It’s Taking Judges An Awfully Long Time To Get To The Bottom Of Who’s Running DOGE

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Who Is Running DOGE???

The Trump White House won’t say exactly, the Trump Justice Department professes not to know, and so far federal judges have not been able to obtain an answer to the most basic question: Who is the administrator of Elon Musk’s DOGE?

The judge to confront the question most directly has been U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Washington, D.C. During a surreal hearing Monday in which the judge called into question the constitutionality of DOGE, Justice Department lawyers still could not tell her who the official administering DOGE is.

It led to Kafkaesque exchanges like these, helpfully posted by Lawfare’s Anna Bower:

Kollar-Kotelly is hearing a case seeking to bar DOGE from accessing sensitive records maintained by the Treasury Department. Meanwhile, in a new ruling, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman of Maryland blocked DOGE’s access to personally identifiable information at the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management. 

It’s an answerable question, but still nada from the Trump administration.

The Great ‘5 Things’ Email Fiasco Of 2025

It was impossible to find a clear through-line in the messaging coming out of the Trump administration about Elon Musk’s ridiculous weekend email:

• President Trump, famous for his reality TV “You’re fired,” tepidly said workers would be “semi-fired” if they did not respond.
• OPM said workers were not required to respond after various government components had wrestled all day with what to tell their employees, in some cases sending mixed messages
• By the end of the day, Musk himself had re-upped his demand and threatened firings yet again:

Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance.

Failure to respond a second time will result in termination. https://t.co/04xzgScXfj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2025

IMPORTANT

Government Executive:

An independent federal oversight agency has deemed at least some of President Trump’s mass firings of probationary period employees unlawful, creating a pathway for those employees to regain their jobs. 

The Office of Special Counsel, the agency responsible for investigating illegal actions taken against federal employees, issued its decision for six employees, each at different agencies. While the decision was technically limited in scope, it could have immediate impact on all terminated staff at those six agencies and could set a wide-ranging precedent across government. It has not been made public and was provided to Government Executive by a source within the government. OSC, which did not provide the document to Government Executive, verified its authenticity. 

The Unpurging

Another example of the Trump clusterfuckery: The FDA has reinstated dozens of specialists involved in food safety, review of medical devices and other areas who were laid off last week.

Go Deeper On The Trump Purges

University of Minnesota Law School professor Nick Bednar has some helpful backgrounders on the existing legal frameworks that the DOGE-driven purges of federal workers are running hard up against:

• The Use and Abuse of Administrative Leave
• A Primer on Reductions in Force

Trump’s Attack On Independent Agencies

A key element of President Trump’s executive power grab is disregarding any congressional limitations imposed on firing the people who sit atop the independent agencies of the executive branch. We’re talking a host of key agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Merit Systems Protection Board. It will be a defining legal battle of his second presidency and one that the Supreme Court will likely weigh in on sooner than later, with implications for the Federal Reserve as well. TPM’s Kate Riga has an early primer on the structural power dynamics and the legal landscape.

Everything You Need to Know About Dan Bongino

The FBI is reeling from the one-two punch of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino as the new director and deputy director:

• NYT: Before Ascending to Top Tier of F.B.I., Bongino Fueled Right-Wing Disbelief
• WSJ: Dan Bongino Called the FBI ‘Irredeemably Corrupt.’ Now He’ll Help Run It.

We’ve Seen This Type Before

I’ve long been fascinated by how scattered through the federal government are just enough misguided, disenchanted, peevish, grievance-filled, and maladaptive personalities for bad actors to raise up for their own corrupt ends when they take power.

It’s a recurring theme of our coverage over the years how these willing stooges get their chance to “shine” and try to make the most of it. Former Trump DOJer Jeffrey Clark is a classic of the genre. It almost always ends badly, but not as badly as it should (Clark is now back in the new Trump administration).

Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove appears to be the latest in the long line of these passed-over and overlooked opportunists who seize on suddenly no longer being the odd man out. And, yes, they seem chronically to be men.

How Screwed Are We? This Screwed …

Acting DC U.S. attorney Ed Martin proudly tweeting his corrupt notion of the role of the Justice Department as a defender and weapon of President Donald Trump:

pic.twitter.com/utpmdIEmk7

— U.S. Attorney DC (@USAO_DC) February 24, 2025

The Best Of The Best

Former West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner – who as recently as last year claimed that the CIA stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump – is now overseeing the Justice Department’s vaunted Civil Rights Division on an acting basis.

‘Uniformly Unhelpful’

U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden of Washington, D.C., declined to restore immediately the Associated Press’ access to presidential events, but he urged the Trump White House to reconsider its ban over the wire service’s refusal to use “Gulf Of America,” saying the case law “is uniformly unhelpful to the White House.”

Retribution In Action

Within hours of President Trump publicly threatening to end the political career of Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D), his Department of Education initiated a purported Title IX investigation of the University of Maine of transgender women in sports.

EXCLUSIVE

Politico:

A group of prominent military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, has pitched the Trump White House on a proposal to carry out mass deportations through a network of “processing camps” on military bases, a private fleet of 100 planes, and a “small army” of private citizens empowered to make arrests.

The blueprint — laid out in a 26-page document President Donald Trump’s advisers received before the inauguration — carries an estimated price tag of $25 billion and recommends a range of aggressive tactics to rapidly deport 12 million people before the 2026 midterms, including some that would likely face legal and operational challenges, according to a copy obtained by POLITICO.

Surreal Headline Of The Day

CNN: US joins Russia to vote against UN resolution condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine

‘Long Live The Real King’

 Pranksters had a memorable stunt waiting for workers returning to mandatory in-office work at HUD headquarters:

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