All of DOGE’s work could be undone as lawsuit against Musk proceeds

can't put the genie back in the bottle, our data has been stolen

Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost because of the USAID cuts. A great deal of this damage is irreversible.

If by "Undone" you mean get back classified information including the entire US populations personal data from Russia then no. If you mean bring back departments that Musk illegally interfered with then I guess? Sorta. Musk and DOGE should be tried for their crimes against us too.

Somewhere, Susan Collins finds this troubling.

"work" seems like a stretch. Maybe "sabotage" or "meddling" or "crimes" would be better?

DOGE was completely useless and horrible. People were crying inside their offices while the DOGE cretins were having a good time. Makes me sick to my stomach to think about.

Work is NOT a synonym for damage.

Elon Musk must defend himself against a lawsuit alleging that he unlawfully seized too much power as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a judge ruled Monday. According to the plaintiffs, Musk needed Senate confirmation before directing DOGE on drastic actions like eliminating agencies, mass firings, and steep budget cuts. Allegedly going far beyond the authority granted in President Donald Trump’s most expansive DOGE executive orders, Musk took every inch of power granted and then increasingly used it to overreach unlike any presidential advisor who came before, the suit says. In her opinion partly denying a motion to dismiss, US District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan did not buy the US government’s defense that Musk held no office formally established by law—and therefore did not need Senate confirmation and cannot be alleged to have exceeded his authority under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. “Nobody thinks, for instance, that the White House Chief of Staff or White House Counsel are officers in any fashion, despite the fact they may exercise tremendous influence across the government,” the government’s motion to dismiss said. Chutkan called the defense “disquieting.” “Defendants appear to make the extraordinary argument that an individual who holds an important office and wields immense power is not subject to the Appointments Clause so long as the office was unlawfully created, and the power was unlawfully seized,” Chutkan said. Full article: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/all-of-doges-work-could-be-undone-as-lawsuit-against-musk-proceeds/](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/all-of-doges-work-could-be-undone-as-lawsuit-against-musk-proceeds/)

One of his DOGE boys downloaded the SS numbers of all US citizens on a hard drive for unknown reasons.

Fed here, unfortunately in the gov, when policy is set it’s realllly hard to undo. DOGE cancelled all of our contracts including things like building maintenance, travel to do mission critical work, the ability to replace broken office equipment or even order paper. Cruel RTO that’s left families scrambling, having to quit and many many other draconian policies that have literally ground our ability to do our jobs to a stop. They didn’t cut any red tape, they created exponentially more. 

Jobs lost, funding gone, data sent to who knows, and many other things can’t be undone.

Can Unsteal the data, not going to be able to fix the backdoors they left. The destruction of the integrity of the data the Federal Government uses is total, complete, and irreversible

I'm 100% certain they kept all the data tagged and organized properly during the extraction. Putting it back should be a breeze, there's no possible way their junior developer team deleted things they thought weren't needed, right? What even is DEI anyway? /s

Until all of his wealth is confiscated and used to invest in Americas schools and hospitals and he is sitting in a prison cell, justice will remain elusive.

If DOGE is invalidated it means two huge things: 1. Agencies could be resurrected...however messily that could be 2. **Mass litigation** - Every fired employee, every canceled program, every blocked contractor payment, and every affected state gets tons of ammo for lawsuits. Settlements, back pay, declaratory rulings, and YEARS of legal consequences. Trump has an incredible ability to just WASTE money. It's truly astounding how quickly he can piss it away on nothing...like deploying the national guard to rake leaves.

Elon needs to have all of his assets nationalized for sedition and then be deported by ICE This shitbird pedo needs to go

Their work could be undone but not the damage they caused can't.  That snot- nosed kid uploaded all our personal info on a drive and much of that data finding it's way onto the dark web

What about 600K+ dead from the DOGE cuts? Can those be undone? Nope, it’s genocide and they need to be held accountable.

DOGE programmed back doors into every system people stopped me on the street to say. Isn’t that the way to say it? Oh yea thank you sir. /s

What work? They just took data and killed a bunch of people by arbitrarily cutting grants.

It can't be undone. It is permanent damage and ruined lives.

I don’t know how that would even begin to be accomplished. People died, entire support systems are ripped to shreds, grants and contracts destroyed without the money to replace any of it. Regulatory branches made extinct etc. The country was irreparably damaged. That doesn’t even begin to mention all of the stolen data. I mean I’m glad but it feels so f****** useless now.

The theft of private data at the hands of these people cannot be "undone." Is a class action lawsuit possible?

You call that work?

What work… oh you mean crimes? 🤗

DOGE drained the government's brain trust with their firings. It will be decades before competence returns.

Even with the unfixable losses, this would be amazing and really should happen. And reparations need to be made for the incredible damage.

How would them stealing all our private sensitive data all be undone?? Especially when it was already sold to top bidders in other nations? You actually believe Russia or Israel didnt get that information!??? That damage is done.. we would need a full new system with new everything... and i don't see that ever happening... soooo how do we undo this??

No, the damage is unrecoverable. People are dead, research projects have been dropped which will never be picked up again, and an incalculable amount of institutional knowledge has been lost that will never be recovered.

Bringing back USAID won't bring back the networks it had set up. Or un-kill those people.

It can’t really be undone. Those people are gone. You simply can’t rehire tens of thousands of people 2 years later. People who need USAID were often people with severe needs, who have suffered greatly (possibly died) in the meantime. Research has been lost. Confidence is government jobs is gone. It’s not an easy undo.

He'll likely just get pardoned as a 'patriot' unless the bromance has cooled.

They spent the money. And the institutional knowledge has moved on, unfortunately. People are not going to just trust government jobs for awhile.

I’m looking forward to reading a headline that says “All of DOGE’s work is undone and Musk forfeits his fortune in reparations.”

What? What is this F****** DRIVEL from arstechnica - I thought they were once respected. DOGE had one purpose, to steal the social security number and as much useful private information of every American as possible. We know for a fact they have every single taxpayers SSN and corresponding tax/income data. They absolutely have all information on who gets government assistance, Medicare/Medicaid , SSI disability, food stamps, tanf etc. Every single American has been compromised already. The "work" ARS is referencing was a DISTRACTION.

Calling what they did “work” is a stretch

DOGE destroyed civil service for a generation or more.

Toothpaste is already out of the tube. No such thing as going back. Dolling out punishment is something that can still happen though.

It’s already done. I know so many who will never come back to work for government. We’ve lost so many good people who were dedicating their lives to stewardship forsaking increased salaries. This is going to last a generation

Oh, did you hear that people who died from lack of USAID? We might undo it. Cool, right?

Elon Musk should be facing treason charges not a lawsuit.

Lets not use crazy works for that mess like "work".

What "work"? Asking chat gpt if a program was "woke"?

The monkey doesn’t go back in the bottle

Yeah? Neat. Can't undo the tens of thousands of dead children though can they? Can't undo financial pain of the tens of thousands of workers who lost jobs because of those pieces of shit. Can't bring back the tens of thousands of scientists and science projects which failed or have left the US which will cause a dark age for this country for the next 50 years. So great, undo the obviously illegal shit which should never have happened and watch Trump simply say no and not restore anything so every head in the sand dimwit can clearly see that it is time to get to the business of being a house divided. Because if these pieces of trash do not go to prison for the death they wrought illegally then there is no justice.

Can’t unfuck the pig, it’s already done

They fucked over so many innocent people, we need punishment for everyone involved in this charade if there is to be any sort of justice. And I’m not talking about fines, either.

That’s not true. No lawsuit is going to bring back all the people they killed. And your information will remain stolen

What work? Work denotes something with a tangible result in line with the intention, no? Don’t they just fail to do what they said they would while data mining the American public? How the gonna undo that?

Gonna get that stolen data back too? Undo whatever they did yes... fine the shit out of Elon and then let the law have their way with all of them. Do be careful they don't buy or coerce their way out of it.

Can we take his Trillion to offset the money DOGE cost America? Cuz, I want the damn money back in our collective pocket.

Can’t wait to see all the data toothpaste put back in the sensitive information tube.

They should all go to prison for life. They have all of our social security numbers and private information now.

That USAID money is gone. Stolen by the richest man in the world, along with tons and tons of government data. There's no "undoing" that.

>In her opinion partly denying a motion to dismiss, US District **Judge Tanya S. Chutkan did not buy the US government’s defense that Musk held no office formally established by law—and therefore did not need Senate confirmation and cannot be alleged to have exceeded his authority** under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. …that is the Government’s defense? Jesus christ the Department of Justice is really down to the morons who will argue anything huh

If there is proof that DOGE exposed our data, can’t we sue them individually?

People have died. Data has been irretrievably compromised. Huge swaths of assembled talent and institutional knowledge have been scattered to the four winds, and trust in and reliance on government are gone for at least a generation.

I mean...hundreds of thousands of people who died for lack of USAID won't suddenly be coming back.

I hope the cost of putting the government back together again comes out of Elon's bank account.

no way to undo the damage, it's permanent

It can't really be "undone," hundreds of thousands of children starved to death because of USAID shutting down. So many awesome projects were put on hold. Those people have moved on.

What "work"?

what work? it was a scam con job

Try "undoing" their theft of our personal data.

DOGE already extorted all of America's data, so, no, it's not being undone. Horse has already fled the barn, fixing the door doesn't do anything about the horse being gone.

Not going to bring back the many thousands of people who died due to abruptly shutting down USAID.

They are gonna unsteal all of our data and restart all of the investigations into Musk?

"Work"

Not really. They already succeeded in killing a lot of people and stealing our data for their private purposes. Those were DOGE's only real goals.

Deport and confiscate that weasel's money

Can we please get some media with nuts? ;) These softball headlines are garbage. Should be YOUR DATA IS STOLEN & PEOPLE HAVE DIED. THIS ASSHOLES FLIPPED A NAZI SALUTE. Musk maybe might get a slap? I mean, it's lengthy but captures a little bit of the tip of the iceberg.

“Work” is doing some heavy lifting.

“Work” is a pretty insane way to categorize what they did.

The lives ruined can't be restored. The dara stolen by Russia can't be recaptured. They all belong in prison.

It can take years to get USAID alone back functional.

guess that is america now, when you mean "crimes", you say "work". "All of DOGE’s work..."

Im sure much of what was destroyed wasn’t documented. The human resources along with the tribal knowledge they took with them cannot be reversed.

Elon should be required to personally pay back the full funding for every agency he cut and every person who was fired. He's got enough to cover it.

A lot of people will still be dead.

DOGE’s “work” FTFY

What work?

The whole DODGE “team“ should be financially reliable for the damages. 

How? Is the court going to order something the administration will ignore?

"work"

Please, with damages and loss of earnings. He belongs in jail. Is humanitarian at this point to block his access to drugs.

He already has all our data and stopped the investigations into his companies so....

Werk

Sure, all the data they stole, which has since been distributed, will be given back.

Would love to see this a****** deported.

"Work" implies they did anything productive.

He should be on the hook for the cost of fixing his f*** ups.

sometimes theres good news :)

What "work"?

Will it resuscitate all the dead people? Who the f*** actually believe any of this can be *undone*?!? F****** morons.

Uh-huh. Is Elon going to prison then? Doubtful!

'*Chutkan also declined to view Musk’s influence as akin to that of Trump’s cabinet members, writing that “the alleged powers of the head of DOGE are clearly weighty and important.”*' Ahem! Wasn't DOGE telling cabinet secretaries what to do? And the cabinet secretaries were doing it? IF so, does that mean DOGE had **more** power than cabinet secretaies?

I won't get my client contact who had to quit due to the RTO mandate. My job has been significantly more stressful since that happened.

You can’t “undo” the theft of SSNs and other personal data.

And then it'll escalate to the Supreme Court who will be like "lol whatever 6-3"

People have died across the world. That isn’t rectified by lawsuits. We have to prevent putting these fuckheads in power in the first place.

It won’t be, not by a long shot but we can dream.

"Work"

Bro, just bring back USAID

Whats the punishment?

Chukan will find for the plaintiffs, and rule that every related act must be retuned to it's previous state. Potus will appeal, SCOTUS will find that potus can pretty much do whatever it damn well pleases (except levy tariffs -- the exception that proves the rule), and the destruction of government will continue.

Read the article, not the comments.

They didnt actually do anything.

Yes please!

[ Removed by Reddit ]

doge’s WHATNOW?

Can't undo the security breaches

No, it can’t be undone. He did the damage he meant to do.

"Is this my ~~espresso maker~~ *personal data*? How did you get my ~~espresso maker~~ *personal data*?" "We fuckin' stole it, man."

We gave him 41 Million dollars to break a bunch of our nice things.