In 1979, Atari released the Atari 400 and 800, groundbreaking home computers that included custom graphics and sound chips, four joystick ports, and the ability to run the most advanced home video games of their era. These machines, which retailed for $549 and $999, respectively, represented a leap in consumer-friendly personal computing, with their modular design and serial I/O bus that presaged USB. Now, 46 years later, a hobbyist has shrunk down the system hardware to a size that would have seemed like science fiction in the 1970s.

Polish engineer Piotr "Osa" Ostapowicz recently unveiled "Atarino," which may be the world's smallest 8-bit Atari computer re-creation, according to retro computing site Atariteca. The entire system—processor, graphics chips, sound hardware, and memory controllers—fits on a module measuring just 2×1.5 centimeters (about 0.79×0.59 inches), which is roughly the size of a postage stamp.

Ostapowicz's creation reimplements the classic Atari XL/XE architecture using modern FPGA (field-programmable gate array) technology. Unlike software emulators that simulate old hardware (and modern recreations that run them, like the Atari 400 Mini console) on a complete computer system of another architecture, Atarino reproduces the original Atari components faithfully at the logic level, allowing it to run vintage software while maintaining compatibility with original peripherals.

The Atarino is only slightly larger than a Polish 1 Grosz coin. Credit: Piotr Ostapowicz

"The current project is not strictly a clone of Atari but basically, well, I'm forming a machine that is compatible with the Atari 8-bit computer itself, but it was created on the basis of the framework that I created some time ago," Ostapowicz told Atari Online PL in a January 2024 YouTube interview.

An assortment of some of the Atari 8-bit computer systems released in the 1970s and '80s. Credit: Atari

The project, which began over a decade ago and was first publicly demonstrated in December 2023, includes a 6502C processor, ANTIC and GTIA graphics chips, POKEY sound chip, and memory controllers onto a single Lattice UP5K FPGA chip. Despite its tiny size, the system can run at clock speeds up to 31 MHz—far faster than the original hardware's 1.79 MHz.

Smaller, faster, and positioned for future projects

While Atarino maintains broad compatibility with classic Atari software, Ostapowicz says he has enhanced the original design in several ways. For example, the 6502 processor core follows the physical chip specifications but adds new instructions. The memory system uses independent channels rather than the original's "cycle stealing" approach (where the graphics chip temporarily halts the CPU to access memory), improving performance.

The graphics capabilities of the Atarino also extend beyond the original's limitations. Ostapowicz implemented functional clones of the ANTIC and GTIA chips with extended resolution modes. And the system outputs video through both VGA at 60 Hz and HDMI.

The Atarino seen attached to an early evaluation breakout board that features peripheral connectors. Credit: Piotr Ostapowicz

The modular design allows hobbyists to integrate Atarino into custom keyboards, miniaturized cases, or development boards. Ostapowicz has created multiple keyboard variants, including one based on the 65XE layout and another using a UART interface with microcontroller-based scanning. The system also supports connections to modern peripherals through Wi-Fi or Ethernet modules.

Development continues on the project, with Ostapowicz currently refining the POKEY sound chip emulation to match the original's asynchronous behavior. He's also working on simplifying development tools for users, with the environment already compatible with CC65 and Visual Studio Code. He plans to release complete kits with documentation, inviting the retrocomputing community to experiment with the hardware.

The European Atari connection

The Atari 8-bit platform holds particular significance in Poland and Europe in general, where these computers performed well on the home market throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. While most American consumers had moved on to newer systems, Polish users in particular embraced Atari's affordable computers during the country's economic transition away from communism, creating a vibrant community that persists today. This nostalgic connection has made Poland a global hub for Atari 8-bit development and preservation.

A European family enjoying an Atari 600 XE computer from a 1980s German catalog. Credit: Atari

In communist Poland, Western computers were primarily available through Pewex, a chain of hard-currency shops that accepted only US dollars. Despite COCOM embargoes on Western technology, Atari computers became generally available at these stores, partly thanks to efforts by Jack Tramiel, the Polish-born Atari owner who ensured his computers reached his homeland. This nostalgic connection has made Poland a global hub for Atari 8-bit development and preservation.

For Atarino creator Ostapowicz, his Atari miniaturization project is more than a nostalgic exercise or a mere technical challenge; it stems from a desire to create a tiny platform that applies 8-bit computing to new applications. He also saw an opportunity to build something fun and useful for today's hobbyists and developers, bridging the past with future possibilities.

"I just came to the conclusion that we can build something that is compatible with Atari, give it a miniature form, and then it will happen," he said in the Atari Online interview. "As I mentioned, if someone wants to make a portable console, he has an open road. If someone wants to make an IoT system out of it, here you go."

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I can prove I am a US citizen because a) I have all the documentation, b) it's four generations back before you find immigrants in my family, c) I'm well-known enough that my birthplace is public record. But the system isn't designed to help anyone prove anything.nymag.com/intelligence…

— John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) 2025-06-03T15:17:58.831Z

In New York magazine this week, an article about how US citizens who have been detained by ICE can have an exceptionally difficult time proving that they they are, in fact, US citizens, or will have the ability to prove it before they are sent off to El Salvador or Rwanda or anywhere else in the world this embarrassment of an administration wants to unconstitutionally send people. And, while acknowledging the fact that it’s deeply unlikely I, a middle-aged white dude who lives in rural Ohio, will find myself attracting the attention of ICE in the first place, the article does raise a larger and sadly growingly more pertinent question: How many US citizens could, in fact, prove that they are US citizens at the drop of the hat? Leave aside for the moment the absolutely correct argument that it should not be incumbent on any of us to do so, and focus on this particular question. Can you, directly and/or indirectly, show that you have citizenship here in the US?

The gold standard physical proof of this would be an official birth certificate from within the United States (or naturalization certificate), followed by a valid US passport, followed by a REAL ID driver’s license. To obtain a US passport the first time, you need that official birth certificate or a US naturalization or citizenship certificate. For the REAL ID license here in Ohio, where I live, you need proof of US citizenship (passport or birth certificate) and a social security number, proof of Ohio residency, and, if your name has changed due to marriage or other reasons, legal proof of the name change, from a marriage license or a court-ordered name change.

So: Can you quickly lay hands on an official copy of your birth certificate? Do you now have — or indeed have you ever had — a valid US passport? Do you have a REAL ID-compliant drivers license/state ID card? Do you know your Social Security number (or have access to the physical card itself)? If you’ve ever changed your name, do you have ready access to your marriage license and/or court documents approving that name change?

These are not trivial questions, since in 2024, the Brennan Center noted that over 21 million US citizens of voting age don’t have ready access to documents proving their citizenship, and that the percentage of minority US citizens without these documents is higher than the percentage of white citizens. When the rubber hits the road, nearly ten percent of US citizens can’t easily prove they are citizens. These include some of the people most vulnerable to “accidental” deportation from this country — and I put “accidental” in quotes here because it’s been made very clear that this particular administration doesn’t see deporting US citizens, particularly ones of color, as an actual problem.

Ask yourself whether you have ready access to these sorts of documents, starting with the most critical of these: a legal copy of your birth certificate. If the answer is “no,” then for your own safety (not to mention your ability to vote, which is also pretty important), it might be an excellent time to go about getting those documents and storing them somewhere safe. For the moment, the CDC has a page that can help you find official records in the various US states and territories, and there are also third party companies who can help you locate and obtain various records here in the US. Will any of this cost you money? Of course it will, this is America! But then you will have them, and that’s a good thing.

Personally, if you’re a US citizen, I strongly recommend getting a US passport, including the US passport card (I’ll explain why below). Get them for identification purposes, even if you don’t have immediate plans to travel outside of the US.

Let’s turn these questions back to me, since I am exhorting all y’all to have these documents at the ready. Do I have any/all of these documents ready to go?

In fact, yes. I have a certified copy of my birth certificate in a fireproof lock box. I have a current passport — indeed I renewed it last year, just before the change of administration, in order to avoid any delays due to intentional or inflicted incompetence on the part of the State Department — and I have had a REAL ID for several years, since I saw no benefit in not getting that as soon as possible.

I don’t typically keep my US passport with me when I travel domestically (it stays in the lockbox with the birth certificate), but I do have a US passport card in my wallet at all times, which aside from being useful for land crossings to Mexico and Canada, also “is proof of U.S. citizenship and identity” according to our own State Department (and is also the equivalent of a REAL ID for US domestic air travel purposes). Importantly, the REAL ID Ohio driver’s license which also lives in my wallet is not proof of US citizenship, “just” of legal US residency. So I keep both the passport card and my REAL ID drivers license on me when I leave the house.

Will any of this keep an ICE stooge from looking at one’s various forms of ID and deciding they are fake? Nope! That said, having both a REAL ID and a passport card makes it that much harder for such absolute bullshit to stick after the fact (also, memorize your Social Security number). Do I resent that I live in a time and place where having two forms of ID on me at all times, including one that explicitly tags me as a US citizen, is just about required? Sure do, although this is tempered by the fact that I was doing this anyway, long before it was a defensive posture against my own federal government.

Again, I am white middle-aged dude, and live in rural Ohio, so the chances of ICE getting up in my face about anything is pretty damn low. But if they did, and decided the forms of ID I had on me were fake and tossed me into ICE detention, what else do I have going for me? Well, as noted, I have those other forms of ID in the lockbox. I also have provably US citizen parents, both of whom are still living, complete with birth certificates of their own. Their parents were also provably US citizens. I suspect three full generations of provable US citizenship would be difficult for even this administration to brush aside.

(And before that? Well, everyone came over before (European) immigration quotas and controls were a thing. I have relatives here on the North American continent going back to the 1640s, which is to say, long before the racist-ass current president’s progenitors hied their sorry hides over from the mother country. Which to be clear ought not to fucking matter, as regards US citizenship. But here we are in 2025.)

The other thing I have going for me is that I am, well, me: both well-enough off financially that I could mount a reasonable legal defense, and well-known enough that if ICE actually tried to disappear me, bluntly, it would be noticed by more than my immediate family. Heck, my birthplace is in my Wikipedia article (and even if some troll changes that now, the article history will show it). This doesn’t mean my life wouldn’t be miserable before I got sprung, mind you. Just that it would be difficult for this administration to credibly argue they didn’t know what they were doing before they attempted to ship this particular US citizen into some extranational hole.

Again, at this point, I do not see ICE or anyone else trying to expel me from our national borders. I am, statistically and otherwise, as safe as anyone in the US can be from the unconstitutional fuckery being perpetrated at the moment by our federal government. Also, in the current “show me your papers, no these papers are fake” environment, “safe as anyone in the US can be” is not actually safe at all, especially with an administration that is clearly contemptuous of the US Constitution and the protections it affords not only our nation’s citizens, but everyone who is on our soil. If anyone here lacks constitutional protections, we all lack them; our “rights” exist at the whim of bad people.

For all that, if you’re a US citizen, you should have ready access to your documentation. If you don’t have your birth certificate on hand, get a certified copy of it. If you don’t have a passport, get one, including the passport card. And yes, spring for the REAL ID. We don’t exist in the just world where these don’t matter for your personal security. In the world in which we exist, they are useful to have.

— JS

One of the “godfathers” of artificial intelligence has attacked a multibillion-dollar race to develop the cutting-edge technology, saying the latest models are displaying dangerous characteristics such as lying to users.

Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian academic whose work has informed techniques used by top AI groups such as OpenAI and Google, said: “There’s unfortunately a very competitive race between the leading labs, which pushes them towards focusing on capability to make the AI more and more intelligent, but not necessarily put enough emphasis and investment on research on safety.”

The Turing Award winner issued his warning in an interview with the Financial Times, while launching a new non-profit called LawZero. He said the group would focus on building safer systems, vowing to “insulate our research from those commercial pressures.”

LawZero has so far raised nearly $30 million in philanthropic contributions from donors including Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn, former Google chief Eric Schmidt’s philanthropic initiative, as well as Open Philanthropy and the Future of Life Institute.

Many of Bengio’s funders subscribe to the “effective altruism” movement, whose supporters tend to focus on catastrophic risks surrounding AI models. Critics argue the movement highlights hypothetical scenarios while ignoring current harms, such as bias and inaccuracies.

Bengio said his not-for-profit group was founded in response to growing evidence over the past six months that today’s leading models were developing dangerous capabilities. This includes showing “evidence of deception, cheating, lying and self-preservation,” he said.

Anthropic’s Claude Opus model blackmailed engineers in a fictitious scenario where it was at risk of being replaced by another system. Research from AI testers Palisade last month showed that OpenAI’s o3 model refused explicit instructions to shut down.

Bengio said such incidents were “very scary, because we don’t want to create a competitor to human beings on this planet, especially if they’re smarter than us.”

The AI pioneer added: “Right now, these are controlled experiments [but] my concern is that any time in the future, the next version might be strategically intelligent enough to see us coming from far away and defeat us with deceptions that we don’t anticipate. So I think we’re playing with fire right now.”

The ability for systems to assist in building “extremely dangerous bioweapons” could be a reality as soon as next year, he added.

Based in Montreal, LawZero employs 15 people and aims to hire more technical talent to build the next generation of AI systems designed for safety.

Bengio, a professor of computer science at the University of Montreal, will step down as scientific director at Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, to focus on the new organization.

It aims to develop an AI system that will give truthful answers based on transparent reasoning instead of being trained to please a user, while also providing a robust assessment of whether an output is good or safe. Bengio hopes to create a model that can monitor and improve existing offerings from leading AI groups, preventing them from acting against human interests.

“The worst-case scenario is human extinction,” he said. “If we build AIs that are smarter than us and are not aligned with us and compete with us, then we’re basically cooked.”

Bengio’s move to establish LawZero comes as OpenAI aims to move further away from its charitable roots by converting into a for-profit company. That push has provoked concerns from AI experts and triggered a lawsuit from co-founder Elon Musk, who is attempting to block the transaction.

Critics say OpenAI was founded to ensure AI was developed for humanity’s benefit, and the new structure eliminates legal recourse if the company prioritizes profit over this goal. OpenAI argues it needs to raise capital under a more conventional structure to compete in the sector, while its broader mission remains central.

Bengio said he did not have confidence that OpenAI would adhere to its mission, stressing that non-profits do not have a “misaligned incentive that you do in the current way companies are structured.”

“To grow very fast, you need to convince people to invest a lot of money, and they want to see a return on their money. That’s how our market-based system works,” he added.

© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official and a vaccine critic, on Monday fired all members of a prominent federal advisory committee on vaccines — including a doctor from Colorado.

Dr. Edwin Asturias was among the 17 members of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices who were dismissed. Asturias, an infectious disease and global health expert, serves as a professor at both the Colorado School of Public Health and the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Kennedy announced the move in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, citing alleged conflicts of interest among members and writing that “a clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”

The committee, known as the ACIP, reviews data on the safety and efficacy of vaccines and makes recommendations on when they should be used and who should receive them. It is up to the CDC director to decide whether to adopt the recommendations, but the agency has historically gone along.

“A pro-industry orthodoxy”

The committee is currently reviewing vaccines for a wide variety of diseases — from mpox to Lyme disease to flu to RSV to chikungunya — but its most high-profile work recently has been in making recommendations for the use of the COVID-19 vaccines. A thumbs-up from the ACIP was typically among the last steps taken before COVID shots started going into arms across the country.

During his confirmation process, Kennedy committed to keeping the ACIP in place. But he has long been critical of what he says are committee members beholden to the pharmaceutical industry.

“The problem isn’t necessarily that ACIP members are corrupt,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal piece. “Most likely aim to serve the public interest as they understand it. The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy.”

Kennedy said it was necessary to fire committee members now and replace them with new members who “won’t directly work for the vaccine industry.”

“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” he wrote.

Colorado anticipated the upheaval

ACIP members are appointed by the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and serve as volunteers.

While best known for its role in the vaccine-approval process, the committee’s work also plays an important role in selecting vaccines covered through the Vaccines for Children program, which provides vaccines to kids whose parents can’t afford them. ACIP recommendations are also used by states across the country when setting school immunization guidelines.

Because of this influence, health leaders concerned about Kennedy’s appointment have long feared that he may try to dismantle the committee and replace its members with vaccine skeptics.

Anticipating this possibility, Colorado lawmakers this year changed how Colorado sets its school vaccination requirements to de-emphasize the importance of ACIP recommendations. Now, under a bill Gov. Jared Polis signed in April, Colorado’s Board of Health will set immunization requirements after taking into consideration ACIP recommendations, as well as those of several independent medical groups. Previously, Colorado law said the state’s requirements should be set “based on” ACIP recommendations.

Research in Guatemala

Asturias began serving on the ACIP last summer after being appointed to the position during the Biden administration. Much of his work focuses on health in Guatemala, where he was born, and has undertaken numerous health care initiatives. He served as the nation’s COVID czar.

Through a CU spokesperson, Asturias declined to comment Monday.

ACIP members must file confidential financial disclosures and agree to forego participating in certain vaccine-related activities during their tenure. The committee also has other conflict-of-interest safeguards in place.

Kennedy called CDC enforcement of conflict-of-interest rules lax, and alleged in the Wall Street Journal that “most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines.”

During meetings last year and earlier this year, Asturias declared no conflicts of interest. His current CU research profile lists only studies funded by the federal government.

A review of previous disclosures in the federal government’s Open Payments system show that he has received money in the past from drugmakers.

Throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s, Asturias received a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a year for what appear to be consultation and speaking fees. He has received much more, nearly $4 million, in research support to study RSV, pneumonia and other diseases in Guatemala and the U.S., including more than $3 million from drugmaker Pfizer. 

The studies typically focused on assessing the efficacy of a given test or vaccine — one was titled “Determination of the utility of Pfizer’s pneumococcal urine antigen test in children 5 years of age or younger with community acquired pneumonia,” for instance.

“We adhered to our process”

Asturias is not the only Colorado doctor to sit on the ACIP. During the height of the COVID pandemic, Denver pediatrician Dr. Matthew Daley served as a member.

In an interview with The Sun after his term ended last summer, Daley praised the integrity of ACIP members and the work of the CDC staff who supported them.

“The ACIP was allowed to independently follow its process for decision-making,” he said. “We were aware of these different power centers, but I was never getting late-night calls from any of those groups saying, ‘This is what we need you to do,’ or, ‘This is the decision we need you to make.’

“We adhered to our process, the process served us well, and we had independence to make vaccine policy decision-making.”

After Kennedy’s announcement of the firings on Monday, numerous health leaders expressed concern.

Dr. Bruce A. Scott, president of the American Medical Association, said the committee is a trusted source of information and said the firings, along with declining vaccination rates, will help drive an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases.

“Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” Scott said in a statement.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called Kennedy’s mass ouster “a coup.”

“It’s not how democracies work,” he said. “It’s not good for the health of the nation.”

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — a doctor who had raised concerns about Kennedy’s nomination before ultimately voting to confirm him based on assurances that Kennedy would not dismantle the nation’s vaccine policy — said he spoke to Kennedy on Monday after the firings were announced.

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Cassidy said in a social media post. “I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Anti-vaccine advocate and current US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken the extraordinary action of firing all 17 vaccine experts on a federal committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on immunization practices.

In an opinion piece published Monday in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy announced that he had cleared out the committee, accusing them of being "plagued with persistent conflicts of interest" and a group that has "become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine."

"Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028," Kennedy added.

The committee—CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—meets periodically to publicly review, evaluate, debate, and make recommendations on immunization practices. The CDC typically adopts the committee's recommendations. The CDC's vaccination schedules and recommendations set clinical standards for the country and determine insurance coverage.

ACIP was scheduled to meet later this month to examine and make recommendations on this year's COVID-19 vaccines. But its recommendations were largely superseded by separate announcements from the Food and Drug Administration leaders and Kennedy, both of whom set new restrictions and requirements for use of COVID-19 vaccines in children and pregnant people. The moves are a significant break from the standardized, transparent protocols for setting immunization practices.

Announcing a restructuring of federal health guidance processes via an op-ed in a newspaper is also unusual.

In Kennedy's article, he criticized ACIP and FDA advisors for being in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. However, he argued that the "problem isn’t necessarily that ACIP members are corrupt."

"Most likely aim to serve the public interest as they understand it," he wrote. "The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy."

Kennedy, who is currently trying to shift the national attention to his idea of clean living and higher-quality foods, has a long history of advocating against vaccines, spreading misinformation and disinformation about the lifesaving shots. However, a clearer explanation of Kennedy's war on vaccines can be found in his rejection of germ theory. In his 2021 book that vilifies infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, he bemoaned germ theory as "the pharmaceutical paradigm that emphasized targeting particular germs with specific drugs rather than fortifying the immune system through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition."

As such, he rails against the "$1 trillion pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, pricks, potions, and poisons."

In Kennedy's op-ed, he indicates that new ACIP members will be appointed who "won’t directly work for the vaccine industry. ... will exercise independent judgment, refuse to serve as a rubber stamp, and foster a culture of critical inquiry."

It's unclear how the new members will be vetted and appointed and when the new committee will be assembled.

In a statement, the President of the American Medical Association, Bruce Scott, rebuked Kennedy's firings, saying that ACIP "has been a trusted national source of science- and data-driven advice and guidance on the use of vaccines to prevent and control disease." Today's removal "undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives," he continued. "With an ongoing measles outbreak and routine child vaccination rates declining, this move will further fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses."

This post has been updated to include a statement from the AMA. This story is breaking and may be updated further.

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The Supreme Court allowed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to access Social Security Administration (SSA) records on Friday, overturning lower-court decisions that imposed some limits on DOGE's data access.

"We conclude that, under the present circumstances, SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work," the Supreme Court order said. The court also sided with the Trump administration in a different DOGE case, finding that a lower court's discovery order requiring DOGE to provide information about its government cost-cutting operations was too broad (more on that ruling later in this article).

The data-access ruling was in a case filed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the Alliance for Retired Americans; and American Federation of Teachers. US District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander previously issued a preliminary injunction, writing that DOGE "is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion." The District of Maryland judge found that plaintiffs are likely to win their case alleging that the government violated the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit denied the Trump administration's request to stay the preliminary injunction in a 9–6 vote. The Trump administration filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court last month, arguing that the injunction is causing "irreparable harm to the executive branch" and thwarting DOGE's attempts to "eliminate waste and fraud."

The Supreme Court's unsigned ruling didn't go into much detail, which isn't unusual for decisions made on the emergency docket. The majority said that in order to grant a stay, the court evaluates four factors: "(1) whether the stay applicant has made a strong showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits; (2) whether the applicant will be irreparably injured absent a stay; (3) whether issuance of the stay will substantially injure the other parties interested in the proceeding; and (4) where the public interest lies."

The court majority decided "that the application of these factors in this case warrants granting the requested stay." The preliminary injunction is now stayed while litigation continues at the 4th Circuit. The underlying case could make its way back to the Supreme Court.

Dissent: Court bends standards “for certain litigants”

The three justices nominated by Democratic presidents—Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—opposed the stay. A dissent written by Jackson and joined by Sotomayor said:

Today the Court grants "emergency" relief that allows the Social Security Administration (SSA) to hand DOGE staffers the highly sensitive data of millions of Americans. The Government wants to give DOGE unfettered access to this personal, non-anonymized information right now—before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE's access is lawful. So it asks this Court to stay a lower court's decision to place temporary and qualified limits on DOGE's data access while litigation challenging DOGE's authority to access the data is pending. But the Government fails to substantiate its stay request by showing that it or the public will suffer irreparable harm absent this Court's intervention. In essence, the "urgency" underlying the Government's stay application is the mere fact that it cannot be bothered to wait for the litigation process to play out before proceeding as it wishes.

Jackson said the court's emergency-docket practices have become "decoupl[ed] from the traditional harm-reduction justification for equitable stays." In the DOGE case, lower courts are "expeditiously assessing whether federal law permits the SSA to give DOGE staffers unfettered access to Americans' sensitive information," Jackson wrote. The only question before the Supreme Court "is what should happen to all of that data in the meantime," and the government "has not shown that it will suffer any concrete or irreparable harm" if the injunction is enforced while litigation continues, she wrote.

Jackson said the ruling "sends a troubling message" that the court will depart from its usual legal standards "for certain litigants." While other litigants seeking a stay "must point to more than the annoyance of compliance with lower court orders they don't like, the Government can approach the courtroom bar with nothing more than that and obtain relief from this Court nevertheless," Jackson wrote.

Jackson: “Grave privacy risks for millions”

Jackson said the ruling puts at risk personal information like Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, bank account numbers, and medical records. "Every person who has received a Social Security number appears in the SSA's data," and the agency administers various programs that collect other personal information, Jackson wrote. The Supreme Court ruling creates "grave privacy risks for millions of Americans," she wrote.

For example, Jackson wrote that Social Security Disability Insurance "collects detailed medical histories (describing, for example, prescriptions, mental-health treatments, and testing results for sensitive health conditions like HIV) from applicants and beneficiaries." The Privacy Act protects this kind of data, prohibiting agencies "from disclosing covered data except in narrow circumstances, such as where agency employees 'have a need for the record in the performance of their duties.'"

The SSA has long had a policy of restricting access, but its data-handling practices "changed dramatically" after President Trump's executive order creating DOGE, Jackson wrote. "Record evidence reflects that DOGE received far broader data access than the SSA customarily affords for fraud, waste, and abuse reviews," Jackson wrote.

Previously, investigations would "start with access to high-level, anonymized data based on the least amount of data the analyst or auditor would need to know," Jackson wrote, referring to evidence given by a former SSA acting chief of staff. Analysts or auditors previously could only obtain "more granular, non-anonymized data" if they found suspicious entries, she wrote.

The lower courts "carefully craft[ed] interim relief tailored to the needs of the moment," Jackson wrote. The injunction was "minimally burdensome" because it "allows the SSA to provide DOGE staffers with access to redacted or anonymized data and SSA records, so long as DOGE staffers meet the training, background-check, and other requirements that generally govern such access," she wrote.

The injunction also allowed access to non-anonymized data "if DOGE gives the agency a written explanation of its specific need for the records," Jackson wrote. The injunction "amounts to a short-term pause on giving DOGE unfettered and uniquely unprotected access to millions of Americans' sensitive, non-anonymized data, paired with reasonable conditions on data access in the interim," but the government was "dissatisfied with even those minor limitations," she wrote.

"With today's decision, it seems as if the Court has truly lost its moorings," Jackson wrote. "It interferes with the lower courts' informed and equitable assessment of how the SSA's data is best accessed during the course of this litigation, and it does so without any showing by the Government that it will actually suffer concrete or irreparable harm from having to comply with the District Court's order."

Another win for Trump

This isn't the only case in which the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to block orders related to DOGE. In another case, the administration asked the court to block a ruling that requires DOGE to provide information about its government cost-cutting operations as part of court-ordered discovery.

On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that the discovery order was too broad. "The portions of the District Court's April 15 discovery order that require the Government to disclose the content of intra–Executive Branch USDS [US DOGE Service] recommendations and whether those recommendations were followed are not appropriately tailored," the court said.

The Supreme Court remanded the case to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, ordering it to narrow the discovery order. Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan opposed the decision but did not write a formal dissent. The case involves nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which sued after DOGE officials refused to provide records requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

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