Oval Office

from the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal this is patomic watch welcome back speaking of Doge the Elon Musk effort at the department of government efficiency musk was at the Oval Office this week here he is explaining why he views the Doge Mission as so important so we've got a $2 trillion deficit and if this if we don't do something about this deficit country is going bankrupt I mean it's it's it's really astounding that the uh the interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the defense department budget which is shocking because we got a lot we spend a lot of money on defense but and and if that just keeps going we're essentially going to bankrupt the country so what what I really want to say is like it's not optional for us to sit to

reduce the federal expenses it's essential it's essential for America to remain solvent as a country and it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt Kim what's your sense as we sit here 3 four weeks into the new administration of where this Doge effort stands it has made some Headway in the federal courts after some of these laws were filed and had some restraining orders temporary administrative stays that were issued by judges but a lot of chatter this week about the idea that there is now a doge constitutional crisis in Washington this is absolutely nonsense Doge by the way I think that there's probably a little bit of criticism to be had about its initial

weeks in whether or not it was transparent enough about everything it's been trying to do I don't think that that was purposeful I don't think it's trying to be shady I think it's just an enormous effort and I would Point people to just this week they got a doge website up they've also been cataloging what they've been doing on X with an account they have what they have done that we can see that they have successfully accomplished has been a number of cuts already in things that just make eminent sense they did get rid of a lot of Dei contracts they're cancelling for instance Executive coaching contracts we know about some of the very silly and hardto defend grants that have been shut down out of coming out of the US International Aid development group

usaid they've also you know been canceling leases and consolid in space in terms of the big ones that's where they're in court and the reality is that a a huge percentage of the steps that they are taking that stem from some of Donald Trump's initial executive orders are on pretty solid legal ground that's what a lot of this chaos coverage what they claim as chaos is missing is that there has actually been a lot of thought behind a lot of these and I would put into that category the freeze or pause on some spending you know look Congress for a lot of the spending did not specify that money had to go out of a door by a certain day even the prior Administration waited long periods of time before issuing some of the money from some of these laws because

it was checking who was getting it and setting up programs so that's certainly allowable you had a judge this week that agreed with the Trump Administration to allow its buyout offer of federal employees to go forward said that the Union who had sued over that did not have standing I would mention schedule F which is this plan to reclassify certain civil servants those that have a lot of policy-making authority in a way that makes it easier to transfer them or fire them if they are not doing their jobs this was something Trump tried in the first term Biden essentially dismantled it and even put up a regulation to try to thwart it in the future notably even that Biden regulation never suggested that this was illegal and in fact you can look through the

statutes and there solid ground for why they would be able to do something like this so I would argue that most of what they are doing you never can tell with the courts the courts are adjudicating it but they have a solid case going into court and a constitutional crisis is when people are operating outside of a court without license and that's not what's happening here to that point Alicia I do share some of the concern that both parties are are tiptoeing toward the point where one president president might decide that he is going to try to flout a court order against a program a student alone program might be one example on the Democratic side some of this strikes me as posturing for the base of both parties this was the Tweet heard around the world

this week from JD Vance he wrote If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation that would be illegal if a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor that's also illegal a judges aren't allowed to control the executives legitimate power and that was read by many people as a suggestion that the Trump Administration is raring to go out and ignore the courts and to my eye that's not the only way to read that I would quibble with Vance somewhat I mean maybe judges can't tell the Attorney General how to use discretion as prosecutor but if the Attorney General is doing targeted selective prosecution based on political party for example the courts I think would have very little trouble setting

some of those cases aside under existing doctrines of selective prosecution for example but notable also that President Trump the principal was asked on Tuesday about court rulings and here's what he said I always abide by the courts and then I'll have to appeal it and so Alicia I mean maybe we will get to a point where there is some ruling against Doge that the executive branch is going to say it's not going to follow but we are certainly not there yet at least to my eye right they are appealing there have been some 60 or more than 60 lawsuits filed in various district courts around the country they're mostly concentrated by the way in the First Circuit Court of Appeals and that's because that is now the most liberal circuit all the judges who sit on

the appeals court are democratic appointees and so the reason why Democrats are primarily suing there is because they're betting that they're going to win and then the Supreme Court won't take up a lot of these cases to your point about Trump has said that he will appeal these but will abide by Court rulings and that's essentially what he did in his first term if you recall he was sued a number of times and few of the cases ended up going up to the Supreme Court for instance the citizenship question or whether the Census Bureau could include a citizenship question on its 2020 survey it lost that it abided by the decision it lost the question of whether it could roll back Obama's DACA program or at least the Supreme Court ruled that it didn't follow proper

procedures and therefore it would have to do so and so then it went back about trying to roll it back again in comply with the administrative procedure act and so I would expect anything different under during a Trump's second term I think they will probably lose some of these cases especially the ones in which they're trying to overturn longstanding Preston for instance the firing of one one of the nlrb members which blatantly violates a 1935 of the humph executive president and I'm not sure the US Supreme Court is going to actually wait in and take that that case but they're recording a lot of challenges probably with they expecting that yeah they're going to lose but they're going to never less try um they have some of the administration's lawyers

take a very originalist view of the Constitution so they're teeing up some cases for the Supreme Court they are in some cases probably stretching exec Ive power but as to Kim's point you know Joe Biden did that a number of times and perhaps even more so with the student loan forgiveness eviction moratorium you could go down the line vaccine mandates and I'm not sure like what Trump is doing is in in any case you know more egregious a lot of these cases will ultimately have to be settled by the courts thank you Alicia and Kim thank you all for listening you can email us at pwp podcast wsj.

com if you like the show please hit that subscribe button and we'll be back next week with another edition of pomac Watch