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A federal judge on Friday extended a temporary order preventing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team from accessing payment systems within the Treasury Department. The extension follows a lawsuit filed by 19 state attorneys general against the Trump administration over DOGE’s access to the payment system, which contains sensitive information about Americans’ Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, tax refunds, and more.
The lawsuit alleges that the Musk-run agency illegally accessed the Treasury Department’s central payment system at the Trump administration’s request. The case was filed in New York by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office and includes attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan stated that she would not yet rule on the attorneys general’s request for a longer preliminary injunction, leaving the temporary order issued last Saturday in place.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told FOX Business last week that concerns about DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department are unfounded. “DOGE is not going to fail,” he said. “They are moving a lot of people’s cheese here in the capital, and when you hear this squawking, then some status quo interest is not happy.”
Bessent added, “At the Treasury, our payment system is not being touched. We process 1.3 billion payments a year. There is a study being done — can we have more accountability, more accuracy, more traceability that the money is going where it is? But, in terms of payments being stopped, that is happening upstream at the department level.”
The newly-created DOGE aims to reduce government waste and has been granted access to more than a dozen government agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Education, and the Department of Labor.
