Congress
Elon Musk brings all the deregulation hype to X
Elon Musk’s role in Donald Trump’s administration hasn’t been announced, but the billionaire and Tesla CEO is already sharing some of his enthusiasm for the incoming president and his deregulatory desires on social media.
Musk, who owns the social media platform X, has been posting regularly about politics, deregulation and incoming Trump administration personnel. The prominent Trump ally appears poised to play a significant role advising the incoming administration, and some social media posts indicate he is spending time at Mar-a-Lago advising the president-elect during the early transition.
His public posts indicate how he might seek to shape Trump’s policies.
Musk’s biography line on X currently reads: “The people voted for major government reform.”
“Government Efficiency FTW!!” he posted Monday in response to a Republican lawmaker’s suggestion that a GOP-led Congress should have bills to “shrink government overreach” on Trump’s desk by the first day of his term.
Musk recently has posted criticism of the Education Department, weighed in on the next Senate majority leader and celebrated Trump for selecting Tom Homan as his White House “border czar.”
He welcomed broad deregulation and government spending cuts and reposted a comment from Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy saying that, “A band of small-government revolutionaries will save our nation. It’s the only way.”
Musk said of Ramaswamy’s remarks, “Absolutely! Would be interesting to hear recommendations for roles in the new administration for consideration by the President.”
Musk also called for “maniacally dedicated small-government revolutionaries” to join the incoming Trump administration.
Trump said in September that Musk had agreed to lead a “government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government.”
Musk wouldn’t officially serve in the Cabinet, Trump told Fox News in October. “He doesn’t want to be in the Cabinet. He just wants to be in charge of cost-cutting.”
The Trump transition team declined to share the details of Musk’s expected role with the incoming administration.
“Elon Musk is a once-in-a-generation business leader and our federal bureaucracy will certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency. His specific role will be announced when that decision is formalized,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team.
Republicans just solved an immediate crisis with a party-line vote to fund immigration enforcement agencies into 2029. But that hardly improves the chances of avoiding a shutdown for the rest of the government.
Lawmakers in both parties say the odds of another federal funding lapse are unimproved, if not heightened, by the GOP’s move to fund President Donald Trump’s immigration and border security efforts for three years through the party-line budget reconciliation process.
The Sept. 30 government shutdown deadline, less than four months away, hits just weeks before the November elections that will determine which party controls the House and Senate next year. This electoral uncertainty was already complicating cross-party negotiations to fund federal agencies.
“It’s not helpful for sure,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, told reporters this week of the GOP’s party-line gambit. “It makes it very difficult for us moving forward.”
The Senate’s top appropriators, who are typically chummy, are at loggerheads over totals for the military and nondefense programs — prompting the cancellation this week of committee markups for the second week in a row.
Republicans’ move to stiff-arm Democrats has further soured negotiations to fund the government and raised concerns of more my-way-or-the-highway ultimatums from members on both sides.
“Does it mean that we avoid a shutdown in that area? Takes care of that,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a senior appropriator, said about removing the need to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol past the end of President Donald Trump’s term.
“But how many other accounts do we have that we could have another kerfuffle?” she continued. “And all of a sudden we now have leverage, because we tried it once — and we pulled the trigger.”
Murkowski voted against the reconciliation bill last week — the only Senate Republican to do so.
It’s widely accepted on Capitol Hill that Congress will pass a stopgap funding bill to keep cash flowing for federal agencies past the midterms.
Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), who oversees annual transportation and housing spending, predicted this week that Congress will be crafting a funding patch come September. “I just hope we’re not seriously talking about a potential shutdown again,” he added. “We touched that stove once. It was pretty hot.”
Yet some are predicting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will direct his members to band together to oppose a funding patch, as Democrats did last September in triggering a 43-day government shutdown.
“They do not want appropriation bills. They do want to shut down government,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters about Democrats. “And they think they’re going to take the House and maybe the Senate and can get a better deal then.”
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins said Democrats “have made clear they are not willing to work with us” to pass government funding bills. But the Maine Republican also said she doesn’t think her party’s move to fund immigration enforcement through reconciliation “has an effect one way or another” on funding the rest of the government beyond September.
Though ICE and Border Patrol are now funded through September 2029, some Democrats say they are planning to use the dozen annual government funding bills as leverage to demand policy changes and funding cuts at those two agencies.
“I can tell you this: We’re going to try every which way to unfund these agencies,” Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), a member of the Appropriations Committee. “We have 12 bills that we have to pass. We have so many battles — this piece is one of them.”
Democrats had for months been demanding guardrails on Trump’s immigration enforcement activities as a condition of supporting enforcement funding after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota in January. When talks broke down, Republicans made the decision to act alone.
It’s not just ICE and Border Patrol that control immigration enforcement policy, though. Congress still has to fund the broader operations of DHS each year, including the office of Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who recently told lawmakers he couldn’t commit to following court orders.
“You still have to ultimately deal with the Homeland Security bills, and they’ve refused to rein in a lawless ICE operation,” Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a top Democratic appropriator, said in an interview. “That’s not changed.”
Some appropriators are holding out hope that collegiality on the House and Senate funding panels will ultimately prevail, if for no other reason than the margins of the Republican majorities in both chambers depend on it.
“You don’t have to have a master’s in logic to figure out that, at the end of the process, the bills in today’s Congress are going to have a bipartisan flavor,” Womack said, “because the numbers dictate that anybody that thinks otherwise is just simply not being intellectually honest about the situation that we happen to be in.”
After Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) proposed the idea this week of funding other controversial agencies through party-line reconciliation bills, House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole immediately rejected the idea floated by one of his subcommittee chairs.
“We’re not doing that. I will just tell you flat out, that will not happen,” the Oklahoma Republican told reporters.
He also refuted the idea that the $70 billion party-line immigration enforcement package could be attractive for his colleagues to replicate going forward.
“I don’t think it’s a precedent,” Cole said. “But if it became a regular practice, I certainly wouldn’t be supporting it.”
Trump-endorsed Marty O’Donnell won the GOP primary Tuesday to take on Democratic Rep. Susie Lee in Nevada’s battleground 3rd District.
The seat, which touches parts of Las Vegas, is one of Republicans’ targeted pickups this November since President Donald Trump carried it by less than 1 percentage point in 2024 after losing it by nearly seven points in 2020.
But O’Donnell — who also has the backing of the National Republican Congressional Committee — will face an uphill battle. He recently came under fire for hosting a neo-Nazi influencer on his podcast. Trump’s tariffs have hit the district hard, with Canadian tourism to Sin City down by 17 percent, leaving Democrats confident they can hold the seat.
O’Donnell is best known for his role as the audio composer for the “Halo” video game series. It’s his second run in the district after placing fourth in the 2024 Republican primary.
O’Donnell bested several candidates Tuesday, with businessperson Tera Anderson and former Ambassador to Iceland Jeff Gunter — who ran for Senate in 2024 — putting up the most significant challenges.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is on his way to clinching his fifth term in the Senate.
Graham won the Republican primary for Senate on Tuesday, vanquishing five opponents that included businessperson Mark Lynch — who challenged the senator over his staunch support for the war in Iran and long history in Washington. Lynch also drew support from some of the president’s most prominent MAGA Republican critics.
But Graham won more than half the primary vote, allowing him to avoid an embarrassing two-week runoff sprint. He is expected to cruise to victory in November; a Democrat has not represented the state in the Senate since 2005, when longtime Sen. Fritz Hollings chose not to seek reelection.
The four-term senator spent big in the final weeks of the campaign to make sure he won, combining with his allies to spend over $18 million in television and digital ads touting his record and endorsement from President Donald Trump. That spending proved to be decisive in staving off Lynch’s challenge from the right.
He even called in the big guns for a last minute bump, bringing in Trump, who reaffirmed his support for his occasional frenemy in a telerally on the eve of the primary election.
Graham’s success is a loss for the strict “America First” wing of the GOP that has criticized the president’s new interventionist foreign policy streak, including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and former counterterrorism official Joe Kent. They came out in support of Lynch during the final stretch of the campaign, though that was not enough to upset Graham, a fixture of Columbia and Washington politics.
- US to reach $41T debt ceiling as soon as late winter, forecasters predict
- Sen. Lindsey Graham wins primary over ‘America First’ challenger
- 20 House Republicans cross party lines to pass pro-union bill
- House Republicans clear $70B go-it-alone immigration enforcement package
- Raphael Warnock meets with Mike Johnson after questioning speaker’s Christian faith
- US to reach $41T debt ceiling as soon as late winter, forecasters predict
- Bill Gates’ damaged reputation is about to get another Epstein test
- Republicans just took ICE spending fights off the table. It won’t end shutdown threats.
- Platner romps to victory in Maine Democratic primary, will face Collins despite controversies
- Ex-Fox News host will advance in California governor’s race, facing Becerra for Newsom’s seat
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship9 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words