Just In: They’re not just suing to stop DOGE. They’re suing Elon Musk himself….Read More

A pair of lawsuits say that, with all the power he has accumulated, Musk is violating the Constitution’s rules about the appointment of federal officers

Elon Musk’s 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 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.

The lawsuits rest on a provision of the Constitution that says powerful federal officers must be “established by law,” 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.

Many lawsuits have challenged DOGE’s early initiatives. But the two suits filed Thursday — one brought by state governments and the other by federal employees — are the first to take on Musk personally.

His 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,” the government employees argue in a lawsuit filed by longtime Trump nemesis Norm Eisen.

Similarly, the states say Musk’s little-understood role has stoked “mass chaos and confusion for state and local governments, federal employees, and the American people.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan held a hearing on the states’ 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.

But Chutkan stopped short of ordering an emergency halt to DOGE’s 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.

A lawyer for the states lamented, “We’re playing Whac-A-Mole here,” 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 “bad things could happen” was not enough to justify an emergency restraining order