Elon Musk departs a meeting with Senate Republicans on March 5.Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Zuma
Nearly two months into President Donald Trump’s lawless dismantling of the federal government, a small agency has stood up with a tell-all lawsuit. The lawsuit from the president of the United States African Development Foundation (USADF) asks the courts to spare the agency from obliteration at the hands of Elon Musk and his band of tech bros. In doing so, it lays out in detail just how Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency go about their illegal takeovers—and how one tiny agency stood up for its mission and the rule of law.
DOGE sought to take control with an outlandish series of threats, lies, and actions without legal authority.
Since the opening days of the administration, Musk and his minions have barged into agencies, including such august institutions as the Treasury Department, where they demanded access to the most sensitive systems and were handed the keys to the kingdom. Across government, career officials facing DOGE orders have resigned quietly, leaving the public to guess as to what is happening as reporters rush to share snippets.
But the lawsuit offers something that has been generally lacking—an example of top agency officials who not only fought DOGE’s attacks, but are sharing with the public exactly how these attacks are taking place.
USADF and its president Ward Brehm has something going for him that some larger agency leaders do not, in that it operates outside the purview of any Trump-appointed cabinet official. By blocking DOGE’s access to their systems, despite threats, and then filing a lawsuit, USADF demonstrates how smaller agencies and officials can stand up against Musk. After all, as the lawsuit points out, Musk and his staff do not have actual authority to do what they are doing. At least in this case, they just have bravado. While DOGE personnel were escorted into the USADF headquarters by federal marshals on Friday, if the agency’ lawsuit succeeds, its resistance could fend off annihilation at the hands of DOGE.
The allegations in the complaint lay bare how DOGE operates. First, Trump issued an executive order targeting several agencies as “unnecessary,” including USADF. Next, DOGE staff attempted to penetrate USADF’s internal networks “under the false pretenses of modernizing and streamlining USADF’s computer systems.” When USADF leadership were later told the real reason DOGE sought access was to essentially shut USADF down, they refused them access.
What followed was an increasingly outlandish series of threats, lies, and actions without any legal authority on the part of DOGE as they sought to take control at USADF.
“DOGE employees began threatening members of the Board—telling them that unless they carried out DOGE’s plans to strip USADF to its core, the Board would be fired,” the complaint alleges. “When that didn’t work, USADF was told that President Trump did not need to follow the required process for advice and consent of the Senate and instead had appointed Pete Marocco as the sole board member (despite there still being four properly appointed board members, none of whom had received any notification of termination).”
On March 5 DOGE staffers tried to physically force their way into USADF’s offices. Denied access by Brehm, Marocco and DOGE staffers threatened the building’s property manager with a lawsuit and warned they would bring in U.S. Marshals and Secret Service agents.
Had Brehm and USADF capitulated, we already know what would have happened, because it already happened to its sister agency, the InterAmerican Foundation. As the complaint lays out, IAF experienced the kind of hostile takeover you’d expect in a dictatorship, not a functioning democracy that operates under to the law:
Using the same bullying tactics, they attempted to get access to IAF’s grants and contracts. When that failed, they purported to fire IAF’s President and then announced by fiat that Marocco had been appointed sole board member (despite the IAF board also not having been fired). In a closed-door board meeting last Friday, February 28—which consisted of just Marocco in the IAF lobby—Marocco appointed himself acting President of IAF. That night, at Marocco’s direction, Treasury cancelled all but a handful of IAF’s contracts. And two days ago, Case 1:25-cv-00660 Document 1 Filed 03/06/25 Page 3 of 26 4 purporting to act as both President and sole board member, Marocco directed DOGE to cancel all but a few of IAF’s grants, shut employees out of the IT systems, laid off almost the entire IAF staff, and shut down IAF’s website.
Brehm’s lawsuit hits upon the lawless absurdity of these developments: the legally unfounded DOGE is seizing a congressionally approved and funded agency, with leadership appointed according to the law, and destroying it without any legal justification or authority. (According to the complaint, DOGE’s goal is to reduce the agency to its core statutory function, which it assessed could be carried out with one or two contracts.) It underlines how much of what has happened since January 20 is not a legal reorganization or assessment, but rather an hostile takeover on the part of Musk and his henchmen. (Musk, the de facto head of DOGE is not named in the lawsuit, but the titular head, Amy Gleason, is.)
Republicans have for decades complained that government is wasteful, inefficient, even evil. DOGE plays on these fears to justify its evisceration of government. But even where there is truth to these complaints, the USADF’s lawsuit demonstrates that what is being undertaken by Trump and Musk is not an orderly downsizing—but a destructive rampage that trades the laborious work of following bureaucratic rules with a rule-less rule by thugs.
