In an effort to slash government spending, President Trump has asked the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, to lead his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In turn, Musk and his team have spent the first few weeks of Trump’s second term waging a largely unchecked war on the federal bureaucracy — an onslaught that was finally challenged Thursday when a dozen states announced they would sue to block DOGE's access to government payment systems containing Americans' personal data.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday by America’s largest federation of labor unions says that Musk’s DOGE will imminently infiltrate the Department of Labor and that a court should halt this process, noting that DOGE has no legal standing to make operational decisions at the agency.