A federal judge has extended a temporary order that blocks President Donald Trump’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team from investigating the Treasury Department’s payment systems.
The order was issued by Joe Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan on Friday.
The extension comes after 19 Democrat state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over DOGE’s access to the payment system.
Democrats have falsely claimed that Musk is trying to access Americans’ personal information such as Social Security, Medicare, and veterans’ benefits, and tax refund information.
The lawsuit claims the Musk-run agency illegally accessed the Treasury Department’s central payment system.
However, DOGE is investigating the department at President Trump’s behest.
The lawsuit was filed in NYC by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office.
It includes attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Judge Vargas in Manhattan said on Friday that she wasn’t going to issue a ruling yet on the attorneys general request for a longer preliminary injunction.
In the meantime, the judge is leaving the temporary order issued last Saturday in place.
Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told FOX Business that the concerns about DOGE’s access to the department’s systems are not valid.
“DOGE is not going to fail,” he said.
“They are moving a lot of people’s cheese here in the capital, and when you hear this squawking, then some status quo interest is not happy.”
He continued, “At the Treasury, our payment system is not being touched.
“We process 1.3 billion payments a year.
“There is a study being done — can we have more accountability, more accuracy, more traceability that the money is going where it is?
“But, in terms of payments being stopped, that is happening upstream at the department level.”
The newly-created DOGE aims to cut government waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money.
The team has been given access to more than a dozen government agencies.
DOGE has already been investigating the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Education, and the Department of Labor.
The abuses exposed in USAID were so significant that the agency has been almost entirely shut down and absorbed into the State Department.
