District of Columbia federal district Judge Tanya Chutkan seemed skeptical of the attempt by 14 state attorneys general to stop DOGE head Elon Musk from accessing federal data in order to find waste, fraud and abuse in federal agencies.

Chutkan seemed to argue during hearings that the states did not give enough information to justify a restraining order, although she definitely had opinions about DOGE and how it was conducting itself.

Musk is a special government employee, not confirmed by Congress, and has been given access to people's personal data in his quest to cut wildly out of control government spending.

The state attorneys general argued that this violates the Appointments Clause in the Constitution, which requires powerful officers in the executive branch to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

"Troubling"

"This is essentially a private citizen directing an organization that’s not a federal agency that has access to the entire workings of the federal government, fire, hire, slash contracts, terminate programs all without apparently any congressional oversight," Chutkan characterized Musk and DOGE.

She agreed with the Democrat-run states that it was troubling for DOGE to be operating in secrecy, but this isn't even true. DOGE has put all of its operations on social media and now has a website operating to show exactly what it's doing.

Still, Chutkan said, “DOGE appears to be moving in no sort of predictable and orderly fashion, and plaintiffs are obviously scrambling to find out what’s next. I don’t know if that’s deliberate or not.”

But while she may agree with the states about DOGE being a bad or a dangerous thing, she didn't seem to find a legal basis to stop it or prevent it from accessing the requested data.

“I’m not seeing it so far. … It’s sort of like a prophylactic TRO, and that’s not allowed,” Chutkan said. “The courts can’t act based on media reports. We can’t do that.”

"100,000-foot allegations"

DOJ lawyer Joshua Gardner said that all cuts and firings are being carried out by agency officials who do have authority under the Constitution, not by Musk or anyone at DOGE.

"There is not a single instance of Elon Musk in his own name or the [U.S. DOGE Service] commanding any of these actions at all,” Gardner said during the hearing. “Somebody is signing that document, somebody is taking that action on behalf of the government. … All they’ve done is offer these kind of 100,000-foot allegations that Elon Musk is holding the puppet strings.”

DOJ lawyers said they could not answer a question about Chutkan about whether thousands of government workers were fired in the previous week.

Clearly, she is skeptical of what President Donald Trump is attempting to do with DOGE, but has shown she will rule on the legal merits, not her personal animus.

Chutkan said she expects to rule on the request within 24 hours.