There are a couple stories today that require understanding something about DOGE’s predecessor institution. So here goes.

A short time ago, I broke the news that the acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration has abolishing CREO, the SSA’s statutory civil rights and equal opportunity division. He also put all employees of the division on immediate leave; that’s the standard DOGE approach, the closest you can get to firing those people, which will presumably become formal soon. Acting Commission Leland Dudek was a mid-level SSA staffer until about a week ago, when he was caught making unauthorized leaks of SSA information to DOGE. He was in the process of being fired when he was elevated over at least one hundred more senior agency executives to running the whole agency.

I am told that other steps of similar gravity and equally questionable legality are also either in process or expected.

This is a developing story.

In response to last night’s “red alert” post, a number of TPM Readers have written in to say, okay, okay, fine but what exactly do I tell my member of Congress? This takes me a bit out of my lane. I’m not a strategist. But I can say how I see the situation, where the weak points seem to be.

So here’s my take.

Republicans control the White House and Congress. They’re the majority. The current “continuing resolution” that’s funding the government runs out on March 14th. They’re also trying to put together a budget to take away your health care coverage and give Elon a huge tax cut. But that new budget won’t kick in until later this year. They’re just starting that budget process. But they need to fund the government in the meantime. They’re in the majority. So they need to do that. But they only have a tiny majority and they’re clowns and they can’t manage to do this simple thing — basically because they can’t get the Freedom Caucus freaks to vote for something that their few moderates will also support. So they’re coming to Democrats basically hat in hand: “Friends, we are clowns. And we are about to do a shut down the government on ourselves. Can you help us?”

Winston Churchill once said, “nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” One might also say there’s nothing so fun as being right about a big story totally by accident. Or rather, in this case, I actually knew about what I’m about to describe to you but forgot. Early February was at least a hundred years ago and I’ve been working on a million different stories since then — and, so, I’d totally forgotten about these details. But seriously, people, let’s not make it about me.

Here’s the story.

As you know, Elon Musk went on Twitter on Saturday and said federal workers had to list their accomplishments for him or else. The email was sent out over something called The Government-Wide Email System (GWES), a DOGE creation from the first days after the takeover of the Office of Personnel Management. (This will be a key point.) The email itself didn’t include Elon’s threat of termination (or, technically, a constructive resignation). But the message was heard loud and clear. Then pretty much the entire federal government spent 72 hours trying to figure out whether compliance was or wasn’t required. On Sunday morning, I flagged this Privacy Impact Statement (PIA) which OPM prepared for the GWES system back on February 5th. That document was flagged to me by a government tech. And as I noted, it states very clearly that compliance with any requests you receive via GWES is totally voluntary. You can respond to these emails or not. You can share information or not. It’s totally up to you. It’s very clear.

But I didn’t really have any clear idea of why this document existed or why it made such strong representations about the voluntariness of anything tied to GWES. (As is often the case, Marcy Wheeler had already put it a lot of this together even though I hadn’t.)

Well, here’s the story.

Over recent weeks I’ve told you several times that while Democrats are shut out of power in Washington and have few means of arresting the Trump-Musk spree of criminal conduct across the executive branch, they do have two points of leverage: the need for a new “continuing resolution” by March 14th to keep the government funded, and the need to raise the debt ceiling at some point in the coming months — the exact date on that isn’t clear. At present, Republicans are on course to shut down the government on March 14th. Essentially, the Freedom Caucus is holding them hostage, demanding not the draconian budget cuts favored by most of the GOP caucus but draconian-plus cuts, the kind that they fear will get their members in swing districts defeated. So Republican leadership is coming to Democrats, hat in hand, asking for help. I’ve explained in probably a dozen posts over the last month that this is the line not just on policy and anti-constitutional actions but also a key moment in the drama of performative power between President Trump and the opposition that will have repercussions and reverberations for months and perhaps years to come. There are already plenty of signs the public is turning against Musk’s wilding spree of criminal conduct through the federal government. To put it in the vulgar and rapacious terms that are the only ones that do it justice, Donald Trump and Elon Musk have spent the last month slapping around like bitches the Constitution, federal workers, the Democrats and really the sovereignty of the American people. Democrats have this moment to decide whether they’ll not only arrest the damage but change the tone through the idiom of power.

Well, now we appear to be at the crunch moment.