Trump administration asks Supreme Court to let DOGE access Social Security systems

WASHINGTON AP The Trump administration required the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for Elon Musk s Department of Leadership Efficiency to access Social Safety systems containing personal facts on millions of Americans The exigency appeal is the first in a string of applications to the high court involving DOGE s swift-moving work across the federal executive It comes after a judge in Maryland restricted the group s access to Social Assurance under federal privacy laws The agency holds personal records on nearly everyone in the country including school records bank details salary information and physiological and mental healthcare records for disability recipients according to court documents The regime says the group demands access to target waste in the federal ruling body Musk now preparing to step back from his work with DOGE has been focused on Social Precaution as an alleged hotbed of fraud The billionaire entrepreneur has described it as a Ponzi scheme and insisted that reducing waste in the campaign is an key way to cut establishment spending Solicitor General John Sauer argued Friday that the judge s restrictions disrupt DOGE s crucial work and inappropriately interfere with executive-branch decisions Left undisturbed this preliminary injunction will only invite further judicial incursions into internal agency decision-making he wrote He inquired the justices to block the order from U S District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland as the lawsuit plays out An appeals court previously refused to at once to lift the block on DOGE access though it split along ideological lines Conservative judges in the minority noted there s no evidence that the organization has done any targeted snooping or exposed personal information The lawsuit was originally filed by a group of labor unions and retirees represented by the group Democracy Forward The Supreme Court appealed them for a response to the administration s appeal by May More than two dozen lawsuits have been filed over DOGE s work which has included deep cuts at federal agencies and large-scale layoffs Hollander identified that DOGE s efforts at Social Shield amounted to a fishing expedition based on little more than suspicion of fraud Her order does allow staffers to access records that has been made anonymous but the Trump administration has mentioned DOGE can t work effectively with those restrictions Elizabeth Laird with the nonprofit group Center for Democracy and Apparatus mentioned wide-ranging access to sensitive personal material poses a serious threat If DOGE gets a hold of this information it opens the floodgates on a host of likely harms It also normalizes a very dangerous practice for other federal agencies she disclosed The nation s court system has been ground zero for pushback to President Donald Trump s sweeping conservative agenda with about lawsuits filed challenging policies on everything from immigration to guidance to mass layoffs of federal workers Among those that have reached the Supreme Court so far the justices have handed down certain largely procedural rulings siding with the administration but have rejected the establishment s broad arguments in other cases