President Donald Trump’s lawyers have pulled the nation’s highest court into a fight to keep the inner workings of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting operation under wraps, and the outcome could decide how much the public ever learns.
The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, to hear the Trump administration’s bid to withhold records from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), taking up a Justice Department appeal in a lawsuit brought by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). CREW is seeking records from DOGE’s work during the early days of Trump’s second term, and the administration asked the court to step in.
The justices made no decision on who wins. Their arguments will cover whether, and how far, discovery can proceed in CREW v. DOGE Service.
A Presidential Adviser or an Agency
Everything turns on one question: is DOGE a federal agency covered by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)? CREW says it is. The administration counters that DOGE was a presidential advisory body and that the law does not reach it.
The appeals court’s ruling, in the view of Solicitor General D. John Sauer, “intrudes into the autonomy and confidentiality of presidential advisors.”
The president’s own words supplied the response from CREW’s lawyers. Public records, including Trump’s statements, show that DOGE was “wielding enormous independent authority across the federal government,” they wrote.
“Not Appropriately Tailored,” the Justices Said
This is the second time the case has reached the court. Sitting in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Christopher Cooper found on April 15, 2025, that discovery could go forward, siding with CREW. He also ordered the government to speed up its handling of the group’s records request.
CREW also prevailed before a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal in May 2025, and the justices paused the discovery orders on May 23, 2025.
The conservative majority found on June 6, 2025, that Cooper had ruled too broadly. The requests at issue then sought what DOGE recommended and whether agencies followed those recommendations — “not appropriately tailored,” the court said.
The Deposition the Administration Wants Blocked
CREW trimmed its requests after that ruling, and the government objected anyway. DOGE acting administrator Amy Gleason could then be put under oath by CREW’s lawyers, the appeals court decided.
That deposition, the administration argues, was never the panel’s to allow. The judges also brushed past the Supreme Court’s instruction to weigh separation-of-powers concerns, it says, while cutting into the independence and confidentiality of presidential advisers.
The appeals court followed the Supreme Court’s instruction precisely, CREW says. “The lower courts have uniformly ruled that CREW is entitled to discovery in this case,” Nikhel Sus, CREW’s chief counsel, told Politico. “We will continue to pursue transparency for the American people.”
The justices must rule by the end of the term, in late June or early July 2027. No date has been set yet for arguments. Experts say the ruling could shape government transparency far beyond this one lawsuit.
The Records That Never Came
Musk, a former administration adviser, spearheaded DOGE. The operation helped fire thousands of federal workers, canceled government funding and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), drawing a string of lawsuits during Trump’s early months back in office. Its operations have dwindled since.
The fight began with a FOIA request CREW filed on Jan. 24, 2025. The group wanted a picture of how DOGE was structured and what it was telling other agencies. No documents arrived, so CREW sued. The group announced the lawsuit on Feb. 20, 2025, and the U.S. DOGE Service and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) were behaving as though records law did not apply to them — and it does, then-CREW President Noah Bookbinder said.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed FOIA into law in 1966, giving the public the right to ask any federal agency for its records. National security, personal privacy and confidential deliberations should be weighed against the benefit of a well-informed public, Johnson said at the signing, expressing his hope that the government would do so. Sara Creighton, an associate professor at Georgetown Law and the former deputy chief counsel at American Oversight, traced the law to a core belief: a democracy depends on citizens who know what their government is doing.