The Last Line of Defense: The Courts vs. Trump

As Elon Musk approaches away from the so-called Department of Leadership Efficiency the chaotic legacy of his aggressive assault on federal agencies continues to reverberate throughout the cabinet Musk s goal slashing trillion from the federal budget has fallen far short At the majority it has cut billion of federal funding a number that the Financial Times reports is opaque and overstated Notably the richest man on Earth s businesses have received a comparable amount of cabinet funding preponderance of it going to SpaceX which remains untouched by DOGE s budget ax Stepping in to carry the torch is Russell Vought the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget and a key architect of Project the sweeping conservative playbook to consolidate executive power Under his stewardship DOGE will continue its mission to dismantle the federal administration from within Access to all of this information gives extraordinary power to the worst people says Mark Lemley the director of Stanford Law School s plan in law science and instrument Lemley is suing DOGE on behalf of federal employees for violating the Privacy Act This week on The Intercept Briefing Lemley and Intercept newsroom counsel and reporter Shawn Musgrave join host Jordan Uhl to take stock of the legal challenges mounting against the Trump administration s agenda As the executive branch grows more hostile to checks on its powers the courts remain the last fragile line of defense Related The Clear and Present Danger to the American Rule of Law From slashing cancer research funding to firing employees responsible for guarding the nation s nuclear arsenal DOGE s reckless tactics have triggered a legal firestorm Bloomberg Politics reports that DOGE s action has sparked more than three dozen lawsuits alone out of cases challenging the Trump administration s expansive use of executive authority There have now been hundreds of court decisions on issues a few involving the Privacy Act but a wide variety of the Trump administration s illegal exercises says Lemley In partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and State Democracy Defenders Lemley s suit accuses the U S Office of Personnel Management of violating the federal Privacy Act by handing over sensitive evidence to DOGE without consent or legal authority That facts breach occurred shortly after Trump returned to office when Musk reportedly dispatched DOGE operatives into establishment agencies and demanded access to federal systems and files One of the systems they accessed was OPM s which contains records for every current and former leadership employee Those records include Social Measure numbers bank records disability status and more In short DOGE got access to lots of confidential information As the Republican-held Congress abdicates its oversight responsibilities the courts have stepped up Courts are so far being the sort of bastion and holding the line for the Constitution says Lemley They re taking this very seriously They re writing incredibly detailed opinions in very short periods of time he adds especially as it has become harder and harder to justify the positions the executive is taking Those positions have the Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi behaving more like the personal lawyers of Donald Trump and his administration rather than an agency independent of the White House Related Democrats Had a Shot at Protecting Journalists From Trump They Blew It We re seeing this in things like Attorney General Bondi s latest memo about leak investigations says Musgrave If you read that thing he adds it s half just screeds from President Trump himself rather than any coherent report of approach You have to really get past a lot of vitriol and spite straight from President Trump s mouth before you understand what the Justice Department plan is One of the lessons that Donald Trump took from the first administration was An independent justice department was a dilemma for him says Lemley In this second term we re seeing just how vulnerable the system is when norms collapse Lemley explains Checks and balances depended not on the actual letter of the law and the way the Constitution is written but on a series of norms and on good-faith behavior by parties to the authorities he says And as we see those norms just wiped away it turns out that it s much harder to in fact control the effort of a president who is determined to make himself a dictator Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts Spotify or wherever you listen The post The Last Line of Defense The Courts vs Trump appeared first on The Intercept