Even Trump-Hating Judge Knows DOGE Lawsuits Are Dogs

The left and the swamp can rant and rave all they want about President Trump, Elon Musk, the DOGE, and the efforts to expose and cut criminal waste in the federal government, but as one constitutional law expert tells The Federalist, there’s no “there” there.

Even the D.C. judge who made life hell for Trump knows that. 

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected an urgent filing from more than a dozen leftist state attorneys general to block the Department of Government Efficiency from issuing pink slips to thousands of employees and accessing agency data. 

Chutkan, the judge who presided over the bogus election interference case against Trump that partisan Special Counsel Jack Smith brought against the then-GOP presidential candidate, said states haven’t “carried their burden” to show the states will “suffer imminent, irreparable harm” by DOGE’s government downsizing plan. 

In her ruling, Chutkan noted what news consumers have come to understand: You can’t base your legal claims off of the suspect accounts of corporate media, a Trump-hating propaganda press that has routinely lied to Americans. 

“Plaintiffs ask the court to take judicial notice of widespread media reports that DOGE has taken or will soon take certain actions, such as mass terminations,” the Obama-nominated  judge wrote. “But these reports cannot substitute for ‘specific facts in an affidavit or a verified complaint’ that ‘clearly show that immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result.’” 

The 14 blue state attorneys general brought the legal action seeking a temporary restraining order because, they allege, Musk’s actions violate the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. They assert that because the billionaire tech titan has not been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, Musk and DOGE lack legal authority to do that government fat-cutting voodoo they do so well. Musk “exercises virtually unchecked power across the Executive Branch, making decisions about expenditures, contracts, government property, regulations, and the very existence of federal agencies,” the states assert. 

They don’t want the D.C. court to let DOGE play any more reindeer games. No “accessing, copying, or transferring any data systems in the Office of Personnel Management, and the Departments of Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Energy, Transportation, and Commerce. And no firing or placing on leave officers or employees in those agencies. They assert only harm will come from DOGE’s ongoing efforts to shine a light on the potentially trillions of dollars in misspent taxpayer funds and the firing of a portion of the 2.3 million employees that make up the bloated federal government’s payroll. 

Chutkan, however, found the AGs have failed to satisfy he “high standard for irreparable harm.” 

“Plaintiffs’ declarations are replete with attestations that if Musk and DOGE Defendants cancel, pause, or significantly reduce federal funding or eliminate federal-state contracts, Plaintiff States will suffer extreme financial and programmatic harm,” the judge wrote. “But the ‘possibility’ that Defendants may take actions that irreparably harm Plaintiffs ‘is not enough.’”

Lawsuit Fog

But there’s a bigger issue at play that all the lawsuits and activists judges will eventually have to contend with under separation of powers: Trump is the head of the executive branch and the executive branch has control over the executive branch. 

“There’s no ‘there’ there with these lawsuits,” constitutional law expert Hans von Spakovsky, senior Legal Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told The Federalist Tuesday on the “Simon Conway Show.” “I’ll tell you very easily why. Elon Musk has no executive power. He is simply an adviser to the president.” 

A White House court document filed Monday notes that Musk is not a DOGE employee, and that he “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions.” 

When DOGE acts it’s because Trump wants it to. DOGE is providing recommendations to the president. He can do with them what he wants, he’s the “ultimate decider,” von Spakovsky said, particularly when it comes to accessing information, including classified information inside the executive branch. 

“If he wanted to give Elon Musk a top secret clearance right now, he could do it. And no one could question that,” von Spakovsky said. 

‘In the Name of Democracy’

Democrats and their lawfare allies want voters to believe they’re fighting the good fight against the guy they paint as an enemy of democracy. But George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley recently said Democrats are proving anti-democratic in their quest to stop the Trump administration from rooting out wasteful spending. 

“What’s interesting about the protests of many of these members is that a lot of these voices were the same ones in the name of democracy that wanted to prevent voters from voting for Donald Trump, who ultimately won both houses and a majority of votes,” Turley told Fox News. “And now in the name of democracy, they’re arguing they should be able to slowdown or stymy and even prevent some of the things that he ran on.”

Turley told Fox News’ Dana Perino that the left’s battle apparently to defend government waste is “a level of denial that borders on delusion.” He said Trump is “well within his articles and powers.”

“A trial judge can try to stop that but that judge will be quickly reversed, in my view,” the attorney said. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.