Elon Musk is the ultimate chaos agent | Siva Vaidhyanathan
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With one post on X, Musk has the power to shut down the government of the most powerful nation in world history. Elon Musk holds no public office. He has never stood for election, passed scrutiny for appointment to public office, nor commanded a political force of any measure. He is, however, the latest star and favorite of Donald Trump, the president-elect. So when Musk issues one of his off-the-cuff missives via his decrepit social network, X, Trump loyalists (almost all the Republicans) take him seriously.
Yet now, suddenly, Musk has the power to shut down the government of the most powerful nation in the history of the world and depose his party’s legislative leader, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a Republican lawmaker from Louisiana. Very early Wednesday morning, fueled by hubris and whatever else, Musk called for the US House of Representatives to reject the negotiated continuing resolution that it must pass this week to keep the federal government funded.
“This bill should not pass,” the richest human being in the world wrote at 4.15am ET. Musk followed up for hours, using every derogatory word he could muster to describe a bill he almost certainly had not read nor understood. “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk wrote Wednesday afternoon.
Johnson spent months garnering enough votes among his divided caucus (plus Democrats, with whom he must negotiate to get such a bill passed) to send the resolution to the Democrats who control the Senate until next month and then to the president, Joe Biden. Johnson knows the failure to pass this resolution would cause great harm to 4 million federal employees and those who depend on their services right before the holidays. Farmers would go without subsidy payments. Small businesses would not get their loan payments. Kids in head start programs would have no place to go during the work day, forcing parents to take time off from work and possibly lose jobs. Active-duty military personnel would work with no December or January paychecks until Congress passes such a resolution.
