Elon Musk’s role in overseeing the government’s Department of Efficiency (DOGE) is likely to be a violation of the US Constitution’s appointment clause, a federal judge wrote Tuesday.
Theodore Chuan, a US District Court judge for the Maryland district, wrote that despite claiming that the world’s wealthiest person truly is “special advisor to the president,” there is ample evidence (mainly from statements by Musk and Donald Trump) that the world’s wealthiest person actually acts as heads of doges.
Chuan has released his opinion in a case in which an unnamed worker with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) filed a mask and doge lawsuit. The judge also wrote that the actions that Mask took in that role, including shutting down Mask after throwing him into a “wood chipper,” are likely to be unconstitutional.
“Musk demonstrated his real authority on USAID that only properly appointed officers could exercise,” he writes. (US officers are legal distinctions set out by their appointment clauses.)
Chuan’s opinion comes more than 50 days after Trump took office and allowed Musk to begin cutting agencies with his Doge team. His opinion is the most direct shot across the mask and doge bow of many lawsuits filed over the past two months.
In his opinion, Chuan ordered the recovery of some of the USAID operations and restricted Musk and Doji from taking further steps to dismantle the agency.
It is unclear whether musk and doji follow that order. Musk and President Trump have posted on social media for the past few days, claiming that judges opposed to their actions should be fired each. Trump’s promotion of that idea was so unremarkable to the actions of the president that preceded him that Supreme Court Justice John Roberts issued a rare public statement blaming him.
“For over two centuries, it has been established that each is not an appropriate response to discrepancies in judicial decisions.”
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