DOGE has landed at the SEC.
A coterie of cost cutters from Elon Musk’s Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arrived March 28 the SEC, which has created an internal team to accommodate examiners from the controversial and heavily litigated organization, according to internal communications reported Friday by Bloomberg.
“Our intent will be to partner with the DOGE representatives and cooperate with their request following normal processes for ethics requirements, IT security or system training, and establishing their need to know before granting access to restricted systems and data,” according to an internal email to staff, according to a Friday story from Reuters.
The email told SEC staffers to respond politely to DOGE requests but said they should not “provide any substantive information” without consulting the SEC liaison team first, according to Reuters.
The SEC press office confirmed that the SEC is beginning to “onboard” members of DOGE in accordance with executive orders from the White House, but provided no details on what DOGE’s goals might be or what potentially sensitive information DOGE staffers might be allowed to access.
Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mark Warner called for a Government Accountability Office (GAO) review of DOGE actions including any new efforts to get data access and cut costs at the SEC.
“Efforts to reduce SEC staff or limit the SEC’s functions… have the potential to significantly harm investors,” they said in a March 28 letter to GAO director Gene Dodaro.
“The SEC is the nation’s primary enforcer of securities laws and works to ‘protect investors; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation’,” they wrote. “Given the importance of the SEC, we are concerned by recent reports regarding the Trump Administration’s efforts to shrink the agency in the name of government efficiency.”
Considering the number of SEC staff accepting buyouts, the letter continued, “it is essential that Congress and the public understand how the Trump administration’s recent actions have affected the SEC’s ability to carry out its mission and statutory obligations. Therefore, we request that GAO conduct a review of actions that have occurred at the SEC since January 20, 2025.”
Federal employees, agency officials, consumer- and privacy advocates have sued to halt or reverse mass firings of federal employees and the unauthorized access to sensitive and private information by DOGE staffers with no training in federal information-security practices, legal requirements or security clearances.
Acting SEC chair Mark Uyeda has been trying to get ahead of the White House push to cut government costs with a buyout program that persuaded more than 10% of SEC staffers to agree to resign voluntarily and by reducing SEC office space in key regional headquarters locations and eliminating a number of senior management positions.
The reductions, cutbacks and centralization-of-power moves including the decision to put enforcement decisions in the hands of Commissioners rather than senior enforcement staff have prompted already prompted complaints from investor- and consumer advocates concerned that the changes could leave the SEC not only smaller, but significantly less able to do its job.
“Given Mr. Musk’s history with the SEC, it is troubling that he may now be given influence over the agency’s operations,” a group of five Columbia University Law professors wrote in a March 13 analysis addresses to Uyeda that compared the changes to “watching the SEC face a death by 1,000 cuts.”
“We are aware that some SEC skeptics have argued that the SEC brought this pending loss of independence on itself through the energy and independence that have long characterized the agency. Others claim that the SEC can operate with less resources by reallocating its troops, moving them from less active offices and departments to more active ones. Both claims are erroneous. As experienced securities counsel are aware, the SEC’s role is statutorily required and works best when counsel and the SEC staff work cooperatively. Nor, under current law, can the SEC itself shift the appropriations that Congress gave it,” they wrote.
