview with a social media producer laid off from Condé Nast, asking her questions such as, "Where were you when you found out?" and "What was your greatest financial concern with the sudden loss of income?" and "Has being laid off changed how you view your relationship to work?" She has since been inundated with people willing to share their stories. Within two months, Laid Off grew to 5,000 subscribers. Recently, it surpassed 10,000. The number of Americans facing long-term unemployment has crept up from 1.05 million in February 2023 to over 1.67 million as of last month. Since 2022, more than half a million tech workers have been laid off — one analysis found there had been about 90,000 tech layoffs in the first five months of 2025. Amid the job losses, a new culture around layoffs has sprung up. Workers are livestreaming their layoffs to audiences of millions on TikTok. The post-layoff note on LinkedIn has become so ubiquitous that it's now a social media cliché. Many of the newly laid-off have no qualms declaring themselves #OpenToWork. There's even layoff merch now. To welcome the legions of freshly unemployed, a network of layoff support groups has emerged. On Reddit, r/Layoffs is in the top 2% of subreddits by size, with more than 120,000 members. On LinkedIn, there are more than 100 groups for those affected by layoffs, including company-specific groups for Meta, X, and Amazon. Across social platforms, layoff influencers are attracting thousands of followers by sharing advice and commiserating with those in the same boat. While workers can't change the fact of being laid off, they are no longer taking it lying down. In the 1990s, layoffs had become more or less standard business practice, but there was still a major taboo around them. "We've all heard those stories about a dad who was laid off," says Denise Rousseau, a professor of organizational behavior and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. "Every day, instead of going to work, he goes to the mall and spends eight hours there before coming home. He's embarrassed to not be working." The pandemic changed layoff culture. People stuck at home on their laptops all day began broadcasting their unemployed status. Then the pandemic changed layoff culture. More than a fifth of the American workforce was laid off during the first few months of COVID-19, a decline in employment not seen since the end of World War II. Layoffs stopped being seen as an individual failing but as an unfortunate byproduct of economic instability. People stuck at home on their laptops all day began broadcasting their unemployed status. LinkedIn introduced its green #OpenToWork banner in June 2020. The post-layoff note, with its cheery tone and calls to "reach out if you're hiring," quickly became standard practice. As more layoffs have hit in the past year, the stigma has vanished even more. "It used to be if you got laid off, it's because you're a screwup — you're just a bad employee," Mustafa says. "Now it's just par for the course." For some, being laid off became not just a LinkedIn update but lucrative content. Giovanna Ventola, a commercial real estate worker, first went viral for sharing advice to other job seekers after being laid off three times in three years, Bloomberg reported. She has gained nearly 30,000 followers sharing her perspective on coping with unemployment and has launched a professional networking platform, Rhize. Others have documented their days-in-the-life navigating being newly unemployed. In her newsletter, Ehrenkranz has spotlighted stories from everyone from a design intern for the National Park Service to a creative director at Google. "I definitely think it's opening up people's eyes to the fact that a layoff is not this thing that happens to a certain type of person in a certain industry," Ehrenkranz says. "It's something that can happen to anyone." The new visibility of layoffs doesn't make it any easier when a call with HR gets added to your calendar. Research published in the International Journal of Mental Health found that losing a job increased the risk of depression, risky substance use, and suicide. For Mustafa, being laid off meant involuntarily grinding his teeth at night and having debilitating stress headaches. Christine Reichenbach was laid off from her chief of staff role at the cloud computing company VMware in January 2024 while she was 34 weeks pregnant. It quickly sent her into a downward spiral. She ended up on postpartum anxiety medication and, despite having ample savings, put her baby in day care at seven weeks to frantically hunt for a new job. "It was very illogical," she says. "It's just what it did to my brain." At the time, Reichenbach was introduced to a Discord group called The Labor Club, a referral-only application-based group of 500 women who have experienced being laid off while pregnant or postpartum. "It's a specific niche that was just awful to experience," Reichenbach says. Her husband, though supportive, couldn't relate to what she was going through. "He has no idea what it's like to be laid off pregnant." Instead, she had a pool of women to turn to for both practical resources and, importantly, emotional support. After some soul-searching, Reichenbach decided to leave Big Tech altogether and founded her own company, The Phoenix Formula, at the start of this year with the goal of empowering other job seekers. She is also building her own support group, Beyond the Layoffs, on LinkedIn and Slack. "People need a space for this to actually be constructive," she says. If members need a space to yell in all caps, there's a channel for that. "I hope it's a place people can vent on a bad day and it's not on social media for hiring managers to see," she says. As the stigma around layoffs disappears, the boundaries of professionalism on social media have become increasingly blurred. Ask any recruiter, and they'll say bad-mouthing a previous employer on social media is tantamount to career cyanide. "It gives me alarm bells," says Brad Thomas, a business manager at Orange Quarter, a tech recruitment company in New York. "It's the same as when a candidate interviews somewhere — talking bad in an unprofessional manner about a previous employer is just not a good look." His advice when it comes to posting on social media is to keep it professional. In the new culture of layoffs, however, there is an important caveat. "The size of the company makes a difference," Thomas explains. "If someone has a pop at Meta or Google, it's less personal and less damaging to the brand versus a startup of 30 people." As the stigma around layoffs disappears, the boundaries of professionalism on social media have become increasingly blurred. Earlier this year, when Meta let go of some 4,000 workers, branding them as " low performers" on the way out, the departing employees refused to leave quietly, pushing back on the label on LinkedIn. As Business Insider's Aki Ito wrote, "This is something we haven't seen before in the professional world: Employees sticking up for themselves in public, and calling out their former employer for misrepresenting their work." Both the social media posts and the private communities offer a kind of testimony that shifts blame from the employee back onto the employer. Ehrenkranz has had many people tell her that being interviewed for Laid Off or filling out her surveys is a cathartic experience. "A layoff these days is a 10-minute Zoom call, shut your computer, and then you're thrown into this new chapter," she says. Having a dedicated space to talk about being laid off with those who get it is a relief for Mustafa. "I don't really feel like I'm being pushy or shoving my layoff experiences down someone's throat," he says. While there is power in numbers, for some, those numbers can be overwhelming. A friend of Mustafa's left the Discord group shortly after joining. "She was getting emotionally burned out from hearing about layoffs," he explains. "She's fortunately a freelance writer, so she's making some money. She can just tune out that stuff if she wants to. For me, I'm still desperately tuned in." Ehrenkranz focuses on making sure the Laid Off community is a toxic-positivity-free zone. "I would say the vibe is just real," she says. "There's no 'Everything happens for a reason' or 'You'll get the next one.' People don't want to hear that." Rather than just a place to wallow, many of these support groups are designed as both a safety net and a springboard for when members are ready to begin the hunt for their next role. Fana Yohannes, a social media consultant and former Meta employee, founded the group Here2Help to give job seekers a leg up. In the wake of the 2020 layoffs, she posted on Instagram that she was open to reviewing and providing feedback on five people's résumés. "One person replied and was like, actually, I'd be down to help too," she says. From there, Yohannes says, Here2Help grew to 200 mentors who helped about 2,000 people find new opportunities during COVID. "We've come to an era where layoffs are part of the job," Yohannes says. "We have to kind of be strategic." After four months of sending out applications, Mustafa has a second interview lined up for another tech role. Even if he gets the job, he plans on staying in the Laid Off community for a while — just in case. "I can't trust these people anymore," he says about employers.
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
US States Seek To Ban Chinese Citizens From Buying Land, Property
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Some U.S. states are attempting to ban Chinese citizens from buying land and property, amid souring diplomatic relations between the countries. By 2024, more than two thirds of states had enacted or considered laws limiting or barring foreign land ownership including states that specifically mention China by name, according to POLITICO. According to the non-profit membership organization the Committee of 100, in total 27 states have considered this kind of legislation. However, the group has not shared a list of those states. Newsweek has rounded up a non-exhaustive list of states that have been involved in this kind of legislation, based on publicly available information. Some states do not name China explicitly, but name foreign nations that would likely include China. A number of US stakes have advanced legislation to ban some land sales by foreign nationals and so-called "foreign adversaries." A number of US stakes have advanced legislation to ban some land sales by foreign nationals and so-called "foreign adversaries." Flourish Why It Matters There has been a wave of concern over Chinese land purchases in the United States, some of which have taken place close to military bases. This comes amid soaring tensions between the U.S. and China including trade clashes between the two giants and national security concerns. However, as of USDA data accurate to 2023, Chinese investors own land in the U.S. equivalent to roughly twice the size of the footprint of New York City. What To Know A number of states have considered legislation on the issue. In May, the Texas legislature passed a bill to ban people tied to the governments of China, North Korea, Russia and Iran from purchasing land in the state. In January, Republican senators in Arkansas introduced the Not One More Inch or Acre Act which would prohibit any Chinese citizen, entity or foreign person acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from purchasing public or private real estate in the U.S. On Tuesday, Arizona's Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill to prevent the People's Republic of China from buying a 30 percent stake or more in land near military bases and other strategic assets. Meanwhile, Florida passed a bill to prohibit citizens from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria from owning agricultural land or property near military sites in 2023. Similar legislation has been passed in South Dakota, North Dakota, Indiana, Nebraska, Virginia, Utah, Iowa, West Virginia and Montana. Other states are considering legislation or bills regarding foreign nations' ability to purchase land including Ohio, Michigan and Georgia. What People Are Saying Speaking to Newsweek, Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, said: "Not every Chinese citizen is an agent of the Communist Party of China. Many of China's most successful entrepreneurs, engineers, and academics—especially those living and working in the United States—loathe the Chinese Communist Party. U.S. government officials must develop more sophisticated policies for decreasing the influence of the Chinese Communist Party in the United States that do not treat all Chinese citizens as enemies of America." Cole Hefner, a Texas Republican state representative, said of Texas' bill: "Senate Bill 17 will counter this threat and make Texas a leader in state security. We cannot, we will not, allow oppressive regimes who actively seek to do harm to cease control and dictate their terms over our economy, our supply chains, our daily lives, our critical infrastructure for our food supply." Advocacy group Asian Texans for Justice opposed the Texas bill, saying it revives "a shameful chapter in American history—when Asian immigrants were banned from owning land." What Happens Next Texas' bill will now go to the state's governor, who has indicated he will support it. The success of other bills as well as whether other states will advance legislation pertaining to the issue remains to be seen.
