Left-leaning activist groups have often teamed up with left-leaning judges to block or constrain various aspects of President Donald Trump's policy agenda, including the mission of the Department of Government Efficiency to root out and eliminate examples of waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending.

A district judge previously ordered DOGE to publicly disclose certain data and communications under the Freedom of Information Act, but U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts just temporarily paused that order, Newsmax reported.

At issue here is whether DOGE is a federal agency fully subject to FOIA requests or a mere presidential advisory body generally exempt from the disclosure requirements.

Judge ordered DOGE to submit to FOIA request

President Trump issued a Day One executive order to establish DOGE and its fiscal mission, but, unsurprisingly, a FOIA lawsuit was filed against DOGE just days later by the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington watchdog organization, according to SCOTUSblog.

The CREW lawsuit insisted that DOGE was a federal agency subject to FOIA and demanded that DOGE expeditiously turn over reams of certain communications and documents about its leadership and mission.

In February, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, ruled in favor of CREW and ordered DOGE to hand over the requested information to the watchdog group, in large part because DOGE "wields shockingly broad power" and has not been fully transparent with the public about what it is doing.

The Trump administration asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to place that order on hold, but the appellate panel declined to do so.

Order stayed for now

According to SCOTUSblog, the Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Wednesday with an emergency request to intervene in the case, largely on the argument that DOGE is not an actual federal agency subject to FOIA but instead is an advisory body to the president that is exempt from FOIA's requirements.

The administration further insisted that allowing the lower court to force DOGE to turn over to CREW the requested information "clearly violates the separation of powers," and would "significantly distract" DOGE from its president-assigned "mission of identifying and eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government."

Though CREW strongly disagreed with that assessment in its filed response, Chief Justice Roberts appeared to side with the administration, at least for now.

Roberts issued an administrative stay that effectively pauses Judge Cooper's order temporarily while the high court further considers DOGE's request for intervention.

DOGE says it has saved around $170 billion

As noted, DOGE was tasked with improving the efficiency of the government by finding and eliminating examples of wasteful, fraudulent, or abusive federal spending, and though that mission seems to have fairly broad public support, it has been maligned as highly controversial and even damaging by Democrats and the media.

Nevertheless, DOGE has been hard at work on its assigned task, and as of mid-May, the advisory body claims to have identified and saved upwards of $170 billion, which equates to nearly $1,056 in savings per individual taxpayer.

Those savings have come via a "Combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions."