Brian Barrett

government, there's another really interesting story that's happening right now that I am watching so, so closely as someone who obviously was a big part of Wired's doge coverage.

And we all went, what happened to these federal employees after they were doged?

What happened to the people who spoke out?

So we have one person that McKenna Kelly, our senior politics writer, spoke with last week, Alexis Goldstein, a former employee from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who was put on leave after she recorded how Elon Musk's so-called Doge members were actually seemingly accessing equipment at the CFPB very early on in their takeover without telling employees, without any sort of notice.

So Goldstein filmed them.

She quite literally went up to them and filmed them.

Here she is now recalling exactly what happened in her own words in an interview with Democracy Now.

I mean, like, it's so surreal to even hear someone speaking about this as an experience, to watch people, you know, go into your place of work and just really turn it upside down.

And one of the things that Alexis also said is just like how much people trust them with this technology.

These are like very, very important bits and bobs that were all of a sudden in the hands of people that weren't like actually government employees.

She has a little bit more to say.

Let's listen up.

Goldstein told McKenna that she had tried to approach these Doge members.

They refused to share their names with her.

A security guard eventually escorted her out.

And later that day, she found out she was being put on administrative leave.

Then earlier this year, a long time after, she was officially fired from the CFPB.

The plot twist now, though, is that Goldstein is running for office.

She's a candidate in a race for the U.S.

House of Representatives in Maryland's 6th congressional district.