Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is moving fast and breaking the law — lots of laws.

The scope of Trump and Musk’s sweeping effort to purge the federal workforce and slash government spending has shocked the political world — in part for its ambition, but also in part because of its disregard for the law.

David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School, recently told the Washington Post that so many of Musk’s moves were “so wildly illegal” that he seemed to be “playing a quantity game, and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

I reached out to Super so he could walk through this quantity game — so he could take me on a tour of all of the apparent lawbreaking in Musk’s effort so far. A transcript of our conversation, condensed and edited for clarity, follows.

The legality of Musk’s use of administrative leave to sideline civil servants

Andrew Prokop

One thing that really has struck me about the new administration’s tactics so far is this extremely aggressive use of paid administrative leave. Career officials who’ve resisted DOGE’s demands have been quickly put on administrative leave. So were government officials working on DEI. Nearly all of the staff of USAID, the US Agency for International Development, has met that fate.

Is this a legal use of administrative leave? How do normal administrations use it?

David Super

This is very strange and likely illegal. Federal law limits administrative leave to 10 workdays per year. So they will be exhausting the cap very quickly for many of these people.

Normal administrations use it the way normal businesses use it, as a patch for a variety of problems. If there’s someone who’s accused of wrongdoing and you need time to investigate and the matter is serious, administrative leave can be the solution. If somebody clearly needs some time off for a compelling reason, such as major losses, and there’s no way of doing it with other forms of leave, this can be done. So it’s a bit of a gap filler in statute and in intent and in ordinary use.

This is making strategic use of it on a vastly grander scale and there’s simply no legal authority for that.

Andrew Prokop

The........

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