Shortly after 1 a.m. on Feb. 4, Elon Musk’s team seized access to sensitive Treasury Department data, including our Social Security numbers and tax information, and, as reported by Wired, “systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government.”

This means that an unelected billionaire from South Africa, whose position has not been approved by Congress, now has the power to shut off payments to people or organizations he alone deems unworthy.

Musk’s team plans to use AI coding agents to write software that would purportedly cut fraudulent, wasteful spending. But according to an unidentified government employee, this plan poses a major security risk that could intentionally or unintentionally introduce vulnerabilities allowing backdoor access to foreign adversaries.

It’s a digital coup — a violation of federal law and congressional protocol.

One wonders why Musk and his minions have not already been arrested.

On Feb. 5, Sen. Angus King, with seven colleagues on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles expressing concerns about Musk’s unconstitutional grab of classified information. According to the Portland Press Herald, they requested responses to 22 questions about how Musk and his team are being vetted, “what systems and records they are accessing, and how they’re protecting information from misuse or public disclosure.”

Given the urgent threat to our economic security — not to mention our democracy — it’s hard to fathom why King and his colleagues gave Wiles until Feb. 14 to answer their 22 questions.

With President Trump’s support, Musk abruptly shut down USAID, endangering the lives of people all over the world, increasing the risk of viruses like bird flu reaching pandemic proportions, and negatively affecting international views of America.

To her credit, Republican Sen. Susan Collins said Trump overreached his authority when he supported the dissolution of USAID. A 1974 law prevents presidents from rescinding appropriations already allocated by Congress without formal permission from both the House and Senate. Nonetheless, Collins said she planned to support Trump’s nominee Russell Vought — the architect of Project 2025 — for director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Although Vought has publicly stated his contention that the president has broad authority over congressional spending, Collins says he has assured her that he played no part in the memo issued by OMB to freeze all federal grants and loans, and that she is supporting Vought because he is qualified and held the same position in Trump’s first term.

Of course, this was before Vought co-authored the extremist Project 2025, which seeks to dismantle the U.S. government, ushering in an authoritarian regime antithetical to this country’s democratic ideals.

Collins’ decision to trust Vought’s claim is either naïve or cunning. It recalls her justification for her decision to confirm accused rapist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court — that he assured her he would not change abortion laws. And then he did. Or maybe she thinks we, her constituents, are naïve. But I, for one, have not forgotten how she failed us.

America’s democracy has never been so precarious. This is not a time for business as usual. This is an all-hands-on-deck kind of time, and we need our legislators to step up and take extreme measures to stop this coup.