Still think this isn't a coup?:

The messages indicate that, under Elon Musk's leadership, DOGE is actively taking steps to make sure its communications and records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, a records transparency law commonly used by journalists and lawyers to hold government accountable. Instead, DOGE is asserting that rather than reporting up through the Office of Management and Budget as the United States Digital Service did for years, it is reporting through the Executive Office of the President and to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Under OMB, it was generally subject to FOIA. Under the White House Chief of Staff, records it creates are generally not subject to FOIA.

This would make DOGE a Presidential Records Act entity, meaning records it creates are not FOIAble until years after a president leaves office rather than a Federal Records Act entity, which would make its records FOIAble now. This is a very notable, but unsurprising move that federal records experts have been worried about since the issuance of Donald Trump's executive order renaming the United States Digital Service"an agency of federal tech workers that was formed under the Obama administration"to the United States DOGE Service. That executive order specifically states that the renamed entity "shall be established in the Executive Office of the President," and that the USDS administrator (Elon Musk) "shall report to the White House Chief of Staff."

Sources tell WIRED that the ability of DOGE's Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and W.H. officials said it didn't exist.

Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn't Have Write Access' When He Actually Did

"3) once some people (e.g., the press that Pres Trump seems to hate?) noted Mr Musk's unprecedented access to internal and extremely critical government computer systems, the walk-back quickly occurred."

I wonder if it might have something to do with this judge's ruling today?:

Just hours before his reported resignation, Elez, along with Tom Krause, chief executive of Cloud Software Group Inc., was cleared by a judge to retain "read-only" access to sensitive payment systems at the Treasury Department. Elez was part of a team waging a war on USAID on behalf of the Trump administration and canceling authorized payments to the agency's employees.

"Maybe someone in court under oath told the truth about them having read & write access."

Or maybe not:

Why Did Musk Gizmocrats Rewrite the Payment System Code?

The Times this morning has an apparent explanation for why DOGE operatives were so eager to take control of the unified government payment system at the Treasury: they wanted to be able to shut off payments to USAID projects without going through USAID personnel. They say this is based on emails between Elon-backed Trump appointees now at Treasury. I assume this is accurate in itself but I wouldn't be sure this is the only reason and perhaps not even the main reason. But it's the only non-speculative explanation we have so far.

David Kurtz notes this morning that the judge overseeing a lawsuit aimed at halting the actions at Treasury is almost certainly being given false information about what's actually happening, though as David notes we can't say for certain the Justice Department lawyers representing the administration are affirmatively lying. (They may use weasel words; they may not themselves know; many possibilities.) Those lawyers continue to insist that the Musk operatives at Treasury only have "read-only" access to the computers. As Wired and I have independently reported, that's not true. They have full administrator privileges and, as I have reported, they've already altered the code.