Congress

The Trump-Musk governing duo is clearly a work in progress

Published

2 years ago

December 20, 2024

As Elon Musk unleashed a volley of X posts demanding that Republicans back away from a deal to avert a government shutdown, Donald Trump was publicly silent.

Instead, the president-elect holed up in his office Wednesday in a ballroom above Mar-a-Lago. While Musk riled up the MAGA masses, Trump was holding a series of conversations with top aides — including Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller — as Vice President-elect JD Vance privately expressed Trump’s concerns about the bill on Capitol Hill, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the matter freely.

By the time Trump and Vance finally chimed in several hours later in a joint statement, the measure was already tanked and Speaker Mike Johnson’s future was in jeopardy.

The sequence highlighted the evolving dynamic with his high-profile benefactor-turned-adviser and raised an awkward question for Trump of whether he or Musk was running the show. As GOP lawmakers on Thursday floated the prospect of installing the billionaire businessman as House speaker, and Democrats taunted Trump by claiming Musk was the real leader of the Republican Party, Trump did a round of interviews with reporters seemingly meant to ensure they knew it was his idea to kill the bipartisan funding bill.

In phone interviews with reporters at ABC, CBS and NBC, Trump also called for the debt ceiling to be eliminated or extended and emphasized that if the government did in fact shut down, “it’ll be a Biden shutdown.”

Trump aides and allies insisted that Musk was acting at the president-elect’s direction.

Musk is a “pawn in Trump’s chessboard, like everybody else,” said a person close to Trump who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak frankly. The media “really wants to paint Elon as this independent character. If it were a chessboard, [Musk would] be a bishop.”

But the fact that Trump’s spokesperson felt it necessary to issue a statement about who was leading the GOP showed the extent to which lines had been blurred, even among some Republicans and close Trump allies.

“As soon as President Trump released his official stance on the CR, Republicans on Capitol Hill echoed his point of view. President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop,” said Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, in response to Democrats’ taunts that Musk was actually in charge.

Musk’s involvement in the Capitol Hill fiasco raised questions about whether he was simply getting a head start on his cost-cutting duties as the leader of the newly announced Department of Governmental Efficiency with the blessing of Trump — or freelancing.

Johnson told Fox News on Wednesday morning he spent his evening texting with Musk and his DOGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy about the proposed bill.

“Here’s the question: Is Elon saying to the president, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this.’ And the president’s like, ‘Great, you be the fucking bad guy.’ Or is he just doing this shit? And the president’s like, ‘Ah, fuck,’” said a person close to Trump.

“Elon knows a lot about launching rockets into space. But what does he know about the minutiae of political dealmaking, right? And what it takes to get through? It is very difficult to get things passed when you have [an eight-seat] majority.”

Those razor-thin margins left Johnson scrambling to piece together a stopgap bill that Democrats and Republicans alike could agree to, even if it went far beyond what Trump’s team had made clear the president-elect would support.

If there were any hurt feelings between Trump and Musk, it was not apparent in the immediate aftermath. On Wednesday night, Musk joined Trump at a dinner with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on the patio of Mar-a-Lago.

“The most influential person in the Republican Party is Donald Trump. But the second-most is Elon Musk. He has the attention of a lot of members,” said a House Republican staffer granted anonymity to speak freely.

Much of Musk’s clout comes from his unique ability to fire up the GOP base on social media. A former Republican lawmaker said Musk’s power can’t be overstated. The ex-lawmaker suggested that GOP members are aware of his ability to create a backlash online and take seriously his threat to fund primary challenges against them.

“No one wants to cross him,” the former lawmaker said, adding that it would be foolish to expect any profiles in courage given that most of the more independent-minded lawmakers have already departed.

Some conservative allies and Republicans close to Trump, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), even suggested that Johnson should be replaced by Musk.

“I’d be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House,” Greene posted. “The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday.”

The 24 hours of chaos — a foreshadowing of future negotiations on Capitol Hill — resulted in a GOP plan that both Trump and Musk endorsed. (Its fate is in doubt after Democrats came out opposed.)

“SUCCESS in Washington!” Trump declared on X. “Speaker Mike Johnson and the House have come to a very good Deal for the American People.”

Musk reposted Trump’s statement, and later clarified that he did not have anything to do with the new deal.

“I’m not the author of this proposal. Credit to @realDonaldTrump, @JDVance & @SpeakerJohnson,” Musk wrote.

Eli Stokols and Betsy Woodruff Swan contributed to this report.

Congress

Rand Paul’s about to get his chance to settle his feud with Anthony Fauci

Published

12 hours ago

July 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Rand Paul’s said Anthony Fauci belongs in prison. The Kentucky Republican will get his chance to make the case Wednesday when the former Covid czar is slated to appear under subpoena before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that Paul chairs.

Paul reiterated his objective on X Monday, saying the pardon President Joe Biden gave Fauci — Biden said to shield him from a vindictive Trump administration prosecution — would not protect Fauci if he lies to Congress.

The two have a feud dating to the pandemic, when Paul accused Fauci of lying to Congress about funding risky research in China that Paul believes unleashed Covid-19. Fauci responded to Paul by accusing him of lying. Now 85, Fauci retired from federal service at the end of 2022.

In April, a federal grand jury indicted Fauci’s former senior adviser, David Morens, on three felony charges for allegedly circumventing federal public records laws by concealing Covid-related communications. Federal agents arrested Morens at his home in Maryland, reportedly putting him in handcuffs and making him disrobe.

Paul’s goals go beyond incriminating Fauci. He also wants to show that Fauci funded risky virus research in China.

“The goal is the truth,” Paul told reporters on Monday about Fauci. “I’d like to hear him say he’s sorry.”

The origin of Covid remains a fraught debate, with no scientific consensus on whether it was a lab accident or whether an animal infected a human. But most Republicans and President Donald Trump have embraced the lab leak theory.

Fauci has rejected Paul’s accusations and defended himself vigorously, including in some of the five previous hearings in which they’ve faced off.

He declined to comment.

The debate over Fauci’s legacy has long broken on party lines, and Democrats are expected to defend him against GOP attacks on Wednesday.

“They got a longstanding vendetta against Fauci. He seems to be almost obsessed,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member, said of Paul on Monday.

Both Paul and Democrats on the committee have supported stricter oversight of gain-of-function research, which aims to make viruses more virulent or more transmissible in order to devise defenses against them. The panel has twice approved Paul’s Risky Research Review Act, which would take funding decisions away from Fauci’s old agency, the National Institutes of Health, and give them to a new Life Sciences Research Security Board appointed by the president. The White House also released Tuesday a new policy stopping high-risk biological research.

Congress

Big Ten, SEC are on the clock as new college athletics bill is circulated

Published

12 hours ago

July 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee are making changes to their big college sports overhaul in a bid to garner support from the nation’s two most powerful athletic conferences as they look to build Republican support ahead of a potential vote on the Senate floor.

Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the ranking member, made several concessions to the Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences in the latest draft of their Protect College Sports Act. They include protections against certain legal challenges and a new $20 million pool of funds that schools can use for retaining athletes, according to three people close to the negotiations.

It’s unclear whether the changes will be good enough to win over the two conferences. A senior Commerce Committee staffer asked the conferences to schedule a call with their general counsels and staff “ASAP” to discuss the text and gave them a 9 a.m. Wednesday deadline to decide whether they support the latest version of the bill, according to an email reviewed by Blue Light News.

Two lobbyists directly engaged on the bill said Tuesday that weeks of negotiations had not meaningfully addressed a litany of concerns the SEC and the Big Ten had with earlier versions of the bill.

The conferences demanded, for instance, that a provision allowing universities to jointly negotiate their media rights make clear that schools cannot be coerced into participating. The updated text includes a provision shielding schools who do not participate in media pooling from potential litigation, according to a copy of the draft obtained by Blue Light News.

The bill, however, leaves out another key demand of the conferences: a provision clarifying that postseason tournaments and contests would be excluded from media pooling.

It also retains a prohibition on conferences with over $700 million in revenue participating in mergers and acquisitions, which would impact both power conferences along with the Atlantic Coast Conference. That threshold was brought down from an earlier $1 billion limit, but the SEC and the Big Ten had hoped to see it stripped from the bill altogether.

The new text also includes a newly added section titled the “Ignite HBCUs Sports and Media Act.”

That section, which is still in flux, deals with “extraneous topics of broadband,” per the email sent to the conferences on Tuesday. The $20 million athlete retention pool also remains subject to change “as we discuss how to align the proper incentive for spending on women’s NIL,” according to the email.

Cruz remains determined to get the bill onto the floor before the Senate heads out of town for a scheduled recess next week. But time is running short, and he and Cantwell still need to win over wary senators on both sides of the aisle.

Congress

VA secretary’s role in failed vets bill stokes new round of White House, GOP frustration

Published

12 hours ago

July 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

White House officials and House GOP leaders are increasingly frustrated with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, after they say he undermined a major veterans measure championed by Republicans, according to five people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The bill, which would expand benefits for tens of thousands of veterans, was abruptly pulled off the House floor earlier this month after a group of Republicans privately warned they would tank it. They were concerned they would end up being blamed for cutting benefits because of the way the bill proposed paying for the increase — and said that Collins’ VA hadn’t done enough to alleviate their worries.

“A self-inflicted loss at the hands of the VA secretary,” said one White House official after the vote.

The floor meltdown cost Republicans a legislative win just before the House departed for its summer recess — and scuttled a positive campaign issue ahead of the November elections. Johnson will now have to burn precious floor time in September if he wants to make another attempt.

And it’s just the latest move by Collins that has stoked backlash on Capitol Hill and inside the White House, after he irritated lawmakers by failing to give them advance warning about several high-profile changes, including staffing cuts and management reforms at the department.

Speaker Mike Johnson was so unhappy with the VA’s handling of the situation ahead of the veterans bill vote that he called the White House to press for a clarification from the VA about how it would change its rules to pay for the benefits expansion, according to three of the people, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive legislative dynamics.

Top Republicans involved said that the VA under Collins helped fuel opposition to the bill by issuing conflicting guidance about its own plans for veterans benefits. The VA ultimately issued a new statement to POLITICO just hours before the scheduled vote in an attempt to quell resistance. But it wasn’t enough.

Inside private meetings with GOP leaders ahead of the failed vote, key House Republicans said they had spoken with Collins about their concerns and he had at least in part agreed with them, according to three other people involved in the conversations.

Administration officials pushed back on the friction. White House assistant press secretary Olivia Wales said in a statement that Collins “is doing a great job and works tirelessly to deliver for our heroic veterans.”

VA press secretary Quinn Slaven said that officials have clearly outlined support for the measure in a statement of administration policy and in public statements. “Under the leadership of President [Donald] Trump, Secretary Collins is proud to work every day to make VA benefits better, faster and easier to use than ever before,” he said in a statement.

Senior House Republicans have relayed concerns to the White House about how both Collins and Don Bergin, the VA’s assistant secretary for congressional and legislative affairs, handled the matter.

Democrats and some veterans groups have strongly opposed the measure. Money for the expansion of aid for disabled veterans would be funded by cuts in future disability claims for tinnitus and sleep apnea cases, a rule change that has been planned since the Biden administration.

But officials from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans have attacked the plan as a dangerous precedent. Supporters, including House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Mike Bost (R-Ill.), have argued the savings will be returned to the U.S. Treasury if not used for other programs.

In the lead-up to the vote, VA officials had suggested that they may not go ahead with the changes, jeopardizing about $13 billion over the next decade that was slated to pay for the measure. Just hours before the House vote was pulled, department officials clarified that the sleep apnea and tinnitus revisions will move ahead in coming months regardless of the bill’s fate.

But several GOP members still expressed concerns about the uncertainty surrounding the bill. And after a blowup between the speaker, his allies and the GOP holdouts in his ceremonial office just off the House floor, Johnson had to pull the bill from the floor.

The normally even-keeled Johnson, deeply frustrated after the failed vote, said he and Republican supporters of the measure were battling “misinformation” swirling about the legislation.

Senior Republicans were especially upset that Collins appeared to be working against them even after the VA had a seat at the table to craft the legislation.

House Republicans who spoke with Collins about the legislation said he never directly told them to vote against the bill, but he discussed their and his concerns about the legislation in a way they felt okay remaining opposed to it, according to the three other people involved in the conversations.

But anything less than 100 percent endorsement from Collins was seen as a major blow to the bill — which GOP leadership and White House officials struggled to get to the floor and whip for weeks.

It was just the latest move from Collins, a former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who helped defend Trump through his first impeachment, that has rankled Capitol Hill leaders and officials inside the White House.

His reorganization of the VA, including an initial mass layoff proposal for 80,000 more firings across a roughly 480,000-person department drew fierce opposition from bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, including from the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said he was blindsided by the move.

“We don’t need to be reading memos in the paper about 20 percent cut at the VA,” Graham said at the time.

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) also said at that time that while the massive department is “in need of reform,” efforts to downsize “must be done in a more responsible manner,” Moran, who had been in close contact with VA, Collins and White House staff about personnel issues for weeks, added that lawmakers “need information” and that the numbers need to be “justifiable.”

Collins has also triggered the anger of Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill — he agreed to testify before House appropriators in May only after lawmakers voted to withhold funding for the agency if he didn’t. A VA spokesperson at the time denied GOP lawmakers had to pressure Collins to appear.

Collins’ handling of the veterans’ bill has also shaken his relationship with some White House officials — who are tracking how many days a week Collins is in Washington versus his home state of Georgia, according to two of the people involved in the conversations.