At 2 PM Eastern on May 9, MuckRock will be hosting an online discussion digging into how DOGE is hiding its work and what you can do to strengthen truly public oversight over Elon Musk’s effort to reshape government.

In 2024, Elon Musk proclaimed an unequivocal commitment to government transparency. “I think that the strong bias with respect to government information should be to make it available to the public,” he said at a town hall shortly before the election. “Let’s be as transparent as possible. Fully transparent.”

But a hundred days into the second Trump administration, journalists, watchdogs and even government officials have found key documents and data withheld, particularly by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

While DOGE has been deeply entrenched in the federal government, government lawyers have claimed in court filings that it is a purely advisory body, and therefore outside the scope of transparency laws.

Meanwhile, FOIA offices at a range of federal agencies have had their staffs slashed or completely eliminated as part of broader agency reductions.

Through lawsuits and painstaking reporting, reporters and public interest organizations are trying to pierce DOGE’s veil of secrecy to inform America about what the service is actually doing.

At 2 PM Eastern on May 9, MuckRock is hosting a few of them to share their work, talk about what they have discovered and give their insights on what comes next for the fight for transparency.

Joining the discussion:

• Vittoria Elliott, a reporter for WIRED who has been covering how DOGE has been using financial levers to reshape policy while building a massive digital dragnet for the federal government by combining databases.

• Kel McClanahan, a litigator specializing in national security law who often represents intelligence employees and contractors, representatives of the news media, and advocacy organizations. He is currently litigating a FOIA request for the First Amendment Coalition, requesting emails between Elon Musk and DOGE staff. He is also representing MuckRock in its lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency, which has led to the public release of over 13 million pages of material.

• Jon Maier, Senior Litigation Counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He is leading some of the non-profit’s lawsuits against DOGE.

• Mason Kortz, clinical instructor at the Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.