The full slate of judges on a federal appeals court in Virginia rejected the Trump administration’s request to give the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “immediate and unfettered” access to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) records systems, dealing the president another court loss just after passing the 100-day mark in office.

In a nine-to-six vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit on Wednesday kept in place a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander, of Maryland, that blocked the Elon Musk-led organization from gaining access to the highly sensitive personal information of “essentially everyone in the country.” The majority reasoned that the “bedrock” principle of the SSA keeping personal data confidential “has been flouted by the sudden grant to DOGE of unfettered access to SSA system of records.”

In the majority’s 12-page order, Circuit Judge Robert Bruce King, an appointee of Bill Clinton, heaped praise on Hollander, an appointee of Barack Obama, referring to her as a “very able district judge” who had “carefully and thoughtfully examined the evidence and the legal issues” in the case. He also noted that her initial TRO order was accompanied by a 137-page opinion, while her preliminary injunction order included a 148-page opinion.

King lauded Hollander’s dual opinions as “addressing extensive evidence proffered by the parties” and “refining the pertinent legal analysis” of the lawsuit. The complaint accused the administration of violating the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by granting DOGE SSA system access, and claimed it was acting in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner by “flouting SSA protocols for hiring, onboarding, training, and granting systems access to the DOGE affiliates.”

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In her latest opinion in the case, Hollander noted that since the SSA’s inception in 1935, it has “collected, stored, respected, and protected” personal and private data of U.S. citizens. She then emphasized that ensuring the confidentiality of that information was a “bedrock principle of the agency” — a principle the Trump administration sought to change by giving DOGE “unfettered access to SSA systems.”

“The objective to address fraud, waste, mismanagement, and bloat is laudable, and one that the American public presumably applauds and supports,” Hollander wrote. “Indeed, the taxpayers have every right to expect their government to make sure that their hard earned money is not squandered.”

Rather, she said, the issue was how DOGE wants to perform its work, and how the SSA was willing to abandon its long-standing mission.

“However, the issue here is not the work that DOGE or the [Social Security Administration] want to do,” she continued. “The issue is about how they want to do the work. For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records,” adding, “This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation.”

Hollander ultimately found the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on the merits, as did the majority of the appellate court judges.

“[Hollander’s preliminary injunction] analysis of those claims and the preliminary injunction factors is lengthy, thorough, and compelling,” the appellate court’s opinion says. “Rather than repeating that carefully crafted analysis herein, I adopt and attach hereto the [preliminary injunction] Opinion in its entirety.”

A coalition of 24 states and Washington, D.C., is suing the Trump administration, claiming that it unlawfully dismantled the AmeriCorps grant program, an independent federal agency that funds volunteer efforts throughout the United States. The lawsuit came in response to billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutting the agency’s funding by $400 million and terminating about 85% of its workforce as part of the administration’s ongoing efforts to gut the federal bureaucracy.

States joining the filing include California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Michigan.

In the 69-page complaint, the state attorneys general state that the administration’s stripping of resources is an “unlawful effort to dismantle AmeriCorps” that usurps the power of the legislative branch by rendering the agency ineffective and unable to pursue the goals set forth and funded by Congress.

“The Administration’s abrupt decision to dismantle AmeriCorps flouts Congress’s creation of AmeriCorps and assignment of agency duties; usurps Congress’s power of the purse and thereby violates the Constitution’s separation of powers; and arbitrarily and capriciously — without any reasoned analysis — vitiates the agency’s ability to function consistent with its statutory mission and purpose,” the 69-page complaint states. “It also violates a provision of AmeriCorps’ statutory appropriation that requires the agency to make ‘significant changes to program requirements, service delivery or policy only through public notice and comment rulemaking.’”

The suit asserts that if the Trump administration wants to put an end to the agency, it is “free to ask Congress” to do so, but the executive branch “cannot simply terminate the agency’s functions by fiat or defund the agency in defiance of administrative procedures, Congressional appropriations, and the Constitutional separation of powers.”

“The Executive Branch violates the Take Care Clause where it declines to execute or otherwise undermines statutes enacted by Congress and signed into law or duly promulgated regulations implementing such statutes,” the attorneys general wrote, adding, “The President is without authority to set aside congressional legislation by executive order.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said that Trump and Musk’s actions in “turning away tens of thousands of volunteers who want to serve their communities” were “unlawful,” in a news briefing on the lawsuit Tuesday afternoon.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will quickly appeal a court order aimed at prying open the internal structure of the beleaguered pseudo-agency helmed by Elon Musk, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a late Thursday court filing.

In a 13-page ruling handed down on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, a Barack Obama appointee, directed titular U.S. DOGE Service Administrator Amy Gleason to sit for a deposition. The group was also ordered to provide certain documents and answer limited questions issued by nonpartisan government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

The underlying lawsuit is an effort to enforce Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests against the Trump administration’s intra-governmental fraud-and-waste-focused organization. DOGE, in turn, has maintained “it is not an agency subject to FOIA,” Cooper noted.

The court disagreed and entered an injunction requiring expedited processing of CREW’s FOIA requests against DOGE. The plaintiffs then moved for summary judgment on the lawsuit and, seeking a quick bit of finality, moved for expedited discovery.

A Florida man who allegedly claims he “stands with Tesla” attacked a group of people protesting against CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump outside one of the car company’s showrooms in Palm Beach County on Saturday by driving into them, cops say.

“He drove into a crowd of senior citizens,” Mark Offerman, a member of the group behind the protest, the Democratic Progressive Caucus in Palm Beach County — Trump’s home county — told The Palm Beach Post about the suspect, Andrew Dutil, who is charged with aggravated assault. He is said to have almost hit multiple people who were targeting the Palm Beach Tesla showroom on account of its relation to Musk, a Trump ally and unofficial leader of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” (DOGE) as well as its location.

“Everybody was able to move out, but two older women were really almost clipped,” Offerman said. “We immediately called the cops.”

A federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday blocking the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing citizens’ personal data at the Social Security Administration (SSA), saying the Elon Musk-led organization was essentially on a “fishing expedition” to make good on the baseless claims of widespread fraud coming from the Trump administration.

“The American public may well applaud and support the Trump Administration’s mission to root out fraud, waste, and bloat from federal agencies, including SSA, to the extent it exists. But, by what means and methods?” U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander wrote in a scathing 137-page opinion. “The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.”

Musk himself has repeatedly alleged that Social Security is rife with fraud, though he’s yet to produce any concrete evidence to back up that claim. Over the last few weeks he has referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” as well as “one big pyramid scheme.”

Hollander’s order will allow DOGE to continue systems training and permit its employees to access data from the SSA systems, provided the DOGE employees have “received all training that is typically required of individuals granted access to SSA data systems” and the data is anonymized

In addition to blocking DOGE, Hollander ordered the organization and those affiliated with it to immediately “disgorge and delete” any personally identifying data in their possession and remove any software or code it may have installed or altered on the SSA computer systems.

A federal judge in Maryland issued an order on Tuesday stating that Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “likely violated the Constitution in multiple ways” by unilaterally dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in an effort to shutter the agency completely.

The ruling is yet another impediment to the Trump administration’s stated effort to gut the federal workforce and shrink the size of the government.

U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang granted a preliminary injunction at the request of 26 current and former USAID contractors and employees, ordering Musk and DOGE to cease any additional cuts at the agency without the “express authorization” of an authorized agency official. The judge also directed USAID to restore access to the agency’s computer systems for employees, including more than 1,000 workers placed on leave since February, supposedly at Musk’s direction.

“Under these circumstances, the evidence presently favors the conclusion that contrary to [the Trump administration’s] sweeping claims that Musk has acted only as an advisor, Musk made the decisions to shutdown USAID’s headquarters and website,” Chuang wrote in the 68-page opinion.

The ruling stems from a Feb. 13, lawsuit filed on behalf of the employees by the State Democracy Defenders Fund and law firm Marziani, Stevens & Gonzalez PLLC. The suit alleged that Musk had been granted “an extraordinary amount of power” without being nominated or confirmed by the Senate, in violation of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause

“Indeed, the scope and reach of his executive authority appears unprecedented in U.S. history,” the complaint states. “His power includes, at least, the authority to cease the payment of congressionally approved funds, access sensitive and confidential data across government agencies, cut off systems access to federal employees and contractors at will, and take over and dismantle entire independent federal agencies.”

A government ethics watchdog group implored a federal judge to order the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to produce records responsive to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by next week, arguing that information on the “black box agency” and its operations are vital for Congress and the general public before the current continuing resolution expires next week.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed the lawsuit against DOGE last month, accusing the pseudo-agency of unlawfully refusing to comply with its FOIA requests for records associated with the government group’s actions and ignoring repeated demands for DOGE to preserve its records under the Federal Records Act.

CREW requested expedited records and documents related to communications between Office of Management and Budget (OMB) staffers and individuals who were affiliated with DOGE prior to Trump’s inauguration, changes to the operations of the U.S. Digital Service, organizational charts and financial disclosures, and DOGE’s communications with federal agencies, which DOGE and the other plaintiffs have so far failed to turn over.

The Trump administration responded to the litigation by claiming that DOGE was not subject to FOIA laws due to the president’s designation of the entity as a “free-standing component of the Executive Office of the President.”

FOIA allows the public to obtain non-exempt information from executive branch agencies and departments that do not function “solely to advise and assist the President.”

Appearing before U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper on Friday, attorneys representing CREW asserted that it would suffer irreparable harm if the document request was not fulfilled by next week. The organization further asserted that based on news reports, the government’s own public statements, and DOGE’s own publications, it clearly wielded more than advisory authority.

CREW’s attorney argued that members of Congress lacked sufficient information on DOGE, its organizational structure, funding, and the agency’s authority before they could vote on funding the government on March 14.

“The nature of the influence DOGE has been wielding is unlike anything we’ve seen before,” CREW’s attorney told the court. “This newly formed, unscrutinized, black box agency is directing other agencies what to do and what not to do. They’re instructing agencies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in cancelled contracts and the firing of thousands of federal workers.”

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3 lawyers with ‘elite establishment credentials’ have joined Musk’s DOGE effort, report says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 12, 2025, 3:10 pm CST

Three lawyers who have joined Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have “elite establishment credentials,” according to a report by ProPublica.

Two of the lawyers have clerked for U.S. Supreme Court justices, while the third has been hired as a Supreme Court clerk for the 2025-2026 term, ProPublica reports here and here. They also have BigLaw ties. The lawyers are:

  • James Burnham, who is the DOGE’s general counsel. A former clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch, Burnham was formerly a Jones Day partner. He worked in the White House counsel’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice in the first Trump administration. More recently, he launched a boutique law firm and a litigation finance fund.

  • Keenan Kmiec, a former clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts. He worked at a “corporate law firm” (identified as Sidley Austin on LinkedIn), worked at his own firm handling insider trading litigation, worked at a Swiss foundation promoting blockchain, and was the CEO of a startup.

  • Jacob Altik, who has been hired to clerk for Gorsuch beginning this summer. He is a former associate at Weil, Gotshal & Manges and a former intern at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonprofit that aims to “protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the administrative state.”

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The nation’s largest federation of labor unions on Thursday won a significant victory against the Trump administration in their efforts to peel back the curtain on the activities of the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

In a 16-page order, U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, ordered four members of the “opaque” cost-cutting group to sit for depositions on a series of “properly-scoped topics.” The under-oath testimony will total eight hours, the court ruled.

The judge’s move to enforce a certain measure of transparency on DOGE comes in response to an expedited discovery request from the AFL-CIO, several other unions, and a progressive economic think tank. Filed earlier this month, the underlying lawsuit aims to bar the often-evasively-defined group from accessing nonpublic Department of Labor information and accuses DOGE of violating “multiple laws.”

“Although this in an Administrative Procedure Act case, the discovery plaintiffs request is proper because it is necessary to determine the contours of the agency actions that plaintiffs challenge,” the order reads. “The limited expedited discovery plaintiffs request is also reasonable.”

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been operating “in the shadows,” wielding unconstitutional authority across multiple agencies while providing the public with “no meaningful transparency” and failing to keep proper records, according to a new lawsuit from a nonprofit government watchdog group.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) accused DOGE of unlawfully refusing to comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records associated with the government group’s actions and ignored repeated demands for DOGE to preserve its records under the Federal Records Act.

More from Law&Crime: ‘Precisely the Executive abuses that the Appointments Clause seeks to prevent’: Judge troubled by Trump giving Musk ‘unchecked’ power, but won’t stop him — yet

CREW has requested records and documents related to communications between Office of Management and Budget (OMB) staffers and individuals who were affiliated with DOGE prior to Trump’s inauguration, changes to the operations of the U.S. Digital Service, organizational charts and financial disclosures, and DOGE’s communications with federal agencies, which DOGE and the other plaintiffs have so far failed to turn over.

The filing requests that a federal judge order OMB and DOGE — as well as their leaders — to promptly disclose the requested records, to preserve all records until the court decides the case, and to initiate enforcement action to recover any lost records.

The suit asserts that while President Donald Trump vowed DOGE would operate with “maximum transparency,” in actuality, “it has done the opposite.”

“The entity has worked in the shadows — a cadre of largely unidentified actors, whose status as government employees is unclear, controlling major government functions with no oversight. [DOGE] has provided no meaningful transparency into its operations or assurances that it is maintaining proper records of its unprecedented and legally dubious work,” the suit states.