NEW YORK: Two federal judges will consider on Saturday whether Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting team, known as DOGE, will have access to Treasury Department payment systems and potentially sensitive data at US health, consumer protection and labour agencies.

The Musk-led Depart­ment of Government Efficiency has swept through federal agencies since Republican Donald Trump became president last month and put the chief executive of carmaker Tesla in charge of rooting out wasteful spending as part of a dramatic overhaul of government.

In Manhattan, judge Jeannette Vargas will consider a request by Demo­cratic state attorneys general to extend a temporary block on DOGE that he put in place last week, which prevented Musk’s team from accessing Treasury systems responsible for trillions of dollars of payments.

The states allege that Musk’s team has no legal power to access the payment systems that contain sensitive personal information.

The lawsuit also argued that Musk and his team could disrupt federal funding for health clinics, preschools, climate initiatives and other programmes, and that Trump could use the information to further his political agenda.

In Washington, district judge John Bates will consider a request by unions to prevent the DOGE team from accessing sensitive records at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Labour Department and the Con­sumer Financial Protec­tion Bureau.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2025