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{"id":9983,"date":"2025-06-06T12:02:28","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T12:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-gop-leaders-rush-into-elon-musk-damage-control\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T12:02:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T12:02:28","slug":"capitol-agenda-gop-leaders-rush-into-elon-musk-damage-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-gop-leaders-rush-into-elon-musk-damage-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: GOP leaders rush into Elon Musk damage control"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Hill GOP leaders are in full-on damage control as they scramble to save their megabill \u2014 and themselves \u2014 from the blast radius of Donald Trump and Elon Musk\u2019s breakup.<\/p>\n<p>But Musk doesn\u2019t seem interested in sparing any part of the GOP trifecta from his wrath on his way out of Washington. The president\u2019s new enemy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2025\/06\/05\/congress\/elon-musk-attacks-johnson-thune-00390273\" target=\"_blank\">attacked both Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> Thursday over the cost of the party\u2019s sweeping domestic policy package. Thune brushed it aside.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson, however, is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/06\/05\/elon-musk-mike-johnson-megabill-00390657\" target=\"_blank\">mounting a multi-front rebuttal<\/a> as he aims to keep Musk from hurting the megabill\u2019s prospects. He\u2019s questioning the tech mogul\u2019s motives for opposing the bill and challenging his claims about its impact on the deficit. Johnson already had to reassure hard-liners concerned about the bill\u2019s spending in order to squeeze the bill through the House last month.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;m the same guy that&#8217;s always been a deficit hawk, and now I&#8217;m the speaker of the House, and I&#8217;m working on a multi-step plan to reverse the fiscal insanity that has haunted our country,\u201d Johnson told reporters Thursday. \u201cWe have to get the big, beautiful bill done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Johnson\u2019s leadership team quickly claimed Musk wouldn\u2019t rattle their members. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise insisted it hadn\u2019t moved any votes. And Whip Tom Emmer, <a href=\"https:\/\/subscriber.politicopro.com\/article\/2025\/06\/politico-pro-q-a-rep-tom-emmer-00391492\" target=\"_blank\">in an exclusive interview with POLITICO<\/a>, said he\u2019s not tracking Musk\u2019s onslaught on X.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSorry,\u201d Emmer said, \u201che\u2019s not on my phone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some fiscal hard-liners \u2014 who share in Musk\u2019s concerns about the bill but allowed it to pass the House \u2014 avoided immediately picking sides in the feud. Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.), bombarded with questions about Musk on Thursday, said only that he\u2019s \u201cright on the deficit.\u201d Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BasedMikeLee\/status\/1930735981323251878\" target=\"_blank\">posted on X<\/a>: \u201cBut \u2026 I really like both of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They may not have to choose. Signs of a d\u00e9tente emerged late Thursday, with Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/06\/05\/trump-white-house-aides-signal-a-possible-detente-with-musk-00391502\" target=\"_blank\">brushing off the clash in a phone call<\/a> with Blue Light News and Musk <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1930798791806050496\" target=\"_blank\">seeming somewhat open to a reconciliation<\/a> (just not <i>the<\/i> reconciliation bill). White House aides are working to broker peace.<\/p>\n<p>Still, if the Trump-Musk divorce goes through, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2025\/06\/05\/steve-bannon-trump-musk-rachael-bade-00391135\" target=\"_blank\">MAGA will likely side with the president<\/a>. There were signs Thursday that Musk was alienating some of Trump\u2019s biggest Hill boosters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cElon is getting too personal. It&#8217;s getting out of control,\u201d Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told Blue Light News. \u201cSome of the most recent comments, I think: Elon, you&#8217;ve lost your mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b><i>What else we\u2019re watching:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 Rescissions deadline:<\/b> Congress <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2025\/06\/05\/congress\/congress-has-until-july-18-to-act-on-trumps-request-to-claw-back-9-4b-00391029\" target=\"_blank\">must act by July 18 on Trump\u2019s request to claw back $9.4 billion<\/a> in funding or the White House will be required to spend the money, the Senate parliamentarian said. The House is expected to vote next week to approve the request, as submitted. But Senate Republicans are considering their options for making tweaks to the package. <\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 AI update for the megabill: <\/b>Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Thursday his committee would <a href=\"https:\/\/subscriber.politicopro.com\/article\/2025\/06\/cruz-ai-moratorium-00390202\" target=\"_blank\">attempt to rewrite the 10-year moratorium<\/a> on enforcement of state and local artificial intelligence laws that the House tucked into their version of the megabill. <\/p>\n<p><i>Rachael Bade, Dasha Burns and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hill GOP leaders are in full-on damage control as they scramble to save their megabill \u2014 and themselves \u2014 from the blast radius of Donald Trump and Elon Musk\u2019s breakup. But Musk doesn\u2019t seem interested in sparing any part of the GOP trifecta from his wrath on his way out of Washington. The president\u2019s new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}