As expected, late yesterday, the new Musk-MAGA Mike funding bill, approved by Senor T failed its first hurdle on the floor. Under a rule suspension, it needed 2/3s of those present. It didn’t even get half and flopped 174-235. 38 GOP extremists, basically the House Freedom Caucus, voted it down. And this was after Trump explicitly threatened Chip Roy (R-TX), basically telling him his career was over. Look at this these two whackadoodle social media posts Trump let lose yesterday morning. First this one:
Basically, thanks to a drug-impaired South African fascist billionaire, the U.S. government shuts down at midnight tonight. JD Vance and Russ Vought got together with the Freedom Caucus this morning to try to resolve the differences between the 38 members who voted NO and Mar-a-lago. Either that works and the Republicans revote on the Trump-approved bill that failed yesterday or MAGA Mike has to go the other route— going to Hakeem for a compromise. As Jake Sherman, Melanie Zanona, John Bresnahan and Mica Soellner explained before dawn, “The problem for Johnson is this runs the risk of both dividing the House Republican Conference and angering Trump by trying to again cut a deal with Jeffries. Democrats have to be convinced Johnson won’t renege again, as well as being able to deliver enough votes. Sources close to Jeffries say they can deliver the votes. The question is can Johnson?... There was some talk inside the GOP leadership and among rank-and-file members about a short-term CR to fund federal agencies until early or mid-January. But this wouldn’t change the current reality: Johnson has a very small majority, he has to deal with a volatile incoming president, face down an emboldened mega-billionaire with a social media platform and has a generally uncooperative House Republican Conference. On the other hand, this would at least allow the temperature to cool and get members home for Christmas. The GOP can regroup in January. This doesn’t help Johnson remain speaker. But it would avoid a shutdown... The only way Johnson survives the Jan. 3 speaker vote is if Trump is openly backing him. And Thursday’s episode showed even that might not be enough.”
And if that first tweet wasn’t bad enough, he followed up— before the vote— with this. How’s this for explicit? Presidents usually this kind of threatening behind closed doors, especially when their majority in the House is fragile... and a two-vote majority is what you would call super-fragile. This kind of ugly public name-calling is something Roy isn't going to forget.
Roy voted against the Musk-MAGA Mike bill anyway, as did many of Trump’s top congressional allies including Freedom Caucus chairman Andy Harris (MD), Aaron Bean (FL), Cory Mills (FL), Beth Van Duyne (TX), Michael Cloud (TX), Tom Tiffany (WI), Paul Gosar (AZ), Andy Biggs (AZ), David Schweikert (AZ), Nancy Mace (SC), Eric Burlison (MO), Russ Fulcher (ID), Cat Cammack (FL)…
Although both versions of the bill included $50 million for the Trumpanzee inauguration, it will exclude $190 million for the bipartisan ‘Give Kids a Chance’ program for child cancer research. Also defunded: research on premature labor, treatment of sickle cell disease, breast and cervical cancer early detection, a program for down syndrome research, an anti deepfake porn bill and bipartisan reforms to pharmacy benefit managers to lower drug prices. None of this is of any interest to the billionaire class; they’d rather have more tax cuts.
Politico reported that with funding for the government set to run out tomorrow night, co-presidents-elect “Musk and Trump lured Congress into a power struggle, demanding that Johnson abandon the bipartisan accord he struck with top Democrats this week and instead craft a bill favored by Republicans. By defeating that Trump-backed alternative, Democrats demonstrated that they won’t help him pass bills if they don’t have a seat at the negotiating table. ‘A deal’s a deal,’ Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the House’s top Democratic appropriator, said on the floor before the vote. ‘Yesterday a multi-billionaire, with apparently no working knowledge of government or of appropriations— a self-appointed president of the United States, Elon Musk— issued a marching order for House Republicans to go against their own elected leadership and shut down the government,’ DeLauro said. ‘Soon after, Congress was on a fast track to a government shutdown.’”
MAGA Mike now needs to get almost every single one of the Republicans who voted against it to change their votes— if the bill gets through the Rules Committee.
GOP leaders could now try to pass the bill with a simple majority. But they would need almost every Republican to vote in support of teeing up debate, then for passage— a feat they have continually failed to pull off over the last two years as conservative lawmakers block party leaders from passing funding bills under a simple majority.
The package— which includes funding the government through March 14, suspending the debt ceiling until early 2027 and disaster relief, among a few other priorities— was hastily assembled Thursday afternoon after Trump and Musk urged Republicans to spike the previous package.
Top Republicans argue that Democrats should support the bill on its merits, since it contains much of what they already agreed to, despite Johnson’s backtracking on the initial bipartisan accord.
“This keeps the government open. What my friends want to do by voting no is to effectively shut it down,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) said on the floor.
The second-attempt spending and disaster package was assembled without input from Democrats, who fumed about Republicans stripping out dozens of bills they want to clear in the final days of the current session of Congress, from measures on pricing transparency for hotel reservations to support for the semiconductor supply chain.
Thursday night’s failed vote follows two days of chaos and House Republican infighting about the stopgap spending agreement brokered by Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — drama that began even before Musk and Trump weighed in with demands, including that the bill waive the U.S. debt limit as the nation surpasses $36 trillion in debt.
Johnson tried to shore up support within his own conference for the original stopgap, which many complained was burdened with additional spending and policy bills. But Musk stoked outrage against the bill online, and Trump landed the killing blow on Wednesday.
It was Rosa DeLauro, the strategic Connecticut Democrat leading the floor debate for Team Blue, who gave Roy 3 minutes of her time to speak. Smart move. Because this is the incendiary speech that sent Señor T into orbit and helped guarantee that the House Republicans would descend into complete chaos:
Later, Schumer urged MAGA Mike to return to the original deal that Musk and Trump killed. “It’s a good thing the bill failed in the House, and now it’s time to go back to the bipartisan agreement we came to,” said Schumer. The mood in the Senate, even among Republicans, isn't great. When asked if she's frustrated with the House, Susan Collins (R-ME), the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, simply replied: "yes."
The Trump Musk "divorce" will be ugly. But HOW ugly? I'm afraid there will be a mass casualty event involving Musk and thousands if not tens of thousands of innocents that will give Trump an excuse to end democracy forever in the US.