President Donald Trump’s team just pulled the Supreme Court into its fight to keep the inner workings of Elon Musk’s DOGE under wraps, and the outcome could decide how much the public ever learns.
The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, to hear the Trump administration’s bid to withhold records from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The justices took up a Justice Department appeal in a lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a watchdog group seeking records from DOGE’s work in the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term. The administration asked the court to take the case. The justices did not decide who wins. They agreed to hear arguments over whether, and how far, discovery can proceed in CREW v. DOGE Service.
One question sits under all of it: whether DOGE is a federal agency covered by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). CREW says it is. The administration says DOGE was a presidential advisory body, and that the law does not reach it.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the appeals court’s ruling "intrudes into the autonomy and confidentiality of presidential advisors."
CREW’s lawyers answered by pointing at the president’s own words, writing that public records, including Trump’s statements, show DOGE was “wielding enormous independent authority across the federal government.”
What the Justices Blocked in 2025
This is the court’s second time in the case. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled on April 15, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, that the case could move to discovery. He ruled for CREW and ordered the government to speed up its handling of the group’s records request. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with CREW as well.
The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal in May 2025. The justices paused the discovery orders on May 23, 2025. On June 6, 2025, the conservative majority found Cooper had ruled too broadly. Requests about what DOGE recommended, and whether agencies followed those recommendations, were “not appropriately tailored,” the court said.
CREW then trimmed its requests. The government objected anyway.
The Deposition the Administration Wants Stopped
The appeals court also cleared the way for CREW’s lawyers to take a sworn deposition of DOGE acting administrator Amy Gleason. The administration says the panel had no business allowing it, and that the judges brushed past the Supreme Court’s instruction to weigh separation-of-powers concerns while cutting into the independence and confidentiality of presidential advisers.
CREW says the appeals court did exactly what the Supreme Court told it to do. “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.”
A 1966 Law and a 2027 Ruling
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed FOIA into law in 1966. It gives the public the right to ask any federal agency for its records. Johnson said at the signing that he hoped the government would weigh national security, personal privacy and confidential deliberations against the benefit of a well-informed public.
Sara Creighton, an associate professor at Georgetown Law and the former deputy chief counsel at American Oversight, said the law was built on the belief that a democracy depends on citizens who know what their government is doing. Experts say the ruling could shape government transparency far beyond this one lawsuit.
DOGE, spearheaded by Musk, a former administration adviser, helped fire thousands of federal workers, canceled government funding and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). It drew a string of lawsuits in Trump’s early months back in office. Its operations have since dwindled.
A ruling is due by the end of the term, in late June or early July 2027. When the justices will hear arguments is not yet clear.
The fight started with a single piece of paper. CREW filed its FOIA request on Jan. 24, 2025, asking for a picture of how DOGE was structured and what it was telling other agencies. The documents never came, and the group sued. Announcing the lawsuit on Feb. 20, 2025, CREW President Noah Bookbinder said 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 that it does.