A lawsuit says the Trump administration violated the law by allowing DOGE access to workers’ data
A lawsuit against the Trump administration over the FOIA investigation of DOGE data: The EFF, Labor Unions, and the TRUST
The EFF and two labor unions have filed a lawsuit, claiming that the Trump administration was in violation of a federal privacy law by giving employees of the DOGE access to information on millions of government workers.
He said that when it comes to questions about conflicts of interest, “you have to look at the individual contract,” adding, “I’m not the one, you know, filing the contract. It’s people at SpaceX or someone who will be putting the contract.”
Musk spoke for a majority of the 30 minute appearance wearing a trench coat and hat. Standing just feet away from the president, who sat behind the Resolute Desk, Musk was asked to respond to critics who argue that he is exercising too much power over the government.
The lawsuit is just one of several legal challenges to DOGE’s infiltration and attempts to dismantle federal agencies. Others target the Treasury Department for allowing access to its sensitive payments system, and another has sought to halt the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from being thrown in the “wood chipper,” as Musk has said. The cases make their way through the courts but Democratic lawmakers have struggled to find ways to slow what they have called an illegal coup and the Trump administration has reportedly shown tolerance for disobeying court orders.
The order follows a slew of moves by the Trump administration in line with Musk’s work. Musk has reduced federal spending and shut down the work of government institutions since Trump was sworn in three weeks ago. The moves have prompted a cascade of legal challenges and sparked uncertainty among federal workers as they await additional actions by the DOGE effort.
The changes do not apply to military personnel and allow exemptions for positions related to “nationalsecurity, homeland security, or public safety responsibilities,” according to the order.
The order also sets out new guidelines around hiring. Each agency has to hire no more than one employee for every four employees who leave. The order requires agency heads to have a conversation with a “DOGE Team Lead” about hiring approvals.
Trump told reporters that the discovery of Billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse was the result of the DOGE program, and that the final tally could reach as high as a trillion dollars. But the president and Musk offered few specifics on how they were arriving at those estimates.
Their joint appearance came as Trump signed an executive order providing new guidance for federal agencies on the implementation of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, a push to cut what Musk and Trump characterize as excessive government spending.
February 11th has been changed. An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified President Donald Trump as one of the defendants in the lawsuit. He is not directly named as a defendant.
The White House will continue to fight, and we expect to be vindicated, said the White House press secretary in a statement. “The President has every right to exercise his executive authority on behalf of the American people, who gave him a historic mandate to govern on November 5th.”
The DOGE staffer dispute over the deferred resignation offer for the Open Post Machine Learning (OpenMP) database breach: a federal district court order in New York
Experts don’t like how increased access could expose the data to new vulnerabilities. After all, OPM databases were breached in 2014, resulting in sensitive information on more than 20 million people being compromised.
Labor groups are still litigating over the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer, which Congress had not yet appropriated. A federal judge has s0 far delayed the deadline for federal workers to opt to take the offer, pending further consideration by the court.
DOGE lacks “a lawful and legitimate need for such access” to OPM files, the groups allege. They’re asking the US District Court in the Southern District of New York to suspend DOGE staffers’ access to the system, and prevent them from using any information they allegedly illegally accessed already. The court should order the destruction of any copies of data that are not authorized to be accessed.
is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.