Throwback Thursday: Remember when everything in D.C. ground to a halt, and everyone stood around staring slack-jawed at their phones, waiting to see what he’d tweet next? Of course you do, it was yesterday.
In the morning, a source close to the White House said Donald Trump would eventually respond to the Elon Musk barrage, and at the time said, “I give it to EOD.”
Two hours later, the president’s pushback began in earnest and NOTUS’ Jasmine Wright had to call her source back. The source’s response? “It was always destined to end this way.”
That feels a bit like revisionist history after the amount of Musk stuff Trump has put up with and defended this year. (He bought a Tesla in the White House driveway!) The breakup certainly came as a surprise to Republicans in Congress.
“Elon, for whatever reason, is very upset,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said.
Musk had “lost his damn mind,” Rep. Troy Nehls said.
A new question is, just how much does Musk lose here? Fiscal hawks have been quick to agree with him on the substance of his attacks on the reconciliation bill, bolstering his cred, but no one has said Musk has changed their mind when it comes to voting for it.
The view is the original Tweeter-in-Chief is gonna win this one over the guy who renamed the site X.
“Every tweet that goes out, people are more in lockstep behind President Trump, and he’s losing favor,” Rep. Kevin Hern said of Musk.
Trump suggested cutting off the lucrative federal contracts flowing to Musk’s businesses at one point yesterday. But a White House official wouldn’t say if any real action to do that had been taken: “The president was clear that he could.”
A Closer Look at What Triggered Musk (the Policy Bits): Bill supporters say Musk is just trying to save Joe Biden’s electric vehicle-promoting policies. Musk says he doesn’t care about them. Both sides are a little bit right.
Tesla gets a lot of credits, both for EVs and for its battery storage business. Musk especially likes the credits for the energy side of the business, and that might matter a lot more now that the company’s stock is in the dumps.
The credit people are most familiar with is the money that consumers get to reduce the price of a new electric car, and the House version of the reconciliation bill ended that program.
Musk has said he doesn’t care about it for a while now. Everyone else — including Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson — say that’s why he’s so mad.
Trump also repealed an EPA waiver that would have helped Tesla a lot. Here’s what the Alliance for Automotive Innovation said when Trump signed the Congressional Review Act blocking California from banning new gas cars: “There’s a significant gap between the marketplace and these EV sales requirements. In reality, meeting the mandates would require diverting finite capital from the EV transition to purchase compliance credits from Tesla.” (Translation: Tesla made a lot of money from other car companies buying these kinds of credits from the company.)
A much simpler thing that Musk is mad about: He really wanted his guy, Jared Isaacman, at NASA, and that didn’t happen.
Musk Shmusk, What’s Up With Reconciliation? Senate Majority Leader John Thune insists the Senate GOP is “probably a week away” from its compromise version of the House’s Medicaid cuts. But does it look that way to you? Take a gander, via NOTUS’ Helen Huiskes and Ursula Perano:
“You’re not going to be able to cut your way out of this mess,” Sen. Jim Justice, a skeptic of cuts to the program, said. “And literally, when you start doing that, if you’re Republicans, if you start cutting in the bone and really hurting people, we’re not going to be in a majority.” He added: “And that, to me, is dumb bunny stuff.”
And:
“It takes four people to sort of push the bill one way or the other, but those four people have to be willing to vote no,” Sen. Rand Paul, who wants deeper cuts in the bill, said. “So I think there’s a growing concern from the conservative wing of the party that there’s not enough spending cuts.”
The Travel Ban Will Not Be Televised: Don’t expect the new travel ban to get the kind of opposition messaging it did under Trump’s first term. Senate Democrats say the ban is being used to “distract” from Medicaid cuts, NOTUS’ Torrence Banks reports.
“I think it’s not a coincidence he announced it last night as a means to try to distract us from their efforts to kick 15 million people off of health care,” Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters.
This whole thing may be televised, though: Oversight Committee Chair James Comer has subpoenaed Biden’s doctor to testify to the former president’s mental decline and use of the autopen — the subject of another of Trump’s late-night orders.
Step Aside DCCC?: House Majority PAC is doing a lot of candidate recruiting and vetting, which is raising some eyebrows among Democratic strategists about whether the DCCC is ceding some responsibility, NOTUS’ Alex Roarty reports. (The DCCC says it’s doing no such thing.)
“You can’t help but notice there is a push and pull there,” one Democratic strategist said.
- But some Democrats are already looking past 2026 and warning that the 2030 Census reapportionment is not going to be kind to them if they need to build inroads in the South. “Our party’s been really shortsighted,” Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, told NOTUS’ Katherine Swartz.
New On NOTUS
- Is the Senate About to Mess Up the House’s SALT Deal?: To “unwind our deal is to unearth that radioactive material that would probably poison the rest of the bill,” Rep. Nick LaLota said.
- Democrats Balk at Hegseth’s Order to Strip Harvey Milk’s Name From Navy Ship: Adam Schiff introduced a resolution calling on the Defense Department to halt the name changes.
- Lawmakers Say Trump’s Budget Would Put Health Care for Native Americans at Risk: The Indian Health Service needs to have advanced funding in case of shutdown, lawmakers say.
Not Us
- ‘Big Balls’ Is Officially a Full-Time Government Employee, by Makena Kelly for Wired
- Trump Wants His Presidential Library Set in Florida, Enticed by Free Land, by Meridith McGraw, Josh Dawsey and Annie Linskey for The Wall Street Journal
- Months after detaining 47 people accused of being Tren de Aragua in Austin, authorities offer no evidence of gang ties, by Alejandro Serrano for The Texas Tribune
Be Social
This all just reminded me, Happy Gemini Season!
— Rosa DeLauro (@rosadelauro) June 5, 2025
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