Yesterday, Senate Republicans were quick to give Elon Musk a standing ovation in the House chamber as President Trump heaped praise on his efforts to overhaul the federal government.
Today, though, they seized the opportunity to ask him some questions privately: an hour and 45 minutes’ worth of questions, to be exact.
Musk’s foray into government led the world’s richest man, a person who intends to colonize Mars, to find himself in the more earthly confines of Senate Republicans’ regular Wednesday lunch.
A phalanx of photographers and reporters waited in a Senate hallway, under a portrait of the former senator from Massachusetts Charles Sumner, hoping to get a chance to ask Musk about his first diplomatic mission to Capitol Hill since Trump took office.
Photographers’ lenses swiveled every time someone came around the corner.
“Not me!” Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota said at one point. “Next one.”
Musk appeared shortly behind him, deep in conversation with Senator Rick Scott of Florida, before disappearing into the lunchroom.
Lunches like these are closed to the press, so I and my colleagues Catie Edmondson and Robert Jimison waited in the hallway to ask senators what had happened. As they began to trickle out, the senators spoke positively of the proceedings, which Rounds described as “refreshing, straightforward and casual.”
But a touch of discomfort simmered just below the surface. Some senators pressed for more communication with Musk’s opaque team — particularly as the work force cuts he’s ordering begin to affect constituents.
“We’re getting feedback, and we want to respond to our constituents — and how do we work most effectively to do that?” Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota said, describing the tenor of the questions.
“Anytime there’s a transition, it’s difficult,” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said. “There were many voices saying, ‘Let’s make sure we’re not just getting rid of people that we actually need and that we are not overdoing it.’”
“There was general discussion,” Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said, “about how we, as senators, can do a better job of explaining clearly what he’s doing.”
Musk seemed to realize that he needed to do a little constituent services of his own. So, as Catie, Robert and I wrote, he did what any local lawmaker might do when trying to build good will with his supporters: He gave them his cellphone number.
MEANWHILE on X
Musk posts about a pardon for George Floyd’s killer
My colleague Ryan Mac is reading through Musk’s many, many posts on X to bring you the ones that matter.
“Something to think about.”
That’s how Musk responded to the idea of Trump’s pardoning Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of killing George Floyd.
Musk posted those four words to his nearly 220 million followers on Tuesday, along with a video from the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who is pushing for the pardon.
Shapiro said that pardoning Chauvin would reverse “the evils of the last several years of American life.”
Floyd’s murder in 2020 fomented a racial justice movement, leading to examinations of police abuse and to Black Lives Matter rallies across the United States. That movement also prompted a backlash from conservatives, including Musk.
Upon taking over Twitter in 2022, Musk posted a video that mocked T-shirts created by a Black employee group after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. The shirts read “#Staywoke.” Musk had a Black Lives Matter mural at the company’s San Francisco office removed.
Chauvin was found guilty of murder and is serving two concurrent sentences for federal and state convictions. If Trump pardoned him on the federal charges, Chauvin would still have to serve the remainder of his 22½-year sentence in a state facility, a prison official told The Minnesota Star Tribune.
BY THE NUMBERS
$1 million
That’s what Musk’s pro-Trump super PAC, America PAC, is spending on its very first television ad.
The spot has a very niche audience — airing only in the Washington, D.C., media market. It spends its 60 seconds ticking off Trump’s accomplishments and thanking him, and making fun of former President Joe Biden.
Musk’s political action committee spent roughly $300 million on a ground game ahead of the November election. Since then, the super PAC has begun some work for Republicans, and it has spent more than $3 million on canvassing to support the conservative candidate in next month’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
In the courts
Trump’s words on Musk sail from the dais to the docket
During his address to Congress last night, President Trump did something White House officials have generally sought to avoid: he described Musk as the leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“I have created the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, perhaps, which is headed by Elon Musk,” the president said.
The administration has insisted that Musk doesn’t have a formal leadership position with the agency and is merely an adviser to Trump — a designation that shields him from some transparency and disclosure requirements. The White House says a former health care executive named Amy Gleason is the department’s acting administrator.
Today, lawyers in at least three lawsuits — two filed in Washington and another in Maryland — urged judges to take notice of Trump’s description.
More legal news
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The Supreme Court rejected Trump’s emergency request to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid — an indication that the justices will subject his and Musk’s efforts to reshape the government to close scrutiny.
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