Judge to rule swiftly on effort to block DOGE from assessing data and firing federal employees

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday questioned the authority of billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency but was skeptical of a request to block DOGE from accessing sensitive data and firing employees at half a dozen federal agencies. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan held a hearing on a request from 14 states for a temporary restraining order seeking to curtail Musk’s power in President Donald Trump’s quest to downsize the federal government. The administration dismissed probationary employees and Trump in an executive order told agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions.” Democratic attorneys general from 14 states had filed a lawsuit challenging what they called Musk’s “unchecked power.” The states are seeking to block DOGE from firing employees and accessing data at the federal Office of Personnel Management along with six federal agencies that oversee health and human services, education, energy, transportation, labor, and commerce. The federal government countered that DOGE is acting in an advisory role, they don’t need Senate confirmation to access data, and that the states hadn’t shown Musk’s hunt for waste and fraud had harmed them. While Chutkan seemed skeptical if a temporary restraining order was merited, she seemed sympathetic to some of the states’ claims “One of the challenges in plaintiff’s motion is that this is essentially a private citizen directing an organization that’s not a federal agency to have access to the entire workings of the federal government, fire, hire, slash, contract, terminate programs all without apparently any congressional oversight,” the judge said in describing the states’ claim.