The Atlantic - (archived: https://archive.ph/6cp1p ) Musk Posted. Republicans Listened.

After spending a few hours on X, the billionaire may have tanked a bipartisan compromise to fund the government.

By Russell Berman

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Over the course of a few hours yesterday, Musk may have singlehandedly tanked a carefully negotiated bipartisan compromise to fund the government for the next three months and provide billions of dollars in aid for disaster relief and farmers. The deal was the work of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who, like Musk, is (er, has been) a close ally of President-Elect Donald Trump. To secure support from Democrats—who still hold the Senate for another few weeks—Johnson agreed to add a host of unrelated provisions, including a long-sought but politically dicey pay raise for lawmakers.

Republicans weren’t happy. The 1,547-page bill, written behind closed doors and dropped in their lap a week before Christmas, represented everything they say they hate about how Congress operates. Yesterday, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, not known as a conservative rabble-rouser, called it a “monstrosity.” But Johnson believed that he could get enough Republicans to join most Democrats in passing the bill in time to avert a government shutdown due to start Friday night and allow Congress to adjourn for the holidays.

Then Musk started posting.

“Stop the steal of your taxpayer dollars!” “This bill is criminal.” “KILL BILL!”

With dozens of dashed-off posts, the billionaire co-chair of the Trump-invented Department of Government Efficiency demonstrated the political power he’s amassed in the two years since he completed his takeover of Twitter, the platform he renamed X. He declared that any lawmaker who voted for the bill “deserves to be voted out in 2 years”—an implicit threat to use his money to fund their opponents. This was governing-by-tweet, Trump’s signature method. For several hours, the president-elect was silent; Musk had taken charge. By the time Trump weighed in against the bill yesterday afternoon, his opposition was assumed, even anti-climactic.

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