Yves here. Trump continues to suffer legal setbacks. The question is the degree to which he can keep defying the courts, as he has seemed determined to do with deportations. With that apparatus, Trump looks to have solid control over the military, Federal Marshals, and the FBI, so he appears able to continue to thump his nose at orders. It’s not clear that DOGE has yet achieved the same level of control across the many departments and agencies it has targeted.
Note that judges can impose civil contempt penalties. That remarkably can include incarceration, but per the Federal Marshals point above, a judge would not succeed, as he could normally, in ordering the gens d’armes in court to haul away the contempt perp. However, one interview of a judge indicated that the penalties are a maximum of $.1000 a day, as with criminal contempt, but can be set to double every day the defiance continues. From a Politico interview with former Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin:
Assuming that the judge — Judge Boasberg or any other judge for that matter — eventually concludes that the government deliberately violated a court order, what are the judge’s options?
I can tell you that every former judge I know has been asked this question by somebody in the media, including me. I think the only real option is civil contempt….
You could also sanction the person, and that’s always interesting, because you could have fines that double every day, so it can get serious fast. I don’t know how good at math you are, but a $1,000 fine doubling every day can quickly add up to real money — not for the United States government, but for an individual. If somebody was individually sanctioned, that adds up…
By Jessica Corbett. Originally published at Common Dreams
Defenders of the Social Security Administration celebrated a federal judge’s Thursday order blocking U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from access to millions of Americans’ SSA records.
“The DOGE team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack,” wrote Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander, who issued a temporary restraining order.
In her 137-page opinion, Hollander explained that “to facilitate the expedition, SSA provided members of the SSA DOGE team with unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, drivers’ license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses.”
“Yet, defendants, with so-called experts on the DOGE team, never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government,” noted the appointee of former President Barack Obama.
“Indeed, the government has not even attempted to explain why a more tailored, measured, titrated approach is not suitable to the task. Instead, the government simply repeats its incantation of a need to modernize the system and uncover fraud. Its method of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer,” asserted the judge, concluding that “plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that such action is arbitrary and capricious,” and violates the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Thank you to @AFSCME, @ActiveRetirees, and @AFTunion for standing up to Musk in court to protect Americans’ privacy.
Today is a big step forward, but we can’t take our eye off the ball. Elon Musk must come before Congress to tell us what he plans to do. He is not above the law! https://t.co/z5qbDWTUNk
— Rep. John Larson (@RepJohnLarson) March 20, 2025
The plaintiffs in this case are three unions—the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Alliance for Retired Americans, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—represented by Democracy Forward. In addition to DOGE, they sued the SSA and its acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, over the “data grab.”
“This is a major win for working people and retirees across the country,” AFSCME president Lee Saunders said of the Thursday order. “The court saw that Elon Musk and his unqualified lackeys present a grave danger to Social Security and have illegally accessed the data of millions of Americans. This decision will not only force them to delete any data they have currently saved, but it will also block them from further sharing, accessing, or disclosing our Social Security information.”
AFT president Randi Weingarten also welcomed the development, saying that “no one filed for Social Security believing their personal assets would be appropriated by a billionaire who attacks Social Security as a ‘Ponzi scheme.’ Americans must be allowed to retire with dignity and grace without having to worry about Elon Musk jeopardizing their savings.”
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward—which is involved with multiple court battles challenging the Trump administration’s sweeping assault on the federal government—pledged Thursday that “our team will continue its legal efforts to ensure that this data remains protected and that those responsible are held accountable.”
Judges who have ruled against Trump and Musk’s agenda have faced threats of violence and impeachment.
WATCH: Social Security Works President Nancy Altman discusses Elon Musk's Social Security cuts with NBC News’ Liz Kreutz @LizKreutzNews @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/f6yPfUvrb1
— Social Security Works (@SSWorks) March 20, 2025
While the Musk-led entity’s attempt to gut the federal government has sparked various legal fights, “this ruling is the first time a federal court has explicitly mandated that Musk and DOGE delete unlawfully obtained data,” according to Democracy Forward.
Critics of the administration’s attempt to “sabotage” the SSA—which includes cutting phone services, laying off workers, shutting down offices, and stealing seniors’ earned benefits—warn that Trump and Musk are pushing for privatization.
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As you point out in your intro, I think there is a major difference between available court powers and what they can really do. As Trump threatens everything he doesn’t like, including Roberts overnight, he has effectively won and will get his way.
An interesting thought, as they are successfully threatening about everything with withholding monies, what stops them from doing the same for the parts of the Judiciary they don’t like (e.g., an ‘unfriendly’ Circuit Court)? It has worked with universities, corporations, etc.
In my opinion we are well over the red line and are being ruled, indiscriminately, by an autocrat. There nothing I can think of that will stop him, and meanwhile the MSM sane washes what is happening.
PS the only thing standing between my canceling my NY Times subscription, which I basically don’t read anymore, and who has silenced too many voices that appear critical of Trump, is I enjoy the X-word puzzle. Many in my crowd say the same.
So for the price of an X-word puzzle, you and many in your crowd will keep paying the NyTimes to sanewash the Trump regime?
You can buy books of NYT crossword puzzles : by day, e.g. Monday puzzles, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. Hundreds per book. If that’s your cup of coffee. For me they’re spoiled by too many clues of the sort Most Valued Player Superbowl XXX, state bird of Maine, state flower of Utah, &c. Same with the London Times, if that’s your cup of tea : too many like Coach of Manchester FC 1979-1985, Market Town on the M6, Wimbledon doubles champ 1999, &c.
I believe there my be a typo as to the civil penalty in the introduction… it appears as $.1000 which is ten cents— later is piece it indicates a fine of $1,000.00. It appears the one-thousand-dollars is the penalty?
Open defiance of a court order–and not pursuing appeal, will be the Moment of Constitutional crisis.
No question in my mind that Trump and his off-book militias are standing by and standing ready, spoiling for a fight.
I hope it does not come to gun-play and open shooting war. The pearl-clutching opposition is neither well-armed, proficient in arms use, and mostly not interested in brutish war as opposed to enforcing a civil implementation of the rule of law. Precarity- it ain’t all about wages and work!
Here is a very distressing assessment from our 2024 Democrat Governor candidate and former gun manufacturing executive Ryan Busse:
https://ryandbusse.substack.com/p/midterms-or-shock-troops-in-2026
Starting at 10 cents instead of $1000 just means that it takes an extra 2 weeks for it to become “real money”. Ah, the power of exponential growth!
(And my first ever NC comment.)
How does Musk plan to use all this private and personal information he has gleaned? Sell it? Use it in the unholy alliance of oligarch private enterprise x big brother government surveillance purposes?
Any which way he feels like. Unless he himself is destroyed by boycotts and cancellations all over the world.
The fine of $1000 per day and doubling every day afterward (1+2+4+8…) arrives at $1,024,000 in ten days. The 11th day is double that…real money!!
In my gambling daze, sometimes i’d try and let a $2 blackjack bet ride and if you win 9 hands in a row, that’s over a grandido.
My best though was only 7 in a row, only good for $256 before I lost the next hand.
https://archive.ph/k9efu
Trump Admin Threatens to Stop Social Security If DOGE Can’t Have Personal Data
Trump’s interim Social Security chief says he wants to turn off the program if Musk and DOGE can’t access Americans’ most sensitive data
If you think Musk’s Tesla products are seeing retribution, wait until Dedek infuriates 100 million SSA pensioners!
Probably around 67 million people plus their dependents, but who’s counting? It still greater than the six western most of the lower 48 states and the I assume that I could add Hawaii and Alaska to that. That is eight states. That is a lot of people to enrage.
It looks like Dudek has backed down for now:
I wonder how they think people are going to react to not paying rent, house payments, buying food and paying for utilities. I also saved money in a 401k plan besides paying into social security for 40 years. That 401k went poof! In 2008 when a 401k that my husband and I had little control over how the money was invested was tanked by the banks. We lost half of our life savings. I don’t remember Congress or Obama caring too much. Now Congress is sitting back and allowing a billionaire to decimate social security. I think it’s time we turned him loose on their pension system.
Everybody can’t boycott everything. Some people can boycott some things.
How should donors to Trump be ranked in terms of boycott priority? Those which can be boycotted most easily? Those whose destruction through successful extermicott would torture and terrorise the “business” community” into engineering the removal of Trump from office?
Since everybody can’t do everything, which few most painful and destructive things should “everybody” focus on doing?
Exterminating every last dollar of Musk’s money seems like the very first ‘no-brainer’ to focus on.
Exterminating every branch and facet of Big Murdoch Media would be the second no-brainer to focus on. Hard to achieve, I know. Perhaps a years-long boycott of every Murdoch advertiser to dry up and exterminate Murdoch’s advertiser revenue streams?
And then making years-long changes to lifetime-consumption-patterns by as many millions of people as possible so as to destroy the most pro-Republican businesses and sectors would be the next no-brainer after that. It would be hard to do. What percent of totality of “defunding the enemy” would make the enemy weak enough to defeat?
And it occurs to me that the “other 2nd no-brainer” to focus on would be the other digital tech-bro companies which also support Musk(trump) plus also including Jeff Bezos Amazon.
One billion social media addicts are not going to stop using social media. Because they are addicts.
But what if one billion social media addicts could ( and maybe even would) all boycott everything that is advertised on social media? And keep boycotting it until nothing is advertised on social media? That would at least reduce revenue streams to social media. ( And search engine media too. If every advertiser on every search engine found themselves utterly boycotted till they stopped advertising, big search engine media would also lose revenue streams and would have to increase user fees. Would users pay those increased fees if the knew for a fact that exterminating advertising from the search engine media would reduce the power of the search engine media?
Not sure I agree with the position that Trump has the military behind him, at least not to the degree he could get them to do something directly illegal. The recent immigrant deportation case is a poor litmus test for how far the military would go for Trump.
It may very well be true he has military backing to kingship levels, but so far we have no evidence of such support.
So it seems to becoming clear that if the Marshalls and DOJ thumb their noses at judges, there is no way to enforce any judges ruling. I doubt those fines will work, but maybe they will. Seems like a pretty thin thread to me. The only way left is impeachment, and how likely is this with the current structure of Congress? I suspect that unlike with Nixon, when the Republicans side with the Constitution, today the MAGA party is with Trump.
And of course, what happens then, once it becomes clear to millions that the judicial part of government has been nullified? Then, very likely, millions will go into the streets. And THEN Trump will declare martial law, which was and is probably the basic plan from the beginning.
Game over.
Only if the military backs the order, which we’ve seen no evidence they will do so.
And the military will have to get involved because I feel confident states with democratic governors will call out their national guard to prevent what they will see as illegal orders/actions.
The US is too big and bureaucratic for marital law to happen that easily.
It depends on if the military remains cohesive. Let a few units split off and you have the makings of a possible low level Civil War.
My main hope is that the military honours its pledge to support the Constitution, not any individual or ideological group.
Which may be why Hegseth is trying to make the military as hostile as possible to non-hetero non White Power men. He wants to make the Armed Forces into an Armed-Forces-sized set of White Power militias as soon as he can. If he and Trump feel they have come close enough to that goal to take the chance, then they would declare Martial Law.
I have read rumors that Trump intends to declare Martial Law this April 20th, in honor of Adolf Hitler’s birthday. But those are just rumors.
Certainly will happen before mid-term elections…
A good point, but it would take YEARS to do what that idiot Hegseth wants to do. The US military is what, 60% black, I think? And the vast majority of the military is from the working class, black and white. There is a relationship between the Dog and the Wolf that simps like Heggie and Musk and Trump don’t think about.
I am not a lawyer so my understanding here is limited (and I would appreciate being set straight if I am misunderstanding this) but there may be another avenue. With regards to civil contempt, in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 4.1. Serving Other Process states (bold mine):
So it may be possible for the courts to “deputize” someone to carry out their orders if the U.S. Marshals defy them.
Trump Admin Threatens to Stop Social Security If DOGE Can’t Have Personal Data https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-musk-stop-social-security-doge-data-1235300785/
Social Security Says DOGE Ruling Could Force Agency to Shut Down https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-20/social-security-says-doge-ruling-could-force-agency-to-shut-down
Can’t access these articles because they’re paywalled but looks like Dudek is threatening to shut down the whole system if ‘lil Elon (“Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time”) and his DOGEbags don’t get their way.
We really are getting ready to find out if Social Security is a “Third Rail” for American politics.
Shut down the Social Security Administration for a few months and America will have its own ‘Colour Revolution,’ a Grey one.
Stay safe. Stack deep.
The word ” Color Revolution” has been transformed into a left-wing slur used against any group of people who are unhappy about something in a country. The slur is intended to mean that the people in question could not possibly be self-agently self-motivated to try revolting.
“Color Revolution” as a slur is now uttered in the same spirit as the White Citizens Councils using the slur “Outside Agitators” against the Civil Rights revolution people.
So lets find something other that “Color Revolution” to call a gray olds revolt if it happens. How about bringing back the name Gray Panthers? As in ” Gray Panther Revolt”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Panthers
Considering that between the various categories of people being paid roughly 20% of Americans are being paid something interfering with Social Security is going to be politically disastrous. I know that the oligarchs especially in private equity really want a cut of the 1.2 trillion dollars paid out each year, but almost everyone using sense doesn’t want it interrupted. When you add the incoming recession, that is even more clear. But common sense is running short isn’t?
Nicely said. The oldsters can be frightening.
I was thinking about the consequences if Mr Dudek carries out his threat to shut down Social Security for a couple of Months.
Not less than 10MM older Americans would no longer be able to pay their rent or buy food, and at least 30% of them own guns.
So, 3MM people with Guns who literally have nothing to lose because they are homeless and starving, I expect they will blame Mr Dudek personally for their situation.
They will blame Trump and Musk as well, but Dudek is the one who is the public face of this cruelty.
And Mr Market will have a sad even though the funeral industry will have a lot more business.
Due to my medical issues I would be dead in a matter of weeks if I were living on the streets, so would a lot of the newly homeless.
Will the feds pay for the refrigerator trucks?
Asking for a friend.
To be clear I think Judge Boasberg should call Dudek’s bluff, while making it clear that if he carries through with his threat he will not only have tens of Millions of Americans enraged with him, Mr Market will also be very unhappy with him.
Which it will be,very unhappy indeed.
Here’s another populist oligarch weighing in: ‘At one point in the wide-ranging, nearly two-hour conversation, Lutnick also said that if Social Security “didn’t send out their checks this month,” his “mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain.”
“She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining,” the billionaire businessman said.’
So, if people don’t get their deposits they’re fraudsters if they complain. Right. Also, do you think his mother-in-law needs it? He’s a billionaire.
Heh. We know unpunished fraud is rampant on Wall Street. These Wall Street denizens peopling the Trump government seem to believe that everyone is as dishonest as they are.
Is that cumulative, or lump sum? On day one I owe $1,000; on day two do I owe $1,000*2 = $2,000 or $1,000 + $2,000 = $3,000?
Good luck to gray panthers finding an open voting place or a drop box
Or trying to mail in a ballot with the post office closed down. And there
Will be an army of proud boys offering to help those lost voters find a
Toilet while waiting to vote