Washington-Donald Trump’s shooting style of the LIP kept Americans at the edge of their seats during last year’s campaign. But now that he is talking as president and not as a candidate, his words are being used against him in the Court in the storm of litigation that challenges his agenda.
Spontaneity is complicating the legal positions of its administration. Nowhere has it been clearer than in the cases involving their advisor Elon Musk and the Government’s efficiency department, the driving force in their efforts to reduce and review the federal government.
The last example occurred earlier this week, when the United States district judge, Theodore Chuang, ruled that Musk had probably violated the Constitution by dismantling the United States agency for international development.
The demand became the question of whether the billionaire businessman had exceeded his authority. The lawyers of the Department of Justice and the White House officials insist that Musk is simply a presidential advisor, not Doge’s real leader.
But Trump has said otherwise, in speeches, interviews and public comments, and Chuang cited him widely in his decision.
Trump markedly boasted Dux during his speech at starring time to a joint session of Congress and said he was “headed by Elon Musk.” The Republicans gave musk a standing ovation, which greeted the gallery on the house of the house.
“Trump’s words were essential, central and indispensable,” said Norm Eisen, one of the USAID employees lawyers who filed the demand. “His admissions took what would have been a difficult case and became a direct.”
The loosening with words is a change of predecessors such as President Barack Obama, who used to say that he was careful because he could send troops marching or the fallen markets.
Trump does not have such a feeling of restriction, nor other members of his republican administration as an musk.
Chuang, based in Maryland and was appointed by Obama, also cited publications on the social networks of Musk, who frequently writes in X, the platform he owns.
For example, Musk published “We spent the weekend feeding USAID to Woodchipper” on February 3. The agency stood at that time, with despised staff, detained expenses and closed headquarters.
“Public statements and Musk’s publications … suggest that it has the ability to make Doge act,” Chuang wrote in his ruling.
Harrison Fields, deputy secretary of the White House press, said Trump was fulfilling his campaign promise “to make the federal government more efficient and responsible to taxpayers.”
“Dishonest bureaucrats and activist judges trying to undermine this effort are only subverting the will of the American people and their obstructionist efforts will fail,” he said.
Anthony Coley, who led public matters in the Department of Justice during the administration of President Joe Biden, said that the statements involving civil litigation were always coordinated between their office and the western wing.
“Words could be used to support what we are doing or undermine what we are doing,” he said. “It is a carefully choreographed effort to ensure that there was no daylight between what was said in the public opinion court and what could finally develop in the Law.”
In comparison to how things were done in the past, Coley said, Trump has an “air approach ready to do business.”
Trump does not usually let legal disputes force him to reject the volume. During a criminal investigation about his decision to keep the records classified in Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House after his first term, Trump spoke a lot about the case in an interview with Fox News.
The defending lawyers of a lifetime were surprised: the defendants are generally encouraged to keep the mother while facing an accusation. But the situation hastened to Trump. His legal team delayed the case, and the special lawyer’s office withdrew the charges after he won the elections because the presidents cannot be processed while they are in office.
Doge has been the focus of almost two dozen demands. It often prevails so far in cases involving access to government data, where several plaintiffs have fought to convince judges to block the actions of the organization.
But it also meets challenges, such as a demand on whether Doge must meet requests for public records. The Trump administration said in the Court that Dege is part of the White House, which means that it is exempt.
Judge Christopher Cooper, also appointed by Obama, did not agree, on the side of a government surveillance group called Citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington or the crew.
“The public statements of the musk and the president indicate that USDS”, the original acronym for the organization that was renamed as Doge, “in fact exercises substantial independent authority,” Cooper wrote, based in Washington.
Cooper concluded that Dege can “identify and cancel federal employees, federal programs and federal contracts. Doing any of those three things would seem to require a substantial independent authority; doing all three surely does.”
He ordered Dege to begin responding to requests on the role of the team in mass shots and interruptions to federal programs. The administration unsuccessfully asked the judge to reconsider, saying that the judge “fundamentally erroneously” the structure of the agency.
The fact that Musk claims the online credit for clippings of deep agencies, does not necessarily translate into doge that has authority in the eyes of the law, the professor of the Stanford Law Faculty, Michael McConnell, argued in a recent debate on the subject.
Doge recommends changes, he said, but it is the chiefs of the agency who actually put them in force.
“And that is all that will care what the Supreme Court will do,” McConnell said in the debate organized by the National Constitution Center.
