The president-elect and the world’s richest man combined Wednesday to smash a short-term spending compromise orchestrated by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to keep the government open until early in Trump’s new term.
The stop-gap measure is packed with nearly $100 billion in aid for Americans hit by multiple national disasters, economic aid for farmers, a federal commitment to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and a criminalization of revenge porn.
But the Trump-Musk blocking maneuver plunged the capital into one of its classic year-end crises, pitched Johnson’s hopes of keeping his job into extreme doubt and offered a preview of the chaos that may churn in Trump’s second term.
A sense of turmoil was exacerbated by the 10th straight day of losses on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, matching a mark set in the Ford administration. The selloffs underlined a volatile national moment and some of the economic challenges Trump may face after the Federal Reserve warned that inflation will tick up next year.
The sabotaging of Johnson’s funding initiative triggered shock and confusion on Capitol Hill. But for many of Trump’s supporters and boosters in the conservative media who are anticipating massive cuts to federal programs, the mayhem is the point. Even if the impasse leads to a damaging government shutdown, that may represent progress for some since the government itself is viewed with disdain on the populist right. And by taking aim at the Washington status quo even before he takes the oath of office, Trump is doing exactly what he said he’d do on the campaign trail.
But the sudden imbroglio also highlighted one of the key issues facing Trump in his second term: If he wants to pass his tax cuts, push through his immigration overhauls, defend the country and leave a meaningful legacy, he will have to find some way to govern – even if that draws him into conflict with base voters and MAGA ideologues who seem happy to burn government to the ground.
Musk-style governance
One of those mega disruptors is Musk. In his biography of the SpaceX pioneer, Walter Isaacson described the philosophy of the president-elect’s new super buddy as “Take risks. Learn by blowing things up. Revise. Repeat.”
The rocket mogul lived up to that mantra on Wednesday, unleashing assaults on Johnson’s plans before dawn. “This bill should not pass,” Musk wrote on X, opening a 70-post blast that slammed the bill as full of “pork” spending and warning that anyone who voted for it should be ditched in the 2026 election.
Musk whipped up opposition to the bill all day, driving fury on MAGA media outlets, before Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance issued a late afternoon statement demanding a streamlined spending bill without Democratic deliverables. And exacerbating the pandemonium on Capitol Hill, they added another huge condition — for Congress to raise the government’s borrowing ceiling while Joe Biden is still president — a massive challenge at short notice.
It was not immediately clear how closely Trump and Musk were coordinating. But the timeline of Musk’s pressure and the president-elect’s belated entry into the public fray offered demoralized Democrats an opening. New York Rep. Dan Goldman conjured a scenario on X clearly calculated to get under the president-elect’s skin. “As the shadow Pres-Elect, Elon Musk is now calling the shots for House Rs on government funding while Trump hides in Mar-a-Lago behind his handlers,” Goldman wrote. “It increasingly seems like we’re in for 4 years of an unelected oligarch running the country by pulling on his puppet’s strings.”
Risky dilemmas
Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley told CNN’s Manu Raju after speaking to the president-elect that Trump had been blindsided by Johnson. He said Trump is “not read into this … and he’s just learning about it … he’s just reading about it.”
The collapse of the stop-gap spending bill presented Johnson, Trump and Democrats with risky dilemmas.
- Unless Johnson can pass some kind of spending measure by Friday at midnight, the government will partially shut down.
- Johnson’s speakership suddenly is in huge danger after he was torpedoed by Trump and Musk and as several House Republicans said they’d not back his reelection.
- A government shutdown could have unpredictable political consequences since it would hurt many Americans, potentially including seniors and veterans who rely on government help, and could also shutter vital federal functions.
- Trump’s power-play is a gamble, since he has now triggered a standoff that may even linger into next year, potentially overshadowing the run-up to his inauguration on January 20.
- The showdown is also a test for Democrats. The party wouldn’t want chaos to envelop Biden’s final days in office. But they have little incentive to bail out Trump.
As lawmakers left the Capitol Wednesday night with no certainty of what would happen next or when they’d be able to go home for the holidays, the country lurched into the first crisis of the second Trump era.
Outgoing Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell summed up the commotion with a prediction for 2025.
“Oh, this is the way it’s going to be next year,” he told his GOP colleague, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, as they passed in a Senate corridor.
MAGA media piles pressure on Johnson
The size of Johnson’s bill sparked uproar on conservative media. MAGA pundits were especially outraged that lawmakers awarded themselves a pay rise in the measure, weeks after an election that partly turned on inflation.
Trump supporters pose this question: After Republicans won in 2024 on a promise to gut the federal government and slash budgets, why would they make their first act since Trump’s triumph a classic year-end spending spree?
“I’ve been a ‘no’ on it a long time,” GOP Rep. Tim Burchett told CNN’s Jim Acosta. The Tennessee lawmaker added: “President Trump ran on changing things. I say if we’re going to pass something, pass it about three days into the next Congress and hand it over to Trump and let him handle it.”
But many Republicans are worried about the political implications of a shutdown. And assuming they want a way out, any new bill must recognize current realities. Democrats — for a couple weeks more — control the Senate so they must be given some incentive to cooperate. And the GOP speaker will need Democratic votes in the House owing to his tiny majority and the reluctance of some on his side to back any spending.
A speakership in peril
Johnson said he’d tried to sell his bill to Musk and his fellow co-chair of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy, on a text chain. Explaining the “conservative play call” behind his plan, he said on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning, “Instead of doing, you know, (Democratic Senate Majority Leader) Chuck Schumer, Biden spending for 2025, we push this decision into March.” He went on: “So, the feature there is that we’ll have Republican-controlled Congress and Trump back in the White House and we get to decide spending for 2025.”
But all Johnson has succeeded in doing is putting his own job in jeopardy.
Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie told CNN’s Raju that the speaker wouldn’t get his vote in the next Congress, adding that “it would take a Christmas miracle” for him to change his mind. And Bryan Lanza, who served as a senior adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that a number of lawmakers were of the same mind. “The speaker doesn’t have the votes right now. He would need to be saved by Donald Trump,” Lanza said.
But if Johnson is in danger — only days after appearing at the Army v. Navy game in a show of unity with Trump and Musk on Saturday — his fate could complicate Trump’s big inauguration party next year.
Republicans are desperate for a fast start to make the most of the apex of Trump’s power. A bruising election for speaker — like the 15 rounds it took to choose short-lived Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 — would be counterproductive.
And if Johnson, who was himself a last-ditch compromise from the backbenches, can’t get elected speaker, who can?
In one of his posts on X, Musk suggested that the best path for Republicans would be to freeze Washington until Trump takes office. “No bills should be passed (by) Congress until Jan 20,” he wrote. That would create a government shutdown that would last for weeks, saddle the president-elect with a massive crisis as soon as he takes office and cause considerable economic damage. And the Republican House majority will be even smaller to start Trump’s term than it is now, making it even more difficult to pass anything.
It’s ‘amazing’ what can happen at Christmas
Musk’s sabotaging of the Johnson stop-gap spending measure gave Democrats an early chance to land a blow on the coming Trump presidency.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries raised the plight of Americans who would be harmed by a government shutdown. “We reached a bipartisan agreement to meet the needs of the American people and provide assistance to farmers, families, children, seniors, veterans, men and women in uniform and working-class Americans,” the New York Democrat said. “House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt everyday Americans all across this country.”
House Democrats will meet Thursday morning to discuss next steps. But Jeffries’ statement suggests they will stand firm and demand Trump back down.
Politically, there is little incentive for them to help extricate Johnson and the president-elect from their corner. After all, Trump demanded they cooperate in passing a stripped-down bill without any of their priorities. And his order to raise the debt ceiling, which is expected to be reached in his second term, is a transparent attempt to place the political blowback for such a step on the current president before he leaves office and to spare himself. In fact, Trump said so himself: “Increasing the debt limit is not great, but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch.”
Republicans have historically made lifting the government’s borrowing limit painful for Democratic presidents — several times driving the country close to a disastrous debt default. So why should Democrats help now?
The White House said it was up to Republicans to sort out the mess in the House. But there’s no obvious path to do that, meaning Washington is clouded in uncertainty ahead of the holiday season.
North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer told Raju he was frustrated that Trump had not made his bottom lines clearer sooner. And asked whether it was possible to raise the debt ceiling in only two days, he was doubtful.
“But, you know, it’s almost Christmas, it’s amazing what people might do to get home.”
