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The spontaneity is complicating his administration's legal positions. Nowhere has this been clearer than in cases involving his adviser Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, the driving force in his efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government.

The latest example came this week when U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled that Musk likely violated the Constitution by dismantling the United States Agency for International Development.

The lawsuit turned on the question of whether the billionaire entrepreneur overstepped his authority. Justice Department lawyers and White House officials insist that Musk is merely a presidential adviser, not the actual leader of DOGE.

But Trump says otherwise — in speeches, interviews and public remarks — and Chuang quoted him extensively in his decision.

Trump most notably boasted of creating DOGE during his prime-time address to a joint session of Congress and said it was "headed by Elon Musk." Republicans gave Musk a standing ovation, and he saluted from the gallery above the House chamber.

"Trump's words were essential, central and indispensable," said Norm Eisen, one of the lawyers for USAID employees who filed the lawsuit. "His admissions took what would have been a tough case and made it into a straightforward one."

The looseness with words is a shift from predecessors like Democratic President Barack Obama, who used to say that he was careful because anything he said could send troops marching or markets tumbling.

Trump has no such feeling of restraint, and neither do other members of his Republican administration such as Musk.

Chuang, who is based in Maryland and was nominated by Obama, also cited social media posts from Musk.

For example, Musk posted "we spent the weekend feeding USAID to the woodchipper" on Feb. 3. The agency was being brought to a standstill at that time, with staff furloughed, spending halted and headquarters shut down.

"Musk's public statements and posts … suggest that he has the ability to cause DOGE to act," Chuang wrote in his ruling.

Harrison Fields, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, said Trump was fulfilling his campaign promise "to make the federal government more efficient and accountable to taxpayers."

Anthony Coley, who led public affairs at the Justice Department during Democratic President Joe Biden's administration, said statements involving civil litigation were always coordinated between his office and the West Wing.

"The words could be used to support what we're doing or undermine what we're doing," he said. "It's a carefully choreographed effort to make sure there was no daylight between what was said in the court of public opinion and what could ultimately play out in the court of law."

In comparison to how things were done in the past, Coley said, Trump has a "ready-fire-aim approach of doing business."

DOGE has been the focus of almost two dozen lawsuits. It's often prevailed so far in cases involving access to government data, where several plaintiffs have struggled to convince judges to block the organization's actions.

But it's also run into challenges, such as a lawsuit over whether DOGE must comply with public records requests. The Trump administration asserted in court that DOGE is part of the White House, meaning it's exempt.

Judge Christopher Cooper, also nominated by Obama, disagreed, siding with a government watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.

"Musk and the President's public statements indicate that USDS" — the original acronym for the organization that was renamed as DOGE — "is in fact exercising substantial independent authority," wrote Cooper, who is based in Washington.

Cooper concluded that DOGE can "identify and terminate federal employees, federal programs, and federal contracts. Doing any of those three things would appear to require substantial independent authority; to do all three surely does."

He ordered DOGE to start responding to requests about the team's role in mass firings and disruptions to federal programs. The administration unsuccessfully asked the judge to reconsider, saying the judge "fundamentally misapprehended" the agency's structure.

The cases are still in their early stages, and the novel legal questions they're raising will take time for the courts to consider, said Michael Fragoso, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and former chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

"What Elon does on Twitter is not necessarily what DOGE does," he said. "My hope would be courts take the time to sift between those two."