13 states to sue over DOGE access to government payment systems containing personal data

13 states to sue over DOGE access to government payment systems containing personal data
Democratic members of Congress have expressed concerns that Elon Musk, an unelected citizen, wields too much power within the US government. (AP)
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Updated 07 February 2025
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13 states to sue over DOGE access to government payment systems containing personal data

13 states to sue over DOGE access to government payment systems containing personal data
  • DOGE recently gained access to sensitive payment data within the Treasury Department

Democratic attorneys general in several states vowed Thursday to file a lawsuit to stop Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing federal payment systems containing Americans’ sensitive personal information.

Thirteen attorneys general, including New York’s Letitia James, said in a statement that they were taking action “in defense of our Constitution, our right to privacy, and the essential funding that individuals and communities nationwide are counting on.”

“As the richest man in the world, Elon Musk is not used to being told ‘no,’ but in our country, no one is above the law,” the statement said. “The President does not have the power to give away our private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.

Government officials and labor unions have been among those raising concerns about DOGE’s involvement with the payment system for the federal government, saying it could lead to security risks or missed payments for programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Also Thursday, a federal judge ordered that two Musk allies have “read only” access to Treasury Department payment systems, but no one else will get access for now, including Musk himself. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by federal workers unions trying to stop DOGE from following through on what they call a massive privacy invasion.

It was not immediately clear when the Democratic attorneys general will file their lawsuit.

Joining James in the statement were the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont.

President Donald Trump tapped Musk, the world’s richest man, to shrink the size of the US government.

Democrats have criticized the tech billionaire’s maneuvers, which include the hostile seizure of taxpayer data and the apparent closure of the government’s leading international humanitarian aid agency.

DOGE recently gained access to sensitive payment data within the Treasury Department after Treasury’s acting Deputy Secretary David Lebryk resigned under pressure.

“This level of access for unauthorized individuals is unlawful, unprecedented, and unacceptable,” the attorneys general said. “DOGE has no authority to access this information, which they explicitly sought in order to block critical payments that millions of Americans rely on — payments that support health care, childcare, and other essential programs.”

Democratic members of Congress have expressed similar concerns that Musk, an unelected citizen, wields too much power within the US government and states blatantly on his social media platform X that DOGE will shut down payments to organizations.

Musk has made fun of the criticism of DOGE on X while saying it is saving taxpayers millions of dollars.

DOGE officials sought access to the Treasury payment system to stop money from flowing into the US Agency for International Development, according to two people familiar with the matter. That effort undermines assurances the department has given that it only sought to review the integrity of the payments and had “read-only access” to the system as part of an audit process.

The two people familiar with the matter spoke Thursday to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.


UN chief calls Cyprus peace talks ‘constructive’

UN chief calls Cyprus peace talks ‘constructive’
Updated 12 sec ago
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UN chief calls Cyprus peace talks ‘constructive’

UN chief calls Cyprus peace talks ‘constructive’
  • Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion followed a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta

UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that meetings between Cyprus’s rival leaders at the organization’s New York headquarters were “constructive,” even as questions remained about crossing points on the divided island.

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar have been holding talks and had reached a breakthrough on forming a committee on youth and three other topics, Guterres said.

The opening of four crossing points, and the exploitation of solar energy in the buffer zone between the two sides of the island remained unresolved, he said.

“It is critical to implement these initiatives, all of them, as soon as possible, and for the benefit of all Cypriots,” Guterres said.

The meeting follows one in Geneva in March, which marked the first meaningful progress in years.

At that gathering, both sides agreed on a set of confidence-building measures, including opening more crossing points across the divide, cooperating on solar energy, and removing land mines.

Guterres said there were specific technical issues still to be resolved on the issues of crossing points, but did not give details.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion followed a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, declared in 1983, is recognized only by Ankara.

The internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, a member of the European Union, controls the island’s majority Greek Cypriot south.

The last major round of peace talks collapsed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in July 2017.

“I think we are building, step-by-step, confidence and creating conditions to do concrete things to benefit the Cypriot people,” Guterres said in remarks to reporters.

 


US designates group that claimed Kashmir attack as terrorists

US designates group that claimed Kashmir attack as terrorists
Updated 17 July 2025
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US designates group that claimed Kashmir attack as terrorists

US designates group that claimed Kashmir attack as terrorists
  • Gunmen in April shot dead 26 people, almost all Hindus, in Pahalgam, a tourist hub in the Indian-administered side of divided Kashmir

WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday designated as terrorists a shadowy group that claimed an April attack in Kashmir, which triggered Indian strikes on Pakistani territory.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio described The Resistance Front as a “front and proxy” of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terrorist group based in Pakistan.

The terrorist designation “demonstrates the Trump administration’s commitment to protecting our national security interests, countering terrorism, and enforcing President (Donald) Trump’s call for justice for the Pahalgam attack,” Rubio said in a statement.

Gunmen in April shot dead 26 people, almost all Hindus, in Pahalgam, a tourist hub in the Indian-administered side of divided Kashmir.

Little had been previously known about The Resistance Front, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

India designates TRF as a terrorist organization and the India-based Observer Research Foundation calls it “a smokescreen and an offshoot of LeT.”

Pakistan has denied responsibility for the attack.


US House passes landmark crypto bills in win for Trump

US House passes landmark crypto bills in win for Trump
Updated 17 July 2025
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US House passes landmark crypto bills in win for Trump

US House passes landmark crypto bills in win for Trump
  • It will now head to the Senate, where Republicans hold a thin majority

WASHINGTON: The US House passed landmark cryptocurrency bills on Thursday, delivering on the Trump administration’s embrace of the once-controversial industry.

US lawmakers easily passed the CLARITY Act, which establishes a clearer regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.

The bill is intended to clarify rules governing the industry and divides regulatory authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission  and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission .

It will now head to the Senate, where Republicans hold a thin majority.

House legislators also easily passed the GENIUS Act, which codifies the use of stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to safe assets like the dollar. That bill was due to immediately go to Trump for his signature to become law.

The GENIUS Act was passed by the Senate last month and sets rules such as requiring issuers to have reserves of assets equal in value to that of their outstanding cryptocurrency.

The raft of legislation comes after years of suspicion against the crypto industry amid the belief that the sector, born out of the success of bitcoin, should be kept on a tight leash and away from mainstream investors.

But after crypto investors poured millions of dollars into his presidential campaign last year, Trump reversed his own doubts about the industry, even launching a Trump meme coin and other ventures as he prepared for his return to the White House.

Trump has, among other moves, appointed crypto advocate Paul Atkins to head the Securities and Exchange Commission .

He has also established a federal “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” aimed at auditing the government’s bitcoin holdings, which were mainly accumulated by law enforcement from judicial seizures.

The Republican-led House is also considering a bill it calls the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act that aims to block the issuance of a central bank digital currency  — a digital dollar issued by the US Federal Reserve.

Republicans argue that a CBDC could enable the federal government to monitor, track, and potentially control the financial transactions of private citizens, undermining privacy and civil liberties.

It would require a not-easily-won passage in the Senate before going to Trump for his signature.

An aborted effort to set the anti-CBDC bill aside caused a furor among a small group of Republicans and delayed the passage of the two other bills before a solution was found.


‘A trap’ — Asylum seekers arrested after attending US courts

‘A trap’ — Asylum seekers arrested after attending US courts
Updated 17 July 2025
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‘A trap’ — Asylum seekers arrested after attending US courts

‘A trap’ — Asylum seekers arrested after attending US courts

NEW YORK: In gloomy corridors outside a Manhattan courtroom, masked agents target and arrest migrants attending mandatory hearings — part of US President Donald Trump’s escalating immigration crackdown.

Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to deport many migrants, has encouraged authorities to be more aggressive as he seeks to hit his widely-reported target of one million deportations annually.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, Homeland Security agents have adopted the tactic of waiting outside immigration courts nationwide and arresting migrants as they leave at the end of asylum hearings.

Missing an immigration court hearing is a crime in some cases and can itself make migrants liable to be deported, leaving many with little choice but to attend and face arrest.

Armed agents with shields from different federal agencies loitered outside the court hearings in a tower block in central New York, holding paperwork with photographs of migrants to be targeted, an AFP correspondent saw this week.

The agents arrested almost a dozen migrants from different countries in just a few hours on the 12th floor of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building.

Brad Lander, a city official who was briefly detained last month by ICE  agents as he attempted to accompany a migrant targeted for removal, called the hearings “a trap.”

“It has the trappings of a judicial hearing, but it’s just a trap to have made them come in the first place,” he said Wednesday outside the building.

Lander recounted several asylum seekers being arrested by immigration officers including Carlos, a Paraguayan man who Lander said had an application pending for asylum under the Convention Against Torture — as well as a future court date.

“The judge carefully instructed him on how to prepare to bring his case to provide additional information about his interactions with the Paraguayan police and make his case under the global convention against torture for why he is entitled to asylum,” Lander said.

After his hearing, agents “without any identifying information or badges or warrants grabbed Carlos, and then quickly moved him toward the back stairwell,” he said.

Lander, a Democrat, claimed the agents were threatening and that they pushed to the ground Carlos’s sister who had accompanied him to the hearing.

The White House said recently that “the brave men and women of ICE are under siege by deranged Democrats — but undeterred in their mission.”

“Every day, these heroes put their own lives on the line to get the worst of the worst... off our streets and out of our neighborhoods.”

Back at the building in lower Manhattan, Lander said that “anyone who comes down here to observe could see... the rule of law is being eroded.”


US prosecutor in Epstein, Maxwell cases abruptly fired

US prosecutor in Epstein, Maxwell cases abruptly fired
Updated 17 July 2025
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US prosecutor in Epstein, Maxwell cases abruptly fired

US prosecutor in Epstein, Maxwell cases abruptly fired

WASHINGTON: A US federal prosecutor who handled the case of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and is the daughter of a prominent critic of President Donald Trump has been abruptly fired, US media reported.

Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, was dismissed on Wednesday from her position as an assistant US attorney in Manhattan, several major US outlets reported.

The Justice Department declined to confirm Comey’s firing to AFP, saying it would have “no comment on personnel.”

Politico published a message Comey, who spent 10 years in the US attorney’s office, sent to her former colleagues in which she said she had been “summarily fired” by the Justice Department with no reason given.

She also encouraged them not to fall prey to “fear.”

“If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain,” Comey said. “Do not let that happen. Fear is the tool of a tyrant.”

Comey’s dismissal comes a week after the Justice Department confirmed it had opened an unspecified criminal investigation into her father, a long-time Trump adversary.

It also comes amid mounting pressure on Trump to release material from the probe into Epstein, who committed suicide in a New York prison in 2019 after being charged with sex trafficking.

Comey was among the prosecutors who handled the case involving the wealthy financier, which never went to trial because of his death.

She also prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell, the only former Epstein associate who has been criminally charged in connection with his activities.

Trump is facing the most serious split in his loyal right-wing base since he returned to power over claims his administration is covering up lurid details of Epstein’s crimes to protect rich and powerful figures.

The Trump-supporting far-right has long latched on to the scandal, claiming the existence of a still-secret list of Epstein’s powerful clients and that the late financier was in fact murdered in his cell as part of a cover-up.

The Justice Department and FBI said this month that there was no evidence that Epstein kept a “client list” or was blackmailing powerful figures.

Comey’s father, the former FBI chief, has had a contentious history with Trump dating back to his first term in the White House.

Trump fired Comey in 2017 as the then-FBI chief was leading an investigation into whether any members of the Trump campaign had colluded with Moscow to sway the 2016 presidential vote, in which the Republican beat Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Since taking office in January, Trump has taken a number of punitive measures against his perceived enemies, stripping former officials of their security clearances and protective details, targeting law firms involved in past cases against him and pulling federal funding from universities.