Ancestors

Written by Heidi Li Feldman on 2025-01-20 at 22:05

At 12:01 pm today, Democracy Forward and CREW filed a lawsuit, seeking a halt to DOGE unless and until it comes into compliance with law regulating “federal advisory committees.” Here’s the complaint, which I will explain a bit in this thread. https://democracyforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/DOGE-FACA-Lawsuit-1.20.25.pdf 1/ #LawFedi

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Written by Heidi Li Feldman on 2025-01-20 at 22:10

Democracy Forward spearheads legal actions for a consortium of pro-democracy groups, several of whom are named plaintiffs along with CREW. The suit shows the value of sophisticated pro-democracy legal actions, though of course with the federal judiciary and Supreme Court riddled with Trump minions, we can’t know if rule of law will hold. 2/

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Written by Heidi Li Feldman on 2025-01-20 at 22:15

At the heart of the complaint is the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), a 1972 law Congress passed to curb Executive Branch use of secretive and unnecessary “advisory committees.” Congress wanted to make sure that industry and special interests couldn’t unduly make or influence executive policy and operations. 3/

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Written by Heidi Li Feldman on 2025-01-20 at 22:20

FACA imposes procedural and substantive requirements to ensure advisory committees are kept to a minimum; have a balanced membership reflecting all those likely to be affected by any agency working with a committee; and have defined and public objectives, budgets, and operations. 4/

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Written by Heidi Li Feldman on 2025-01-20 at 22:22

By law, advisory committees must provide for public input and make their own records publicly available. 5/

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Written by Heidi Li Feldman on 2025-01-20 at 22:25

As you can imagine, the Democracy Forward-CREW complaint notes the secretive, ad hoc, unrepresentative nature of DOGE and its stated objectives to influence OMB, an agency whose decisions affect practically every member of the public. 6/

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Toot

Written by Heidi Li Feldman on 2025-01-20 at 22:27

Hence, the complaint argues, DOGE must suspend all activity unless and until it complies with FACA. 7/7

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Descendants

Written by Heidi Li Feldman on 2025-01-20 at 22:29

P.S. You can sign up for the Democracy Forward newsletter https://democracyforward.org/. Strongly recommended.

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Written by gentlegardener on 2025-01-20 at 22:49

@heidilifeldman thank you again

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Written by Pamela Barroway – Biz Editor on 2025-01-21 at 02:22

@heidilifeldman Thank you for making all of us aware of this organization!

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