‘Who are they?’: Rep. Jahana Hayes spars with GOP’s Lawler about why Elon Musk’s DOGE ‘is not normal’

“This is not regular for one person to have that kind of access over every agency, over people’s data, over security systems,” said Hayes during a CNN town hall on Thursday.

During a CNN town hall with members of Congress on Thursday night, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., sought to make a compelling case as to why Americans should be gravely concerned about the outsized role Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is playing in the federal government.

“You have your right to be concerned about Elon Musk because he’s an unelected billionaire who has a tremendous amount of influence,” said Hayes during 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. House of Representatives in 2018, called out the Trump administration’s lack of transparency on Musk’s work as the head of DOGE. The White House-sanctioned department has been leading the administration’s claimed efforts to eliminate government waste and fraud, resulting in billions of dollars paused or rescinded and thousands of government employees laid off or terminated. Many of the administration’s actions remain contested in federal court.

Hayes noted that the Trump administration made a point of saying in court that Musk wasn’t in charge of DOGE despite President Trump and other officials saying he was the head of the department and leading its decisions or recommendations. “They tried to hide the ball,” she said.

The congresswoman said that if Musk’s DOGE is indeed finding evidence of government waste and fraud, then he and his team should come to testify before Congress and present it. “Lay it out, not through a series of tweets, not through these unverified reports that he’s putting out,” said Hayes. She said it was also “very peculiar” that “7,000 Social Security employees are fired, 6,000 from the Veterans Administration are fired [yet] his company is getting more contracts and making more money off the federal government every day.”

Rep. Hayes pointed out that Musk’s satellite company, Starlink, now has a server at the White House and argued that Musk is “aggrandizing himself.” She continued, “No one is even calling him to account…Everyone should be concerned about that. This is not normal. This is not regular for one person to have that kind of access over every agency, over people’s data, over security systems.”

Rep. Jahana Hayes raised concerns over @elonmusk growing federal contracts and profits, questioning the lack of accountability and oversight—especially with Starlink now serving at the White House.@RepJahanaHayes @kaitlancollins pic.twitter.com/wNHUjU9W5V— Asmat Mallick (@AsmatMallick) April 11, 2025

When Rep. Lawler tried to defend Musk and DOGE, arguing that their work is being assisted and supported by career civil servants, Hayes interrupted and asked sharply, “Who are they?” She repeated the question several times as Lawler spoke, seemingly as a tactic to draw out an argument Democrats have repeatedly made about the lack of transparency about what Musk, who is not a government employee, is doing with the data he is collecting and ensuring privacy rights are protected.

“I’m not sure if the Republican conference got a list of the employees at DOGE, because we didn’t. So that information has not been available to us,” said Hayes. “If there are employees, career, federal employees, who are working within the system to find this information, we’d love for you to share that with us.”

Hayes, who was awarded “Teacher of the Year” at the White House by President Barack Obama in 2016 before running for Congress, also decried the Trump administration’s actions to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Despite the repeated claims by Trump officials and Republicans that dismantling the department would give the “power” back to state and local governments, the congresswoman pointed out that “public education is already handled by the states.”

“The Department of Education protects the civil rights of students,” she explained, listing off the services of the DOE, including enforcing anti-discrimination laws to protect students of color and students with disabilities and managing the $1.2 trillion federal student loan system and Pell Grants.

“The kids who will be the most hurt are kids in poor and low-income communities,” she warned. “So when people say…that something was taken away, I don’t know if they’re asking for states to be able to discriminate, for states to be able to deny civil rights protections for poor students [or] not to have adequate funding and teachers to serve them.”

The Department of Education protects the civil rights of students, prepares teachers, handles student loans and our Pell Grant programs – they do not govern curriculum or instructional materials at the state, that already belongs to the states. ⁰⁰So when people say that… pic.twitter.com/Odh7weDVcp— Jahana Hayes (@RepJahanaHayes) April 11, 2025