Voices in the Sky Issue #1

The Status of Trump Administration Actions in The First Few Weeks

Feb 09, 2025

This is our first Voices in the Sky issue summarizing administration actions and their status. We may fail to capture everything as things are moving quickly, but aim to provide enough information for us all to stay informed (and sane).

DOGE Takeover

What: Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has infiltrated major agencies of the federal government including the US Treasury, the state and health departments, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Small Business Administration (SBA).

How: Musk and his team have rapidly gained access to IT systems of these agencies. They have (or had, before court orders stopping them) access to:

Information of Medicare customers
Social security numbers
Bank account details
Health records of US citizens
Federal government budget payment systems for various federal programs (see section on federal funding freeze and USAID below for why that’s important).
OPM’s computer systems, which contain the personal data of millions of federal employees and contractors, which matters as the admin attempts to fire parts of the government’s workforce
Records of businesses (through its access to the SBA)

The Impact:

DOGE has reportedly used this access to lock career civil servants out of OPM, the agency that manages federal employees.

Lawmakers are also concerned that access to budget systems could result in attempts to access payment systems to control the budget and cut funding without Congress’ approval. Congress (who the voters elected) controls federal spending, not Trump or Musk. Such an action would be blatantly illegal.

Additionally Musk could privately profit from the access he has to budgets and the Small Business Administration, which keeps records of business owners and the health of their businesses.

Why can he do this?: According to the White House, Musk is operating in his capacity as a non-Senate-confirmed “special government employee,” a category of employee that is typically brought on for a period of less than a year, hired for their expertise, and subject to less stringent conflicts-of-interest rules than other federal officials. There are ways to work around the one year requirement, which our members of Congress should challenge.

Lawsuits:

Public Citizen, a left-leaning consumer rights advocacy group, sued the Trump administration Monday on behalf of workers whose personal information is stored in Treasury Department databases, alleging that officials broke privacy laws in giving DOGE access.

On Saturday February 8th a judge temporarily restricted the DOGE team from accessing the Treasury Department payment system that distributes Americans’ tax returns, Social Security benefits, disability payments and federal employees’ salaries. The judge ordered the destruction of any downloaded information from the payment system by anyone given access to it since January 20.

Federal Funding Freeze

Within a week of taking office Trump issued a memo ordering that all agencies freeze their spending operations, and the consequences have been significant:

Several states have reported Medicaid portals going offline
Head Start, child care centers that operate nationwide, will potentially have to close as they struggle to access operating funds (8)
Across the country, health clinics serving rural and low-income patients have found themselves unable to access previously allocated federal funds
In West Virginia, a nonprofit mental health program for teenage girls is turning to a private donor to help cover its expenses (7)
In Virginia, 11 of the state’s 31 community health center operators were still unable to access their funding and three health clinics have shut their doors
The Community Health Center Association of Mississippi said last week that 21 centers were locked out the system where they draw down funding - they currently are facing a deficit of $500,000 and may have to scale back services (7)

Millions of Americans count on states to administer key government services including education, nutrition, housing, healthcare. Although funding levels vary by state, federal funds make up 18 to 50 percent of state budgets. (8) See here for a table of the millions of Americans relying on these services: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-consequences-of-a-federal-funding-freeze-in-the-states/

Lawsuits

Three judges blocked the funding freeze and the Trump administration rescinded the memo, but the chaos has resulted in confusion around payments and disruptions to services have continued.

Dismantling of USAID

Trump issued an executive order freezing most U.S. foreign aid from the U.S. Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D. U.S.A.I.D. spent about $38 billion on health services, disaster relief, anti-poverty efforts and other programs in fiscal year 2023. That was less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

Administration appointees and Musk’s teams have shut down almost all funding for the agency, stopping aid and development programs worldwide. They have placed staffers and contractors on leave and locked them out of the agency’s email and other systems. According to lawmakers, they also physically removed USAID’s computer servers. (9) The Associated Press has reported that USAID contractors in the Middle East saw their “panic button” apps wiped off their mobile phones. (9)

Why we care

Foreign aid serves our strategic interests, strengthens allies, prevents conflict, and is a form of national security. For example, USAID serves peace-building in Somalia, disease surveillance in Cambodia, vaccination programs in Nigeria, H.I.V. prevention in Uganda and maternal health assistance in Zambia. The agency has also helped to contain major outbreaks of Ebola.

Impacts

About 2.4 million anti-malaria bed nets intended to be distributed by USAID were stuck in production facilities in Asia
In Uganda, a national anti-malaria program suspended spraying insecticide into village homes and halted shipments of bed nets
In Syria, the action threatens a U.S. security program holding tens of thousands of Islamic State members and their families

Lawsuits

A judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from placing 2,200 workers at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on paid leave, hours before it was due to happen.

Birthright Citizenship

In his first week Trump issued an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship in the United States. The EO says “ no department or agency of the United States government shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship, or accept documents issued by State, local, or other governments or authorities purporting to recognize United States citizenship, to persons: (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.” (5)

But this blatantly flies in the face of the US Constitution — specifically the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause—which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. (5)

In a stunning act of bravery five pregnant women without lawful status sued the Trump administration over the executive order alongside the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and CASA. This past week, a Maryland judge blocked the order, saying it “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts a 125-year-old binding Supreme Court precedent, and runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth.” (5)

In another lawsuit, four state Attorneys General brought a challenge to the EO in a federal court in Washington, and that judge also blocked the EO citing the14th amendment’s guarantee: “The constitution is not something with which the government may play policy games,” Judge Coughenour said. “If the government wants to change the exceptional American grant of birthright citizenship, it needs to amend the Constitution itself.” (6)

Deportation Efforts

The Trump administration has arrested 8,000-10,000 people since Inauguration Day in cities around the country including Chicago, New York and Denver. (2) However, some are being released domestically due to insufficient system capacity to process court claims.

For those that are still detained, there are concerns over where they will go. This is because ICE is funded for only 41,500 beds nationwide. (2) One solution the administration is beginning to implement is sending migrants to Guantanamo Bay (not the detention center, but immigration facilities). The administration has started by sending those it has identified as criminals, and said that in the future the Bay will be used for those detained by ICE.

As part of its mass deportation program the administration is targeting “sanctuary cities” and the laws in those cities and states to protect immigrants. For example, the US justice department has filed a lawsuit against Chicago, accusing local officials of impeding federal immigration enforcement efforts amid Donald Trump's drive to ramp up deportations.

The lawsuit - which mentions Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson - also seeks to block local laws it claims "interfere with and discriminate against" federal immigration policy. Chicago, Pritzker, and Johnson will be defending their state and city laws in the lawsuit. This week, new Attorney General Pam Bondi also vowed to slash federal funding to "sanctuary cities".