The Trump administration has made an urgent plea to the Supreme Court to prevent Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from disclosing its operational documents to a federal watchdog group.
What Happened: The administration made the appeal on Wednesday, asking the Supreme Court to overturn court orders requiring DOGE to share its operational documents with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), reported AP News.
The Justice Department maintains that DOGE, a significant component of President Trump’s government reform initiatives, is a presidential advisory body and therefore not subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
In February, CREW initiated a lawsuit claiming that DOGE wields considerable power without any transparency about its activities. In March, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that DOGE’s role likely goes beyond advisory, noting its role in the closure of USAID and the reduction of billions in government contracts.
Cooper has given the administration a compliance deadline of June 13. Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the justices to act swiftly, calling Cooper’s orders “extraordinarily overbroad and intrusive.”
Why It Matters: This latest development is part of a series of legal battles surrounding DOGE’s authority and operations. Earlier this month, the Trump administration sought Supreme Court approval for DOGE to access sensitive Social Security data, despite a lower court’s ruling against this. This move further escalated the ongoing dispute over data privacy and executive authority.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc. TSLA, has been at the center of these controversies. Musk’s DOGE has been aggressively cutting costs, yet federal spending has reportedly increased by $154 billion since Trump’s second term began. This has raised questions about the effectiveness and impact of DOGE’s actions.
When CNBC’s David Faber asked Musk on Tuesday about the concrete results of DOGE’s cost-cutting measures, pointing out the criticism Musk has received, Musk replied: “We are advisers. We are not—we’re not kings here.” Previously, Musk had accepted that DOGE hadn’t been as effective as he’d like.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
