Musk describes himself as “White House tech support,” and he has embedded himself in an unorthodox administration where there are no discernible limits on his influence.

The president’s lawyers argued that the distinction between civil servants and political appointees was unworkable and unconstitutional. A hearing is set for Friday.

The US Treasury Department’s payment servers hold the tax returns, social security data and bank account numbers of every adult citizen of the United States. They are, one would assume, among the most highly secured servers on earth and yet it seems that all the employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) needed to do to access these systems after January 20 was to walk into Treasury Department offices and demand access to the servers’ credentials.