{"id":6164,"date":"2025-02-15T00:20:06","date_gmt":"2025-02-15T00:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/theyre-not-just-suing-to-stop-doge-theyre-suing-elon-musk-himself\/"},"modified":"2025-02-15T00:20:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T00:20:06","slug":"theyre-not-just-suing-to-stop-doge-theyre-suing-elon-musk-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/theyre-not-just-suing-to-stop-doge-theyre-suing-elon-musk-himself\/","title":{"rendered":"They\u2019re not just suing to stop DOGE. They\u2019re suing Elon Musk himself."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Elon Musk\u2019s efforts to disrupt and dismantle the federal government at the behest of Donald Trump have already sparked a legion of lawsuits. Now the legal challengers are setting their sights on a new target: Musk himself.<\/p>\n

Two new cases accuse the ultra-wealthy CEO of illegally amassing too much government power without the accountability typically required of high-level executive branch officials. They are seeking court orders that would force Musk to halt the cost-cutting and information-gathering activities he has been spearheading through his U.S. DOGE Service.<\/p>\n

The lawsuits rest on a provision of the Constitution that says powerful federal officers must be \u201cestablished by law,\u201d must be formally appointed by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate. Musk, of course, has not been confirmed by the Senate, and his role is amorphous and ill-defined. He has been operating out of the White House as the head of the newly created DOGE enterprise, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency but is not a formal government department. It was established by a Trump executive order, not by Congress.<\/p>\n

Many lawsuits have challenged DOGE\u2019s early initiatives. But the two suits filed Thursday \u2014 one brought by state governments<\/a> and the other by federal employees<\/a> \u2014 are the first to take on Musk personally.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis power includes, at least, the authority to cease the payment of congressionally approved funds, access sensitive and confidential data across government agencies, cut off systems access to federal employees and contractors at will, and take over and dismantle entire independent federal agencies,\u201d the government employees argue in a lawsuit filed by longtime Trump nemesis Norm Eisen.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the states say Musk\u2019s little-understood role has stoked \u201cmass chaos and confusion for state and local governments, federal employees, and the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan held a hearing on the states\u2019 case Friday and agreed the states showed legitimate reasons for concern about the prospect that Musk and DOGE officials are improperly accessing or compromising federal databases. <\/p>\n

But Chutkan stopped short of ordering an emergency halt to DOGE\u2019s access to those systems, saying that would be an extraordinary remedy that could only be deployed with specific evidence that improper action against another federal agency was imminent. <\/p>\n

A lawyer for the states lamented, \u201cWe\u2019re playing Whac-A-Mole here,\u201d and said it was hard to pinpoint where Musk would train his DOGE allies next. Chutkan acknowledged that DOGE has been rampaging through the federal government swiftly and unpredictably, but she said \u201cbad things could happen\u201d was not enough to justify an emergency restraining order.<\/p>\n

Musk \u2014 who is the CEO of X, SpaceX and Tesla, and is estimated to be the world\u2019s richest person \u2014 has done little to illuminate his precise role in the Trump administration. His job appears to entail Oval Office meetings with Trump, trolling critics on X and assailing judges who have clipped both his and Trump\u2019s early ambitions over questions about their constitutionality.<\/p>\n

Musk has attacked reporters for identifying the employees he has helped embed in many federal agencies. And he agreed to reinstate a DOGE employee who abruptly resigned last week after reporters surfaced racist social media posts he made under a pseudonym. (Court documents suggest, however, that the employee, Marko Elez, has not resumed his previous duties.)<\/p>\n

Trump has made clear he endorses what Musk and his DOGE team are doing, setting out in executive orders that the group\u2019s mission is to modernize systems and databases across the federal government.<\/p>\n

The direct legal attack on Musk\u2019s unappointed position will play out in courtrooms in Washington, D.C., and Maryland, where the two suits have been filed. But the issue could escalate as far as the Supreme Court and determine just how much power a president has to designate a roving budget-cutter to access the government\u2019s most sensitive systems and databases.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the fight is the Constitution\u2019s \u201cappointments clause<\/a>,\u201d which requires most powerful executive branch officials to be confirmed by the Senate. Though department leaders can hire employees who don\u2019t need Senate approval, anyone wielding executive power must face vetting by Congress.<\/p>\n

That principle was at the heart of a ruling last year by a Florida federal judge \u2014 Aileen Cannon<\/a> \u2014 that derailed special counsel Jack Smith\u2019s prosecution of Trump for storing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Smith\u2019s role as a special prosecutor, Cannon concluded, violated the appointments clause \u2014 a ruling that contradicted a long line of judicial decisions upholding the authority of the Justice Department to name special counsels without getting Senate confirmation.<\/p>\n

Trump, at the time, celebrated the ruling and praised Cannon as a \u201cbrilliant\u201d judge. Now, Trump\u2019s detractors \u2014 who railed against Cannon\u2019s decision in the context of special counsels \u2014 want to apply the same reasoning to Musk.<\/p>\n

But Musk\u2019s role has no historical comparison. Never before has a president empowered a private CEO to come into the government and take a hacksaw to systems governed by intricate laws and policies meant to insulate them from political manipulation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk\u2019s efforts to disrupt and dismantle the federal government at the behest of Donald Trump have already sparked a legion of lawsuits. Now the legal challengers are setting their sights on a new target: Musk himself. Two new cases accuse the ultra-wealthy CEO of illegally amassing too much government power without the accountability typically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}