Republicans haul ass into hearing room to protect Musk from questioning

A dramatic hearing in Congress today made clear that Republican lawmakers are aiding and protecting Elon's coup.

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That said, Elon Musk’s full-scale government takeover continued apace this week with the help of his young dork squad, who are somehow managing to strong-arm their way into government buildings that even members of Congress are having trouble entering. Today they gained full access to the Medicare and Medicaid systems, setting up a large scale theft from the American people that the Wall Street Journal has wrongfully framed as a “search for fraud.” It should be obvious to everyone at this point that Musk is in no way “searching for fraud” in our systems; what we’re seeing is the world’s richest man cutting off financial aid and health care to poor and elderly people in order to further enrich and empower himself.

I pointed out in Sunday’s newsletter, as others have, that Musk and Trump have no legal basis to cancel entire government departments and decide who and what receive federal funding. Congress is supposed to hold the power of the purse. For that reason, I thought it possible that perhaps even some Republican lawmakers who generally support Trump and Elon might join their Democratic colleagues in resisting—or at least questioning—an unelected foreign billionaire taking over their own jobs. (Not to mention deliberately tanking the U.S. economy, leaving thousands of civil servants unable to support their families, and generally humiliating us on a global scale.)

Alas, that does not appear to be the case. In a dramatic House Oversight Committee hearing this morning, Republicans literally sprinted into a room at the last minute to shoot down the Democrats’ attempt to bring Musk in for some basic questioning. The chaos began when Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) moved to subpoena Musk to come testify before the committee and explain what exactly he’s doing.

“Who is this unelected billionaire that he can attempt to dismantle federal agencies, fire people, transfer them, offer them early retirement, and have sweeping changes to agencies without any congressional review, oversight or concurrence?” Connolly asked. “Therefore Mr. Chairman, given his prominence and his importance, I move that the committee subpoena Elon Musk as a witness at the earliest possible moment.”

The move caught Republicans by surprise, and the committee erupted into chaos. Members started shouting over each other, and committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) slammed his gavel down repeatedly, yelling “out of order.”

“Yes, let’s have order in this country,” Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico yelled back. “Elon Musk is out of order.”

"While you were at Trump's private resort in Florida and partying it up after the inauguration...millions of real Americans were sent in total chaos, and our states had to go to the courts,” Stansbury said. “While Trump was golfing, the Medicaid systems were shut down and locked out."

“Real innovation isn’t clean and tidy,” said Comer, the clown from Kentucky who once called his colleague a smurf. “It’s what the American people voted for in November: a departure from the broken status quo.”

Comer tried to use his power shut down the motion without a vote, but Democrats called for a recorded vote, knowing that they actually outnumbered Republicans in the room in that moment and could snatch an unexpected win. At this point, Republican members started hustling back to the committee room to gather the numbers to protect Elon—which they barely did, by a vote of 20-19.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), one of nine Democrats who missed the hearing entirely, immediately came under fire for his absence from the vote. He claimed on X that he would have voted with Democrats to subpoena Elon if he’d been given enough lead time that the move was happening, and he called for a second vote, to which Musk replied, “Don’t be a dick.”

So Republicans in Congress have revealed themselves to be spineless traitors who refuse to even ask Musk any questions, and the Democrats continue to fail to do anything about it. But at least some elected members have started to make an effort to resist. Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) introduced new articles of impeachment today over Trump’s threat to help ethnically cleanse Gaza, which is welcome, and lawmakers have started showing up to protests outside the Treasury in solidarity.

Other Dems, however, are openly frustrated that we are asking them to do something about Musk feeding federal agencies into the wood chipper when they don’t control any branch of government. “What more do they want us to do? Handcuff ourselves to lampposts and get arrested?” one anonymous senator told The Hill today.

To that I say: well, yes.