The U.S. Capitol on April 21, 2025. Democratic lawmakers are asking the National Labor Relations Board to respond to a recent whistleblower disclosure that documents concerns that officials with the Department of Government Efficiency team may have taken sensitive information about workers.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Over fifty Democratic lawmakers have signed a letter demanding answers from senior U.S. government officials about a recent potential exposure of sensitive data about American workers.
The letter is addressed to the acting General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, William Cowen. The independent agency is in charge of investigating and adjudicating complaints about unfair labor practices and protecting U.S. workers’ rights to form unions.
The lawmakers, who are part of the Congressional Labor Caucus, wrote the letter in light of news first reported by NPR, that a whistleblower inside the IT Department of the NLRB says DOGE may have removed sensitive labor data and exposed NLRB systems to being compromised.
“These revelations from the whistleblower report are highly concerning for a number of reasons,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Cowen. “If true, these revelations describe a reckless approach to the handling of sensitive personal information of workers, which could leave these workers exposed to retaliation for engaging in legally protected union activity.”
The letter refers to an official whistleblower disclosure made by Daniel Berulis, a cloud administrator in the IT department of the NLRB, who also spoke to NPR in multiple interviews.
In his disclosure, Berulis shared that he initially became concerned in March when members of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived at the agency and demanded high-level access to the systems without their activities being logged. Those fears escalated after he tracked a large chunk of data leaving the agency at the same time as many security controls and auditing tools were turned off, the disclosure continues.
Ultimately, Berulis became concerned that DOGE, which is effectively led by Trump adviser and billionaire CEO Elon Musk, could have accessed sensitive internal information about ongoing investigations into U.S. companies, witness affidavits and even corporate secrets. The alleged insecure practices and removal of data could also create vulnerabilities for criminal hackers or foreign adversaries to exploit, Berulis explained in his official disclosure.
It’s unclear how that data would be relevant to DOGE, whose stated mission is to make the government more efficient and slash federal spending. One of the lawmakers’ central questions was about why DOGE would have needed access to internal NLRB systems to reduce government spending.
“Given DOGE’s desire to access sensitive information at other federal agencies with a focus on payment information, it is unclear why DOGE would be interested in NLRB data that has nothing to do with federal payments,” the lawmakers wrote.
The lawmakers were also concerned about the potential conflicts of interest for DOGE leaders like Musk who might benefit from having access to sensitive labor data at a time when the NLRB has ongoing cases involving Musk’s companies including SpaceX and Tesla. “Furthermore, Elon Musk, who Donald Trump has repeatedly said is ‘in charge’ of DOGE, has a number of cases before the Board and is also pursuing several lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality of the Board itself,” they wrote.
The members urged NLRB leadership to take immediate action to answer questions about DOGE’s alleged access, given the fact that “DOGE officials were again recently present at NLRB headquarters” and will be detailed part-time at the agency over the next couple of months, according to a letter sent to NLRB employees last week.
The NLRB told NPR that they have no records of DOGE’s early March visit, did not grant DOGE official access to its systems, and never received an official request from DOGE to access the systems. Meanwhile, the NLRB said there was an internal review of a potential breach inside the agency after Berulis raised his concerns, and that NLRB officials ruled out a breach. However, Berulis has argued that the forensic evidence he has presented warrants further investigation by agencies with additional investigative resources.
The revelations from Berulis come at a time when there are over a dozen court cases alleging that DOGE staffers mishandled sensitive government data across different agencies, ranging from the Treasury Department to the Social Security Administration.