Throughout a CNN city corridor with members of Congress on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., sought to make a compelling case as to why Individuals needs to be gravely involved concerning the outsized function Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual, is enjoying within the federal authorities.
“You’ve your proper to be involved about Elon Musk as a result of he’s an unelected billionaire who has an amazing quantity of affect,” stated Hayes through the bipartisan panel with Democrat Rep. Derek Tran of California and Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania.
Congresswoman Hayes, who was elected to the U.S. Home of Representatives in 2018, known as out the Trump administration’s lack of transparency on Musk’s work as the pinnacle of DOGE. The White Home-sanctioned division has been main the administration’s claimed efforts to remove authorities waste and fraud, leading to billions of {dollars} paused or rescinded and 1000’s of presidency staff laid off or terminated. Lots of the administration’s actions stay contested in federal court docket.
Hayes famous that the Trump administration made a degree of claiming in court docket that Musk wasn’t accountable for DOGE regardless of President Trump and different officers saying he was the pinnacle of the division, and main its selections or suggestions. “They tried to cover the ball,” she stated.
The congresswoman stated if Musk’s DOGE is certainly discovering proof of presidency waste and fraud, then he and his crew ought to come to testify earlier than Congress and current it. “Lay it out, not via a sequence of tweets, not via these unverified stories that he’s placing out,” stated Hayes. She stated it was additionally “very peculiar” that “7,000 Social Safety staff are fired, 6,000 from the Veterans Administration are fired [yet] his firm is getting extra contracts and making extra money off the federal authorities on daily basis.”
Rep. Hayes identified that Musk’s satellite tv for pc firm, Starlink, now has a server on the White Home and argued Musk is “aggrandizing himself.” She continued, “Nobody is even calling him to account…Everybody needs to be involved about that. This isn’t regular. This isn’t common for one individual to have that type of entry over each company, over folks’s knowledge, over safety programs.”
Rep. Jahana Hayes raised considerations over @elonmusk rising federal contracts and income, questioning the dearth of accountability and oversight—particularly with Starlink now serving on the White Home.@RepJahanaHayes @kaitlancollins pic.twitter.com/wNHUjU9W5V
— Asmat Mallick (@AsmatMallick) April 11, 2025
When Rep. Lawler tried to defend Musk and DOGE, arguing their work is being assisted and supported by profession civil servants, Hayes interrupted and requested sharply, “Who’re they?” She repeated the query a number of instances as Lawler spoke, seemingly as a tactic to attract out an argument Democrats have repeatedly made concerning the lack of transparency about what Musk, who isn’t a authorities worker, is doing with the info he’s accumulating and guaranteeing privateness rights are protected.
“I’m unsure if the Republican convention obtained a listing of the staff at DOGE, as a result of we didn’t. In order that info has not been accessible to us,” stated Hayes. “If there are staff, profession, federal staff, who’re working throughout the system to search out this info, we’d love so that you can share that with us.”
Hayes, who was awarded “Trainer of the 12 months” on the White Home by President Barack Obama in 2016 earlier than working for Congress, additionally decried the Trump administration’s actions to dismantle the U.S. Division of Schooling. Regardless of the repeated claims by Trump officers and Republicans that dismantling the division would give the “energy” again to state and native governments, the congresswoman identified that “public training is already dealt with by the states.”
“The Division of Schooling protects the civil rights of scholars,” she defined, itemizing off the companies of the DOE, together with imposing anti-discrimination legal guidelines to guard college students of shade and college students with disabilities and managing the $1.2 trillion federal pupil mortgage system and Pell Grants.
“The children who would be the most harm are youngsters in poor and low-income communities,” she warned. “So when folks say…that one thing was taken away, I don’t know in the event that they’re asking for states to have the ability to discriminate, for states to have the ability to deny civil rights protections for poor college students [or] to not have enough funding and lecturers to serve them.”
The Division of Schooling protects the civil rights of scholars, prepares lecturers, handles pupil loans and our Pell Grant packages – they don’t govern curriculum or educational supplies on the state, that already belongs to the states. ⁰⁰So when folks say that… pic.twitter.com/Odh7weDVcp
— Jahana Hayes (@RepJahanaHayes) April 11, 2025
