AFT’s Weingarten Reacts to Injunction Against Elon Musk

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after a federal court judge ordered a preliminary injunction preventing the Education Department, the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of the Treasury from handing private data to Elon Musk’s so-called ‘Department of Government Efficiency’. The court had previously issued a temporary restraining order in the case.

“Elon Musk’s operatives have been running roughshod over Americans’ privacy, and today the court correctly decided to uphold the firewall between their activities and the personal data of tens of millions of people. Every day, when Americans apply for a student loan or financial aid for their kids, they hand over their information to the government in good faith because they expect it to be safeguarded and used only for the purposes it was intended. They do not expect it to be transferred to a third party, rifled through by outsiders or fed into AI software.

“This is the United States, not Putin’s Russia, and Americans still believe our government should preserve freedom and privacy. Musk and DOGE must be held to account, and this preliminary injunction is a significant and important step forward.”