Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online analyzes a federal judge’s recent hearing involving President Trump’s government efficiency efforts.

Even judicial partisans do not like to get reversed by higher courts — at least those of them who want to be taken seriously as jurists. Consequently, the indications from [the] hearing in Washington, D.C., federal district court are that Judge Tanya Chutkan will rebuff the 14 blue states that have asked her to block the Trump administration’s scrutiny of federal data systems. …

… It seems apparent that Chutkan’s heart is with the Democratic state attorneys general who’ve sued to prevent access to the data systems from being given to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Trump confidant Elon Musk. The judge has expressed sympathy for the blue states’ pose of alarm over Musk’s access to the sensitive government records and has treated as serious the states’ claims that DOGE is making personnel decisions about government employees — in particular, to eliminate their jobs.

Yet, this is political theater, banking on both recent polling that indicates Musk is unpopular and the hope that Democrats can dupe the public with their story line that Trump is letting Musk run the country. Legally, it doesn’t alter the fact that Trump was elected president and can consult with whomever he chooses regarding how the government operates.

In reality, Musk is not an outsider being given access to the administrative state’s deep dark secrets; he is a special government employee appointed by Trump. DOGE is a component of the Executive Office of the President: an overhauled version of an agency initially established by President Obama (to deal with digital issues responsible for the troubled rollout of Obamacare). While their media allies persist in parroting claims falsely suggesting that Musk and DOGE staffers are independent actors, they are executive officials who answer to the president. The president has the constitutional authority to consult such government employees and delegate them to inspect government records — after all, the chief executive is accountable to the public for the operation of the agencies whose records are being reviewed.