A federal judge on Friday decided not to immediately block the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) access to U.S. Labor Department systems.
Labor unions sued to stop the department’s access to the systems, largely over DOGE chairman Elon Musk’s involvement, citing a conflict of interest.
U.S. District Judge John Bates expressed concerns over DOGE’s access, but said the unions failed to provide evidence of any legal injury, a Fox News report outlines.
“Although the court harbors concerns about defendants’ alleged conduct, it must deny plaintiffs’ motion at this time,” Bates wrote in his decision.
The AFL-CIO, a union representing around 800,000 government workers, called the ruling “a setback, but not a defeat.” The union claims it would be improper to give DOGE staffers access to information about investigations into Musk’s companies and his competitors.
President Donald Trump was asked generally about a potential conflicts of interest regarding Musk, and indicated he was unconcerned.
“If there’s a conflict, we won’t let him get near it,” Trump told the press last week. “But he does have a good natural instinct. He’s got a team of very talented people. We’re trying to shrink the government and he can probably shrink it more than anybody else, if not better.”
Musk has become the subject of countless Democrat attacks since exposing waste in the federal government. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NYC), for example, has said that Musk is “not smart” and “lacks intelligence” to properly find waste from the federal government. Other prominent Democrats have argued that no one “elected” a billionaire to oversee government waste.
Vice President JD Vance addressed the criticism online, writing, “‘No one voted for Elon Musk.’ (They did however vote for Donald Trump who promised repeatedly to have Elon Musk root out wasteful spending in our government.)”
“No one voted for Elon Musk.” (They did however vote for Donald Trump who promised repeatedly to have Elon Musk root out wasteful spending in our government.)
— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 5, 2025
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt similarly took on Democrats’ more incendiary attacks.
“President Trump was elected with a mandate by the American People to make this government more efficient,” she told reporters on Wednesday. “He campaigned across this country with Elon Musk, vowing that Elon was going to head up the Department of Government Efficiency, and the two of them, with a great team around them, were going to look at the receipts of this federal government and ensure it’s accountable to American taxpayers. That’s all that is happening here.”
“If you heard that type of violence-inciting rhetoric from our side of the aisle, from Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, I think there would be a lot more outrage in this room today.”@PressSec addresses Democrat leaders’ outrage over DOGE. pic.twitter.com/hsFyL2PnyF
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) February 5, 2025
Polling conducted by McLaughlin and Associates, provided to The Daily Wire, shows that an overwhelming number of Americans are on board with DOGE’s mission to cut reckless government spending. About four out of five voters agreed that the U.S. government should “rein in Washington’s reckless borrowing and spending” to tamp down inflation, the poll found.