By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Elon Musk ’s Department of Government Efficiency from Social Security Administration systems that hold personal data on millions of Americans.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland also requires the team to delete any personally identifiable data they may have. It comes after labor unions and retirees asked for an emergency order limiting DOGE access to the agency and its vast troves of personal data.

They said DOGE’s “nearly unlimited” access violates privacy laws and presents massive information security risks. A recently departed Social Security official who saw the DOGE team sweep into the agency said she is deeply worried about sensitive information being exposed.

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The Trump administration says DOGE has a 10-person team of federal employees at the Social Security Administration, seven of whom have been granted read-only access to agency systems or personally identifiable information.

The administration has said DOGE is targeting waste and fraud in the federal government.

Hollander, though, found that the ends may not justify the means.

“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” she wrote.

Attorneys for the government argued the DOGE access doesn’t deviate significantly from normal practices inside the agency, where employees are routinely allowed to search its databases. But attorneys for the plaintiffs called the access unprecedented.

DOGE has gotten at least some access to other government databases, including at the Treasury Department and IRS.

At SSA, DOGE staffers swept into the agency days after Trump’s inauguration and pressed for a software engineer to quickly get access to data systems that are normally carefully restricted even within the government, a former official said in court documents.

The team appeared to be searching for fraud based on inaccuracies and misunderstandings, according to Tiffany Flick, the former acting chief of staff to the acting commissioner.

Hollander, who is based in Baltimore and was nominated by President Barack Obama, is the latest judge to consider a DOGE related case. The team has drawn nearly two dozen lawsuits, some of which have shed light on staffing and operations that have largely been kept under wraps.

Several judges have raised questions about DOGE’s sweeping cost-cutting efforts, but they have not always agreed that the risks are imminent enough to block the team from government systems.

Associated Press writer Lea Skene in Baltimore contributed reporting.

The 10,000-seat rink now known as 3M Arena at Mariucci opened in Minneapolis in 1993, just a few months after the NHL’s Minnesota North Stars had loaded their sticks, pucks and sweaters onto moving trucks and headed down I-35 bound for Dallas.

For college hockey in Minnesota, the timing could hardly have been better, as tickets to see the Minnesota Gophers play were scarce and expensive for the next decade or so. In a hockey-crazy metro area of three million, the Gophers were hockey’s “big show” in town until the NHL returned in 2000.

Now in his ninth season as Arizona State’s first and only head coach at the Division I level, Greg Powers can relate.

The Sun Devils have occupied Mullett Arena — their well-appointed 5,000-seat facility on campus in Tempe — for a few years now. This season, ASU joined the powerful National Collegiate Hockey Conference just a few months after the Arizona Coyotes departed for a new NHL home in Utah, leaving a blank space on the sports landscape in one of the nation’s 10 largest metro areas.

“I don’t think anybody can fill the void of the National Hockey League. That’s not gonna happen until it returns,” Powers said as the Sun Devils prepared to face defending national champion Denver in the opening game of the NCHC Frozen Faceoff at Xcel Energy Center on Friday afternoon. “But we have done a great job of being active in the community and giving the Arizona hockey community something to really be excited about.”

The Sun Devils open the tournament versus the Pioneers at 4 p.m., with North Dakota facing regular-season champion Western Michigan later that evening. The winners play Saturday night for the conference title after the Wild play an afternoon game against Buffalo.

Picked eighth in the nine-team conference’s preseason poll, the Sun Devils finished as runners-up in year one with a 21-13-2 overall mark and can earn the program’s second NCAA tournament trip with a pair of wins in St. Paul.

Much like the transplant-heavy makeup of metro Phoenix, Powers’ roster features players from 13 different states — four of them Minnesotans — and a handful of Canadian provinces, and made it to the tournament via a pair of first-round wins over Minnesota Duluth last weekend.

Dubbed the “Last Call in St. Paul,” this weekend’s trio of games will be the final neutral site tournament for the NCHC, which is moving its playoffs to campus sites next season. For the Sun Devils, there’s a sense of excitement to make it to the X, even if it is for last call.

“We’re thrilled to be here, but certainly not content just to be here,” Powers said, placing the focus solely on the two wins needed to extend their season. That would surely give the small but passionate Arizona hockey community some good news in the wake of the NHL’s departure.

Last Call in St. Paul

The NCHC will hold its final Frozen Faceoff championship at Xcel Energy Center this weekend:

Friday — Semifinals: Arizona State vs. Denver, 4:07 p.m.; Western Michigan vs. North Dakota, 7:37 p.m.
Saturday — Championship, 7:38 p.m.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. The national suicide and crisis lifeline is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — The family of a former Boeing quality control manager who police say killed himself after lawyers questioned him for days about his whistleblowing on alleged jumbo jet defects sued the airplane maker Thursday.

Boeing subjected John Barnett to a “campaign of harassment, abuse and intimidation intended to discourage, discredit and humiliate him until he would either give up or be discredited,” lawyers for the family wrote in a wrongful death lawsuit filed in federal court in South Carolina.

Barnett, 62, shot himself March 9, 2024, in Charleston after answering questions from attorneys for several days. He lived in Louisiana.

“Boeing had threatened to break John, and break him it did,” the attorneys wrote in court papers.

Boeing has not yet responded in court filings.

“We are saddened by John Barnett’s death and extend our condolences to his family,” the company said in a statement this week.

Barnett was a longtime Boeing employee and worked as a quality-control manager before he retired in 2017. In the years after that, he shared his concerns with journalists and became a whistleblower.

Barnett said he once saw discarded metal shavings near wiring for the flight controls that could have cut wiring and caused a catastrophe. He also noted problems with up to a quarter of the oxygen systems on Boeing’s 787 planes.

Barnett shared his concerns with his supervisors and others before leaving Boeing, but according to the lawsuit they responded by ignoring him and then harassing him.

Boeing intentionally gave Barnett inaccurate, poor job reviews and less desirable shifts, according to the lawsuit. Barnett’s family argues the company publicly blamed him for delays that angered his co-workers and prevented him from transferring to another plant.

Barnett eventually was diagnosed with PTSD and his mental condition deteriorated, his family said.

“Whether or not Boeing intended to drive John to his death or merely destroy his ability to function, it was absolutely foreseeable that PTSD and John’s unbearable depression, panic attacks, and anxiety, which would in turn lead to an elevated risk of suicide,” the lawsuit said. “Boeing may not have pulled the trigger, but Boeing’s conduct was the clear cause, and the clear foreseeable cause, of John’s death.”

The lawsuit doesn’t specify the amount of damages sought by Barnett’s family but asks for compensation for emotional distress and mental anguish, back pay, 10 years of lost future earnings as well as bonuses, health expenses and his lost life insurance benefits.

NEW YORK (AP) — An FBI agent who publicly accused the agency of a pro-Trump bias has been arrested and charged with disclosing confidential records after authorities say he included sensitive material about investigations and informants into a draft of his memoir.

Johnathan Buma, who claimed in 2023 that the FBI went after President Joe Biden’s son Hunter while stifling his own investigation of President Donald Trump’s ally Rudy Giuliani, was arrested Monday evening at Kennedy Airport in New York as he was about to board a flight out of the country, authorities said.

In the draft of his book, Buma described himself as “the most significant whistleblower in FBI history.”

Federal prosecutors in California, where Buma had worked as a counterintelligence and counterproliferation agent, charged him on Tuesday with a single count of disclosure of confidential information. The charge is punishable by up to one year in prison.

Buma submitted a letter of resignation Sunday, according to an affidavit prepared by an FBI agent involved in the investigation. The probe into Buma’s conduct began well before Trump took office for his second term. The FBI searched Buma’s home in November 2023, when Biden was in office.

Messages seeking comment were left with Buma’s lawyer.

After filing a whistleblower complaint and testifying before Congress, the court affidavit said Buma went to his FBI office in Orange County, California, in October 2023 and printed copies of about 130 confidential files. The files included summaries of information provided by confidential informants, the identity of an informant and screenshots of text messages he exchanged with an informant, the affidavit said.

Some of that information also appeared in a draft of Buma’s book, the affidavit said.

After emailing his bosses that he was taking an unpaid leave of absence, Buma posted excerpts of the draft on social media and emailed copies to various people, some of whom were helping him negotiate a publishing deal, according to the affidavit. Among other things, the book contained information about an FBI investigation into a foreign country’s weapons of mass destruction program, the affidavit said.