Date: 2025-07-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028314
TRUMP CHAOS
USAID
Judge finds Elon Musk and DOGE's shutdown
of USAID likely unconstitutional
USAID
Judge finds Elon Musk and DOGE's shutdown
of USAID likely unconstitutional
Original article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-finds-doges-usaid-shutdown-likely-unconstitutional/
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
The media talks about Trump being 'transactional'. I have no idea what they actually mean by that. My interprettation is that Trump has no idea about the strategic purpose of what he is doing, but rather likes the direction of the 'first move'.
During my schoolboy days, I played rugby football. I was a 'back' rather than a 'forward'. Initially I played as a 'scrum-half' but eventually as an older boy played as a 'full-back'. I never played as a 'forward'.
The 'position' I played was a combination of my physical build, and part mental and the way I saw the game and strategised how to win!
And to a great extent I think I have played the 'game of life' pretty much the way I used to play rugby!
As a schoolboy playing rugby, I got the benefit of a schoolmaster who was also the 'coach' of the team.
In life, rather few of us have the benefit of a 'coach;'. Our parents serve as coaches during out childhood, but few parents have the skills to be of much value in this role as a child moves from through the teenage years and into adulthood.
My schoolboy experience was in the UK ... at an old boarding school, Blundell's founded in 1604 by Peter Blundell, a wealthy textile merchant who also was involved with the founding of Sidney Susses College at Cambridge, and Balliol Colleg at Oxford. When I was at school, the school was committed to both the academic work as well as a high standard in athletics. Richard Sharp, who was a year ahead of me went on to play rugby for the Navy, for Oxford University and for England. By comparioson, my record of accomplishment was rather weak, but I did get to play rugby for the English Schoolboys against Scotland in my last year of school!
At University, my rugby progress was challenging. In the college setting, the captain of the team was another full back, a year ahead of me ... and that was a challenge! At the university level, the captain of the Cambridge University team was Ken Scotland, a full back, and also captain of the Scottish national ream. Nevertheless, I still participated in two college rugby tours during my university years, one to the Channel Islands and one to Paris, France! Both of these tours were memorable experiences.
Looking at Trump, I see a schoolboy rugby player who is big, quite fast, snall brain and strategically clueless. As long as the ball never reaches the opposing 'backs', the Trump team can gain ground and maybe win as a 'pack' ... but more likely the opposing 'backs' will eventually run up a big score against the Trump players! In rugby, 'getting possession' of the ball is important ... and Trump has possession right now, but this is starting to change as the legal profession ... some of the legal prfession ... gets involved and gets engaged. Many other groups are waking up ... not to mention Trump voters who are starting to realise that they have been 'conned' by a 'master con-artist' ... that is Trump, together with a bunch of others like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel who have wealth and very questionable backgrounds and motivations!
Both Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are foreign born ... as am I. Elon Musk was born in South Africa< and Peter Thiel was born in South West Africa (now Namibia). They grew up with apartheid and both migrated to the United States when they were quite young. They became a part of the young 'PayPal Mafia' team in California that created PayPal and made a huge profit from its success. Both Musk and Thiel grew up in very racist settings in Southern Africa before migrating to California as young adults!
The following from Wikipedia:
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa's administrative capital. He is of British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His mother, Maye (née Haldeman), is a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa.
Peter Thiel, born in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, on October 11, 1967, to Klaus and Susanne Thiel, emigrated to the United States with his family when he was one year old. His family lived in Cleveland, Ohio, where his father worked as a chemical engineer, and later moved to South Africa and South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) before settling in Foster City, California.
Both Elon Musk and Peter Thiel now have huge wealth thanks to technology ... starting with PayPal and multiplying manyfold over time. Musk is very visible, Peter Thiel less so. Both Musk and Thiel have political philosophies that are potentially dangerous and bot have financial resources that give them an unusual amount of power should they choose to use it.
Peter Thiel, for example, has been the financial power behind the rise of J.D.Vance into the position of Vice President of the United States!
In combination with Donald Trump, this quartet does not look like good news for either the United States, nor the World!
Maybe ... just maybe ... America's 'rule of law' will hold ... but it is not a sure thing!
Peter Burgess
CBS News ... Politics
Written by Melissa Quinn
Updated on: March 19, 2025 / 3:55 PM EDT
Washington — A federal judge on Tuesday found that Elon Musk and the White House's Department of Government Efficiency likely violated the Constitution when they unilaterally acted to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.
U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled in favor of a group of more than two dozen unnamed current and former USAID employees and contractors who had challenged the efforts to shutter USAID, which were mounted by DOGE and Musk, a senior White House adviser who President Trump has said is the leader of the task force.
Chuang granted in part their request for a preliminary injunction and said in a 68-page decision that DOGE and Musk likely violated the Constitution's Appointments Clause and separation of powers.
He ordered Musk and task force employees to reinstate access to email, payment and other electronic systems to all current USAID employees and personal services contractors. The judge also prevented DOGE and Musk from taking any action relating to the shutdown of USAID, including placing employees on administrative leave, firing USAID workers, closing its buildings, bureaus or offices, and deleting the contents of its websites or collections.
DOGE and Musk are prohibited under the judge's order from taking any other actions relating to USAID without the 'express authorization' of an agency official with legal authority to take the action. The Trump administration is likely to appeal the decision.
'To deny plaintiffs' Appointments Clause claim solely on the basis that, on paper, Musk has no formal legal authority relating to the decisions at issue, even if he is actually exercising significant authority on governmental matters, would open the door to an end-run around the Appointments Clause,' Chuang wrote.
He continued: 'If a president could escape Appointments Clause scrutiny by having advisers go beyond the traditional role of White House advisors who communicate the president's priority to agency heads and instead exercise significant authority throughout the federal government so as to bypass duly appointed officers, the Appointments Clause would be reduced to nothing more than a technical formality.'
Norm Eisen, executive chair of the State Democracy Defenders Fund, which brought the case on behalf of the 26 USAID employees and contractors, said the ruling is an 'important victory' against Musk and DOGE.
'They are performing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel, harming not just the people USAID serves but also the majority of Americans who count on the stability of our government,' he said in a statement. 'This case is a milestone in pushing back on Musk and DOGE's illegality.'
USAID was one of the first agencies that came under scrutiny by DOGE as part of Mr. Trump's sweeping plan to shrink the size of the federal government. Soon after the president returned to a second term, the agency, which was established in 1961, became subject to a 90-day pause on foreign assistance funding that devastated nonprofit organizations, businesses and aid groups that received grants and other awards from USAID.
DOGE team members also gained access to the agency's financial and personnel systems, and hundreds of USAID officials were placed on administrative leave. Its website was shut down last month, email accounts deactivated and USAID's Washington, D.C., headquarters were occupied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The unidentified USAID employees and personal services contractors filed their lawsuit against Musk and DOGE in mid-February and argued that Musk's actions violated the Constitution's Appointments Clause. The case was one of several filed after DOGE was established that have challenged Musk's actions and the task force's access to sensitive federal systems.
Musk's role within DOGE has been of particular interest, including among federal judges overseeing court fights involving the task force. While Mr. Trump has claimed publicly that Musk leads DOGE, including during his joint address to Congress earlier this month, Justice Department lawyers have argued that he is a senior adviser to the president and does not have formal authority to make government decisions.
Amid repeated questions about who was leading DOGE, the White House revealed last month that Amy Gleason, who worked for DOGE's predecessor, is its acting administrator.
Chuang, meanwhile, said Musk and DOGE have been behind agency actions throughout the federal government, including at USAID.
He noted that Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, appears to have been involved in the closure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headquarters. He said evidence shows that Musk and DOGE 'have taken other unilateral actions without any apparent authorization from agency officials,' including the firings of employees at the Department of Agriculture and National Nuclear Security Administration.
'Under these circumstances, the evidence presently favors the conclusion that contrary to defendants' sweeping claim that Musk acted only as an advisor, Musk made the decisions to shutdown USAID's headquarters and website even though he 'lacked the authority to make that decision,'' Chuang wrote, citing arguments from the Trump administration.
As to USAID, the judge said that the record before the court 'does not support the conclusion' that decisions to dismantle the agency by permanently closing its headquarters and taking down its website were made by USAID officials.
'Thus, based on the present record, the only individuals known to be associated with decisions to initiate a shutdown of USAID by permanently closing USAID headquarters and taking down its website are Musk and DOGE team members,' Chuang wrote.
The Constitution's Appointments Clause in part lays out the methods for appointing officers of the United States, divided into two categories: principal officers, appointed by the president with Senate approval, and inferior officers, who generally do not require Senate confirmation. The challengers in the case argued that Musk was carrying out the functions of an officer without being appointed to that role, thus violating the Appointments Clause.
Chuang agreed. He found that where there is evidence that Musk exercised significant authority reserved for an officer while serving in a continuing government position, the unnamed USAID employees and contractors were likely to win on their argument that he skirted the Appointments Clause.
'The public interest is specifically harmed by defendants' actions, which have usurped the authority of the public's elected representatives in Congress to make decisions on whether, when and how to eliminate a federal government agency, and of officers of the United States duly appointed under the Constitution to exercise the authority entrusted to them,' he wrote.
In addition to finding that the dismantling of USAID by Musk and DOGE was likely unconstitutional, Chuang found that they lack authorization by Congress to take steps toward abolishing the agency.
'There is no statute that authorizes the Executive Branch to shut down USAID,' he wrote.
The judge added that Congress alone has the constitutional authority to take action to eliminate agencies it has created.
'Where Congress has prescribed the existence of USAID in statute pursuant to its legislative powers under Article I, the president's Article II power to take care that the laws are faithfully executed does not provide authority for the unilateral, drastic actions taken to dismantle the agency,' Chuang wrote.
The judge's opinion warns that there are reasons to be concerned about the potential public disclosure of personal, sensitive or classified information by DOGE team members. He said they 'took extreme measures' to gain access to classified information, including in secure facilities, 'when there was no identified need to do so,' and when some DOGE staff lacked security clearances.
Chuang cited one USAID employee on administrative leave who reported that DOGE team members who did not have security clearances granted themselves access to restricted areas that required approval.
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