February 14, 2025
Are Elon Musk and his DOGE team about to be stripped of any power they have? Maybe.
That’s because not one – but 14 states have now joined together to sue Elon Musk and President Trump to stop all that’s happening with DOGE. Of course doge is the department of government efficiency. I’ve bene reporting and I know you’ve been seeing all that has been happening with doge since president trump took office. President Trump says that new agency he created by executive order is needed to make the government more efficient and to root out what he considers “waste, fraud and abuse.” This is what trump campaigned on.
This lawsuit from the 14 states is not the same as the lawsuit filed over Musk’s access to the treasury department’s payment systems. This is totally different. Here it is. The suit was filed in the Washington DC federal district court last night. I’m going to tell you which states are filing this case and explain why they say what musk and his team are doing is illegal in a second but first –I will email this actual lawsuit to you so you can read it for yourself tonight in my FactsHQ email. You should absolutely be signed up for that email. Its free and I send it out every single night. It’s full of stories that I don’t cover here and is a super helpful resource. As soon as you’re done watching this video – sign up.
Ok – the states suing include New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and the state of Washington. The states make a bunch of striking statements in this lawsuit. Saying things like President Trump has “transformed a minor position that was formerly responsible for managing government websites into a designated agent of chaos without limitation and in violation of the separation of powers.” They say trump is acting like a “king” and they argue trump basically deputized Elon Musk to have “limitless and unchecked power to strip the government of its workforce and eliminate entire departments with the stroke of a pen or click of a mouse”. They argue the founding fathers would have been disgusted if they saw what was happening. Saying this “would have been shocking to those who won this country’s independence.”
The states argue that this whole Elon Musk and doge thing is a separation of powers issue. They say the appointments clause of the constitution is being violated. Basically that clause says presidents can nominated anyone they want to certain powerful positions but the senate must have the “advice and consent” power to approve that person. You’re seeing that right now with all of Trump’s cabinet picks. Right? They all had to have Senate confirmation hearings and all needed to get a vote by the full senate before they could hold that cabinet position. That’s in the constitution for a reason. The founders did that so that a president couldn’t just put people in huge positions and give them all kinds of power through the executive branch that would outweigh the power of the other branches of government. Well the states are arguing that’s what Trump is doing. The facts are this – initially after he won the election, trump said doge would just be an agency that would advise him on where the “waste, fraud and abuse” was located within the federal government. But that’s not what’s happening. The facts show that the doge team is way more powerful than being just an “advisor.”
The states are also arguing that the executive order that establishes the department of government efficiency set it up to be a “temporary organization” which of course is legal. However the states say that statute does not allow temporary organizations to have the power and authority to do the things that doge is currently doing throughout the government. They say doge shouldn’t have access to the sensitive data and systems, like the treasury department payment systems, USAID’s systems, health and human services systems like Medicare and Medicaid, the department of energy systems that operates the state’s energy programs, the department of defense systems – which is where Musk has received the bulk of his $20 billion in government contracts, to the systems of the office of personnel management which is like HR for the federal workforce and the list goes on and on and on.
They say “Mr. Musk is far more than an adviser to the white house. He executes the president’s agenda by exercising virtually unchecked power across the entire executive branch, making decisions about expenditures, contracts, government property, regulations, and the very existence of federal agencies. No executive position wields as much power over the operations of the executive branch other than the president.”
The states say all of these things combined have harmed their states and will continue to harm their states because they say musk is messing with the funding that the federal government sends them and he is unlawfully accessing the states’ private financial data that the federal government has on file. They want a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order that immediately orders Elon Musk to disclose what data he saw, what he’s doing with that data and to destroy any copies he may have made of that data. And they want the judge to ban Elon Musk and doge from ordering any kind of payment stoppage of public funds to agencies, ban them from stopping any kind of regulation that’s on the books, ban them from making any more personnel decisions for federal workers, ban them from dismantling agencies created by laws or asserting any kind of control over those agencies, and ban them from altering any agency data systems without authorization by a law passed by congress. The states basically want the judge to strip musk and doge of any power he has and they want the judge to rule everything Elon Musk and doge have done so far and will continue to do is not legally binding.
We will have to see what happens if and when this case is heard by a federal judge.
Read the lawsuit here.
Read more from the New Mexico AG here.
