A coalition of states has failed to raise a valid legal claim against Elon Musk and his project to shrink the federal government, the Trump administration told a federal court Friday.
The administration’s motion to dismiss follows a request last month by New Mexico and other states to immediately stop Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from slashing federal funding and firing government workers. Musk’s helming of the operation, the states said, is a violation of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which says that Congress must approve certain officers selected by the president.
Musk’s position is no different from so-called policy czars chosen by prior presidents to handle priority matters, the administration wrote in its motion to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
“[O]n the States’s own telling, Elon Musk has massive (perhaps even decisive) influence over the DOGE-related portfolio of domestic policy. But the one thing he lacks is the one thing that the Appointments Clause requires: an office, ‘established by Law,’ and vested with formal power to act as an ‘Officer of the United States,’” Justice Department lawyers wrote.
