A Federal Worker Was Fired for Filming DOGE. Now She’s Running for Congress | WIRED

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Alexis Goldstein had just dropped her toddler off at day care and was on her way back into the office when she ran into a group of people she had never seen before attempting to access equipment that appeared to be from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). What ensued was a yearlong fight to save her job at the agency from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

It was February 2025, and DOGE was conducting a wholesale assault on the US government. The operatives arrived at the CFPB on February 6. Goldstein whipped out her phone and started documenting the intruders; they turned out to be members of DOGE, including Jordan Wick and Jeremy Lewin. CFPB leadership alleged that Goldstein violated agency information security rules because the pictures she took included computer screens. After a year in administrative leave limbo, she was fired this past February.

Like the US Agency for International Development (USAID), DOGE targeted the CFPB early on, attempting to terminate more than 1,400 of its 1,700 workers in April 2025. Musk first acknowledged his intention to destroy the small consumer protection agency in November 2024, writing on X “delete CFPB.”

Days after her firing, Goldstein announced that she would run in a crowded race for the US House of Representatives as a Democrat in Maryland's 6th congressional district against incumbent April McClain Delaney. WIRED spoke to Goldstein about her experiences in the government and with DOGE—and how her experience as a federal worker inspired her to run for office.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WIRED: Can you walk me through the situation that got you fired?

Alexis Goldstein: DOGE arrived at the CFPB, and I was on-site that day because the union had been tabling in the lobby all week, trying to show people we were still there for them. We had gotten word that DOGE was probably coming that day. I had dropped my kid off at day care and was pushing my stroller through the basement when I saw some people I had never seen before who didn’t have CFPB badges but had a CFPB computer. I put my phone in the cupholder and started filming through the window, trying to be subtle, but they saw me and moved to a room that didn’t have a window.

So I went in and introduced myself and asked who they were, because we have all this training that says we are all responsible for safeguarding the sensitive data we have, whether it’s from consumers or the companies we regulate. I started filming and asking them their names and whether they’d had the proper training to handle our sensitive information. One of them ran out of the room immediately. Another one, Jeremy Lewin, the guy that dismantled USAID who looks approximately 18 years old even though he’s almost 30, ran into the corner, and they called security on me. [Lewin and CFPB did not respond to a request for comment.]

You were put on administrative leave for a year before being fired. What was that like, and when did you find out you were fired?

Answering this is a little hard, because they fired a third of the CFPB the next week. So I just got fired with everybody else, then we got unfired, then we got fired again, then we got unfired. It wasn’t really until around May that I was in limbo on my admin leave specifically.

In some ways, I wasn’t worried about my own situation. I was worried about everybody’s. There was only a court order keeping the CFPB open. At one point it went to the DC Circuit, and we were waiting for their decision. Every day that passed, people would be like, “We made it through another day!”

My situation didn’t become a real stressor until the inspector general asked to speak to me at the end of June. I thought it was going to be a productive conversation, because they were investigating DOGE. But they were like, “Isn’t what you did as bad as what DOGE did? If they had a computer open and your camera caught a tiny bit of that computer, didn’t you do the same thing, if you’re saying that we should be concerned that DOGE shared information?” It was a very hostile interview, and I felt like I was being scapegoated.

Then you don’t hear from them. They go away and do their thing. I didn’t know what was going on until December, when I got a letter that was a proposal to fire me. In that letter was a document from the inspector general saying they found no wrongdoing. But between July and December, I had no idea. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I knew that. But in this environment, that doesn’t matter.

What data were you worried about DOGE accessing?

Broadly, everyone was worried about the same kind of stuff they were worried about DOGE getting at other agencies, like the Social Security Administration. But at the CFPB, the kind of personal data we have is more like what is happening to you in your most vulnerable financial moment. You are facing foreclosu