‘Acting Like a King’: Michigan’s Attorney General on the Lawsuit to Undo Musk’s Damage
Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are operating unconstitutionally, and their actions must be reversed. That’s the striking claim made in a lawsuit filed by 14 state attorneys general on Feb. 13 in federal court.
The lawsuit runs 60 pages, detailing the chaos Musk and his DOGE minions have wreaked at federal agencies from the Treasury Department to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
But its central claims are simple: that Musk is wielding “virtually unchecked” power from a post that Congress did not create, and without the Senate confirmation that is required of any “principal officer” of the executive branch. Such positions include members of the Cabinet — who now all appear to be taking marching orders from Musk, who is acting as President Donald Trump’s head of government.
Not only is Musk operating without the advice and consent of the Senate, but he appears to be operating unchecked by even Trump, who is kept apprised of Musk’s activities only “as needed.” The lawsuit notes, sharply: “If there were any doubt about the reach of Mr. Musk’s de facto power over executive-branch operations, his remarks delivered from the Oval Office on February 11, 2025 — with the president sitting in silence at the Resolute as Mr. Musk held the floor — should dispel it.”
The lawsuit grounds itself in the Declaration of Independence, which decried the rule of the King and his unaccountable cronies. And it claims that Musk’s role in government is an unconstitutional violation of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. The relief it seeks is also stark: a judicial declaration that Musk’s government role requires Senate confirmation, and that his — and DOGE’s — actions to date have not been lawful, and must be reversed.
The litigation alleges that “President Trump has delegated virtually unchecked authority to Mr. Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress and without meaningful supervision of his activities,” and that Musk has “transformed a minor position that was formerly responsible for managing government websites into a designated agent of chaos without limitation.” (Trump, via executive order, created DOGE by renaming the U.S. Digital Service, created in 2014 following the tech lapses that marred the launch of the insurance exchange HealthCare.gov.) The suit asserts that Musk “has exceeded the lawful authority,” not only of any Senate-confirmed post, but “of the president himself.”
To better understand the constitutional and practical implications of the litigation, Rolling Stone spoke Friday afternoon to one of the state attorney generals who filed the suit, Dana Nessel of Michigan, who has served in her post since 2019. Nessel didn’t mince words, likening Musk to a “king” and decrying his lawlessness as, by turns, “terrifying” and “insane.”
The transcript that follows has been edited for length and clarity.
Why root this suit in the Declaration of Independence?
Our nation’s founders wanted to distinguish our country from the country we were succeeding from — so we did not have a king-like figure in the office of the presidency. And President Trump seems to have either not learned, or forgotten, that lesson. It’s bewildering that he would think that he has the authority to grant this kind of power to any single individual. Much less someone like Elon Musk, who has not gone through any of the process that a Cabinet secretary would have to go through.
The Appointments Clause calls on Cabinet secretaries to be nominated and — with the advice and consent of the Senate — appointed. So that there is another branch of government evaluating whether this person is suitable. Vetting the person — security clearances and background checks and financial disclosure reports — and checking to see whether they have a conflict of interest.
The power that Musk now has — one individual who doesn’t just have authority over an agency of government, but who has that power over all agencies of government — has never been seen before, certainly in my lifetime. And, I would argue, likely the history of the country.
The lawsuit alleges that the agency now called DOGE has assumed powers never granted by Congress.
Congress creates agencies and provides them with the authority. [The office now known as] DOGE has exceeded its statutory authority. It’s an administrative body that resides within the Office of Management and Budget. It’s really an “inferior office.”
Under the Constitution, the heads of such offices take their orders from someone who is Senate-confirmed — rather than bossing those people around.
We don’t have a position that would oversee every single agency in the way Musk is doing. One has never been created congressionally. You can’t just say: Well, he’s a proxy for the president. Elon Musk was elected by no one, and he was confirmed by no one. To grant him this kind of broad, sweeping authority over all elements of the federal government is simply unheard of — and, we argue, very illegal and very unconstitutional.
He is acting like a king in every single respect.
It’s insane that you could have one person that could literally access any area of the federal government. And then not just make recommendations like saying, ‘Hey, here’s a contract that we think is unnecessary.’ Or, ‘Here’s where we can trim a little fat from the budget.’ He is wholesale firing workers. He’s canceling government contracts. He’s selling government property. He’s eliminating grants. He says he’s eliminating whole congressionally-authorized departments of government — on his own. We don’t even know that he’s had discussions with the president when he’s doing these things.
It does raise questions about whether the president or his top donor is really in charge.
I watched the spectacle in the Oval Office a few days ago. What the president seemed to suggest is that Musk will tell him things on a need-to-know basis. And if he has questions, I guess he’ll ask. That doesn’t provide great confidence to the American public that our information is being properly protected, or that the decisions Musk is making benefit the American people.
We’ve long had public debate in this country about whether cuts to the federal government should take place with a “scalpel” or an “ax.” Musk is now bragging about sending whole agencies through the “woodchipper” over a weekend.
He’s burning the government down. He has no regard for the American people. He doesn’t care about their well-being. He doesn’t care about their safety and security and their private information.
If you don’t mind me telling you a story: My father is 87. He received some sort of an email [supposedly] from the Michigan Department of Treasury saying that his tax return wasn’t received. I suspected that it was a scam — just trying to get him to provide information. So I contacted the state treasurer, and I was like, ‘Can you just tell if you received my dad’s tax return or not?’ And she said, ‘I can’t give you that information.’ Because that’s how seriously they take protecting people’s privacy and their private information.
Do you remember how Donald Trump didn’t want anybody to know about his tax return? He refused to provide it. He made such a big deal about it, even though he was running for the highest office in the land.
And yet now, Elon Musk and his members at DOGE, they have all of our tax returns. These people were not vetted. We don’t know if they’re even technically federal employees. They’re, I guess, subcontractors? We don’t know who these people are. They have all of our information. They have our bank account information that’s associated with our IRS filings and our Social Security numbers. The people who are on Medicaid or Medicare, they have the medical billing information, which can let you know what condition is being treated, or what kind of procedures they’ve had, or what kind of medication somebody’s on.
And of all the things that scare the daylights out of me — it’s the state secrets [they have access to]. All the way from the nuclear codes, to military plans and where our troops are located. We have this guy who we know meets with leaders all over the world, including it seems with some of our most significant adversaries, such as Vladimir Putin. And now he’s been into the Department of Defense, and God knows what information now he’s obtained that even our generals, the highest classifications of government, don’t necessarily have access to.
That’s insane. Where are the Republicans who are in charge in the Senate and in the House? Why are Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins OK with Elon Musk having this much authority, and this much access to the most sensitive information that Americans and America has in its possession? It’s quite frankly terrifying.
To be clear on the outcome that the lawsuit is seeking: This would just essentially wipe out everything that Musk and DOGE have done to date?
The finding would be that the actions that he’s taken — which have been plentiful — are outside the boundaries of any legal authority that he has. And so those actions have to be clawed back.
First of all, we have to know what all those actions are. Because we don’t necessarily even know all of the things that he’s done — whether it’s ordering the rescission of regulations or all the personnel decisions that have been made. All probationary employees, who have worked for the government for less than a year, are being terminated. It’s not necessary to lay these people off for financial purposes, unless you’re just trying to provide enormous tax breaks to people like Elon Musk.
It’s going to be challenging to put the toothpaste back in the tube. I’ve interviewed folks from USAID, who were administering relief programs in Africa, and they were already sent back to the states. Is it really possible to undo the damage that’s already been done in the way that your lawsuit suggests?
It might not be, but we have to try. There has been a significant amount of damage done in a very short period of time. But, if anything, that tells us that it can’t continue. We hope the judge will grant our temporary restraining order and grant the relief that we’ve requested. We can’t erase the damage, but we can mitigate it.
Can you speak just briefly to state standing? I could imagine the Justice Department countering: What are these states trying to do, telling the federal government how to run itself? How does this issue impact the 14 states that have joined this lawsuit?
We have, in Michigan, millions of people file federal tax returns, millions of people who receive Social Security or Medicaid or Medicare. It’s their personally identifying information that is now in the hands of DOGE. Will this go to our foreign adversaries for a price? Will it be easy to hack into whatever systems they’re keeping it on? Will it be accessed by one of those dark web hacking operations?
It hurts my state residents when you have programs that are cut off wholesale. We saw [pauses to] Meals on Wheels and assistance to our veterans that live in Michigan. And projects through the Infrastructure Act or through the inflation Reduction Act that we’ve relied upon. We have people who are losing jobs in Michigan because of this.
Look at what just happened with the NIH. That order [slashing federal funding] came down last Friday, and we had filed suit and gotten a restraining order by Monday. But that alone was $266 million that would be lost to research institutions in the state of Michigan in a single day. The list just goes on and on. It’s really damaging — the chaos, the confusion, people not knowing from day-to-day whether they’ll receive the programming they’re supposed to get.
I will tell you that we’ve gotten thousands and thousands of complaints about this. My constituents are deeply concerned about this issue, and I think that that mirrors what many Americans are thinking.
You all filed this suit Thursday, and as we were getting on the phone Friday, Tanya Chutkan, the judge in D.C. overseeing the case, has already scheduled a hearing.
I do think it means she understands the serious nature of this. And that, literally, with every hour it goes by, there’s irreparable harm being done to our nation.
What else should the American public know?
It’s a noble goal to want to make sure that our government is running efficiently and that we’re not wasting money. I don’t know a single person who disagrees with that premise. But this is absolutely not the way to do it. They fired all the inspectors general, whose job was to make sure that we didn’t have waste in the government, or fraud in the government. They fired all of those people.
This is clearly about something else. Here you have Elon Musk, President Trump’s biggest benefactor. His biggest donor. He’s not there to help the American people. He’s not there because he’s a believer in good government. He’s there for his own selfish interests — and those of the president.
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