A federal judge ruled Monday night that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency must open its records to the public under federal law.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the DOGE office has so much power and “unusual secrecy” that its internal documents should be urgently released under the Freedom of Information Act.
“The authority exercised by USDS across the federal government and the dramatic cuts it has apparently made with no congressional input appear to be unprecedented,” Cooper wrote in his 37-page ruling, taking direct aim at Musk’s claim that the pseudo-agency is running transparently.
Cooper cited evidence that has come out in previous court cases as well as media reports about DOGE’s vast authority, contradicting the White House’s assertions that Musk is merely an adviser to the president. The office is moving quickly and giving shifting explanations on its leadership, Cooper said, demanding that DOGE release its records on a “rolling” basis within weeks.
“The rapid pace of [DOGE’s] actions, in turn, requires the quick release of information about its structure and activities,” Cooper wrote. “That is especially so given the secrecy with which DOGE has operated.”
The ruling is a big blow for Musk and DOGE, which has engaged in a mass purge of federal employees across multiple agencies without regard to their critical jobs. These include bird flu experts and people who work on the country’s nuclear arsenal, and the government has scrambled to rehire some of them. Monday night’s ruling will undoubtedly be challenged by the Trump administration, but for now, at least, Musk and Trump are being held to some measure of accountability.
More on Trump-Musk legal setbacks:
Donald Trump is celebrating the detention of Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, despite his being a green card holder.
The president boasted about Khalil’s arrest on his Truth Social account Monday afternoon, calling him “a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University,” and warned, “This is the first arrest of many to come.”
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump posted. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country—never to return again.”
Last week, Trump threatened to pull funding from schools that allow “illegal protests” and added that “agitators” would be “imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.” Following this, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University for what it called “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
The president is making good on his threats and gloating about it, and the fact that Khalil is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin suggests that the administration’s first targets may be ethnically motivated. Plus, it overlaps with Trump’s goal of mass deportations of immigrants, only in this case, the president is including legal immigrants in this attack on the First Amendment. Will Democrats stand up and demand free speech protections, or will they oppose pro-Palestinian protesters?
