(CN) — House Democrats say they are litigating, legislating and mobilizing in a three-pronged approach to defend federal agencies and employees from President Donald Trump’s executive orders and his seemingly unbridled support of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
In an “emergency telephone town hall” with constituents Tuesday evening, Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell said the Trump administration has unleashed an “egregious invasion of privacy” by allowing an unelected billionaire and a “band of rogues” to access the payment systems of the U.S. Department of Treasury and other databases, where they have a window into private and sensitive information belonging to every American.
Sewell said the Democratic Party is fighting back by using the courts, Congress and grassroots efforts to build opposition and dissent, and she added that some of those efforts have already paid off.
“Elon Musk has absolutely no business handling the personal information of American taxpayers, period,” she said, noting that DOGE played a role in stopping Treasury payments to USAID. “If he can shut off payments to an entire federal agency, we can only imagine what he will do with our personal information.”
Sewell said the party was nearly unanimous in its support of the recently unveiled Taxpayer Data Protection Act, which would require those with access to sensitive taxpayer data to have a security clearance and be free of conflicts of interest. She also said that given the Democrats’ narrow majority in the House of Representatives, it would only take the support of three House Republicans to pass.
But for the time being, courts have blocked many of the president’s executive orders and related actions in more than 55 federal lawsuits that have been filed against the Trump administration in the past four weeks, Sewell said.
The House’s Assistant Democratic Leader Joe Neguse of Colorado, who also participated in the phone call, spoke about his role as the chairman of the House Democrats’ recently established Rapid Response Task Force and Litigation Working Group.
He said in the vast majority of cases brought against the Trump administration thus far, the administration has largely “failed in its effort to defend the propriety of the actions that they have taken.”
He noted judges in different federal districts, including some who were appointed by Republican presidents, have granted nationwide injunctions against Trump’s birthright citizenship order and federal employee buyout proposal. Separately, the administration reversed course on certain health care funding initiatives after wide opposition and another injunction.
“It will be a long process and it will be appealed, but the House Democratic Caucus — through this task force — will certainly communicate the developments on the legal front and where appropriate, do what we can to support the litigation as it unfolds,” Neguse said.
In response to questions, both Sewell and Neguse did not have definitive answers to questions about whether the Trump administration would simply ignore court orders without consequences. On Monday, Vice President J.D. Vance suggested the judicial branch would not stand in the way of the administration’s goals.
Neguse said federal courts have some tools to enforce compliance with court orders, while states can pursue their own remedies.
But he warned of an unprecedented constitutional crisis if Trump undermined the division of powers.
“It would warrant the attention and leadership of Congress, governors, attorneys general and ultimately the American people, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” he said.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union for about 800,000 federal employees, also spoke during the call.
“When you attack the federal workforce, you’re attacking the vital services that the American people need and deserve,” he said amid advice for government workers who had been offered buyouts. “If these workers are not there for forming these essential duties, the American people are the one that’s going to suffer.”
Musk defended the work of DOGE and the Trump administration in an appearance in the Oval Office earlier Tuesday. Musk said American voters had a mandate.
“The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get,” he said.