The judge’s order, issued early on Saturday, temporarily halts access to a sensitive payment system that distributes Americans’ tax returns, Social Security benefits, disability payments and federal employees’ salaries.

US District Judge Paul Engelmayer ordered the destruction of any downloaded information from the payment system by anyone given access to it since January 20, citing “the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking”.

A hearing on the matter was set for February 14.

The White House called Saturday’s order “judicial overreach”.

“Grandstanding government efficiency speaks volumes about those who’d rather delay much-needed change with legal shenanigans than work with the Trump Administration of ridding the government of waste, fraud, and abuse,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told CNN in a statement.

Engelmayer’s ruling was in response to a suit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James and 18 other state attorneys general against the Trump administration.

Trump and Musk have upended the federal workforce in their quest to shrink the government, sparking chaos, fear, anger — and multiple lawsuits that have prompted judicial action.

Musk also offered a defense of the access in a social media post on Saturday, saying that DOGE and the Treasury Department “jointly agreed” to requirements involving government payments, including that “all outgoing government payments have a payment categorisation code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits”.

“The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!” Musk added.

Saturday’s order came on the heels of another court ruling temporarily blocking the administration’s attempts to dismantle the US Agency for International Development.

And a federal judge paused a Thursday deadline for the administration’s so-called buyout offer to federal employees while more proceedings on the program’s legality played out. That followed earlier federal court rulings halting a sweeping federal spending freeze.

The suit from the attorneys general alleges the team led by Musk and staffed by young associates categorised as “special government employees” have been unlawfully granted access to the Treasury system that previously was restricted to specific government employees.

The effort by what the Trump administration calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is intended to cut government costs drastically but has sought access to critical computer systems, including the Treasury payment system, at the objection of others in the agencies, as CNN previously reported.

DOGE’s actions have ignited a tense political debate and emergency court proceedings over its access to the system and the administration’s potential interest in using it to turn off payments as it chooses.

“The conduct of Doge members presents a unique security risk to the States and State residents whose data is held,” the lawsuit said.

The payment system offers services for more than 250 federal agencies and is the conduit for an extraordinary swath of critical individual payments. It is central to the operations of the US government and the lives of millions of Americans.

The administration’s efforts have drawn the wrath of Democratic senators as well as unions and protestors concerned about Musk’s incursion into the private data of US citizens.

Musk and his DOGE team have sought to disrupt or gain access to a number of government nerve centers, including those responsible for the federal workforce, real estate portfolio, computer systems and records management.

The Trump administration’s first moves to upend the federal government were felt most acutely at USAID, after the president placed a freeze on most foreign aid.

In the separate court decision late on Friday involving USAID, another federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its plans to put at least 2200 employees at the agency on administrative leave and required the temporary reinstatement of 500 other workers who had been suspended.