Republicans Rush to Suck Up to Elon Musk After New Budget Bill Threat

Congressional Republicans are stuck between a rock and a hard place as their former financier, Elon Musk, threatens to use his gargantuan fortune to unseat anyone who supports the president’s “big, beautiful bill.”

Last month, Musk confessed in an interview with CBS that he believed Donald Trump’s spending package—which would add trillions to the national deficit in order to extend his 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy—was actually a bad idea. But the tech billionaire has become more brazen in his read of the bill in the weeks since he’s left the White House.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote Tuesday afternoon on X, the social media platform he owns. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

In a separate post, the world’s richest man—who had promised to bankroll Republican primaries mere months ago—made clear what he now planned to do with his cash.

“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” wrote Musk.

The bill passed the House by a vote of 215–214, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in voting against it. Republicans plan to offset the expensive tax cut by slashing more than $800 billion from Medicaid. But Musk’s issue with Trump’s plan has little to do with slashing programs aimed at supporting and uplifting the most vulnerable Americans—instead, he condemns the bill because it would effectively undo his work atop the Department of Government Efficiency, which was tasked with paring down government spending.

Senator Rand Paul quote-tweeted Musk, arguing that Congress knows adding another $5 trillion to the national debt would be a “huge mistake.” Senators Ron Johnson, Rick Scott, and Mike Lee have also spoken out against the bill’s price tag. Senators Josh Hawley, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Joni Ernst have claimed that slashing Medicaid—the third rail of American politics—could prove to be a fatal political move. Senators John Curtis and Thom Tillis have drawn red pen under the bill’s elimination of green energy tax cuts.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene told NewsNation Tuesday that she agreed with Musk “to a certain extent,” hitching herself to the tech billionaire as another conservative who entered government because she was irate with Republicans.

“However, I don’t want to continue this government on a CR that’s funding Democrat and Biden policies and funding, and this bill was important to transition over to exactly what the American people voted for,” Greene said. The Georgia lawmaker further specified that she was wary of some of the inclusions tacked onto the bill, one of which would prevent states from drafting regulation around the artificial intelligence industry for the next decade.

“I think that’s pretty terrifying,” she told NewsNation. “We don’t know what AI is going to be capable of within one year; we don’t know what it will be capable of in five years, let alone 10 years.”

(Greene had admitted earlier Tuesday that she hadn’t actually read the bill before voting in favor of it.)

Representative Scott Perry also hailed Musk as “right to call out House leadership” over the bill. “We expect MASSIVE improvements from the Senate before it gets back to the House,” he wrote on X Tuesday. (Perry voted for the bill.)

Still, Republican leadership has continued to defend the spending bill.

“It’s very disappointing, OK?” House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN, reacting to Musk’s threat. “I’ve come to consider Elon a good friend. But with all due respect, my friend Elon is terribly wrong about the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

The White House similarly brushed off Musk’s threat.

“The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, during a press briefing Tuesday. “It doesn’t change the president’s opinion.”

Musk was Trump’s top financial backer in the 2024 election, spending at least $250 million in the final months of the president’s campaign after Trump was shot in July. Musk had also promised to funnel funds toward other Republicans, declaring in the wake of the November election that his super PACs would “play a significant role in primaries.” In the following months, Musk threatened to use his money to fund primary challengers to Trump’s agenda and go after Democrats, and that he would be preparing “for the midterms and any intermediate elections, as well as looking at elections at the district attorney level.”

Trump officials blocked the written analysis on an economic report because it predicted an increase in the farm goods trade deficit, a direct contradiction of his stated plans to reinvigorate domestic agriculture.

According to Politico, the Trump administration delayed the report itself by five days before releasing it with numbers that were the same as they were in the original unredacted report.

This is a quarterly report from the Agriculture Department that farm organizations, traders, and elected officials have relied on for years for information on the status of U.S. import and export markets. Now, the Trump administration is openly threatening government transparency because the report doesn’t fit the narrative of Trump’s tariffs somehow being a positive for our domestic production capabilities. A trade deficit clearly shows that we’re buying more than we’re selling on agricultural goods, and Trump blocking that information from the report, at least in part, proves he knows exactly how bad it is.

“The report was hung up in internal clearance process and was not finalized in time for its typical deadline,” said USDA spokesperson Alec Varsamis. “Given this report is not statutory as with many other reports USDA does, the Department is undergoing a review of all of its non-statutory reports, including this one, to determine next steps.”

It is unknown whether the full and unredacted analysis of the report will ever be released.

“Objectivity is really key here and the public depends on it,” former USDA chief economist Joe Glauber told Politico. “To lose that trust would be terrible.”

Donald Trump was up late at night whining about how hard it is to make a trade deal with China.

“I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” he posted at 2:17 a.m. on Wednesday.

The post came ahead of an expected call between Trump and the Chinese president on how to negotiate a deal on the two countries’ $600 billion trade relationship—which Trump threatened when he imposed tariffs.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also tried to bully China into quickly accepting a deal. “They either want to be a reliable partner to the rest of the world, or they don’t,” he warned on Tuesday.

But Trump’s own decision seems to be driving him crazy.

“The president is obsessed with having a call with Xi,” one person familiar with the trade talks told Politico, adding that the president seems convinced he can personally come up with a deal with Xi.

In May, the United States and China reached a preliminary trade deal—as Trump lowered his 145 percent tariffs to 30 percent, while Beijing slashed levies on U.S. imports to 10 percent. That came with a 90-day deadline to reach a broader trade deal, but it looks like there’s been little progress since then.

President Trump, notoriously quick to post, has been publicly mum as Elon Musk continues to excoriate his One Big Beautiful Bill. 

The world’s richest man came out in opposition to the bill on Tuesday afternoon, on the grounds that it will sharply increase the national debt. And he posted well into the night about how he thinks the legislation is a total disaster.

“Mammoth spending bills are bankrupting America! ENOUGH,” Musk wrote Tuesday evening. 

“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” he said, above a post directly chastising the GOP for not being fiscally responsible. He also reposted an article titled, “It’s Rand Paul and Elon Musk vs. Donald Trump over the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, and replied with the American flag emoji over a post from Rand Paul stating that the GOP “can and must do better” on the deficit.  

Trump has made time to attack every critic of his OBBB except Musk, perhaps the loudest and certainly the richest detractor. The president’s silence feels deafening, as his former right hand man continues to disparage what he sees as the defining legislation of his second term—especially after they just appeared together in the Oval Office and made a big deal about Musk leaving DOGE but not actually leaving. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have arrested the entire family of the suspect involved in Sunday’s attack in Boulder, Colorado, after also revoking their visas.

“Today the Department of Homeland Security and ICE are taking the family of suspected Boulder, Colorado, terrorist and illegal alien Mohamed Soliman into ICE custody,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a video message posted on X on Tuesday.

Soliman has been charged with a federal crime and attempted murder for attacking a group of peaceful demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. His attack left 12 people injured.

Soliman, an Egyptian national, entered the country legally on a tourist visa in August 2022. He filed for asylum the next month, and has been in the country legally since then with a pending asylum application. Presumably, his family was in a similar situation, though DHS hasn’t provided information about their immigration status.

Noem said DHS would be investigating whether the family knew about Soliman’s attack ahead of time, an indication that the department currently has no proof that this is the case. Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson who like other Trump officials falsely claimed that Soliman was in the country illegally, said that the family’s visas have been revoked.

A DHS official said that six people—Soliman’s wife and their children—were taken into ICE custody and will be processed under expedited removal. That will allow the Trump administration to deport them without any proof they were involved in the attack and without any court hearing, Trump’s preferred method when it comes to deportations.

The Navy is considering renaming multiple ships dubbed for prominent Americans who apparently don’t align with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s anti-woke “warrior” ethos. And one of those ships—just in time for Pride Month—is named after assassinated LGBTQ rights leader and Navy veteran Harvey Milk.

CBS News reported Tuesday it had obtained official documents to brief the Navy’s secretary on proposed timelines for revealing the new name for USNS Harvey Milk. The documents do not indicate what the ship’s new name could be.

The Navy documents also list other ships that are being considered for renaming. They include USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Lucy Stone, USNS Cesar Chavez, and USNS Medgar Evars. All of the eponymous figures are prominent people of color, women, and/or civil rights leaders from American history.

Since Hegseth was sworn in, he has made it his personal mission to scrub all traces of diversity from the Department of Defense. This has included dismantling DEI hiring and recruitment initiatives and temporarily erasing posts about racial history from the department website.

He announced that the military would no longer recognize Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and other heritage months, declaring the observations “dead” on January 31. He also has happily carried out Trump’s executive order to ban transgender people from serving in the armed forces.

After making a grand gesture of his exit from politics, Elon Musk spent his Tuesday afternoon railing against President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he wrote on X. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.

“It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt,” he continued, before again posting, “Congress is making America bankrupt.” 

Musk is unfortunately correct here. Republicans’ budget bill is projected to add $4 trillion to the debt ceiling in its House iteration, and $5 trillion in its Senate iteration. The world’s richest man is falling on the side of Senators Rand Paul and Ron Johnson here, who have both stated they will vote against the bill so long as it does nothing about decreasing  the national debt. 

“I agree with Elon,” Paul wrote in reply to Musk on X. “We have both seen the massive waste in government spending and we know another $5 trillion in debt is a huge mistake. We can and must do better.”

Musk has expressed his public opposition to Trump’s bill for some time now. In May, he said that he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit—not decrease[s] it—and undermines the work the DOGE team is doing.” 

Musk’s repudiation of the bill makes his dogged enthusiasm—and millions of dollars—that he contributed to the Trump campaign look funny in the light. And furthermore, it raises questions around what exactly the relationship between Trump, Musk, and DOGE will be upon the OBBB’s passing.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt inadvertently admitted Tuesday that Donald Trump, having failed to make any actual trade deals with other countries, has resorted to pleading with world leaders to come to the negotiating table.

Reuters reported earlier in the day that the administration has sent a letter to multiple countries urging them to provide their best offer on tariff negotiations by Wednesday. In a draft seen by Reuters, the U.S. asks countries to provide their best proposals in key areas, including quota offers to purchase American products and plans to resolve any non-tariff barriers. It is not clear which countries received the letter.

When asked in a press briefing about the letter, Leavitt said she could “confirm the merits in the content of the letter.”

The U.S. trade representative “sent this letter to all of our trading partners just to give them a friendly reminder that the deadline is coming up,” she said.

Leavitt said that multiple officials are currently engaged in trade talks, and that “this letter was simply to remind these countries that the deadline is approaching and the president expects good deals.”

The Trump administration has come a long way from promising to make 90 deals during the 90-day pause on Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs. So far, only one actual deal has emerged, with the U.K.—and when Trump announced that deal, it sounded more like the concepts of a plan than an actual agreement.

The administration was also in talks with China, but those negotiations have publicly (and dramatically) stalled. As for other countries, they appear to be biding their time. Many countries reportedly saw that Beijing’s tough negotiating strategy landed them a much better deal, indicating that waiting for Trump to suffer backlash for the tariffs at home and ultimately cave is a better tactic than trying to reach a compromise with him.

It’s unclear how much longer Trump’s tariffs will be in place. Last week, two separate courts ruled that his tariff policy is illegal. The administration is appealing at least one of those rulings.

On Tuesday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene confessed that she had not read all of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act before voting for it. She also noted there was a provision on AI she wouldve voted against if she had taken the time to actually look at the piece of major legislation she’s spent weeks pushing. 

“Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years. I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there,” the Georgia representative wrote on X. “We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states hands is potentially dangerous. This needs to be stripped out in the Senate.”

The provision states that:

No state or political subdivision thereof may enforce, during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, any law or regulation … limiting, restricting, or otherwise regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems entered into interstate commerce. 

“When the OBBB comes back to the House for approval after Senate changes, I will not vote for it with this in it. We should be reducing federal power and preserving state power. Not the other way around,” Taylor Greene continued. “Especially with rapidly developing AI that even the experts warn they have no idea what it may be capable of.”

Taylor Greene’s post underscores both a competence issue on her end and the greater lack of Republican cohesion on the details of this One Big Beautiful Bill Act. While MTG threatens to recast her  future vote, the Senate’s more traditional fiscal conservatives like Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, and Susan Collins look to hem it in over cuts to Medicaid and a sharp deficit increase.  

Subscriptions to the Kennedy Center have dropped by more than a third since Donald Trump took over the arts institution and promised to remake it in his image.

Sales are down by about $1.6 million, or roughly 36 percent, compared to this time last year, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. By June 2024, subscription sales had produced $4,413,147.

But so far this year, the Kennedy Center has only made $2,656,524 from subscription sales, as well as an additional $155,243 from a special deal, according to internal data shared with the Post by former Kennedy Center staffers. A current staff member anonymously confirmed the numbers.

Subscriptions are just one source of revenue for the Kennedy Center. Others include donations, individual ticket sales, and government funding. But the current staffer said it was important to provide an indication of what is going on behind the center’s closed doors.

“We understand providing information like this can be seen in a bad light,” the current staffer told the Post. “But we feel that it is necessary to show that mismanagement by the new leadership is becoming a real problem for the health of the organization.”

The employee said that the new Trump-installed leadership has ignored staff opinions and even fired people who disagreed. As a result, “we feel that we no longer have a choice but to force complete transparency with the public.”

Trump took over the prestigious arts organization earlier this year, saying he plans to “bring it back” from disrepair—meaning get rid of any performances he deems too “woke.” So far, multiple productions have already backed out of performing at the center in protest against Trump.

Interestingly, though, one of the shows Trump has apparently approved to run at the Kennedy Center is Mrs. Doubtfire, which famously features a man in drag.

When asked about Trump’s effect on the Kennedy Center’s popularity, the new leaders pointed to large audiences at events such as a fireworks show by artist Cai Guo-Qiang and a screening of the animated film The King of Kings. Both of those events were free, according to the Post.