Dem
47
GOP
53
Willie Sutton was once asked: "Why do you rob banks?" to which he logically replied: "Because that's where the money is." Quite a few people who are unhappy with the Musk/Trump administration have figured out that suing Donald Trump is complicated because he is officially the president, maybe the king, but Elon Musk is just a private citizen. Furthermore, as Sutton noted, that's where the money is, so they are suing him personally.
Two lawsuits against Musk, one from the states and one from federal employees, are based on a provision of the Constitution that says that officers of the United States must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, which Musk has not been. The lawsuits state that he is exercising the powers of an officer of the United States without Senate confirmation, and that violates the Constitution. D.C.-based U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan got one case on Friday and indicated that it was legitimate, but did not issue an emergency order to halt Musk's access to federal computer systems. She said "bad things could happen" is not a strong enough reason to justify an emergency restraining order.
Ironically, some of the jurisprudence cited in the case comes from... Aileen Cannon. She threw out the indictment Special Prosecutor Jack Smith brought in the Mar-a-Lago documents case because Smith was not personally confirmed by the Senate. Now the plaintiffs are citing her ruling to claim that neither was Musk confirmed by the Senate and so everything he is doing is unconstitutional. At the time of Cannon's ruling, Donald Trump claimed that it was "brilliant." But now... well, let's just say her chances of being promoted to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals did not improve this week. (V)