Many people worldwide, not just in the United States, have wept bitter tears that the USAID has been dismantled. This is the agency that feeds malnourished children when they are at the distended belly stage (read: brink of death) and vaccinates children and adults against crippling and/or deadly diseases. But today a landmark decision was handed down when a a federal court ruled that Elon Musk and DOGE do NOT have the right to dismantle USAID.
And this is after Marco Rubio cosigned on this mad plot and announced that 83% of USAID programs were gone and the remaining 17% were soon to be under the auspices of the State Department. I can’t tell the story better than Common Dreams, so the rest of this article is reprinted in full under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.
Big win for us as federal court rules that Musk & DOGE do NOT have the authority to dismantle USAID
This is a landmark victory for the Constitution & every worker impacted the Trump-Musk chainsaw campaignhttps://t.co/Naps8xoBn3
— Norm Eisen (#TryingTrump out now!) (@NormEisen) March 18, 2025
A U.S. judge on Tuesday barred the Trump administration-created Department of Government Efficiency from taking “any actions relating” to the federal international aid agency it began pushing to dismantle in February, and said “special government employee” Elon Musk likely acted unconstitutionally “in multiple ways” by moving to shut down the agency.
In Maryland, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled in favor of 26 current and former employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), one of the earliest targets of Musk’s push to slash government spending and fire tens of thousands of civil servants. Chuang ordered DOGE to restore email, payment, and system access to all current USAID employees.
The workers are being represented by the State Democracy Defenders Fund, and have accused Musk of acting unconstitutionally.
“Today’s decision is an important victory against Elon Musk and his DOGE attack on USAID, the United States government, and the Constitution,” said Norm Eisen, executive chair of the group. “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. This case is a milestone in pushing back on Musk and DOGE’s illegality.”
Chuang is one of several federal judges who have blocked President Donald Trump and Musk’s actions ostensibly aimed at improving “efficiency” and eliminating waste in the federal government; other judges have blocked the president’s freezing of federal grants and loans, his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and his order attacking diversity, equity, and inclusiveness programs.
But Chuang’s ruling reportedly marks the first time a judge has ruled that Musk should likely be required to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate under the Constitution’s appointments clause.
“The record of his activities to date establishes that his role has been and will continue to be as the leader of DOGE, with the same duties and degree of continuity as if he was formally in that position,'” wrote Chuang.
The State Democracy Defenders Fund noted Tuesday that “the Constitution’s appointments clause only gives those powers to people nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, neither of which applies to Musk. Since Musk’s role as the de facto DOGE administrator constitutes the performance of significant governmental duties that should only be handled by duly appointed officers of the United States, the plaintiffs ultimately seek a permanent injunction preventing Musk and his team from continuing their roles.”
The Trump administration has claimed Musk is only an adviser to the president and is not the administrator of DOGE, which has spearheaded efforts to shut down agencies including the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and to fire federal employees across agencies.
“If a president could escape appointments clause scrutiny by having advisers go beyond the traditional role of White House advisers who communicate the president’s priorities 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,” the judge said.
Chuang rejected the claim that DOGE’s actions are not being directed by Musk, saying the Tesla CEO and Trump megadonor appeared to have been involved in closing the CFPB and to “have taken other unilateral actions without any apparent authorization from agency officials.”
“The evidence presently favors the conclusion that contrary to defendants’ sweeping claim that Musk acted only as an adviser, Musk made the decisions to shut down USAID’s headquarters and website even though he ‘lacked the authority to make that decision,'” Chuang said, quoting an argument from the Trump administration.
Mimi Marziani of Marziani, Stevens & Gonzalez PLLC, which helped defend the USAID workers in court, said the plaintiffs “are regular Americans who have faithfully served our country and the public good but have had their lives turned upside down because Musk wants to play master of the universe.”
“We are proud to stand up for the plaintiffs and the Constitution,” said Marziani, “which is designed to guard against these very sorts of abuses because our nation depends upon a government for all, not for a few.”
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The clown show is starting to unravel bigly after a mere 58 days. We intend to be here for the duration. If you can help with a small donation or go ad-free with a subscription, it would be much appreciated. We don’t know how much Trump will wreck the economy before we start to pull up out of the nosedive. Thank you. Ursula
So it turns out white is white, black is black, up is up, and down is down, just like we thought all along.
And the Trump regime’s insistence that they weren’t was really just another in a long list of lies told to us.
It doesn’t seem to matter what they say or wish, reality remains reality.
Truth remains truth.
Lies remain lies.
That’s the case. But authoritarian regimes live for a long time on the lie before they flame out. The WWI corporal who thought he could take over the world with his Third Reich caused a great many deaths and much suffering. Now we have the TV game show host who’s going to reinvent the American government.
I have no doubt Trump will go the same way as Hitler eventually, but my question is how much damage will he do before he gets there? See the movie Downfall if you haven’t. It will blow your mind.
The damage being inflicted on the USA by its own president and his cronies, ably enabled by the most corrupt, cowardly GOP in history, is already beyond measure and will take a very long time to repair, if and when the MAGAt nightmare ends. The outside world is both aghast and astounded that such destruction can occur, especially when directed and ordered by an unelected non-governmental individual whose sole claim to authority is an “advisor” to the president. So much for any and all the much-vaunted guardrails in place to protect the American democracy.
Other countries will have much more respect for us when we take them down.
This country has been looked upon as a beacon of hope and justice for the world. What trump has done to this globe has drastically changed our image. The only way to bring us out of this is to GET HIM OUT anyway possible!!!
So, the next step should be a (or many) civil suit(s) holding Musk personally responsible for all the costs involved in restoring USAID back to what it was before he started. Presumably, as the rest of this unconstitutional rampage gets unwound there would be additional suits covering other costs he has been creating.