If you don’t read my Substack, you should. Yesterday, I created a TDS variant named DOGE Derangement Syndrome (DDS, but without the dentist). There’s no need to describe it; it’s the only thing the Democrats can talk about. And it turns out to have been one of several judicial traps set by Team MAGA for power-drunk democrats.
Trump set up DOGE by Executive Order and let it loose on the bureaucracy. Democrats, terrified at the fiscal consequences, tripped over Alinsky on their way to court. Freeze your target, ridicule them, destroy them, make them shout uncle. The entire media-industrial complex zeroed in on destroying Elon Musk, who smiled, made fun of them and retweeted the skeletons DOGE was unearthing while acting indifferent or even disinterested in their outrage.
He may have even muttered, ‘I don’t really care, Margaret.
Eighteen Blue State AGs, activated by this outrage, formed a coven of TDS DDS activists and sued the federal government to stop this crazy thing.
Lawyers for 18 blue states had asked (DC District Court judge) Chutkan to temporarily restrain Musk and DOGE from accessing government information systems at the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Commerce. They also wanted the judge to block Musk and DOGE from firing any employees at those agencies.
Chutkan was unkind to J6rs, so no MAGA appointee was she, but so thin was the case to justify any sort of restraining order, she had to say no – with prejudice and in a manner that revealed how Trump and DOGE had railroaded the entire left from its roots to its rotten tips.
“Plaintiffs raise a colorable Appointments Clause claim with serious implications. Musk has not been nominated by the President nor confirmed by the U.S. Senate, as constitutionally required for officers who exercise ‘significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States,’” she wrote. “But even a strong merits argument cannot secure a temporary restraining order at this juncture.”
Why? According to the Director of the Office of Administration, Elon Musk is nothing more than a senior advisor with no actual authority. He does not work for DOGE in any capacity and is not its administrator. He advises, for no pay, and that’s it.
Democrats just assumed, and no one bothered to correct them.
To borrow from Raiders of the Lost Ark, ‘They’re digging in the wrong place,‘ and they have been for weeks. All that Musk, co-president, executive power smokescreen was a MAGA head fake that Trump and company let the Left chase for weeks. He’s got no power. He can only consult and advise, and this fact is now part of the court records denying the coven of AGs their remedy.
For those of you following the online chatter about this case, the Elon Affidavit also torched the plaintiffs’ Appointments Clause argument. They thought they were so clever wielding it against Trump, since Trump used the same argument against Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. But now their argument has vanished, poof! It is a dead letter.
The Appointments Clause (Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution), requires that “Officers of the United States” be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate if they wield significant authority. Since Elon wasn’t confirmed by the Senate, they thought they had him dead to rights. But ‘advisors’ don’t wield significant authority. Thus, the Appointments Clause doesn’t apply—and the plaintiffs just lost their big constitutional argument.
Fear not, the left won’t let it go (I don’t think they can), which will Make America Great Again. Any narrative about someone else running the country invites soft-focus dream sequence journeys back in time to the entirety of the Biden administration and all the Democrats and media allies who ran cover for all of his “advisors,” at least a few of whom had to be acting as the President on the occasions when Joe was incapable of it.
All while insisting that they are defending Democracy by which they mean this.
