Trump puts new limits on Elon Musk | Hacker News Reader

Trump puts new limits on Elon Musk

politico.com

I think this is just legal cover, just as they are denying that Elon is running DOGE. Elon has caused a huge legal problem for the administration by throwing so much of his weight around. The Appointments Clause of the constitution says that Officers of the United States must be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. Obviously the Senate has not confirmed Elon. If he's a mere advisor, making suggestions, that's fine. But if he has the authority to order around cabinet officials, then it's a violation of the Appointments Clause and the courts can potentially some of what he's doing (assuming that the administration abides by court orders).

Elon does not care about the constitution or the law. That's putting the country in a position where either Trump has to rein him in, or Trump will have to trigger a constitutional crisis by ignoring a court order.

> The Appointments Clause of the constitution says that Officers of the United States must be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.

Wasn't that the legal genius in how Trump structured it? DOGE is a re-branded USDS (United States Digital Service).

Given that USDS is not a federal agency, that clause of the Constitution would not apply.

That also would assume that Musk is the administrator of DOGE, which he is not. It's Amy Gleason, and she, just like every administrator of the USDS going back to Obama, was not confirmed.

USDS had a purely consulting role, helping to build websites. What DOGE is doing now is ordering agencies to do various things like cancel contracts, hire and fire people, stop work, etc.

And the idea that Amy Gleason is in charge is a fig leaf. Trump himself has said that Musk is in charge.

The argument is that by wielding this new power, Musk is effectively an Officer of the United States, regardless of his official title. And under the constitution an Officer of the United States must be appointed with the advice and consent of the senate.

Whether or not the Supreme Court will buy this argument is to be determined, but that's the argument.

It will be interesting if someone has to take the fall, cabinet member or Elon for the choices made.

We’ve already had some strange “I don’t know” answers from Trump officials in court, and judges already skeptical of the advisor claims.

>It is unclear whether the new guidance will result in laid off workers getting rehired.

So uh ... who fired all those people?

Does anyone get to rehire them?

Those folks still got a bunch of weird emails from this guy ...

I thought they already made the legal argument that Elon was just an advisor?

Who is running the show?

You will see...in one month he will say he hardly knew what Elon was doing, and anyway he was just an adviser...

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