Congress
Inside the Elon Musk-Jim Jordan ‘mind meld’ shaking up Capitol Hill
Elon Musk has a critical ally in Congress as he tries to slash federal bureaucracy at a break-neck pace: Rep. Jim Jordan.
The billionaire tech executive and the Ohio conservative hardliner have grown increasingly close since first being introduced by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy shortly after Musk’s takeover of Twitter in late 2022. Musk and Jordan, who chairs House Judiciary, talk roughly once a month, according to a person with knowledge of their relationship granted anonymity to speak candidly. And Jordan has already helped Musk advance a number of his goals since they became acquainted.
Now, the friendship is set to help both men further their personal and political agendas in Trump’s Washington.
For Musk, Jordan has a big say over legislation that could pave the way for more legal immigration in the high-skilled work sector, benefitting Musk’s business interests — to say nothing of Jordan’s subpoena power to go after Musk’s enemies. For Jordan, a direct line to Musk is a chance to bolster his bonafides with the conservative movement that considers the Tesla founder a hero.
“This guy, you could argue, was the single biggest — had the single biggest influence — on saving and protecting free speech and the First Amendment, for goodness’ sake,” Jordan said in an interview. “God bless Elon Musk.”
Jordan and Musk met at least twice post-election, first on Capitol Hill and then at Mar-a-Lago, Jordan said. In Washington, the two men discussed social media platforms, Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and the Judiciary Committee’s work digging into the Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission.
The meetings marked early opportunities for Jordan and Musk to explore how their dynamic was about to change as Republicans took control of Congress and the executive branch under President Donald Trump. Jordan’s committee has jurisdiction over a number of Musk’s primary political and policy interests, including immigration, deregulation, antitrust and the policing of social media platforms like X and its competitors.
As Musk focuses on reducing spending and regulations, “We can be helpful,” Jordan said.
Jordan is planning to use the Judiciary Committee to scrutinize companies and government officials that have allegedly suppressed conservative voices, including in Europe. Jordan last week sent a letter to the European Commission’s chief tech regulator inquiring about how it plans to enforce social media law against American companies, like X.
And despite being a hardliner on immigration, Jordan now says he’s open to working with Musk on legislation paving the way for more high-skilled immigrants to live and work in the country, although he has said they have not yet spoken about the topic. The debate over expanding “H-1B visas” for this purpose has long been a point of friction for conservatives who want to support emerging tech industries without being accused of displacing domestic workers.
“[We’ve] got to secure the border first,” Jordan said in an interview last month. “Once you’ve demonstrated that the border is actually secure, then we can entertain questions about the other key issues … whether it’s H1-B visas or other visas.”
Musk did not respond to a request for comment nor did a spokesperson for DOGE. Judiciary Committee spokesperson Nadgey Louis-Charles said the panel’s work on free speech issues started years ago.
“The Judiciary Committee’s investigation into censorship, which started in the 117th Congress, is all about defending the First Amendment and protecting free speech,” she said. “We’re standing up against any effort to silence Americans, and we’ve shown conclusively how Democrats colluded with Big Tech to censor Americans.”
But Jordan’s work has involved him wielding the gavel in Musk’s defense, such as when he called a Justice Department official in 2023 to testify over the government’s lawsuit against SpaceX, one of Musk’s companies, for allegedly discriminating in hiring against refugees and asylum seekers.
Jordan asked the official to testify after SpaceX raised the issue with Jordan’s office directly, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the relationship between Jordan and Musk.
Their collaboration also culminated in the shutdown of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. That coalition, which went by the acronym GARM, was a project of the World Federation of Advertisers that sought to fight “harmful” content online in the wake of the 2019 mass shooting at New Zealand mosques, which was partially livestreamed on Facebook.
GARM caught Musk’s ire when advertisers reportedly pulled back spending on X. Jordan said he’d never heard of the group before, but that he launched a Judiciary Committee inquiry after Musk told him about it.
A July 2024 staff report from the Judiciary Committee, which adapted Musk’s “GARM is Harm” catchphrase for its title, charged that the coalition had seemingly “anti-democratic views of fundamental American freedom” and likely coordinated illegally to flout antitrust laws. Shortly afterward, Musk’s X sued the World Federation of Advertisers over antitrust violations and GARM quickly dissolved, maintaining its innocence but conceding its resources had been drained.
“When they announced they were going out of business, I called Elon up and said, ‘It all started with your one sentence — when you, Kevin [McCarthy], and I met — and you told me, ‘GARM is harm,’” Jordan said.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee who was blocked Wednesday from issuing a subpoena to force Musk to testify on Capitol Hill, said he was alarmed by the Musk-Jordan partnership.
“Elon Musk is an unelected, unaccountable billionaire with absolutely zero knowledge of how government works and rampant conflicts of interest,” the Virginia Democrat said in a statement. “He should be the subject of congressional investigations, not a beneficiary of politically motivated investigations into his opponents and competitors.”
When asked why Musk’s influence on Blue Light News was justified, Jordan said Musk deserved to be listened to as a leader on fighting censorship — plus, “he’s got the confidence of the president of the United States.”
“So I think that’s the key thing,” he added. “The guy who got elected by 77 million Americans wants him in this role.”
Jordan and Musk first entered into a “mind meld” — according to one former associate of Musk granted anonymity to talk about their relationship — following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. McCarthy introduced the two men, who had a shared interest in the alleged suppression of speech on social media platforms.
Jordan had for years been railing against “Big Tech” and its treatment of conservatives. Musk’s Twitter takeover offered some momentum for the cause. Musk seemed particularly excited about someone in Congress focusing so closely on the issue, said the former Musk associate.
All signs indicate that Jordan’s efforts to go after Musk’s adversaries will only continue to escalate. Jordan has even floated plans to work with the State Department to restrict entry into the U.S. by individuals and entities with track records of suppressing speech.
In the meantime, Jordan said he’s glad to come to Musk’s defense.
“What he’s done on … stopping censorship,” said Jordan, “has just been phenomenal.”
Members of Congress are confronting a grim reality: They are ill-equipped to rein in advanced artificial intelligence that one expert warns could “kill us all” by the end of the decade.
A viral social media post this week from ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon cautioned that AI companies are “gambling with our lives” as they race to develop superintelligent models — prompting alarm from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and new calls to action.
In conversations with Blue Light News throughout the day Wednesday, more than a dozen lawmakers and aides from both parties said they were hopeful Congress would start taking the issue seriously. By Wednesday evening, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, was pledging to “work with Congress” to implement “mandatory, capability-based national AI safety regulation.”
But many also conceded that Congress is currently sleepwalking into a crisis, far from ready to tackle the stakes of the moment in light of both philosophical differences and intractable partisan politicking.
“I think we’re finally hitting a tipping point,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who co-chairs the House AI Caucus, said in an interview. “I’m just so grateful that the whole world is finally paying attention … and now the question is, what do we do?”
Mounting worries inside the tech industry about a looming AI apocalypse are beginning to resonate with more members of Congress. Building on the panic seven weeks ago when hundreds of OpenAI-generated “agents” went rogue and hacked another AI platform, Hugging Face, lawmakers Wednesday called for radical action in the immediate aftermath of Coxon’s X posts late Tuesday night.
“There’s broad consensus — and in speaking with the AI companies directly, they want a regulatory framework,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a vulnerable moderate incumbent who has introduced bipartisan AI safety legislation, said Wednesday.
He called it “one of the biggest issues that Congress has to tackle over the next two years.”
It’s far from certain this desire to make progress on the issue will translate into meaningful legislative activity — and certainly not before the end of the year, with some lawmakers questioning whether their colleagues take the matter seriously or fully understand how the technology even works.
Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo of California, who leads AI policy for the centrist New Democrat Coalition, said in an interview his team recently struggled to convince other members to attend a series of events at the Library of Congress that featured OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
“There have been serious conversations among a small number of us, and we need that number to be larger. There is a percentage of my colleagues who are still trying to spell AI,” Liccardo said, adding, “we need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully. And I know that is not going to happen overnight.”
Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), who introduced a bill this summer to create an AI “kill switch” with Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), said in an interview he thought efforts to put checks on advanced models would be a priority in the next Congress. Quicker action, he agreed, would be a heavy lift.
“The number of days that we have left between the election and the end of the year is going to be very tough to educate members and then move a meaningful bill,” he said. “The broad scope of members on both sides of the aisle are trying to get caught up.”
There’s also not yet consensus on the appropriate reaction and policy response to the threat posed by superintelligence. No committee in either chamber has considered a substantive proposal to put guardrails on AI development amid disagreements over how aggressive the federal government should be in regulating the private sector and stifling innovation.
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who convened a markup of AI-adjacent bills in August that steered clear of addressing safety regulations, said in an appearance on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday that the new warnings were “highly concerning” and endorsed passing legislation to prevent “catastrophic risk.”
He pointed to a pending bipartisan bill from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that is expected to represent a more targeted approach than a version of the legislation that advanced out of the Commerce Committee in the previous Congress.
Klobuchar and Thune, however, have provided no timetable for when their new measure might be formally introduced. Thune’s office did not respond to a request for comment, while Klobuchar in a statement said only that she would “continue to work toward a bipartisan agreement on legislation for commonsense guardrails to address the risks posed by AI systems,” while adding, “it’s clear we need to act now and not wait.”
Across the Capitol, House Democrats made especially clear in the aftermath of Coxon’s X posts that they will seek to move quickly if they win the majority in November, with some now discussing whether to establish a select committee on AI.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries convened a Democrat-only AI commission this term to formulate policy recommendations after Speaker Mike Johnson declined to reconstitute a bipartisan AI taskforce, and co-chair Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) projected confidence Wednesday the group’s forthcoming report would pave the way for meaningful legislative action on AI safety.
Passing AI safety legislation will require buy-in from Republicans, however — and Gottheimer, asked if Congress is moving fast enough, blamed GOP leaders for lack of momentum.
“What you’re really asking me is if the Republican leadership is working fast enough on this, right? Because they’re the ones who control the agenda,” he said. “I think you’ve seen a lot of action out of members of Congress. I think our commission has been incredibly active.”
Other Democrats joined Gottheimer in blaming Republicans for slow-walking legislation.
“It only would take one phone call from the speaker to say, ‘I want five Democrats and five Republicans in a room, and I want them to emerge from that room next week with legislation that we can bring to committee and then bring to the floor,’” said Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “That’s it.”
Spokespeople for Johnson and Jeffries did not return requests for comment.
Even if Democrats take back gavels after the midterms, they, too, lack a clear plan to address the growing threat of unchecked AI. Progressive leaders, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), are advocating for a ban on superintelligence — a proposal that more moderate Democrats claim has no viable path to passage.
“Bernie Sanders,” said Gottheimer, “wants to put it in the box and throw it away, but that’s not living in reality. I think we need a reasonable, smart, commonsense approach that’s realistic but also sets up mandatory rules of the road — legislative rules of the road.”
Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) brokered a bipartisan safety bill with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) that the two lawmakers have pitched as a consensus proposal, but it has so far failed to win the support to advance.
“You cannot just put your head in the sand on AI and say, ‘I hope it works out.’ You can’t just go in and say, ‘Government’s got the solution — they’re just going to ban it all.’ That’s just not going to work,’” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a staunch conservative who is leaving Congress at the end of the year, said in an interview. “We’re going to have to be thoughtful as leaders and actually have some friggin’ leadership.”
Owen Dahlkamp, Gabby Miller, Katherine Long, Mia McCarthy and Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.
Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) plans to seek the top GOP spot on the Judiciary Committee, a spokesperson said. The announcement came soon after POLITICO reported that the current chair, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), does not intend to seek a fourth term leading Republicans on the panel. Lee, who is seeking her third term in November, is well down the committee’s seniority list but could make a case to the House GOP steering committee that she is best equipped to lead the key panel as a former state judge.
DALLAS — Rep. Jim Jordan said Wednesday he plans to end his eight-year run leading Republicans on two of the House’s most prominent committees after this Congress, raising fresh questions about what comes next for the veteran Ohio lawmaker.
Jordan, 62, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Republican midterm convention that he has no plans to seek a waiver of the GOP’s three-term limit on committee leaders to retain the top spot on the Judiciary Committee.
Nor, he said, would he seek to return to lead Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. He previously served as ranking member from 2019 to 2020, when he took the GOP reins at Judiciary, and has at least two terms of eligibility remaining there.
“No, I don’t plan to do that,” Jordan said. “There’s other people who are very interested in Oversight.”
Jordan could have requested a waiver from the House Republican Steering Committee, and several other sitting GOP chairs — including Agriculture’s G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) and Armed Services’ Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) — are expected to do just that. He brushed off questions about why we would not join others in seeking to keep the coveted gavel overseeing the Justice Department, immigration law and other high-profile matters.
“I’m just not going to do it,” he said.
The decision is likely to stoke speculation about another potential leadership run for Jordan, who is seeking his 11th term this fall. He unsuccessfully sought the speakership after Kevin McCarthy’s 2023 ouster, and there has been open chatter in recent months that he is quietly setting the grounds to make another run at the top job.
After flatly denying plans to retain a committee gavel, Jordan was far less direct in addressing other questions about his future in the House.
“I’m focused on one thing, one thing only: winning,” he said. “If the left wins, where they want to take the country is very, very scary.”
Jordan, for instance, did not rule out running against Speaker Mike Johnson for the gavel if Republicans hold onto House majority this fall.
“As I said, I’m focused on winning. We got to win,” he said when asked if he could challenge Johnson, adding “that’s why I’ve been … in 15 different states, and so we just keep going to help our colleagues and candidates.”
Jordan only serves on the Judiciary and Oversight committees, and it is rare for veteran Republican members who are term-limited out of committee leadership posts to stick around as back-benchers in the House.
Jordan did not criticize his fellow chairs who are seeking waivers: “They want a waiver, that’s fine. It’s been granted in the past, and sometimes they get them, sometimes they don’t,” he said, noting it was “up to the conference and the steering committee.”
Asked if he would stay in Congress without a committee or conference leadership position, he noted he is running for reelection: “I’m going to go represent the people in the 4th District.”
Asked a final time what’s next for his decadeslong political career, Jordan chuckled and went through his plans for the day.
“I got like three more interviews,” Jordan said. “And then I’m going to go sit down in that suite, and we’ve got to have some popcorn and watch the speeches. I think that’s what’s next for me.”
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