Anne Laurie

Hollander’s scathing, 137-page order was the latest court ruling preventing DOGE, which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, from sifting through databases of federal agencies because of privacy concerns. Other federal judges have ruled that the Treasury and Education departments cannot share sensitive data with Musk’s team.

But DOGE’s activities at Social Security have drawn particular scrutiny because of its role as the government’s central hub for Americans’ most sensitive personal and financial information. The agency is the country’s largest benefit-paying entity, keeping data on millions of individuals who interact with other federal agencies, including the IRS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Agriculture Department, as well as state unemployment offices. About 73 million retired and disabled Americans receive monthly benefits from Social Security…

Since the White House elevated him to the top acting job six weeks ago, Dudek has made major changes. A mid-level data analyst accused by several now-retired career leaders of improperly sharing information with DOGE, Dudek has moved to eliminate 7,000 staff roles, announced plans to close dozens of regional and field offices and has claimed that fraud is endemic to agency operations, despite numerous audits and studies over the years saying otherwise. Trump’s nominee to run the agency permanently, Frank Bisignano, is slated to appear at his Senate confirmation hearing next week…

And I’m sure we’re all shocked that Bisignano is best known as a dedicated job-eliminator and all-purpose Republican tool.
 
Interesting thread on Activist Judges from Angus Johnson:

I get the impression—and this letter from Judge Hollander in the SSA DOGE case helped to crystalize it—that the federal bench is developing new procedural mechanisms for dealing with the Trump admin. It bodes well, I think. (Quick thread.)

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— Angus Johnston (@angus.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 4:54 PM

In this letter, issued in response to media hits by Trump’s acting SSA director, in which he stoked fear about SocSec checks getting delays, Hollander does seven interesting things in the course of three quick paragraphs:

She (1) acts on her own initiative, without waiting for the admin to bring an issue to her formally, (2) issues a detailed, specific clarification of her previous rulings, (3) slaps down misinformation propagated in the media, (4) calms public fears of government disruption…

…(5) warns the admin against specific future bad acts, (6) instructs the admin how to get further clarification, and (7) makes explicit that this is a binding Order.

That’s a lot for three paragraphs!…

None of this is a solution for everything—you still have to get the kids to brush their teeth, and figure out consequences if they don’t—but it speeds up the process, and makes imposing consequences a lot simpler and more straightforward.

And in the case of the Trump admin, it protects the courts from the kinds of reflexive low-grade bad-faith bullshit that most lawyers in or out of government would never pull with a federal judge, but which Trump’s minions revel in.

A principle of organizing is that you want to go outside your target’s experience—it confuses them and slows them down.

Trump II has benefited mightily in the last few months from going outside our collective national experience. But that advantage may be weakening, in the courts and elsewhere...

Another way of thinking about this is that Trump’s lawyers have been rampaging through the courts these last few weeks like smallpox in an immunologically naive population.

But judges who are interacting with them are developing immunity, and perhaps some basic vaccines.