A group of federal employees filed a class action on Tuesday against the Trump administration’s disclosure of sensitive personal information to Elon Musk and members of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, calling it the “largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country’s history.”
The employees work at the Department of the Navy, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Agency for International Development, and each said they only learned about the disclosures via media reporting.
The federal employees in Tuesday’s class action characterized the DOGE agents as hackers gaining unauthorized access to their information — including their names, addresses, Social Security numbers, passport numbers, medical records, and financial information.
Several unions representing federal employees have similarly challenged the unprecedented access in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where Tuesday’s class action was filed.
The Trump administration also faces another lawsuit Tuesday regarding its efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and halt all foreign assistance and grants issued by the agency.
“Far from combating waste, fraud and abuse in U.S. foreign-assistance programs, defendants’ actions have exacerbated it,” the coalition of contractors said.
The coalition asked U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan to vacate the Trump administration’s memos directing the freeze of all USAID funds and enjoin any further actions meant to dismantle the agency.
The coalition said that, despite AliKhan’s order barring the federal funding freeze on Feb. 3, the Trump administration has continued issuing stop-work orders in furtherance with the Office of Management and Budget’s Jan. 27 memo.
That move comes as USAID employees in a parallel lawsuit warned that the administration had continued moving to shut down the agency, such as the physical removal of signage on the agency’s headquarters, the termination en masse of contracts and awards and another bar on employees entering the headquarters Monday morning.
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