3 hours ago
4 ARTICLE AD
Congress came very close on Wednesday to putting billionaire Elon Musk in the hot seat over his ongoing attempts to effectively take control of the U.S. government by infiltrating every federal agency. But the effort failed in a 19-20 decision.
The U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a vote to subpoena Musk, put forward by ranking member Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia. Republican Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the committee and longtime ally of President Donald Trump, tried various tactics to hamper the motion, including by insisting it wasn’t debatable.
“Mr. Chairman, why don’t we want to debate Elon Musk coming in and talking to us about his work and how he has enriched himself for $64 billion?” one Democrat asked.
The room then erupted into chaos, with members of Congress shouting over each other, captured by cameras in the committee hearing. Comer then attempted to get a voice vote, but in truly sleazy fashion, Comer declared the motion had failed. Democrats demanded a proper roll call vote.
The final vote tally was 19-20, causing the motion to fail, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California was notably absent. X users claimed that Khanna had “abstained” from the vote, which wasn’t accurate and the congressman cleared things up in a tweet.
“I would have voted yes. They called a procedural vote without notice & I like 8 others didn’t make it there on time,” Khanna wrote on X. “Musk’s attacks on our institutions are unconstitutional. He should be subpoenaed & answer to our committee. They should call the vote again with notice.”
Musk replied with “Don’t be a dick.”
Khanna explained that he had been in a meeting with the ambassador to Mexico to discuss the “terrible tariffs” that Trump has threatened against the country. Khanna said he wasn’t able to make it on time and “they should properly notice and call the vote again.”
Protests have broken out across the country to raise awareness of Musk’s ongoing coup, with people chanting “no one voted for Elon Musk” and demanding an end to the oligarchic takeover. Some people in New Jersey even held up signs along Route 4 on Tuesday that read “Musk stole your tax data,” a reference to the total penetration of government computer systems that’s happening right now.
But it remains unclear what can be done to stop any of it. Every report seems to indicate that Musk and his goons are just muscling their way into agencies like the U.S. Treasury and USAID, demanding full access to things like payment systems. Several reports in mainstream news outlets have claimed Musk’s staff has something akin to “read-only” access, but Wired reported on Tuesday that’s not true.
A 25-year-old member of DOGE named Mark Elez, who’s previously worked at Musk’s companies, actually has access to the U.S. Treasury’s Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, according to Wired. That means Musk can theoretically stop payments on anything he doesn’t like. Trump’s Press Secretary reiterated that DOGE has read-only access on Wednesday.
It’s not clear yet whether Musk has actually stopped payments, but there are countless anecdotes online of congressionally authorized programs that haven’t received funding yet. As always, it’s unclear if Trump’s henchman and their meddling with these systems has accidentally broken things or if they well and truly have broken them intentionally.
President Trump and Musk have promised to shut down USAID, the foreign aid agency, which can’t technically be done by any president without an act of Congress. But again, nobody seems capable of stopping them at this moment. The USAID website went dark on Saturday but now just has a notice that all staff are being placed on administrative leave.
Numerous Members of Congress and government officials have said DOGE’s activities are blatantly illegal, but the U.S. is now learning pretty quickly that laws are fake unless someone is around to enforce them. And right now the people who are supposed to enforce laws are all on Trump’s side.
