USAID Employees Sue DOGE and Elon Musk, Arguing He Needs Senate Confirmation

President Donald Trump listens as Elon Musk speaks in the Oval Office on Feb. 11, 2025. Photo/Alex Brandon

Current and former employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), claiming that Musk should have been first confirmed by the Senate.

The White House has said Musk is a special government employee, meaning he is not beholden to the same kinds of rules as other federal workers. Early on in his administration, President Donald Trump established DOGE to root out government fraud and waste. Since then, the department has helped to put a halt to numerous programs and departments, including USAID.

In a lawsuit filed on Feb. 13 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, the USAID workers wrote: “In his government role, Defendant Musk exercises an extraordinary amount of power. Indeed, the scope and reach of his executive authority appears unprecedented in U.S. history.”

They then laid out how they believe Musk and DOGE are operating within the federal government, saying that Musk relies on information posted on his social media platform X to “identify a federal program target” before allegedly attempting to install his team within an agency or agencies, trying to gain access to their operating systems and networks, and taking other alleged actions.

Musk and DOGE were then accused of trying to dismantle an agency “from within by severely disrupting or crippling operations” while posting about their actions on X.

Lawyers for the USAID workers, who remained anonymous in the lawsuit, then deployed a novel argument, saying that Musk should be nominated by the Senate because he should be deemed an officer of the United States under the U.S. Constitution’s appropriations clause.

“Questions regarding Defendant Musk’s and DOGE’s role, scope of authority, and proper appointment processes are not merely academic,” the plaintiffs argued. “Plaintiffs—among countless other American individuals and entities—have had their lives upended as a result of the actions undertaken by Defendants Musk and DOGE.”

The lawsuit is one of many legal challenges filed in favor of USAID officials against the Trump administration. Last week, a federal judge paused plans to place thousands of USAID workers on leave, while a lawsuit filed on Feb. 11 alleged that the unraveling of USAID is stiffing U.S. businesses on hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid bills for work that has already been done.

The president’s pause has shut down clinics, water deliveries, and almost all of the thousands of other U.S.-funded aid and development programs around the globe, USAID workers and humanitarian groups have said.

Deputy USAID head Pete Marocco has said in a court filing that “insubordination” at USAID made it impossible for the new administration to undertake a close review of aid programs without first pushing almost all of the agency staffers off the job and halting aid and development work.

A similar accusation was lodged against the agency last week by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also said it was “not functioning” as it should.

As for Musk, he has been critical of the agency on X and has called USAID a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists” while suggesting at other times that it should be dissolved. He has also accused USAID of being, in effect, a money laundering operation.

“The money laundering is done through several intermediaries,” Musk wrote on Feb. 6.

Neither Musk, DOGE, nor the Department of Justice have filed court papers in response to the latest lawsuit. The Epoch Times contacted the White House press office for comment.