At President Donald Trump's direction, tech billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team have attempted to scour various federal departments and agencies for examples of waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars to be cut, but have increasingly been blocked from doing so by oppositional lawsuits.

On Friday, a federal judge in New York granted a request by 19 Democratic state attorneys general for a preliminary injunction to block Musk and DOGE from accessing the U.S. Treasury Department's central payment system, Fox News reported.

However, the judge did not go quite as far with the order as the blue state AGs had wanted and provided time for the Trump administration to address and mitigate the concerns that led to the injunction to lift the block on DOGE.

Preliminary injunction granted

In a 64-page decision released on Friday, U.S. District Judge Jeanette Vargas, a Biden appointee, announced that she'd granted the request from the coalition of 19 Democratic state AGs for a preliminary injunction against the DOGE team at the Treasury Department.

"The preliminary injunction substantially tracks the terms of the temporary restraining order ('TRO') that is presently in place, in that it bars the Treasury Department from granting access to any member of the DOGE team within the Treasury Department to any payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees," Vargas wrote.

"But Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that they are entitled to the broad and sweeping relief they seek, which would far exceed the scope of the present TRO to prohibit members of the DOGE team from developing automated (or even manual) processes to halt payments coming through Treasury Department payment systems," she continued.

"The remedy in this case must be narrowly tailored to redress the specific harm asserted by the Plaintiffs: the threatened disclosure of the States’ sensitive bank information contained in the Treasury Department’s payment systems," the judge noted. "Plaintiffs’ proposed preliminary injunction order is anything but narrow."

"Additionally, the duration of the preliminary injunction also has the potential to be limited in scope. The Court is providing Defendants with an opportunity to promptly cure the procedural defects relating to the protection of sensitive and confidential information that the Court has identified in this Opinion," she added. "Should Defendants do so, the Court will determine whether termination or modification of the preliminary injunction is warranted."

Republican state AGs opposed the injunction

Courthouse News reported that the coalition of Democratic state AGs successfully convinced the federal judge that DOGE having access to the U.S. Treasury's central payment system presented an unacceptable risk of harm to the states' confidential information and sensitive data.

The federal government countered otherwise, of course, as did a coaltion of Republican state AGs who filed a brief in support of the administration and argued that the court's block on DOGE was a violation of the separation of powers doctrine as well as the president's constitutional authority.

"Ultimately, plaintiffs here are upset because one set of bureaucrats in the executive branch have access to data that they believe only other bureaucrats in the executive branch should have access to," the GOP AGs quipped in their filing.

NY AG James celebrates

The coalition of Democratic state AGs was led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, and she was quick to celebrate the legal win in a statement that declared, "Giving the world’s richest man unauthorized access to our nation’s central payment system, and our most sensitive personal information, puts all Americans -- and the essential funds they depend on -- at risk."

"With this illegal power grab, Musk and DOGE are trying to wipe out vital programs and services -- from health care to public safety to education -- that our communities need," she claimed. "I led a coalition of attorneys general to put a stop to this lawlessness, and a federal court has yet again blocked their access to our confidential information."

"Today we won a court order stopping unauthorized, unelected, and unvetted individuals like Elon Musk from accessing our nation’s most sensitive financial information," James added. "We will continue to fight to defend the rule of law and protect all Americans from this administration’s destruction."