Elon Musk Splits Republican Party Further on Reconciliation Bill

Mike Johnson is trying and failing to maintain the appearance of budget unity within the GOP—and Elon Musk is only making it harder.

The looming Republican budget resolution is an attempt to pack Donald Trump’s beefy agenda into one “big, beautiful bill.” But Republican holdouts, potentially influenced by Musk, have put that beauty in jeopardy.

While Johnson told Politico Tuesday he had “no concerns” and felt “very positive” about the reconciliation bill’s prospects, other Republicans had different ideas.

“If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better,” MAGA cheerleader Representative Thomas Massie wrote Monday on X.

“That sounds bad,” Elon Musk replied, reinforcing the MAGA wing’s opposition to Johnson’s version of the budget, which notably does not include the deep cuts to crucial programs that have huge standard-of-living effects, such as Medicaid—and leaving the budget in a precarious, vote-lacking position.

The weight of a three-word X reply from the country’s most influential unelected civilian seriously irked some members of the Republican Party.

“I hope we’re not going to have this come to whatever is said on X to change months and months of substantive work to actually do this in a deficit-neutral way,” Representative Blake Moore told Politico. “I wish we were eliminating as much of the deficit is possible. What’s missing from that X exchange is what happens if it doesn’t pass, and we have the largest tax increase on lower and middle income Americans ever. We can’t be so singularly focused on one aspect of this.”

At least two other representatives have said they intend to vote against the bill. They include Ohio Republican Warren Davidson and Indiana lawmaker Victoria Spartz, a die-hard Department of Government Efficiency loyalist.

This mess certainly won’t be resolved tonight, as Speaker Johnson told Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman: “There may be a vote tonight. There may not be.”

A MAGA-led group of private military contractors are pitching Donald Trump on a plan to use a civilian army to carry out his promise of mass deportations, Politico reported Tuesday.

The contractors, led by Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and its former Chief Operating Officer Bill Matthews, calling themselves 2USV, sent a proposal to Trump’s advisers before his inauguration, pitching a comprehensive, if not legally dubious, plan to expedite massive deportations to displace 12 million people in two years.

Their pitch included plans for a bounty program, mass deportation hearings, temporary encampments on Army bases, and civilians deputized to apprehend undocumented immigrants.

To reach its goal of 12 million deportations, 2USV projected that it would need to “eject nearly 500,000” undocumented immigrants per month.

“To keep pace with the Trump deportations, it would require a 600% increase in activity,” the proposal said, adding that “the government should enlist outside assistance” to address this rise in demand by deputizing 10,000 private citizens to assist law enforcement.

These private citizens would be former law enforcement agents, military veterans, and former ICE and Border Patrol officials with the same federal law enforcement powers as bona fide immigration officials. They would work under the direction of Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called border czar.

Former ICE Director John Sandweg told Politico that 2USV’s plan to deputize private citizens was legally dubious.

“I don’t see how you could do private sector, deputized law enforcement officers,” Sandweg said. “That’s subject to an immediate injunction by a court.”

Prince, one of the central forces behind 2USV, has several ties to Trump. In 2018, Prince reportedly helped raise money for different MAGA causes, including one to infiltrate organizations that opposed Trump, and another to fund the construction of a wall on the American southern border. Betsy DeVos, Prince’s sister, served as Trump’s secretary of education during his first term. In 2020, Trump pardoned a group of Blackwater military contractors who had been found guilty of manslaughter after massacring 17 Iraqi civilians.

American lawmakers, particularly Republicans, still aren’t willing to face the fact that their constituents hate the reality of Donald Trump’s agenda.

After a fiery town hall in Belton, Missouri, Representative Mark Alford turned to CNN to blame the backlash on outside agitators—even while admitting that members of the angry crowd were actually his constituents.

“This was brought about [by] outside agitators, and some people from outside our district, not our constituents, who came there to make their voices heard,” Alford told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Monday night. “And I respect that. They have every right to be there. We did not prohibit them, even though they did not live in our district.

“Some of them were there who had worked for the IRS and were getting laid off in Kansas City,” Alford continued. “And I really wanted to hear their concerns, and let’s work together about how can we find you the next job? There are thousands of jobs, 150,000 to 175,000 jobs, right now, available in Missouri.”

“You say ‘outside agitators,’” Collins interjected. “Are you saying that none of them were your constituents that were there?”

But Alford clearly didn’t view Democrats in his district as the constituents that he’s beholden to.

“No, no, no, no, I—some were,” Alford responded. “I went—and let me make that very clear. Some were our constituents. They clearly were not on—aligned with my way of thinking, and they did not vote for Trump.”

Alford was practically shut down at his own town hall Monday after he expressed support for Elon Musk’s massive layoff plan. At one point, while suggesting to the crowd that they could vote for someone else in the next election if they didn’t approve of Musk’s appointment, one person shouted back, “We didn’t elect Elon!”

Tensions were high enough that Alford seemingly took the protesters’ presence as a threat.

“This is serious business we’re talking about, and that’s why I went and faced the people who don’t want me in office and some I think who wanted to do me harm,” Alford told CNN. “That’s why we had a SWAT team and many police there.

“And I can take that, but I take this serious because this is the survival of our nation, and I don’t think people understand what a severe point we are,” he added.

Donald Trump is making sure Vivek Ramaswamy doesn’t come anywhere near the White House.

The president endorsed Ramaswamy for governor of Ohio on Monday night, a position the biotech entrepreneur pivoted to after being abruptly ousted as DOGE co-lead, likely in part due to his feuding with Elon Musk and calling white Americans lazy, stupid jocks. 

“VIVEK RAMASWAMY is running for Governor of the Great State of Ohio. I know him well, competed against him, and he is something SPECIAL. He’s Young, Strong, and Smart!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Vivek is also a very good person, who truly loves our Country. He will be a GREAT Governor of Ohio, will never let you down, and has my COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT!”

This entire gubernatorial bid seems to have stemmed from a series of iconically disastrous X posts, in which Ramaswamy opined that “our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.… A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers.”

This, along with what The Washington Post called a “deep philosophical rift” with Elon Musk, eventually got Ramaswamy sent to the toil in the Midwest. 

Ramaswamy is likely to face various other Republican primary challengers in Ohio, a state Trump carried by 11 points in 2024. Former state health director Amy Acton is the likely Democratic nominee. 

Former national security adviser John Bolton thinks that Donald Trump’s mind is deteriorating, based on some of his recent comments.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Bolton in an interview Monday night whether Trump actually thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t a dictator, or is refraining from saying so because it’s a negotiating strategy. Bolton didn’t mince words.

“I think it’s an indication his mind is full of mush, and he says whatever comes into it. He believes Vladimir Putin is his friend, and you know, you don’t call your friends a dictator,” Bolton said, noting that Trump has disliked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy since the “perfect phone call” from his first term.

“So, it’s no sweat off his back to go ahead and call Zelenskiy a dictator. This is somebody who is not fit to be president. He can’t tell America’s friends from its enemies,” Bolton added.

Collins also asked Bolton about Trump’s relationship with Lieutenant General Dan Caine, whom Trump has appointed as chair of the joint chiefs of staff. Trump unceremoniously fired the previous chair, General C.Q. Brown, over the weekend. Trump met Caine in Iraq during his first presidential term and said Caine told him that the U.S. could have the campaign against ISIS “totally finished in one week.”

“I said, ‘Why didn’t my other generals tell me that? Why didn’t they tell me that?’” Trump said in 2019. Trump has also said that Caine told him he “loved” the president and would “kill for you,” while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

Collins asked Bolton if Trump is remembering his relationship with Caine correctly, as Bolton was with Trump on the trip to Iraq where the president and Caine met.

“Absolutely not. Trump has made up events that didn’t happen. We were on the ground in Iraq, I don’t know, maybe three hours total, and I was with Trump every minute of that time on the ground,” Bolton said. “There was no chance that Trump had a conversation with General Caine that bore any resemblance to what he’s described. I never saw Caine wear a MAGA hat.

“I think it’s standard Trump. He makes the world as he wants it to be, and then his followers unfortunately believe him,” Bolton added.

If Bolton is right, Trump has altered the military chain of command because of an inaccurate memory of an incident from nearly seven years ago. That is a worrying thought for American national security and for the country as a whole. Trump seems to be replacing anyone who could check his power, and if his mind is going, what does the future hold?

The American checks and balances system is waking up.

On Monday, two different decisions—one from a federal judge and the other from an independent government watchdog agency—came down to limit the power of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a temporary restraining order that blocks DOGE from accessing and sharing sensitive records from the Office of Personnel Management and the Education Department.

“Specifically, the plaintiffs have shown that Education and OPM likely violated the Privacy Act by disclosing their personal information to DOGE affiliates without their consent,” Boardman wrote in the restraining order. 

Multiple labor unions have sued DOGE on the grounds that it was trying to get into databases that held people’s Social Security numbers, banking information, and other “extraordinarily sensitive records of millions of Americans.” 

Boardman noted that the unions had “met their burden for the extraordinary relief they seek,” and would suffer “irreparable harm” if DOGE wasn’t stopped. “There is no reason to believe their access to this information will end anytime soon because the government believes their access is appropriate,” she wrote.

The second loss for DOGE and Musk was handed down by the Office of Special Counsel, which helps protect government employees from illegal treatment. On Friday (although it wasn’t released until Monday), the office ruled that DOGE violated protocol in its firing of six employees—and the decision could have implications for the hundreds of thousands of other federal employees who were also fired by Musk and DOGE for “poor performance.”  

OSC head Hampton Dellinger ruled that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that agencies engaged in prohibited personnel practices (PPPs) … by terminating the employees in violation of federal laws and regulations governing probationary terminations and reductions in force.”

“Firing probationary employees without individualized cause appears contrary to a reasonable reading of the law, particularly the provisions establishing rules for reductions in force,” Dellinger said in a statement on Monday. “Because Congress has directed that OSC ‘shall’ protect government employees from PPPs, I believe I have a responsibility to request a stay of these actions while my agency continues to investigate further the apparent violation of federal personnel laws.”

Dellinger stated that the employees were obviously not fired for “poor performance.” And if it was for a lack of resources (rather than purely political reasons), then Dellinger noted that Musk and DOGE must go through the normal justification process for the firings. 

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the Agencies improperly circumvented [reduction in force] regulations by terminating Complainants and other probationary employees en masse without regard to each employee’s individual performance for the purpose of restructuring government agencies and reducing costs,” Dellinger wrote. 

These are the first of many lawsuits against DOGE and the broader Trump administration. Whether they set a firm anti-purge precedent or simply serve as minor roadblocks remains to be seen. 

Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin need to get their story straight, because they’re both telling different tales about negotiations to end Russia’s violent incursion into Ukraine.

Trump bragged Monday about working with Putin while recapping his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and other G7 leaders about next steps to deescalate the war in Ukraine.

“I am in serious discussions with President Vladimir Putin of Russia concerning the ending of the War, and also major Economic Development transactions which will take place between the United States and Russia,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Talks are proceeding very well!”

But, surprise, surprise, it seems Putin is on an entirely different page.

During remarks on Russian state television Monday, Putin said he had yet to have any detailed talks with Trump about ending the conflict in Ukraine, according to the Associated Press.

The autocrat added that Russian and American negotiating teams hadn’t discussed ending the war, either, during a meeting in Saudi Arabia last week.

So which is it, “serious discussions” or conversations lacking in details? The muddled answers could suggest something is awry in negotiations, if one can even call Trump’s endless capacity for caving to Putin’s every demand a negotiation.

There’s reason to believe that Trump’s supposed statesmanship might be falling apart. Last week, Trump accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of being responsible for Russia’s invasion, enjoying a “gravy train” from the United States, and even calling him a “Dictator Without Elections.”

During their joint press conference Monday, Macron was forced to fact-check Trump, after the president misrepresented the agreement they had just made.

Donald Trump ramped up his outlandish claims of widespread fraud on Monday, claiming that the government was paying fake people not to work.

During a press conference, Trump cobbled together an explanation for Elon Musk’s contentious email to federal workers from the Office of Personnel Management Friday asking them to explain five things they accomplished last week. On X, Musk later claimed that failing to respond would be tantamount to a resignation.

Federal workers have alleged the threat was illegal; meanwhile, Trump said that there was “a lot of genius in sending it,” because it would help root out what he described as nonexistent government workers.

“You know why he wanted that, by the way? I thought it was great, because we have people who don’t show up to work, and nobody even knows if they work for the government,” Trump said. “So, by asking the question, ‘Tell us what you did this week,’ what he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’ And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist.

“That’s how badly various parts of our government were run by, and especially by this last group. So, what they’re doing is trying to find out who’s working for the government, are we paying other people that aren’t working, and where is all this—where has the money gone?”

Trump claimed that his administration had already uncovered “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud,” but of course, to Trump, fraud isn’t actually fraud, it’s just any federal spending he does not agree with—any cuts can be justified post hoc by claiming “fraud.”

There is no evidence supporting Trump’s claim that there are fictional people on the government payroll, but then again, his administration has provided no evidence for any of its supposedly mounting claims of fraud in the past two months.

Musk’s email is simply the latest plot to arbitrarily slash the federal workforce, after the administration’s sketchy buyout scheme and mass firings recommended by the Department of Government Efficiency. Now it seems that Musk and Trump are hoping to create a context to justify the mass firing of federal workers.

In that same vein, Musk announced in a post on X Monday that any federal worker who did not return to in-person work this week would be placed on administrative leave. Last month, Trump signed an executive order telling federal workers that they needed to return to work onsite, or be terminated.

Meanwhile, OPM told agency heads Monday that responding to Musk’s email was “voluntary,” and that employees would not be fired if they did not respond.

The nation’s H.R. leaders suddenly don’t seem keen to obey Elon Musk’s weekend threat.

Responding to the president’s request that he become “more aggressive” in sizing down the federal government, Musk wrote in a social media post Saturday that all federal employees must self-report five things that they achieved in the previous week before midnight on Monday or face immediate termination.

Federal workers reportedly received an email from the Office of Personnel Management shortly afterward that echoed Musk’s post. But by Monday, many federal agencies fronted by Donald Trump’s own appointees had simply told their staffers not to respond. Those included the Department of Defense, the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and most recently, curiously, the Office of Personnel Management.

“This afternoon, OPM during a Chief Human Capital Officers Council meeting, informed agencies that employee responses to the OPM email is voluntarily,” the agency said in an internal email obtained by The Hill.

“OPM also clarified that a non-response to the email does not equate to a resignation,” the email continued.

The stance is a stunning about-face for an agency that has otherwise seemed thoroughly under Musk’s control.

Newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel similarly instructed the bureau not to follow Musk’s demands, telling agents that “when and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”

“The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of our review processes and will conduct reviews,” Patel said.

Meanwhile, the State Department wrote in a statement that “no employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command.”

Musk has acknowledged the similarities between the threat to federal employees and his treatment of Twitter staffers during his takeover of the company in 2022, when he fired the social media company’s former chief executive, Parag Agrawal, after publicly accusing him of failing to accomplish his weekly goals.

“Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired,” Musk wrote on X Saturday.

Donald Trump’s freeze on foreign aid is hurting one of his major campaign promises: taking on fentanyl and ending overdose deaths from the drug in the U.S.

Reuters reports that a United Nations counternarcotics program that seeks to stop fentanyl chemicals from reaching Mexico’s drug cartels has been held up by Trump’s aid freeze, citing eight unnamed sources. The effort gave the Mexican navy training and equipment to boost screening at Mexico’s busiest container port, the Port of Manzanillo. Two more Mexican ports were supposed to be added to the initiative this month until funding was cut off.

The U.S. provided $800,000 in funding to launch the project in 2023 at the Port of Manzanillo, which is used heavily by Mexican drug cartels to sneak in Chinese chemicals used to help manufacture opioids and methamphetamine. Drug traffickers have also used cargo ships leaving the port to stash finished drugs headed overseas. More cargo scanners and drug-testing equipment were supposed to arrive at the Port of Manzanillo before the freeze as well.

Trump’s interruption of foreign aid has also hurt other U.S. anti-drug efforts in Mexico, including a program to train Mexican law enforcement to find and take down hidden fentanyl labs as well as donations of drug-sniffing dogs to the country.

While the Trump administration has scrambled to resume other anti-fentanyl programs with Mexico, including $7.8 million in funding for the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs “to counter production and trafficking of fentanyl and to dismantle terrorist criminal organizations,” the rest of the bureau’s $50 million in funding is frozen.

Last week, the Trump administration labeled 8 Latin American drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations” as part of its efforts to combat drug trafficking and migrant smuggling, stepping up its military actions in Mexico as well. But Trump may soon find that counterterrorism mixed with tariffs threats is no replacement for badly needed aid.

“Stopping all these programs at this moment, I just don’t see how this is going to have a positive impact on reducing the numbers of fentanyl deaths in the U.S.,” a former State Department official, Enrique Roig, told Reuters.