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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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EOP staffers are, in general, not "Officers of the United States" - nothing they do legally matters except in so far as it results in a signed order crossing the Resolute Desk - legally, even the White House Chief of Staff is just an Assistant to the President. (The use of the Presidential autopen complicates this a bit, but that is the principle). The EOP staff who can do things on their own authority (like the head of the OMB, who has an official role in the process of signing off CFR regulations) are Senate-confirmed.

The "inferior officers" clause in the Constitution requires Congressional action - by default all Officers of the United States are Senate-confirmable, but Congress can by law exempt inferior officers. So if someone is acting as an Officer, they either need to be Senate-confirmed, or appointed to a specific "inferior office" created by Congress.

So the question is whether either the de facto head of @DOGE (i.e. Elon Musk) or the administrator of the United States DOGE service (i.e. Amy Gleason) is acting as an Officer of the United States, rather than an assistant. Telling a Senate-confirmed agency head, "You should fire these people/cancel these contracts or I will tattle on you to POTUS." is not acting as an Officer. Breaking leases and cancelling contracts on his own authority probably would be. Signing cheques for the Treasury (or modern equivalent) is definitely acting as an Officer. If, as has been alleged in numerous places, DOGE is overriding the decisions of departments with Senate-confirmed heads about how Congressionally-appropriated funds are spent, then that is an Office and the person who does it is an Officer, and the Appointments Clause is being violated because neither Musk nor Gleason nor anyone else in DOGE has been confirmed as an Officer by the Senate, or appointed to an inferior office established by Congress.