Supreme Court to decide if DOGE records will stay hidden
The Supreme Court said Tuesday that it will take up an appeal from the Trump administration to block information about the so-called Department of Government Efficiency from public records requests.
The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sued the government in February 2025 to compel DOGE and the Office of Management and Budget to release documents related to the mass firings of federal workers during the early days of the second Trump administration.
OMB said it would respond to some Freedom of Information Act requests, but DOGE refused, claiming that it wasn’t an agency and therefore not subject to federal records law.
Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in March 2025 that DOGE was likely subject to FOIA and directed the Elon Musk-led group to process CREW’s records requests on an expedited basis.
Cooper cited three factors in his ruling: executive orders that seemed to “endow USDS with substantial authority independent of the President,” statements made by Musk and President Donald Trump that pointed to that authority, and DOGE moves that exercised power over “vast swaths of the federal government.”
The Department of Justice quickly moved to block Cooper’s subsequent order for expedited discovery by submitting a writ of mandamus, “an extraordinary remedy,” according to the agency, “which should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance.”
In May 2025, the Supreme Court sided with the DOJ, staying the discovery schedule Cooper ordered and allowing the Trump administration to continue withholding DOGE-related documents from the public. The high court’s decision also prevented CREW from deposing Amy Gleason, DOGE’s then-acting administrator and a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services official.
Much has changed with DOGE since SCOTUS placed a stay on the proceedings. The tech collective has essentially become “institutionalized” across the federal government, with dozens of allies stationed at various agencies and other alums venturing into the private sector and reportedly cashing in on their whirlwind government destruction.
The high court’s ruling on the case will likely come next summer.
