Using Bob Dylan Lyrics, Judge Seems To Inch Closer To Win For DOGE In Africa Agency Case
The federal judge presiding over DOGE's takeover of the U.S. African Development Foundation cut to the core of the case Wednesday: If the board president wasn't properly appointed, he loses his standing and the case collapses.
Determining the validity of his appointment, though, requires sifting through the alleged incompetence of the Trump administration. Lawyers for the plaintiff and ex-member who says he was properly appointed president, Ward Brehm, argue the other board members were never properly fired because they weren't given any notice.
If the board members weren't ever legally fired, they still had their posts and could rightfully appoint Brehm as the board's president, giving him standing to bring the lawsuit. If they were properly fired, their vote to appoint Brehm was meaningless and the case dissolves.
That created some factual confusion when the DC United States Attorney's Office attached the termination emails the administration sent, which the members said they never received. But per Brehm's filings, the administration had just made up the email addresses and sent the messages, hoping for the best — including one that misspelled the member's name, and a Gmail account for a board member who says she's never had one.
Those granular details may now determine the future of the case.
Judge Richard Leon expressed musically inflected skepticism Wednesday that the board members really hadn't gotten the news that they were being terminated, whether or not they got the emails.
'You know, Bob Dylan once had a lyric in one of his songs: 'You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,'' Leon quoted.
He incredulously asked whether there was a 'serious question' of the President's intent to fire the members.
'This case can be resolved simply by finding that Mr. Brehm was never appointed president of the foundation to begin with,' Assistant U.S. Attorney John Bardo, on behalf of the Trump administration, said.
'No standing,' underscored Leon.
The judge poked Bardo, saying that the plaintiffs said that Supreme Court precedent demands adequate notice.
'If the notice was adequate — you're saying the notice was adequate — then the…other members of the board were no longer on the board and couldn't appoint Mr. Brehm as the president,' Leon said to Bardo. 'If he wasn't the president, he wouldn't have standing to challenge his own situation as well as Mr. Marocco's,' he added of Trump's alleged acting USADF president.
'Basically they picked the wrong plaintiff,' Leon said. 'There are other people they could have picked who might have had standing.'
Leon said he couldn't give the lawyers a timeline on which to expect his opinion, nodding to the flood of DOGE and other administration-related lawsuits that have inundated the DC federal courts.
'We're a little busy around here these days,' he said.
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Melissa Harris had her future meticulously planned. But after more than 37 years in public service, those plans fell apart when President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ravaged her workplace at the National Institute of Health (NIH). So Harris took an early retirement at the end of April, packed up her Gaithersburg, Md. home, and relocated to North Carolina. 'Right now, I can't imagine anybody wanting to go to D.C. and live there,' she said. Harris, 60, had planned to retire in two years so she could receive the maximum payout after about four decades of service. Instead, she expects she'll be receiving less than what she would have, 'even with the bonus that they offered,' she said. The day she came into the office to enjoy her early retirement celebration was the day mass firings hit NIH. Obviously, the party was cancelled. But DOGE's blow to Harris was more than just symbolic. 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The shakeups are also impacting sellers who wanted to sell their homes, came under contract, and then had those offers pulled because of the fallout from federal job loss. 'The combination of both the economic uncertainty and changes federally that are happening, as well as locally, has led to this retraction,' of buyer interest and an increase in inventory, said Medvene. For now, though, he said the situation is more wait-and-see than a dire retrenchment in the housing market. May saw active listings in the D.C. metro area hit their highest level in four years, said Redfin senior economist Asad Khan. The region ranks in the top 10 among the 50 largest metro areas by active listings, Khan said. There are signs that the area housing market is holding strong, but it's on wobbly footing. According to Bright MLS, younger families hit by DOGE layoffs and cuts may also be looking to leave the region, but may start the process later this year because of school and childcare. That's what DMV area realtor Richard Pearrell predicts. Pearrell maintains an online database tracking housing and condo inventory and average sales prices. On one hand, Pearrell sees panicked reports about federal layoffs as 'hype,' and emphasized that the region still hasn't returned to pre-pandemic levels of housing inventory. On the other hand, he acknowledged the toll economic uncertainty has taken especially on buyers. 'It's just more of, 'let's sit back and wait until all of this irons itself out,'' Pearrell said. ''Am I going to have a job or not? Or, is the spouse going to have a job or not?' Those are the conversations I'm having.' Noting that workers who took buyouts have months of runway before the rubber meets the road, Pearrell expects to see an uptick in people trying to sell their homes beginning as early as August. 'That's when people are going to have to make the decision,' he said. ''Well if I don't have a job because I have taken the severance, what am I going to do?'' And the D.C. metro area isn't the only one that'll be hit by the government's job-slashing effort. Pearrell has seen the amount of homes for sale in Texas and Florida increasing 'astronomically,' while fewer are being sold, creating a spike in housing inventory. Mortgage broker and President-elect of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, Kimber White, is based in Ft. Lauderdale and points to Florida as a hub for remote government workers who settled in the area during the COVID pandemic, and are being forced to return to Washington to comply with return-to-work mandates. He notes there's been a slight uptick in mortgage delinquencies in the first part of 2025, but not enough to point to a crisis. 'Right now, no,' White said. 'Do I think we're going to see some [increases in delinquencies]? Yeah. We're going to see an uptick,' he said. For her part, Harris considers herself lucky. Though her lifelong service was cut short and retirement plans nearly thwarted, she was able to skip town and is settling down elsewhere. But what she faced at NIH still stings. 'Seeing the president and [Musk] on television, that affected us a lot,' Harris said. 'Because seeing that, it's almost like a personal attack… 'You're the problem.' That's what they're saying.'
