A federal judge Tuesday clarified that a ruling preventing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment systems does not extend to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
President Trump and his allies denounced the original sweeping ruling, issued early Saturday before the government could respond.
Though U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas agreed to slightly loosen the restrictions, which were ordered by a separate judge, she did not accept the Justice Department’s bid to dissolve them entirely.
Vargas kept intact restrictions that block political appointees and special government employees, like Musk and DOGE personnel, only exempting Bessent and other senior department leaders whose roles require Senate confirmation.
“More fundamentally, there are no allegations in the Complaint suggesting that access to Treasury payment systems by such senior Treasury officials poses a threat of disclosure of sensitive and confidential information, or that their access would result in systems that would be more vulnerable to hacking, the harms that animated the grant of the February 8 TRO,” Vargas wrote.
As they stepped up their attacks on the courts, the Justice Department moved to scrub the original ruling, warning its sweeping terms amounted to an intrusion on the executive branch that would go as far as to keep out even Bessent from the systems, which are used to dole out trillions annually.
“The government is aware of no example of a court ever trying to micromanage an agency in this way, or sever the political supervision of the Executive Branch in such a manner. This Court should not be the first,” the Justice Department wrote in court filings.
The lawsuit is one of many challenging Musk’s efforts to downsize and even eliminate parts of the federal bureaucracy. Democrats and career public servants have warned the administration is acting without legal authority and endangering sensitive private information of citizens.
Lawsuits have also been filed challenging DOGE’s access at the Labor Department, Education Department, Office of Personnel Management and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
But it is the Treasury Department access that has attracted the most scrutiny.
Saturday’s ruling was issued by an Obama-appointed judge, who was on emergency duty when the Democratic-led states filed their lawsuit hours earlier, before the government could respond. Monday’s order dissolving that ruling was issued by Vargas, an appointee of former President Biden who will permanently oversee the case.
The states largely cautioned Vargas against disturbing the existing ruling, noting she can consider the arguments more fully at a Friday hearing scheduled in the case. They only agreed to loosen the restrictions so that certain federal contractors and Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City employees who have helped maintain the systems can maintain access.
Vargas’s adjustments also allow those individuals to access the system again.
The developments leave untouched an agreement the Justice Department reached with a group of government employee unions who separately sued over the Treasury Department access.
Under that agreement, only two DOGE-affiliated personnel can access the systems.
One of those people, Marko Elez, resigned after racist social media posts surfaced. Musk has said he will bring back Elez, but the government as of Sunday implied in court filings that he had not been rehired.
