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

By Lindsay Whitehurst Associated Press WASHINGTON AP The Trump administration required the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for Elon Musk s Department of Regime Efficiency to access Social Prevention systems containing personal input on millions of Americans The exigency appeal comes after a judge in Maryland restricted the group s access under federal privacy laws Social Safety holds personal records on nearly everyone in the country including school records bank details salary information and curative and mental physical condition records for disability recipients according to court documents The regime says the DOGE unit necessities access to target waste in the federal administration and appealed the justices to put the lower court order on hold as the lawsuit over the issue plays out Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the judge s restrictions disrupt DOGE s urgent work and inappropriately interfere with executive-branch functions Left undisturbed this preliminary injunction will only invite further judicial incursions into internal agency decision-making he wrote Musk has been focused on Social Safeguard as an alleged hotbed of fraud describing it as a Ponzi scheme and insisting that reducing waste in the activity is an central way to cut regime spending An appeals court 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 ruling from U S District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland that blocked DOGE from Social Measure systems did allow staffers to access material that has been redacted or stripped of anything personally identifiable The appeal is the latest in a string of exigency applications to the nation s highest court as the Trump administration faces about lawsuits challenging various aspects of President Donald Trump s sweeping conservative agenda