Nearly 100 Federal employees took part in a protest now into its second day of a takeover by Elon Musk surrogates of the high administration arm of the Federal government. Photo: DCMediaGroup
Washington DC—Federal employees and supporters returned to the main Federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) building today in much greater numbers to continue protesting an incursion into its sprawling computer network by a team of Elon Musk’s computer surrogates.
About 100 Federal employees and supporters occupied the courtyard of the OPM building for most of Sunday afternoon and into the evening. For a brief period they blocked the doors to the building when a handful of self-identified ‘data miners’ waited to be admitted to the building. The small group of young men eventually left without entering after the protesters would not let them near the front doors. A team of DC Metropolitan Police stood nearby watching but did not intervene in the spontaneous doorway block. There was no attempt by the self-identified group to get past the doors and the doors remained locked from the inside.
Federal employees and supporters privately expressed deep anger and concern after learning that Elon Musk’s surrogates had gained access to the OPM building, revoked regular Federal employees’ authorized access credentials, and denied them login privileges into the personnel computer systems. As of late Sunday night the surrogates continued to lock Federal employees out of the systems while they accessed the systems.
There is no way to determine what they are doing with the systems or its vast trove of databases and information which records the personnel actions across the entire Federal government.
These personnel systems and databases house the business accounts and personal information of over 2 million former and presently active Federal employees, their personnel data, work history, job information, payroll records, and retirement benefits and information.
A massive intrusion of this scale taken against a system of secure government computer networks is unprecedented.
Similar activities by Elon Musk’s surrogates were reported at the U.S. Treasury and at USAID. Federal employees were denied login privileges into their systems while unauthorized persons connected to Elon Musk accessed key software, accounts, and databases.
The entire management and administrative arm of the Federal government files and accounts have been effectively captured and taken over by Musk’s surrogates and could conceivably be further accessed further by unknown unauthorized third parties or entities.
While a half dozen protesters blocked the doors the remaining group chanted slogans and heckled Musk’s surrogates inside who periodically looked down on the protesters from the windows of the fifth floor.
They chanted, “There’s a robbery in progress! Stop the steal!” and “No Oligarchs No king!.”
But the protesters laughed and relaxed the tension at least for at a few moments when one of them coined the phrase, “No Elon, no coup, no fascist shiba inu!” (Video below)
The shiba inu is a meme reference to a Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a fake government department which was not authorized by an act of Congress. Musk is recognized as the creator of this department to oversee the reduction in force (RIF) initiative of up to what may be removal of as much as 80% of the regular Federal employee workforce.
Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation manifesto written to outline a complete overhaul of the Federal government lists RIF of public servants and near complete elimination and replacement of its role in civil society.
The shiba inu dog is also the visual image on the DOGE meme coin, an intrinsically worthless cryptocurrency which Elon Musk began backing and supporting by recommending it as a worthy token sometime after developers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer created the cryptocurrency as a joke in 2013.
Towards the end of the night a security guard from the OPM came outside to lower the American and DC flags. One of the protesters questioned him about his role as a secretary guard if he was allowing un-credentialed third parties into the building to access commuter systems. He said he was just doing his job.
The OPM protests are planned to continue all next week as public interest has rapidly grown to do something about the unprecedented seizure and physical takeover and control of the administrative functions of the various departments of the Federal government.
We will continue to cover this story as developments occur.
Update: February 3, 0400 EST (4 am)
Several protesters who stayed late into the night keeping an eye on the OPM building doors watched as two people entered a service portal at the west side of the building after hours at approximately 2100 EST (9 pm).
There would typically be no official Federal employees entering the building at such late hours on a Sunday evening/Monday morning; certainly not using a portal to enter the OPM building. A witness said they left OPM to pick up food from a delivery request.
The witness, who is reporting their observations at OPM from an Bluesky account @MissMouse (missmouse.bsky.social) has been releasing video clips of the OPM activities and Federal employee protests since Sunday afternoon.
A group calling itself Shutdown DC is organizing daily protests around the OPM building starting Monday afternoon and plans a continuing presence outside the OPM building.
We will continue to update major developments of Elon Musk’s administrative takeover of the Federal government departments and agencies as these developments occur.
