From Jeff Childers

CNN ran a remarkable story yesterday headlined, “Judge Chutkan rejects call from Democratic AGs for temporary restraining order blocking DOGE’s access to federal data.” Chutkan is the same DC Circuit judge who gave the J6ers such a hard time and was reversed by the Supreme Court. So you know that if she couldn’t find support for a TRO it was pretty bad. It was another I told you so moment.

Lawyers for 18 blue states had asked Chutkan to temporarily restrain Musk and DOGE from accessing government information systems at the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Commerce. They also wanted the judge to block Musk and DOGE from firing any employees at those agencies.

But Chutkan ruled the states hadn’t shown “that they will suffer imminent, irreparable harm absent a temporary restraining order.” Regular readers will recall imminent, irreparable harm is one of the hardest elements to prove to get a TRO. So, that was good news. But it got much better.

Judge Chutkan—no friend to Trump—couldn’t find a way to justify a temporary restraining order. That means their legal case was embarrassingly weak—so weak that even the judge who handed down some of the harshest J6 sentences wouldn’t touch it. What did Judge Chutkan see?

In what the New York Times called an “extraordinary declaration,” the Director of the Office of Administration filed an affidavit swearing that Elon Musk is not even a DOGE employee. It also said Elon is just an advisor to the President— with no authority to make decisions by himself, such as firing anybody. Read the extraordinary declaration for yourself.

I told you: Elon is a decoy.

The news detonated like an M-80 firecracker flushed down a middle-school bathroom toilet. They are downplaying it, but it was devastating news. They’ve been chasing the wrong person the whole time. The billionaire they love to hate —nobody elected Elon Musk!— is just a special consultant to the White House. But if you go back and read and listen to Musk carefully, you’ll find that, while he may have hinted at authority, he never actually claimed it.

For those of you following the online chatter about this case, the Elon Affidavit also torched the plaintiffs’ Appointments Clause argument. They thought they were so clever wielding it against Trump, since Trump used the same argument against Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. But now their argument has vanished, poof! It is a dead letter.

The Appointments Clause (Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution), requires that “Officers of the United States” be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate if they wield significant authority. Since Elon wasn’t confirmed by the Senate, they thought they had him dead to rights. But ‘advisors’ don’t wield significant authority. Thus, the Appointments Clause doesn’t apply—and the plaintiffs just lost their big constitutional argument.

It was pure political aikido—using the enemy’s own momentum against them. They built an entire legal argument around a fundamental mistake. Trump’s team let the media and the blue states chase Musk around, and then ripped the rug out at the last second. Now their credibility is cracked, their legal strategy is lifeless, their narrative is nullified, and they’re clueless about who to chase next.

It was a strategic humiliation. Like a cartoon coyote, they set the trap for Musk, but the Acme anvil landed on them.

Trump 2.0 is playing a completely different game, and they still don’t realize how far behind they are.