'Null and void': Judge demands DOGE action reversed in major slap for Trump
A judge ruled against President Donald Trump's administration in a decision Monday over the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney posted on X.
The USIP's goals are to promote conflict resolution and peacebuilding globally through a congressionally funded, independent, non-profit organization, its website says. Judge Beryl Howell said that having the executive branch take it over is not legal and "should be treated as null and void," said Cheney.
Trump established DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, through an executive order upon entering office on Jan. 20. The goal was to make significant budget cuts to reach $2 trillion in savings by eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse," as tech billionaire Elon Musk described in a March Fox News interview.
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Among those cuts was the USIP — which is actually under the purview of Congress, not the president.
Judge Howell's ruling reads: "As an independent entity exercising inconsequential government power and de minimis, if any, executive power, Congress’s ability to restrict the President’s removal power is even greater than that outlined in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U.S. 197 (2020), and the Supreme Court’s other seminal presidential removal power cases. Applying those cases, Congress’s restrictions on the President’s removal power of USIP Board members are squarely constitutional, and the President and his Administration’s acts to the contrary are unlawful and ultra vires."
"The actions that have occurred since then—at the direction of the President to reduce USIP to its 'statutory minimums'—including the removal of USIP’s president, his replacement by officials affiliated with DOGE, the termination of nearly all of USIP’s staff, and the transfer of USIP property to the General Services Administration ('GSA'), were thus effectuated by illegitimately-installed leaders who lacked legal authority to take these actions, which must therefore be declared null and void.