Lawfare Archive: DOGE’s Attack on the Treasury Department

The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition · Jun 20, 2026 · 58m

From February 21, 2025: Before January, most Americans had probably never heard of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), a Treasury Department agency that distributes payments from the federal government. But over the last month, this corner of government has appeared again and again in the headlines, as aides working with Elon Musk’s quasi-governmental DOGE initiative successfully gained access to BFS’s payment systems. After a flurry of litigation, a temporary restraining order now bars these aides from accessing data—but the crisis is not over. It’s still not clear precisely what…