The Slatest

It’s Elon’s World and We’re Just Living in It

Have we ever seen shitposting take down a bill before?

A collage of Elon Musk with a speech bubble. Inside the bubble is a snippet from a government funding bill with an X through it. Next to the image is text that reads: "Totally Normal Quote of the Day"
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“This bill should not pass.” —Elon Musk writing on X about the stopgap government funding bill H.R. 10445

Strange things are happening to American democracy this week: An unelected tech billionaire appears to have somehow shredded any chance of a government funding bill being passed into law. Whether or not a new bill is introduced and lawmakers find a way to agree on how to keep the government open, watching some guy on Twitter essentially wield the power of an elected representative has been wild.

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, as Congress was scheduled to pass a bipartisan spending bill that was months in the making to avert a government shutdown on Saturday and keep the lights on through March 14, Musk entered the chat at 4:15 a.m. and declared: “This bill should not pass.”

The bill was the work of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who had secured an agreement with Democrats to keep funding the government at current spending levels. It’s a tried-and-true strategy, like when former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy heralded a stopgap funding bill last year and included some Democratic priorities that allowed the bill to pass while eliminating the optics of Republicans being blamed for shutting the government down.

Johnson’s bill was similar: It included disaster aid, economic assistance for farmers, pay raises for members of Congress, and other policy items, a delicate balance of both Republican and Democratic priorities necessary to strike a deal. The bill wasn’t beloved, as Republican detractors were unhappy with Johnson for conceding to Democrats’ demands, and threatened not to support him in the race for House speaker on Jan. 3. Nevertheless, the compromise bill could have found enough bipartisan support to fund the government for three more months.

Musk threw a wrench in things when he began posting on X incessantly about the funding bill, successfully rallying Republican members of Congress and everyday Americans to oppose it. He called the bill a “crime” and went so far as to suggest “any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk also spread misinformation, claiming, among many other things, that a cost-of-living increase baked into the bill for lawmakers would lead to a salary bump of $69,000. (The bill would have actually increased salaries by 3.8 percent, or $6,600.) By 11 a.m., members of Congress were coming out hard against the bill. Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee said, “In case you were wondering, I’m a NO.”

Things continued to escalate and around 2 p.m., Musk declared, “No bills should be passed Congress until Jan. 20, when @realDonaldTrump takes office.” The final nail in the coffin came about two hours later when Vice President–elect J.D. Vance and President-elect Donald Trump put out a lengthy joint statement condemning the funding bill while also demanding that Johnson increase the debt ceiling or eliminate it altogether. In that statement, the future leaders of our country admitted: “Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch.”

Musk inserting himself into the inner workings of Congress created an opening for Trump to admit the quiet part loud and proud: The GOP’s long-standing opposition to increasing the nation’s debt can be tossed out the window just long enough for Republicans to blame a Democrat for doing the dirty thing they don’t want to be caught doing.

Backed into a corner, Johnson fell in line and introduced a second stopgap spending bill that suspended the debt ceiling until 2027, which—not for the first or last time—sacrificed supposed Republican beliefs to make Trump’s political life a bit easier. The bill was voted down by nearly all Democrats and about three dozen Republicans.

Musk is not an elected member of Congress, but he holds great sway on whether a bill lives or dies. He is a businessman who has obvious potential conflicts of interest, as the leader of four separate companies, of which two account for at least $15.4 billion in government contracts, according to an analysis by the New York Times. All four are under federal investigations. If Musk were an official government employee, he would be prohibited from “participating personally and substantially in official matters where [he has] a financial interest.”

Unluckily for us, Musk has been tapped to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency alongside fellow Republican firebrand Vivek Ramaswamy, which is designed to advise the government from outside the government. It creates a strange new gray area ripe for unethical behavior, and we’re seeing it right before our eyes. Musk has already suggested that he would use his new gig to help his own company.

Trump is not even president yet, and Musk has not formally assumed his role at DOGE, whatever that ultimately looks like. It seems like this is just a taste of the chaos still to come.