【中美创新时报2025 年 2 月 8 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）周六早些时候，一名联邦法官暂时限制伊隆·马斯克的政府效率计划访问财政部的支付和数据系统，称存在“不可挽回的损害”的风险。该命令是对 19 名总检察长提起的诉讼的回应，这些诉讼指控总统未能忠实执行国家法律，因为他允许 DOGE 仔细检查联邦计算机系统。《纽约时报》记者Hurubie Meko 和 Qasim Nauman对此作了下述详细报道。
美国地区法官保罗·恩格尔迈耶 (Paul A. Engelmayer) 在紧急命令中表示，特朗普政府的新政策允许政治任命者和“特殊政府雇员”访问这些系统，其中包含银行详细信息等高度敏感的信息，这增加了泄密的风险，也增加了系统比以前更容易受到黑客攻击的风险。
恩格尔迈耶法官下令，自 1 月 20 日起被授予访问系统权限的任何此类官员“销毁从财政部记录和系统下载的所有材料副本”。他还限制特朗普政府授予这些类别的官员访问权限。
恩格尔迈耶法官表示，被告的代表——特朗普总统、财政部长斯科特·贝森特和财政部——必须在 2 月 14 日出现在法官珍妮特·巴尔加斯 (Jeannette A. Vargas) 面前，后者将长期负责此案。
这种情况可能对美国的法治构成根本考验。如果政府不遵守紧急命令，目前还不清楚该命令将如何执行。宪法规定，总统“应注意忠实执行法律”，但法院很少受到无视命令的首席执行官的考验。
联邦官员有时会以拖延或勉强遵守的方式应对不利的决定。公然违抗的情况极为罕见。根据 2018 年发表的《哈佛法律评论》文章，自 1865 年以来，没有出现过“总统公然违抗法院命令”的明显例子。
周六的命令是对纽约莱蒂蒂亚·詹姆斯和其他 18 名民主党州检察长周五提起的诉讼的回应，他们指控特朗普让马斯克运行政府计算机系统时，他违反了宪法规定的保护措施，并且“未能忠实执行国会制定的法律”。
亚利桑那州、加利福尼亚州、科罗拉多州、康涅狄格州、特拉华州、夏威夷州、伊利诺伊州、缅因州、马里兰州、马萨诸塞州、明尼苏达州、内华达州、新泽西州、北卡罗来纳州、俄勒冈州、罗德岛州、佛蒙特州和威斯康星州的总检察长也加入了诉讼。
他们表示，总统已将联邦政府最敏感信息的“几乎不受限制的访问权限”授予了马斯克手下的年轻助手，马斯克负责管理政府称为政府效率部（DOGE）的项目。
诉讼称，尽管该组织的任务是削减成本，但其成员“试图访问政府数据，以支持阻止联邦资金流向某些不受欢迎的受益者的举措”。诉讼称，马斯克已公开表示他打算“不加警告地鲁莽冻结联邦资金流”，并指出他最近几天在社交媒体上的帖子。
詹姆斯女士在周六自己的社交媒体帖子中重申，削减成本团队成员“必须销毁他们获得的所有记录”，并补充说：“我之前说过，现在我再说一遍：没有人可以凌驾于法律之上，”她写道。
新泽西州总检察长马修·普拉特金 (Matthew J. Platkin) 在周六的帖子中表示，这项禁令意味着“世界首富已被禁止窃取您的数据。”
周六上午，记者未能立即联系到白宫新闻官。
白宫发言人哈里森·菲尔兹 (Harrison Fields) 在周六的一份声明中称这些诉讼“毫无意义”，并表示它们“就像孩子们把意大利面扔到墙上，看看它是否会粘住一样。”
“哗众取宠的政府效率充分说明了那些宁愿用法律手段推迟急需的变革，也不愿与特朗普政府合作，消除政府的浪费、欺诈和滥用的人，”他说。“这位激进的法官已经诉诸将参议院确认的财政部长拒之门外。”
尽管法院命令要求立即停止马斯克员工访问财政部的支付系统，但目前尚不清楚他们何时或是否会完全遵守。也不清楚总检察长将如何监督政府的行动。
在之前的一次行动中，23 名总检察长就特朗普冻结联邦拨款提起诉讼，并于 1 月 31 日获得暂时中止，法官命令政府停止扣留资金。然而，周五，该联盟再次向法官上诉，称资金仍被扣留在各州、受赠人和项目中。
过去几年，特朗普在法庭上几乎没有取得成功。调查发现，特朗普的第一届政府在针对其机构行为的法律挑战中，只有约 23% 成功，而前几届政府的胜诉率约为 70%。
但特朗普的新任期已经与众不同。
自上个月就职以来，特朗普政府一直采取“震慑”策略，新政策和新行动以惊人的速度出台。特朗普上任第一天就赦免了 2021 年 1 月 6 日袭击国会大厦的暴徒。他签署了数十项行政命令，退出国际协议，甚至试图担任华盛顿约翰·肯尼迪表演艺术中心主席。
这种激进的做法开始受到针对一系列问题的数十起诉讼的考验，但法律体系约束政府的能力仍不确定。
哥伦比亚大学法学院教授、前曼哈顿联邦检察官丹尼尔·C·里奇曼 (Daniel C. Richman) 表示，如果联邦官员未能遵守周六限制 DOGE 的命令，法官可能会判他们藐视法庭。他说，法院过去曾这样做过，“尽管很少”。
“藐视法庭的指控可能伴随着罚款，罚款更有可能是针对官员而不是政府本身，甚至可能被判入狱，”里奇曼先生说。
2002 年，内政部长盖尔·A·诺顿 (Gale A. Norton) 因未能解决该部门对美国印第安人土地上赚取的数十亿美元特许权使用费的管理问题而被判藐视法庭。次年，联邦上诉法院裁定，她不能因任职前存在的问题而被判藐视法庭罪。
耶鲁大学法学院教授尼古拉斯·帕里洛 (Nicholas Parrillo) 在 2018 年《哈佛法律评论》文章中写道，尽管藐视法庭的裁决“没有制裁，但仍具有羞辱效果”，这往往足以促使官员遵守规定。
然而，他写道，“党派分化加剧可能会严重分裂支持遵守规定的社区，以至于某一党派的成员拒绝承认对自己阵营成员的藐视法庭裁决的耻辱。”
自特朗普上个月上任以来，马斯克到目前为止一直没有受到约束。当 DOGE 首次将注意力转向财政部时，一位高级官员拒绝让成员进入，导致僵局。这位名叫大卫·莱布里克 (David Lebryk) 的官员被停职，然后突然退休。
马斯克的团队几乎立刻就获得了政府最基本的计算机数据的访问权限，包括美国财政部的支付系统，该系统用于支付包括社会保障福利、退伍军人福利和联邦雇员工资在内的资金。
诉讼称，该系统负责处理美国政府上财年支出约 6.75 万亿美元的约 90% 的支出，并直接向各州人民和州政府支付资金。
诉讼称，在特朗普上个月上任之前，只有少数拥有安全许可的职业公务员获得了访问权限。但根据文件，马斯克的努力已经中断了联邦政府对医疗诊所、幼儿园和气候计划的资助。
这笔钱已经由国会拨款。宪法赋予立法者决定政府支出的职责。
詹姆斯女士在一份声明中表示：“特朗普总统无权将美国人的私人信息泄露给他选择的任何人，他也不能削减国会批准的联邦支付。马斯克和 DOGE 无权访问美国人的私人信息和我们国家的一些最敏感的数据。”
自特朗普上个月上任以来，该案件是众多抵制特朗普激进行动的案件之一。
本周，三家工会起诉了美国人事管理办公室（政府的人力资源部门），以阻止劝说大约 200 万联邦雇员辞职的努力。
两组匿名的联邦调查局特工和雇员起诉特朗普政府，要求其不要公布参与 2021 年 1 月 6 日国会骚乱调查的人员身份。他们于周五赢得了一项命令，要求政府对他们的姓名保密。
总检察长对特朗普试图终止出生公民权的行政命令提出了质疑。本周，詹姆斯女士警告纽约的医院，遵守白宫旨在终止针对年轻人的性别肯定医疗服务的行政命令可能会违反州法律。
DOGE 的行动——强行通过联邦政府——让民主党立法者和联邦雇员感到困惑和担忧。
有了特朗普的授权，马斯克的权力似乎非常大：他的团队曾试图关闭美国国际开发署，这是国际援助的一个重要来源。周五，华盛顿的一名联邦法官下令暂停让 2,200 名美国国际开发署员工休假并迅速撤回驻海外员工的行动。
周五，特朗普表示，马斯克将把注意力转向五角大楼，该大楼与马斯克拥有的公司签订了数十亿美元的合同。
该联盟周五提起的诉讼的核心是马斯克对财政部的访问权限。财政部的系统是一些美国人最敏感信息的存储库，包括社会保障和银行账号，总检察长表示，这些信息将他们所在州的居民置于人身风险之中。
Nathan Willis 对本文亦有贡献。
题图：人们在财政部的柱子前举着标语。其中一个标语上写着：“没有人选举伊隆！”周二，在伊隆·马斯克的削减成本团队获得财政部支付系统的访问权限后，活动人士在财政部外抗议。图片来源：Jason Andrew 为《纽约时报》撰稿
附原英文报道：
Judge Halts Access to Treasury Payment Systems by Elon Musk’s Team
The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by 19 attorneys general accusing the president of failing to faithfully execute the nation’s laws when he let DOGE comb through federal computer systems.
People hold up signs in front of the columns of the Treasury Department. One sign reads: “Nobody Elected Elon!”
Activists protested outside the Treasury Department on Tuesday, after Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team gained access to the department’s payments system.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York Times
By Hurubie Meko and Qasim Nauman
Published Feb. 7, 2025
Updated Feb. 8, 2025
A federal judge early Saturday temporarily restricted access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, saying there was a risk of “irreparable harm.”
The Trump administration’s new policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” access to these systems, which contain highly sensitive information such as bank details, heightens the risk of leaks and of the systems becoming more vulnerable than before to hacking, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in an emergency order.
Judge Engelmayer ordered any such official who had been granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” He also restricted the Trump administration from granting access to those categories of officials.
Representatives for the defendants — President Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Treasury Department — must appear on Feb. 14 before Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who is handling the case on a permanent basis, Judge Engelmayer said.
The situation could pose a fundamental test of America’s rule of law. If the administration fails to comply with the emergency order, it is unclear how it might be enforced. The Constitution says that a president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” but courts have rarely been tested by a chief executive who has ignored their orders.
Federal officials have sometimes responded to adverse decisions with dawdling or grudging compliance. Outright disobedience is exceedingly rare. There has been no clear example of “open presidential defiance of court orders in the years since 1865,” according to a Harvard Law Review article published in 2018.
Saturday’s order came in response to a lawsuit filed on Friday by Letitia James of New York along with 18 other Democratic state attorneys general, charging that when Mr. Trump had given Mr. Musk the run of government computer systems, he had breached protections enshrined in the Constitution and “failed to faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress.”
The lawsuit was joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
They said the president had given “virtually unfettered access” to the federal government’s most sensitive information to young aides who worked for Mr. Musk, who runs a program the administration calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
While the group was supposedly assigned to cut costs, members are “attempting to access government data to support initiatives to block federal funds from reaching certain disfavored beneficiaries,” according to the suit. Mr. Musk has publicly stated his intention to “recklessly freeze streams of federal funding without warning,” the suit said, pointing to his social media posts in recent days.
In her own social media post on Saturday, Ms. James reiterated that members of the cost-cutting team “must destroy all records they’ve obtained,” and added: “I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: no one is above the law,” she wrote.
New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, said in a post on Saturday that the injunction meant “the world’s richest man has been stopped from stealing your data.”
Efforts to reach press officers at the White House were not immediately successful on Saturday morning.
In a statement on Saturday, Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, called the lawsuits “frivolous” and said they were “akin to children throwing pasta at the wall to see if it will stick.”
“Grandstanding government efficiency speaks volumes about those who’d rather delay much-needed change with legal shenanigans then work with the Trump administration of ridding the government of waste, fraud and abuse,” he said. “This activist judge has resorted to locking the Senate-confirmed secretary of Treasury out of his role.”
Although the court order mandates an immediate halt to the Musk employees’ access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, it was not immediately clear when or if they would fully comply. Nor was it clear how the attorneys general would monitor the administration’s actions.
In a previous action, 23 attorneys general sued over Mr. Trump’s freeze of federal grants and won a temporary pause on Jan. 31, with a judge ordering the administration to stop withholding funds. However, on Friday, the coalition appealed to the judge again, saying that the money was still being withheld from states, grantees and programs.
Mr. Trump has had scant success in the courts in years past. His first administration succeeded in only about 23 percent of the legal challenges against the actions of his agencies, a review found, while prior administrations won about 70 percent of the time.
But Mr. Trump’s new term is already a thing apart.
The administration’s “shock and awe” approach since he was inaugurated last month has seen new policies and actions arrive at breakneck speed. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump pardoned members of the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has signed dozens of executive orders, withdrawn the country from international agreements and even tried to install himself as chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
The aggressive approach is beginning to be tested by scores of lawsuits on a host of issues, but the legal system’s ability to restrain the administration remains uncertain.
If federal officials fail to comply with the Saturday order limiting DOGE, the judge may hold them in contempt, said Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia Law School professor and a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan. Courts have done that in the past, he said, “albeit rarely.”
“A contempt citation can come with fines, more likely imposed on the officials rather than the government itself, and even possible imprisonment,” Mr. Richman said.
In 2002, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton was held in contempt for failing to fix the department’s management of billions of dollars in royalties earned on American Indian land. The following year, a federal appeals court found that she could not be held in criminal contempt for problems that existed before her tenure.
Although contempt findings can be “devoid of sanction, they nonetheless have a shaming effect,” which is often enough to spur officials to compliance, Nicholas Parrillo, a professor at Yale Law School, wrote in the 2018 Harvard Law Review article.
However, he wrote, the “rise of partisan polarization could potentially fracture the pro-compliance community so badly that members of one party would refuse to acknowledge the shame of a contempt finding against a member of their own camp.”
Since Mr. Trump entered office last month, Mr. Musk has so far been unconstrained. When DOGE first turned its attention to the Treasury Department, a top official refused to give members access, leading to a standoff. The official, David Lebryk, was put on leave before suddenly retiring.
Almost immediately, Mr. Musk’s team was given access to the government’s most fundamental computer data, including the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment system, which is used to disburse funds including Social Security benefits, veteran’s benefits and federal employee wages.
The system — which channels about 90 percent of the payments for the U.S. government, which spent about $6.75 trillion last fiscal year — pays funds directly to people in the states, as well as to state governments, the suit says.
Before Mr. Trump took office last month, access was granted to only a limited number of career civil servants with security clearances, the suit said. But Mr. Musk’s efforts had interrupted federal funding for health clinics, preschools and climate initiatives, according to the filing.
The money had already been allocated by Congress. The Constitution assigns to lawmakers the job of deciding government spending.
“President Trump does not have the power to give away Americans’ private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress,” Ms. James said in a statement. “Musk and DOGE have no authority to access Americans’ private information and some of our country’s most sensitive data.”
The case is one of many resisting Mr. Trump’s aggressive actions since he took office last month.
Three unions this week sued the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources division, to block an effort to persuade roughly two million federal employees to resign.
Two anonymous sets of F.B.I. agents and employees sued to keep the Trump administration from releasing the identities of people who worked on investigations into the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021. They won an order on Friday requiring the administration to keep their names secret.
Attorneys general have challenged Mr. Trump’s executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship. This week, Ms. James warned New York hospitals that complying with a White House executive order seeking to end gender-affirming medical care for young people could violate state law.
The actions of DOGE — bulldozing through the federal government — have been confounding and concerning to Democratic lawmakers and federal employees.
With license from Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk’s mandate appears to be vast: His team has tried to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, a key international source of foreign assistance. On Friday, a federal judge in Washington ordered a pause on an effort to put 2,200 U.S.A.I.D. employees on leave and rapidly withdraw employees stationed abroad.
On Friday, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Musk would turn his attention to the Pentagon, which has billions of dollars in contracts with companies Mr. Musk owns.
The heart of the lawsuit filed by the coalition on Friday was focused on Mr. Musk’s access to the Treasury Department. The department’s system is a repository of some of Americans’ most sensitive information, including Social Security and bank account numbers, which the attorneys general said puts residents of their states at personal risk.
Nathan Willis contributed reporting.
