A strategy by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and the president’s right-hand man, to break the federal government is hitting a flurry of legal roadblocks.
Court smackdowns against moves like the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” offer to federal employees and its freeze on federal funding are unlikely to stop, said David Super, an administrative and constitutional law professor at Georgetown University.
“The administration has chosen to take a very aggressive position that a great many laws just don’t apply to them, in fact they are unconstitutional,” said Super. “These are laws that have been followed by administrations of both parties — including the first Trump administration — for many decades.”
“I would not expect the lower courts to accept these arguments, and I don’t think the Trump administration does either,” Super continued. “I think they’re hoping they can persuade the Supreme Court.”
But even the nation’s highest bench — with a conservative supermajority, including three Trump appointees — is not expected to take a favorable view of the administration’s moves.
In its decision last summer in Loper Bright v. Raimondo — which overturned the Chevron doctrine, removing judicial deference for agencies’ reading of ambiguous laws — the Supreme Court emphasized that it is the judicial branch and not the president that gets to say what the law is.
“I think the court, whatever its sympathies for the merits of what the Trump administration is doing, is going to be very reluctant about how aggressive the administration’s position is on presidential power,” Super said.
Over the weekend, Musk took to X, the social media network he owns, to call for the impeachment of a judge that blocked his rule-gutting initiative, the Department of Government Efficiency, from accessing sensitive information at the Treasury Department.
And Vice President JD Vance posted Sunday that it is “illegal” for courts to tell a general how to conduct a military operation or an attorney general how to use her prosecutorial discretion.
“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote.
Even if the administration loses all its court cases, Trump officials are making it clear that they’re trying to provoke a constitutional crisis, Super said. They’re sending a message to the public and people who run programs that rely on federal funding that the government is no longer a reliable partner.
And as the litigation plays out, federal workers who have options in the private sector are fleeing their jobs, Super said.
“They’re trying to make a revolution,” he said of the Trump administration.
‘Deferred resignation’
A federal court in Massachusetts is expected to decide Monday afternoon whether to extend a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration’s exit plan for workers at agencies like EPA and the Department of Energy.
In a move that echoed an offer Musk made to employees of X, formerly known as Twitter, the administration gave federal workers until last Thursday to decide whether to go on administrative leave in exchange for resigning by Sept. 30.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Thursday afternoon pumped the brakes on that plan, extending the deadline to Monday night to allow time for more briefing in the litigation.
The court is set to hold a hearing at 2 p.m. Monday to decide whether to extend its pause.
Funding freeze
The Trump administration has received a serious rebuke for allegations that it is continuing to withhold congressionally appropriated climate funds in violation of a court order.
On Friday, Democratic state attorneys general filed an emergency motion to enforce a temporary restraining order issued by Chief Judge John McConnell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island against the funding freeze. (A federal judge in Washington has issued a separate order against the pause in litigation launched by nonprofit groups.)
McConnell sided with the states Monday.
“As long as this Administration continues to break the law, we will continue our fight to uphold it,” said Attorney General Peter Neronha of Rhode Island, one of the blue states challenging the administration’s funding freeze, in a Friday statement.
Despite McConnell’s order, Neronha said, states have continued to experience holds on funding under the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
“These lingering funding pauses are not coincidental,” Neronha said. “So let me be as crystal clear as Judge McConnell’s order: we’re not interested in playing these games, especially when it comes to funding programs that Americans rely on to survive and thrive.”
Reporter Robin Bravender contributed.
