Say, remember when the Left screamed about the "emergency docket" at the Supreme Court? Good times, good times. 

Late Friday night, Democrat attorneys general from 19 states judge-shopped a lawsuit to the Southern District of New York to prevent duly appointed and confirmed executive branch officials from accessing their own data. Judge Paul Engermayer issued a TRO early Saturday morning -- apparently ex parte -- to restrain Trump administration officials from doing their jobs. These states want to stop the US DOGE Service from ending a tsunami of bizarre and unpopular discretionary spending:

A US judge issued an emergency order early Saturday blocking Elon Musk's government reform team from accessing personal and financial data for millions of Americans stored at the Treasury Department, court documents showed.

US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer's order restricts giving access to Treasury Department payment systems and other data to "all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department."

The temporary restrictive order, which remains in effect until a February 14 hearing, also says any such person who has accessed data from the Treasury Department's records since President Donald Trump's January 20 inauguration must "immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded."

This is absurd, constitutionally and in every other way. One does not need to radically adhere to the "unitary executive" theory to grasp that voters elected Donald Trump to appoint the people who run these areas of government. The civil service does not run the executive branch, nor do they have standing for anything other than employment. The civil service does not direct policy, or at least they shouldn't, and yet Englemayer's order leaves no one in charge of the civil service in the Executive Branch. 

Englemayer just negated an election with his emergency-docket restraining order as part of Democrats' new effort at lawfare. Or at least that's what he planned, but Trump and his team have other ideas:

Late Sunday night, the DOJ filed a court order in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York saying that Engelmayer's order "is a remarkable intrusion on the Executive Branch that is in direct conflict with Article II of the Constitution, and the unitary structure it provides." ...

"There is not and cannot be a basis for distinguishing between 'civil servants' and 'political appointees.' Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency's work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the President," DOJ attorneys wrote in the filing.

Cheney also pointed out that "Thomas Krause, the lone Musk ally with access to the system, appended a seven-page declaration describing his work with it and emphasizing he has been properly trained on it. He says his access was limited to 'over the shoulder' review and copies of code."

Politico's Kyle Cheney notes that Trump and his team decided to play along with the lawfare, likely because this order will shortly go into the shredder. It just depends on whether the court will stubbornly stick to the TRO or whether the appellate court will reverse him on its own emergency docket:

Option 1) Openly defy a court order you disagree with, threatening the entire system of government

Option 2) At least take a shot to seek emergency redress through the courts

DOJ, unsurprisingly, chose Door #2. Seems like they’ll get it too, given ongoing talks and Vargas’… pic.twitter.com/EGeDLVUceZ

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 10, 2025

As one person comments in a reply, the Biden administration took Option One with its unconstitutional student-loan forgiveness projects, and yet the media barely blinked. At any rate, the Trump administration likely anticipated this and had its Department of Justice ready to respond quickly and forcefully. They want their unitary-executive argument to set precedents, and Democrats in blue states seem blissfully unaware that they are about to poke a constitutional bear that will have long-term consequences.

By the way, our friend Shipwreckedcrew notes that a new judge is now assigned to the case, although by the docket record, it's not clear whether Englemayer still has control of it. Ship predicts that the TRO won't last out the day, regardless:

Late today the Trump DOJ filed an emergency motion to dissolve the TRO.  

After it was filed, the Judge directed the two sides to "meet and confer" tomorrow to see if any agreement could be reached or if the grounds of dispute could be narrowed.

If not, the Plaintff's response to the motion to dissolve the TRO is due at 5:00 pm tomorrow, and the Govt reply is due at 11:00 pm tomorrow.

This does not seem like a TRO that is likely to last beyond Tuesday.

I doubt it will last too, because it was constitutionally absurd from the beginning. As for the 'negotiations' going on at the moment, one has to doubt whether either side would accommodate much from the other. These states want to use the courts to kneecap Trump's efforts to use legitimate executive authority to direct executive-branch functions, and Trump is not going to bargain that authority away as a sop to the lawfare adherents that made his last eight years a misery. This is a fight that Trump will take, and perhaps even a fight that Trump wants right up front to clear the path for all of the swamp-draining to come.