Federal courts on Thursday dealt two blows to the Trump administration's plans, blocking the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) access to Social Security data and the deportation of a Georgetown University fellow.
DOGE gets another nope: In Maryland, a federal court blocked DOGE employees from accessing certain Social Security Administration (SSA) data, for now.
"The American public may well applaud and support the Trump Administration's mission to root out fraud, waste, and bloat from federal agencies, including SSA, to the extent it exists," wrote Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander in her opinion. But "the DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack."
