Trump administration files emergency appeal to Supreme Court to grant DOGE access to Social Security data
The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday seeking to obtain access to Americans’ Social Security data by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The administration argued that DOGE needs to analyze the data to eliminate waste.
Social Security has been a target of the administration, as both former President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have falsely claimed that “millions” of deceased individuals are receiving checks from the agency.
DOGE has yet to detail a single instance of waste or fraud, leading U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander to accuse the DOGE staff of attempting to launch a “fishing expedition” into the private data of millions of Americans with no evidence of problems.
U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer told the court that Hollander’s recent injunction against the work had halted DOGE’s perusal of private information and dared to interfere with the executive branch.
“Left undisturbed, this preliminary injunction will only invite further judicial incursions into internal agency decision-making,” Sauer wrote.
Sauer asked the Supreme Court to block Hollander’s order while the appeal proceeds. It remains unclear whether the administration will succeed, as a previous appeals court declined to lift the block on the department’s access.
Hollander’s order permits department employees to access only anonymized data. The administration has argued it cannot carry out its work effectively under those constraints.
Access to such data could jeopardize the security of private, personal information, said Elizabeth Laird of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group.
“If DOGE gets hold of this information, it opens the floodgates on a host of potential harms. It also normalizes a very dangerous practice for other federal agencies,” she told The Associated Press.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed over the department’s actions, which have led to thousands of federal job losses amid large-scale layoffs. Since Inauguration Day, at least 200 legal challenges have been brought against the Trump administration.
Before assuming his role at the top of DOGE, Musk said he aimed to save the government $2 trillion. He claims the agency has cut $160 billion to date, though it’s impossible to ascertain that figure since DOGE’s “receipts” posted on its website is riddled with errors.
Despite DOGE’s draconian cuts of federal agencies, jobs, services, grants and contracts, federal spending by the Trump administration has actually increased more than 6 percent over the same period last year when Joe Biden was president,
