NEW YORK — Democratic state attorneys general continued their legal resistance to President Donald Trump’s early policies Friday, filing a new lawsuit accusing Trump and the Treasury Department of violating federal law by granting Elon Musk’s aides access to a sensitive federal payments database.
Coalitions of states have also challenged the president’s orders to end birthright citizenship and freeze federal funding — both now halted by courts.
The newest suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, argues that granting access to the staffers from Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency puts at risk billions of dollars in grants, health insurance payments and tax refunds that the states or their residents receive each year. The states also allege that DOGE’s access increases the possibilities that confidential information about recipients of the payments could be exposed publicly.
“Musk and DOGE have no authority to access Americans’ private information and some of our country’s most sensitive data,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the complaint. “I am taking action to keep our information secure.”
The lawsuit seeks to bar “political appointees, special government employees, and any government employee detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department” from accessing payment data and that any such individuals who’ve been granted that access be required to return the information.
It’s unclear how many DOGE members currently have access to the payment data at the moment.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who’s named as a defendant in the suit, told Bloomberg News Thursday that only two DOGE members have been granted access to the payments database and they were limited to “read-only” viewing of the data. Bessent commented before one member of the DOGE team with access to the payments data, Marko Elez, resigned after a Wall Street Journal report about racist messages he posted to social media. Musk said Friday that Elez would be rehired.
Asked Thursday about the incoming legal challenge, a White House spokesperson noted Democrats’ sweeping election losses in November and said they still have no plan.
“Instead of working to become a party that focuses on the will of the people, they are hell-bent on keeping their heads in the sand and gaslighting on the widely supported mission of DOGE,” Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary, said in a statement. “Slashing waste, fraud, and abuse, and becoming better stewards of the American taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars might be a crime to Democrats, but it’s not a crime in a court of law.”
Joining James in filing the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
James, who has made her name as one of the president’s biggest antagonists, sued Trump dozens of times during his first presidency and won a civil fraud case. He has condemned her in turn over the years as “incompetent.”
On Monday, two labor unions sued the Treasury Department, making similar claims about unauthorized or illegal access to the payment database. Both sides in that case agreed to an order limiting access to regular Treasury employees plus two temporary staffers working on the DOGE project, Elez and Tom Krause, until the unions’ request for longer-term relief is taken up by the court.
