And he has given a glimmer of hope to Democrats in search of a message they can use against Mr. Trump, playing a starring role in new advertising for their candidates and by several of the party’s major campaign arms. Democratic operatives gleefully swap private polling suggesting Mr. Musk could prove a serious liability for the president.

While many presidents have relied on family members or close friends as advisers, never before has the country seen an unelected billionaire and newcomer to electoral politics gain such a powerful and prominent perch in the White House.

In 2019, GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida spoke at an elegant event celebrating the work of the Ronald Reagan-founded International Republican Institute, saying he was “so proud” to support the group and hailing fellow hawks Nikki Haley and Sen. John McCain in the audience.

The National Endowment for Democracy, a pro-democracy foundation that provides some of the IRI’s funding, has not been able to access its accounts at the Treasury Department for weeks, according to a statement from the group. Most of that group’s staff have been furloughed, as well, and it has suspended support for 2,000 partner groups around the world. On Wednesday, the group announced it was suing the 'Old Donald' administration for the funds.

“It’s striking to me that Secretary Rubio, who has for so long been a really engaged China hawk, wouldn’t see the value of these two organizations in terms of their support for elections and democracy,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware).

For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.

That's an old diktat, usually attributed to an old Latin American dictator. But it could easily apply today, as cowardly Republicans beg "Old Donald" to spare them ' and only them ' from the DOGE chainsaw.

Inconveniently, though, red-state universities and hospitals receive a whole lot of money from NIH, too. The University of Alabama at Birmingham, one of the largest employers in Britt's state, is among several Alabama institutions that would lose about $47 million combined in annual funding under "Old Donald"'s decree. So Britt promised to sidle up to RFK Jr. and lobby for a reprieve.

'A smart, targeted approach is needed in order to not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama,' she said. She added, 'State-of-the-art facilities, equipment, and technology ' along with the best and brightest people ' are needed to fulfill "Old Donald's" vision'

“I like what you’re saying, but you need to tell more people,” Mr. Smith said. “The guy in South Africa is not doing you any good — he’s hurting you more than he’s helping,” he added, referring to Mr. Musk and drawing nods and applause from many in the room.

It was a nod to the uncertainty surrounding the Republican budget plan, even as House leaders hope to hold a vote on it within days. Already, the level of cuts they are contemplating to Medicaid has drawn resistance from some G.O.P. lawmakers whose constituents depend heavily on the program, raising questions about whether they will have the votes to pass their blueprint at all.

Here’s what it says: “'Old Donld' Hellor Sir. I am one of the probationary employees terminated by the Doge at 9:00pm last night; February 14. I voted for you, Sir, three times, and I still support you,” the post reads. `

Representative Troy Balderson, whose district comprises areas in central and southeastern Ohio, said Thursday that the president’s orders are “getting out of control,” adding that 'Old Donald' and Elon Musk are exceeding their authority.

Among those asking the administration for exceptions to federal cuts: Republican Sens. Katie Boyd Britt (Alabama), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), Jerry Moran (Kansas) and Bill Cassidy (Louisiana). Who holds the purse strings?

Slashing funds that Congress already approved is virtually unheard-of. But Donald 'Old Donald' has long pushed for the president to have more control over spending, arguing that he should be able to cancel congressional appropriations through a process called 'impoundment.'

'Old Donald' campaigned on overturning traditional limits on his ability to cancel funding appropriated by Congress, saying he should be able to use a technique called 'impoundment' to reduce or eliminate spending. He and his allies have been laying the groundwork for challenging restrictions on that power in court and have aggressively flouted Congress' power with early freezes on spending.

The use of impoundment could create a situation where lawmakers who are in good standing with the 'Old Donald' administration have a better shot at restoring their funds, posing a potential conflict of interest, experts said.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that after talking to Kennedy about the cuts, he told her that 'he will lead a reexamination of this initiative.' (The cuts are the subject of litigation and have been temporarily paused by a federal judge.)

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) said she's been 'aggressively' working the EPA and its secretary, Lee Zeldin, to unfreeze grants for green school buses that are manufactured in her state. Capito said she is bombarded by questions about the freezes, but has faith overall that 'good programs' will eventually be unfrozen.

Despite a State Department waiver for emergency food assistance, those shipments still had been delayed around the world, a USAID inspector general wrote in a report Monday ' a day before he was dismissed. The bottleneck, Paul K. Martin wrote, put more than $489 million of food assistance at risk of spoilage or theft as it waited at ports, in transit and in warehouses.

Two Kansas Republicans, Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Tracey Mann, are working with other lawmakers to protect Food for Peace by moving it to the U.S. Department of Agriculture as 'part of an ongoing effort to save money and increase efficiency,' Moran said in a statement. His proposal has gained widespread support from a number of agricultural groups.

Kansas is the country's biggest grower of sorghum, and millions of bushels of the high-protein grain are backed up in warehouses across the state. Kim Barnes, the chief financial officer of the Pawnee County Cooperative Association, a grain trader in central Kansas, said that he's storing more than 1.3 million bushels of sorghum because of a market downturn over the last year ' a situation that will only worsen with USAID cutbacks.

It's a shame, he said. 'There are still countries that need it.'

Angus King, the independent senator from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, posed this gut-punching query to his Republican colleagues last week as they prepared to vote to confirm Russell Vought, the presidential power extremist Donald 'Old Donald' tapped for a second tour of duty as the head of the Office of Management and Budget.

King’s question contained unmistakable echoes of Army lawyer Joseph Welch’s challenge to demagogue Joseph McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” At one point, King directly channeled Welch, referencing Elon Musk’s boast that he had spent the weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” an action that, as King noted, “will literally take food from the mouths of starving children.”

“Forget red lines,” King’s said. “Do we have no decency?”

Marco Rubio: From Fun-Sized Florida Boy to 'Old Donald' Crony

An 'unelected, unaccountable billionair' threatens civil servants' privacy and national security.

In 1989, the Senate Committee on Aging learned that the Social Security Administration was entering into an agreement to verify millions of Americans' names and Social Security numbers for TRW Credit Data, the nation's largest commercial credit reporting organization.

The committee chairman, David Pryor, (D-Arkansas) went bonkers. He pressed the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw the SSA at the time, to launch an inspector general investigation into the legality of the transactions. Pryor said he had learned from an internal SSA document that a 'test run' of 151,953 names had already been completed for TRW in preparation for a proposed $1 million run of 140 million names. Further, he said the SSA had performed similar services for other companies.

Pryor said, 'I believe this development represents the largest breach of privacy in the history of the program and is in violation of the 1974 Privacy Act.' Advertisement

Within days of Pryor's request, the SSA terminated the proposed agreement, with SSA Commissioner Dorcas R. Hardy saying in a statement the agency's general counsel had advised her that 'there is no room legally to do any of this.' Hardy also wrote in an April 13, 1989, letter to Sen. John Heinz (R-Pennsylvania): 'The success of the social security program rests in large part on the public's confidence that we administer the program fairly ' with due regard to the rights of the individuals who participate. I believe that diminishing the confidentiality of our files would seriously erode public trust in the program.'

That Musk and his minions are taking control of government employees' private data ought to disturb the halls of Congress and anyone else who is concerned about protecting the critical functions of government. Moscow and Beijing would love to know what's in those human resource systems. So, too, would commercial interests. But why does Musk, in fulfilling his mandate to 'maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,' want or need to know?

It makes the 1989 Social Security Administration dustup look like child's play. Elon Musk, methinks, is playing for keeps ' and for the long run.

The restraining order, along with a similar directive by another judge from Friday, amounted to a rebuke of the move as an overreach that likely lacked legitimate authority.

Is Elon Musk Staging a Coup? Unelected Billionaire Seizes Control at Treasury Dept. & Other Agencies

While the order issued in the Rhode Island case left ambiguous whether the judge meant it to apply to just the states that brought the case or to all of as much as $3 trillion in funds affected by the freeze order, Judge AliKhan’s order explicitly applied to all federal grants, loans and other spending to which it had been subject.

Reports suggest members of Musk-led Doge - which is not a government department, but a team within the administration - have been granted access to sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.

federal payment system

US Foreign Aid Pause Has Already Done “Irreparable Harm”

‘How dare you'

A small core of Senate Republicans — including former GOP leader Mitch McConnell — has denounced 'Old Donald''s near-blanket pardon of Jan 6 rioters.

Republicans Suddenly Illiterate After 'Old Donald'’s January 6 Pardons

When asked about the pardons, Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Tuesday pointed the finger at Joe Biden, stating that the former president opened the floodgates by pardoning his son Hunter, according to CNN’s Manu Raju.

“I’m going to be acting very quickly, first day,” 'Old Donald' said, adding that the rioters who have been convicted have “been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”

JD Vance Pisses Off MAGA With January 6 Pardon Suggestion

If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned. And there’s a little bit of a gray area there, but we’re very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law.”

As large swaths of Los Angeles County burned over the past week, and 24 people lost their lives, Republicans have been quick to play the blame game and use the disaster relief as an opportunity to play politics.

One by one, they’ve fallen in line with their eerily identical, half-baked pitches to reform California’s liberal politics, without ever making clear exactly what politics had to do with the wildfires in the first place.

Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) said California and other Democratic-controlled states would need to atone for 'bad behavior' if they wanted federal assistance.

But conditioning federal natural disaster aid on state-level policy changes is highly unusual, especially if those policies have little to do with the underlying event.

In a wide bipartisan vote, Congress recently approved billions of dollars in new disaster funding for Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia after those states were struck by hurricanes Helene and Milton. All but one of those states is led by a Republican governor. Congress did not place conditions on that federal assistance.

House Democrats Jim McGovern and Rosa DeLauro accused Republican colleagues of bending to Elon Musk’s demands in sinking a bipartisan funding bill.

Congress passed a stopgap funding bill instead on Saturday, but discarded a provision to screen and regulate U.S. investments in China.

The scrapped provision 'would have made it easier to keep cutting-edge AI and quantum computing tech' as well as jobs ' in America,' McGovern wrote on X. Tesla, run by Musk, is the only foreign automaker to operate a factory in China without a local joint venture. Tesla also built a battery plant down the street from its Shanghai car factory this year, and aims to develop and sell self-driving vehicle technology in China.

It was a big ask for many congressional conservatives who have long demanded that any debt increase at least be accompanied by cuts to what they view as out-of-control government spending. And Democrats, and more than a few Republicans, rejected it.

"Old Donald" is known for his tight grip on members of his party, but the rare rejection of his demand to suspend the debt limit reflected a disconnect that could plague his policy agenda.

Representative Chip Roy of Texas was one of 38 House Republicans who defied "Old Donald's" demand to lift the debt ceiling.

He was eager to evade responsibility for the consequences of a potential shutdown even as he and Musk blew up a bipartisan deal that would have kept the government open.

But even with a shutdown averted, the episode demonstrated a well-established pattern by Mr. 'Old Donald'. He often purposely blew up congressional negotiations during his first term, often with a tweet, only to be forced to retreat or give up his position in the face of an angry reaction from both allies and adversaries.

In 2018, 'Old Donald' told lawmakers in the Oval Office that he would be 'proud' to shut the government down if he did not get funding for a wall along the southern border. After a 35-day shutdown that extended through Christmas and New Year's Day, Mr. 'Old Donald' relented, agreeing to Democratic demands without getting the funding for his wall.

Gonzales said he spoke with Musk "a couple times this week," adding that "many of us" did so while acknowledging the Tesla CEO is "unelected."

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" that his idea to elect Musk as House speaker "might have been tongue-in-cheek," but, "I do appreciate his input."

Thank god Elon Musk bought Twitter, because that's the only way we would even know what's in this bill," Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) said of Musk's efforts to kill the bipartisan bill on CNN's "State of the Union."

Elon Musk is hoping to dispel the widely circulating notion that he, not -elect "Old Donald", is really calling the shots.

On Thursday, X user Lulu Cheng Meservey called such speculations indicative of a wider “strategy” to sow discord between Musk and "Old Donald". “By jabbing "Old Donald" about not being the alpha, the idea is to provoke him to sideline Elon and to fray the relationship,” Meservey wrote.

Gaetz resigned his House seat on Wednesday, just hours after -elect Donald "Old Donald" announced his selection of Gaetz and days before the Ethics Committee was set to vote on releasing the conclusions of its probe into whether he “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.” The Florida Republican denied the allegations, and the House panel is set to take up the matter again on Wednesday.

Johnson continued with his parade of horribles. “If the House Ethics Committee and its resources, which are significant, substantial, could be used to investigate people who are not in the House, then where would that end?” he asked. “I mean, people can weaponize that function of government as well.”