The U.S. Supreme Court has once again vindicated President Trump with a ruling that granted the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to Social Security information to aid in its mission of rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse within federal government agencies.
For context, on June 6, 2025, the Supreme Court agreed to temporarily lift an injunction that stopped DOGE from accessing Social Security Administration systems to root out alleged fraud. However, the three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, all dissented from the order, along with three conservative judges.
In its official ruling, the Supreme Court explained that it had granted DOGE access to “various SSA records,” clarifying that the agency’s access would be “subject to certain exceptions.” Furthermore, the ruling concluded that “under the present circumstances, SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work.”
On the other hand, in an official statement of dissent, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson described DOGE’s request to access SSA data as a form of “extraordinary intervention,” saying, “The government wants to give DOGE unfettered access to this personal, non-anonymized information right now—before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE’s access is lawful.”
Attempting to support her point, Justice Jackson said that giving DOGE access to SSA data would pose “grave privacy risks” for Americans and described the request for access as a “plainly deficient showing of harm,” adding, “To accept this line of argument sends a troubling message: that this Court will allow departures from our stated legal standards and the basic norms of our judicial system
(such as respect for lower court rulings and equal justice
under law) for certain litigants.”
The news of the Supreme Court’s ruling on DOGE’s SSA access came just days after former DOGE leader Elon Musk and President Trump began trading barbs on X on June 3, 2025, kicking off a heated feud that has left some wondering about the future of DOGE’s work. The conflict began when Mr. Musk wrote an X post calling President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” a “disgusting abomination.”
In response to Musk’s critique on X, President Trump began firing back on Truth Social on June 5, describing Elon as “wearing thin,” which, the president claimed, prompted him to ask him “to leave” and revoke “his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted.”
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However, in previous statements, the White House has clarified that DOGE’s work will continue without Mr. Musk, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters during a May 29, 2025, press conference that “the entire cabinet understands the need to cut government waste, fraud, and abuse, and each cabinet secretary at their respective agencies is committed to that.” In addition, Leavitt explained that in Mr. Musk’s absence, DOGE is now led by the President himself, along with the members of his Cabinet.
Featured image credit: @POTUS via X