I want to be able to renew my passport, register to vote, and verify my identity with the government without wondering who is watching or where my data goes. Right now I cannot be sure, because a White House office is quietly taking over the systems that handle all three.
The National Design Studio was created by executive order in August 2025. It sits inside the White House and reports to the Chief of Staff, and it is staffed largely by engineers from DOGE. It has built White House-controlled versions of services that Congress assigned to specific agencies. A copy of vote.gov was registered to the Executive Office of the President instead of the Election Assistance Commission. A passport site is owned by the White House, not the State Department, and is already collecting biometric photos. Login.gov, the identity service millions of people use, is now run by a former DOGE staffer.
When these systems move into the White House, they leave behind the inspector general review, the agency rules, and the congressional reporting that normally protect the public. A Guardian investigation also found commercial tracking software on four of the studio's sites, no privacy notices of the kind federal law requires, and no record of the studio's funding or contracts in the federal spending database. One studio engineer told state election officials, about the voter data, "I don't know what they retain and what they are logging."
I am asking you to do four things. Order a Government Accountability Office audit of the studio's funding, staffing, and contracts, since none of it appears in public records. Require the studio to file the privacy disclosures the Privacy Act and E-Government Act demand before its sites stay online. Return voter, passport, and identity systems to the agencies Congress assigned to run them, with inspector general oversight. And hold a public hearing with the studio's leadership under oath.
The people who run our elections and hold our identity records should answer to Congress and the law, not to the White House alone. Please put this office under real oversight now.
