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Elon Musk’s attempts to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency have “likely violated the Constitution in multiple ways,” according to a federal judge’s ruling.
District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland granted a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks DOGE from access to any USAID systems and from doing “any work” related to shutting down the agency.
Tuesday’s order follows a lawsuit from a group of recently fired USAID workers and contractors who argued that the world’s wealthiest man — who promised to put the global aid agency in a “wood chipper” — was wielding unconstitutional authority under President Donald Trump to dismantle entire federal agencies and gut the federal workforce.
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The judge’s order — which appears to be the first to restrain Musk himself for his actions in the Trump administration — commands the billionaire and DOGE to reinstate access to email and payment systems for all USAID employees and contractors and blocks the administration from taking any other actions to try to shutter the agency, including firing workers or placing them on leave, deleting websites, shutting bureaus and closing buildings.
Within two weeks, Musk and DOGE must ensure the court that agency staff will be able to reoccupy USAID’s Washington headquarters, where signage was removed and covered in black tape following the administration’s attempts to fire hundreds of workers and cut off funding that supported dozens of life-saving missions around the world.
The order stops short of reinstating workers, though legal challenges to the Trump administration’s slashing of foreign aid and his purge of the federal workforce are playing out in several courts.
The ruling “is an important victory against Elon Musk and his DOGE attack on USAID, the United States’ government, and the Constitution,” according to Norm Eisen, executive chair of State Democracy Defenders Fund, which sued on behalf of government workers.
“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,” Eisen said in a statement. “This case is a milestone in pushing back on Musk and DOGE’s illegality.”
The Trump administration, which has repeatedly rejected court rulings against the president’s actions, has vowed to appeal.
“Rogue judges are subverting the will of the American people in their attempts to stop President Trump from carrying out his agenda,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement shared with The Independent. “If these judges want to force their partisan ideologies across the government, they should run for office themselves. The Trump administration will appeal this miscarriage of justice and fight back against all activist judges intruding on the separation of powers.”
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Chuang’s ruling determined the administration likely violated the Constitution’s appointments clause and the separation of powers by effectively granting Musk unprecedented authority despite holding no official role, without Senate confirmation or appointment to an existing office, to be able to make such sweeping decisions.
“The record demonstrates that, at least during the time period relevant to this motion, Musk was, at a minimum, likely the official performing the duties and functions” as the administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service, the agency that Trump renamed from the U.S. Digital Service upon taking office and empowered Musk to lead.
Administration officials have insisted that Musk is not the administrator for DOGE while the president has said the exact opposite.
Musk is merely an employee of the White House, serving as a “senior adviser to the president,” who has “no greater authority other than other senior White House advisers [have], and has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” according to a sworn statement from a senior White House official, testifying in a separate case.
But in the course of the case in Chuang’s court, “Musk was, at a minimum, likely the official performing the duties and functions” of administrator, the judge said.
“The record of his activities to date establishes that his role has been and will continue to be as the leader of DOGE,” Chuang wrote.
Trump’s apparent appointment of a White House adviser who then exercises “significant authority throughout the federal government” to evade scrutiny would reduce the appointment clause “to nothing more than a technical formality,” according to Chuang.
Chuang also noted that Musk’s actions aren’t confined to USAID — DOGE has also targeted the Consumer Financial Protection Board and “taken other unilateral actions without any apparent authorization from agency officials,” including firing staff at the Department of Agriculture and National Nuclear Security Administration, among others.
Last week, DOGE was separately ordered to comply with public records requests, after a separate judge determined the agency is wielding “unprecedented” authority with “unusual secrecy.”
District Judge Christopher Cooper argued that the administration appears to be making a “strategic” decision to dodge questions about DOGE’s operations and management, qualifying itself as an agency subject to federal law only when it is “convenient,” he wrote.
