Trump and Treasury: Court Should Halt Blocking DOGE's Data Access
President Donald Trump and the Treasury Department doubled down Friday on their request that a court dissolve a preliminary injunction (PI) that's preventing Treasury employees from accessing systems containing citizens' sensitive information.
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The injunction restricts four individuals -- employees of the White House's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) -- from collecting payees' financial or personally identifiable information (PII) from Treasury systems.
"Because there is no longer any live dispute as to whether these four individuals should be subject to the PI’s restrictions, the PI should be modified to remove them from its scope," Trump and Treasury said in a letter to Judge Jeannette Vargas of the U.S. District Court for Southern New York.
On Thursday, the plaintiffs in case 25-01144 -- a New York-led coalition of states -- asked Vargas to ignore the government's May 1 motion to dissolve the injunction against them (see 2505020056 and 2505150061).
Vargas granted an injunction in February (see 2502240008) but partially dissolved it on April 11, ruling that the states were unlikely to succeed in their claims that DOGE employee access to Treasury department data violates the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act (see 2504140036).