This week, President Trump adviser Elon Musk’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seems to have gained full access to the Department of Treasury’s payments systems responsible for processing trillions of dollars of spending, and containing sensitive personal data about hundreds of millions of Americans including bank accounts, tax data, Social Security numbers, tax refunds, Medicare benefits, and home addresses.

If you find this concerning, you’re not alone. Judging from social media, many Americans are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of changes coming from the Trump administration, and are worried about what is happening to our federal government.

In short, “people are creeped out,” according to Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, who along with Senator Elizabeth Warren called on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent’s decision to grant Musk and DOGE access to sensitive government payment systems.

“It is difficult to know all the things that Elon Musk is doing inside the Treasury Department because of a lack of transparency,” Barbara McQuade, who served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010 to 2017, told Fast Company.

Now, DOGE, whose staff has largely operated in secret, communicating through encrypted messages on Signal, according to the Wall Street Journal, is starting to rack up legal challenges.

On Monday, a coalition of union groups and the Alliance for Retired Americans filed a lawsuit against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the Treasury Department, and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service to halt the “unlawful ongoing, systematic, and continuous disclosure of personal and financial information to Elon Musk and other members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency or to any other person.” The lawsuit alleges that all three defendants illegally allowed the coalition’s many members’ records to be shared with Musk’s DOGE.

The Alliance for Retired Americans and the two labor unions, the American Federation of Government Employees and the Service Employees International Union—both affiliates of the AFL-CIO—are represented by lawyers from Public Citizen Litigation Group and State Democracy Defenders Fund.

What is DOGE and what kind of authority does it have?

Trump created DOGE through an executive order on his first day in office, creating a temporary government organization with a mandate to “moderniz[e] Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

But there are many questions about who actually works for DOGE, if the agency is hiring existing government employees or employees from Musk’s own various companies, and if DOGE staff are overstepping their legal authority. (Wired recently reported a 25-year-old engineer at DOGE now has administrative privileges over the code that controls Social Security payments, tax returns, and more.)

DOGE was originally a joint project that Musk was to run with bio-tech company founder Vivek Ramaswamy (who ran against Trump in the Republican presidential primary before endorsing him), along with Bill McGinley, who was named DOGE’s legal counsel. Both Ramaswamy and McGinley have since left, or been forced out by Musk—as reported by Politico over infighting for how DOGE would function among the group.

Musk, meanwhile, was recently classified as a “special government employee,” which basically allows him to work at the White House for some 130 days before he’s required to file the necessary financial disclosure forms required of White House employees. This is concerning for any number of reasons, including that he has yet to be properly vetted and as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, both of which rely on government contracts, he appears to have several (at least) conflicts of interest.