The United States Supreme Court has sided with the administration of President Donald Trump in two cases about government records — and who should have access to them.
On Friday, the six-member conservative majority overturned a lower court’s ruling that limited the kinds of data that Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could access through the Social Security Administration (SSA).
In a separate case, the majority also decided that DOGE was not required to turn over records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a government transparency law.
In both cases, the Supreme Court’s three left-leaning justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan — opposed the majority’s decision.
DOGE has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign to reimagine the federal government and cut down on bureaucratic “bloat”.
Unveiled on November 13, just eight days after Trump’s re-election, DOGE was designed to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies”.
At first, it was unclear how DOGE would interact with the executive branch: whether it would be an advisory panel, a new department or a nongovernmental entity.
But on January 20, when Trump was sworn in for his second term, he announced that the existing US Digital Service — a technology initiative founded by former President Barack Obama — would be reorganised to create DOGE.
The government efficiency panel has since led a wide-scale overhaul of the federal government, implementing mass layoffs and seeking to shutter entities like the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
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