Republicans win 218 US House seats, giving Donald Trump and the party control of government
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Republicans have won enough seats to control the U.S. House, completing the party’s sweep into power and securing their hold on U.S. government alongside President-elect Donald Trump.
A House Republican victory in Arizona, alongside a win in slow-counting California earlier Wednesday, gave the GOP the 218 House victories that make up the majority. Republicans earlier gained control of the Senate from Democrats.
With hard-fought yet thin majorities, Republican leaders are envisioning a mandate to upend the federal government and swiftly implement Trump’s vision for the country.
The incoming president has promised to carry out the country’s largest-ever deportation operation, extend tax breaks, punish his political enemies, seize control of the federal government’s most powerful tools, and reshape the U.S. economy. The GOP election victories ensure that Congress will be onboard for that agenda, and Democrats will be almost powerless to check it.
When Trump was elected president in 2016, Republicans also swept Congress, but he still encountered Republican leaders resistant to his policy ideas, as well as a Supreme Court with a liberal majority. Not this time.
When he returns to the White House, Trump will be working with a Republican Party that has been completely transformed by his “Make America Great Again” movement and a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices, including three that he appointed.
Trump rallied House Republicans at a Capitol Hill hotel Wednesday morning, marking his first return to Washington since the election.
“I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s good, we got to figure something else,’” Trump said to the room full of lawmakers who laughed in response.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who with Trump’s endorsement won the Republican Conference’s nomination to stay on as speaker next year, has talked of taking a “blowtorch” to the federal government and its programs, eyeing ways to overhaul even popular programs championed by Democrats in recent years. The Louisiana Republican, an ardent conservative, has pulled the House Republican Conference closer to Trump during the campaign season as they prepare an “ambitious” 100-day agenda.
“Republicans in the House and Senate have a mandate,” Johnson said earlier this week. “The American people want us to implement and deliver that ‘America First’ agenda.”
Trump’s allies in the House are already signaling they will seek retribution for the legal troubles Trump faced while out of office. The incoming president on Wednesday said he would nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz, a fierce loyalist, for attorney general.
Still, with a few races still uncalled the Republicans may hold the majority by just a few seats as the new Congress begins. Trump’s decision to pull from the House for posts in his administration — Reps. Gaetz, Mike Waltz, and Elise Stefanik so far — could complicate Johnson’s ability to maintain a majority in the early days of the new Congress.
Gaetz submitted his resignation Wednesday, effective immediately. Johnson said he hoped the seat could be filled by the time the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3. Replacements for members of the House require special elections, and the congressional districts held by the three departing members have been held by Republicans for years.
With the thin majority, a highly functioning House is also far from guaranteed. The past two years of Republican House control were defined by infighting as hardline conservative factions sought to gain influence and power by openly defying their party leadership. While Johnson — at times with Trump’s help — largely tamed open rebellions against his leadership, the right wing of the party is ascendant and ambitious on the heels of Trump’s election victory.
The Republican majority also depends on a small group of lawmakers who won tough elections by running as moderates. It remains to be seen whether they will stay on board for some of the most extreme proposals championed by Trump and his allies.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, meanwhile, is trying to keep Democrats relevant to any legislation that passes Congress, an effort that will depend on Democratic leaders unifying over 200 members, even as the party undergoes a postmortem of its election losses.
In the Senate, GOP leaders, fresh off winning a convincing majority, are already working with Trump to confirm his Cabinet picks. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota won an internal election Wednesday to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history.
Thune in the past has been critical of Trump, but praised the incoming president during his leadership election bid.
“This Republican team is united. We are on one team,” Thune said. “We are excited to reclaim the majority and to get to work with our colleagues in the House to enact President Trump’s agenda.”
The GOP’s Senate majority of 53 seats also ensures that Republicans will have breathing room when it comes to confirming Cabinet posts, or Supreme Court justices if there is a vacancy. Not all those confirmations are guaranteed. Republicans were incredulous Wednesday when the news hit Capitol Hill that Trump would nominate Gaetz as his attorney general. Even close Trump allies in the Senate distanced themselves from supporting Gaetz, who had been facing a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
Still, Trump on Sunday demanded that any Republican leader must allow him to make administration appointments without a vote while the Senate is in recess. Such a move would be a notable shift in power away from the Senate, yet all the leadership contenders quickly agreed to the idea. Democrats could potentially fight such a maneuver.
Meanwhile, Trump’s social media supporters, including Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, clamored against picking a traditional Republican to lead the Senate chamber. Thune worked as a top lieutenant to McConnell, who once called the former president a “despicable human being” in his private notes.
However, McConnell made it clear that on Capitol Hill the days of Republican resistance to Trump are over.
Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team are drawing up a list of military officers to be fired, potentially including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two sources said, in what would be an unprecedented shakeup at the Pentagon.
The planning for the firings is at an early stage after Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory and could change as Trump’s administration takes shape, said the sources, who are familiar with the Trump transition and requested anonymity to speak candidly about the plans.
One of the sources questioned the feasibility of a mass firing at the Pentagon.
It was also unclear if Trump himself would endorse the plan, although in the past he has railed extensively against defense leaders who have criticized him. Trump has also spoken during the campaign of [USN:L1N3MD1PE TEXT:“firing “woke” generals"] and those responsible for the troubled 2021 pullout from Afghanistan.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The second source said the incoming administration would likely focus on U.S. military officers seen as connected to Mark Milley, Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Milley was quoted in the book “War” by Bob Woodward, which was published last month, calling Trump “fascist to the core” and Trump’s allies have targeted him for perceived disloyalty to the former president.
“Every single person that was elevated and appointed by Milley will be gone,” the second source said.
“There’s a very detailed list of everybody that was affiliated with Milley. And they will all be gone.”
The Joint Chiefs of Staff include the highest-ranking officers in the U.S. military and comprise the heads of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, National Guard and Space Force.
The disclosure of plans to fire senior leaders of the U.S. armed forces comes a day after Trump [USN:S0N3M808W TEXT:“picked as his defense secretary Pete Hegseth”], a Fox News commentator and veteran who has signaled a willingness to clean house at the Pentagon.
“The next president of the United States needs to radically overhaul Pentagon senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. Lots of people need to be fired,” Hegseth said in his 2024 book “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”
It is unclear if Hegseth’s lack of management experience could complicate his Senate confirmation and if a more traditional alternative for the position would carry out such sweeping dismissals.
GENERAL BROWN TO BE AMONG THE FIRST FIRED
Hegseth has also taken aim at Milley’s successor, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, asking whether he would have gotten the job if he were not Black.
“Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt - which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” he wrote.
The first source familiar with the transition planning said Brown would be among the many officers to leave.
“The chiefs of the Joint Chiefs and all the vice chiefs will be fired immediately,” the source said, before noting that this was still only early planning.
Some current and former U.S. officials have played down the possibility of such a major shakeup, saying it would be unnecessary and disruptive at a time of global turmoil with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The first source said that it would be difficult bureaucratically to fire and replace a large swath of senior U.S. military officials, suggesting the planning could be bluster and posturing by Trump allies.
But the second source suggested the Trump camp believed the Joint Chiefs of Staff needed to shrink due to perceived bureaucratic overreach.
Such cuts could be endured in an organization the scale of the U.S. military, the source said.
“These people are not irreplaceable. They are very replaceable. And then the other thing too is there is no shortage of people that will step up,” the source said.
“In World War Two, we were very rapidly appointing people in their 30s or people competent to be generals. And you know what? We won the war.”
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday named incendiary Republican U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz to be his nominee for attorney general, selecting an ally who has faced Justice Department scrutiny to run the agency.
"Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations, and restore Americans’ badly shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department," Trump said in a statement announcing the selection, which would be subject to confirmation by the Republican-majority Senate.
The choice of a 42-year-old congressman who has never worked in the Justice Department or as a prosecutor at any level of government was the latest in a wave of Trump nominations of candidates with scant experience.
Gaetz resigned from the House of Representatives on Wednesday "effective immediately," House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters.
“It caught us by surprise a little bit," Johnson said of the resignation, adding Gaetz stepped down to quickly start the process of naming a replacement in what is expected to be a closely divided House of Representatives.
Gaetz played an instrumental role in ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023, which kicked off weeks of chaos in the chamber. His nomination as attorney general was met with immediate skepticism by some Senate Republicans -- which holds the power to confirm or deny his appointment.
"I don't think it's a serious nomination for the attorney general," Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski told reporters at the Capitol, according to multiple news outlets. "This one was not on my bingo card."
Trump, who faced two federal criminal indictments following the end of his four-year term in 2021, has for years railed against the Justice Department, and vowed to radically reshape it when he returns to power on Jan. 20. Gaetz on Wednesday mused publicly about abolishing the FBI, a Justice Department unit.
Trump's inner circle has described the attorney general, the country's top law enforcement official, as the most important member of the administration after the president, key to his plans to carry out mass deportations, pardon Jan. 6 rioters, and seek retribution against those who prosecuted him over the past four years.
The Florida congressman, first elected in 2016, remains under investigation by the House of Representatives Ethics Committee over allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and potential attempts to obstruct the probe. Gaetz has denied the claims.
Trump also faced Justice Department investigations after leaving office in 2021, leading to two criminal indictments accusing him of attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election and illegally holding on to sensitive national security documents.
Item 1 of 2 Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) speaks on Day 3 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 17, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo
[1/2]Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) speaks on Day 3 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 17, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens a new tab
Trump loudly objected to both cases, accusing the Justice Department under Democratic President Joe Biden of being turned against him to damage his political prospects. A federal judge appointed by Trump threw out the documents case, and the election case is expected to be dismissed due to Trump's election victory.
FEAR OF FURTHER POLITICIZATION
Former Justice Department officials said they worried that Gaetz would seek to politicize the operations of the agency, which has had a decades-old tradition of independence from the White House.
"I worry that anyone who comes in as attorney general to politicize the work of the department not only risks undermining the rule of law but also the important safeguards that have existed to protect the legitimacy of the department’s work," said Johnathan Smith, a former deputy assistant attorney general who left the Justice Department earlier this year.
Bradley Moss, an attorney specializing in national security, said that in past administrations, someone with Gaetz's history would have raised concerns about his ability to pass security clearance reviews.
"I would be shocked to see someone with his background get cleared in an ordinary circumstance," Moss said.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the pick.
Gaetz worked at a Florida law firm before being elected to the House in 2016, the year Trump was first elected.
In a social media message posted hours before Trump announced his nomination, Gaetz said, "We ought to have a full court press against this WEAPONIZED government that has been turned against our people. And if that means ABOLISHING every one of the three-letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!"
The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, are units of the Justice Department.
Gaetz's nomination could signal the Trump administration will continue an aggressive approach toward antitrust enforcement, particularly when it comes to Big Tech, which began under Trump and was popularized by Biden’s antitrust enforcers, including Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.
Gaetz filed a legal brief in support of the FTC’s ban on businesses forcing workers into non-compete agreements, a rule the U.S. Chamber of Commerce business lobbying group has sued to block.
He also praised the Justice Department's work under Biden in pursuing anti-monopoly cases against Google and warned the company in August that it must abide by any remedy imposed in the case where a judge found it held an illegal monopoly in online search.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, longtime political rivals, discussed Ukraine and the Middle East on Wednesday in a cordial meeting designed to demonstrate a smooth transfer of power despite deep disagreements over policy.
The two American leaders sat side by side before a roaring fire in the White House Oval Office, a peaceful scene that belied tensions between them.
"They discussed important national security and domestic policy issues facing the nation and the world," White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. "It was indeed very cordial, very gracious, and substantive."
The meeting lasted roughly two hours, she said.
Biden argued support for Ukraine was good for U.S. national security because a strong and stable Europe would keep America from being dragged into war, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told journalists.
Trump has pledged to end the Russia-Ukraine war quickly without saying how.
Trump told the New York Post he and Biden "talked very much about the Middle East" during their conversation. "I wanted to know his views on where we are," the Post quoted Trump as saying. "And he gave them to me, he was very gracious."
A Democrat, Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election but dropped out of the 2024 race in July after a disastrous debate with Trump, a Republican. Vice President Kamala Harris became the candidate but lost to Trump.
A SMOOTH TRANSITION
Both men talked about a smooth transition of power.
"Looking forward to having a, like we said, smooth transition - do everything we can to make sure you're accommodated, what you need," Biden told the president-elect. "Welcome, welcome back."
Trump, due to take over on Jan. 20, said: "Politics is tough, and it's many cases not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today, and I appreciate it very much - a transition that's so smooth it'll be as smooth as it can get. And I very much appreciate that, Joe."
Reporters shouted questions but were ushered out.
The traditional courtesy of welcoming the president-elect into the Oval Office is one that Trump did not extend when Biden won in 2020.
Item 1 of 10 U.S. President Joe Biden meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 13, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
[1/10]U.S. President Joe Biden meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 13, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Purchase Licensing Rights opens new tab
The two men have hurled criticism at each other for years. Their respective teams hold vastly different positions on policies from climate change to Russia to trade.
Biden, 81, has portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy, while Trump, 78, has portrayed Biden as incompetent. Trump made false claims of widespread fraud after losing the 2020 election.
During the sit-down, Biden pushed his priorities for Congress' lame-duck session, including funding the government and providing additional funds for disaster relief, Jean-Pierre said. Biden's chief of staff Jeff Zients and Trump's, Susie Wiles, also were present.
First lady Jill Biden joined Biden in greeting Trump on his arrival. The White House said she gave Trump a handwritten letter of congratulations for his wife, Melania Trump, and expressed her team’s readiness to assist with the transition.
Melania Trump's office said on X that she would not attend the White House meeting. "Her husband's return to the Oval Office to commence the transition process is encouraging, and she wishes him great success," it said.
Trump celebrated his victory earlier in the day with Republicans from the House of Representatives. Edison Research projected on Wednesday that Republicans would have a majority in the House, meaning Trump's party will control both chambers of Congress.
"Isn't it nice to win? It's nice to win. It's always nice to win," Trump said. "The House did very well."
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk joined Trump at the meeting with Republican lawmakers.
TRANSITION PARTIALLY STALLED
Despite the show of goodwill, the transition itself has partially stalled.
Trump’s team, which has announced some members of the incoming president's cabinet, has yet to sign agreements that would lead to office space and government equipment as well as access to government officials, facilities, and information, the White House said.
“The Trump-Vance transition lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act," said Brian Vance, a Trump transition spokesperson, referring to the law that governs the transfer of power.
Valerie Smith Boyd, director of the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition, a non-profit that advises incoming administrations, said the agreement underscores that the U.S. only has one president at a time and includes pledges to sign ethics pacts not to profit off information provided in the transition.
“That needs to be signed for interaction to begin with federal agencies,” she said. “Everything is hinging on that.”
The meeting was the two men's first substantive one since their June debate. Biden, Trump, and Harris also appeared together in New York on Sept. 11 at the site of the 2001 plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump chose loyalists with little experience for several key cabinet positions on Wednesday, stunning some allies and making clear that he is serious about reshaping - and in some cases testing - America's institutions.
Trump's choice of congressman Matt Gaetz, 42, for U.S. attorney general, America's top law enforcement officer, was a surprising pick. The former attorney has never worked in the Justice Department, or as a prosecutor, and was investigated by the Justice Department over sex trafficking allegations. His office said in 2023 that he had been told by prosecutors he would not face criminal charges.
Trump tapped Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. The former Democratic congresswoman-turned-Trump-ally has in the past spoken out against military intervention in the civil war in Syria under former President Barack Obama and implied that Russian President Vladimir Putin had valid grounds for invading Ukraine, America's ally.
"I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our intelligence community, championing our constitutional rights and securing peace through strength," Trump said in a statement.
Gabbard has little direct experience with intelligence work and had not been widely expected to be tapped for the post, which oversees 18 spy agencies.
She was deployed in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 as a major in the Hawaii National Guard and is now a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves.
On Tuesday, Trump chose Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator and veteran, to be his secretary of defense. Hegseth has opposed women in combat roles and questioned whether the top American general was promoted to his position because of his skin color. He also lobbied Trump during his 2017-2021 term to pardon servicemembers who allegedly committed war crimes.
Sprinkled in with those personnel choices were more conventional selections. Trump said on Wednesday he would nominate Senator Marco Rubio, who is a hardliner on China, as his new secretary of state.
But on the whole, his selections signal a radical shift in the way the U.S. government conducts its business and in the role America will play in the world over the next four years.
Trump has said he wants to end the "weaponization" of the Justice Department, which he said brought politically motivated criminal cases against him to hurt his presidential candidacy. The department says it acts without political bias.
LOYALTY
One common thread for Trump's picks: He chose unfailingly loyal people who are unlikely to push back against his most controversial orders, analysts said.
Trump pledged on the campaign trail to go after his political enemies, including Democratic President Joe Biden, a pledge that Gaetz, his attorney general-designate, is unlikely to stand in the way of.
"Gaetz will do exactly as Trump says, which is why he was picked I guess," said a source close to Trump, after Gaetz's selection as was announced.
A half dozen sources close to Trump world, including donors, consultants, and fundraisers, said privately that they were shocked by the choice of Gaetz because of his limited qualifications and past DOJ investigation into him.
"I was shocked that he has been nominated," Republican senator Susan Collins, a moderate from Maine, told reporters about the Gaetz selection. "The president obviously has the right to nominate whomever he wants. But I think this is an example of why it's so important that we have the advice and consent provisions in the Constitution."
Some of Trump's other nominees also lack any meaningful qualifications. Hegseth, while a decorated combat veteran, is best known in recent years as a media personality. He will now oversee the better part of 3 million employees and the world's largest fighting force.
"Being secretary of defense is a very serious job, and putting someone as dangerously unqualified as Pete Hegseth into that role is something that should scare all of us," said Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic senator from Illinois who sits on the armed services committee.
SENATE GUARDRAIL
Not only are Trump's national security and foreign policy nominees universally skeptical of helping Ukraine fend off Russia's invasion, but some of their statements have been outright hostile toward Kyiv.
Gabbard, who will oversee America's sprawling foreign and domestic intelligence apparatus, has portrayed Putin as a defender of his own nation's vital national security interests. Ukraine, she has said, is a corrupt kleptocracy.
One potential guardrail that Trump and his nominees still face: is the Senate.
While Trump's Republicans control the Senate and most Republican lawmakers will support his nominees for top jobs, the slate the president-elect put forward will likely give the party's remaining moderates pause and test just how loyal elected Republicans are to him and his vision.
The choice of Rubio as secretary of state could come as a relief to U.S. partners worried that the Trump administration could pull back from its global network of alliances, including NATO, given Trump's "America First" emphasis during his campaign to return to the White House.
"He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries," Trump said of Rubio in a statement.
In addition to being a China hawk, Rubio, 53, is an outspoken critic of Cuba's Communist government and a strong backer of Israel.
He has in the past advocated for a more assertive U.S. foreign policy concerning America's geopolitical foes, although recently his views have aligned more closely with those of Trump's approach to foreign policy.
Some analysts questioned whether Rubio would stand up to Trump, noting the president-elect's inclination to make personal loyalty a central requirement for administration posts.
Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, said it is essential for any president's advisers to stand up to him when necessary, given the wide array of foreign policy challenges Trump will face.
"I'm trying to keep an open mind here," Miller said, noting that Rubio, because of his experience in Congress, has a better grasp of foreign policy than any of Trump's other appointees.
In picking billionaire Elon Musk to be “our cost cutter” for the U.S. government, President-elect Donald Trump won’t be the first American president to empower a business tycoon to look for ways to dramatically cut federal regulations.
President Ronald Reagan tapped J. Peter Grace to lead a bureaucratic cost-cutting commission in 1982. Still, the chemical business magnate had fewer conflicts of interest than the world’s richest man does today.
Musk’s SpaceX holds billions of dollars in NASA contracts. He’s CEO of Tesla, an electric car business that benefits from government tax incentives and is subject to auto safety rules. His social media platform X, artificial intelligence startup xAI, brain implant maker Neuralink, and tunnel-building Boring company all intersect with the federal government in various ways.
“There are direct conflicts between his businesses and the government’s interest,” said Ann Skeet, director of leadership ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center. “He’s now in a position to try and curry favor for those enterprises.”
Musk is also more influential, having pumped an estimated $200 million through his political action committee to help elect Trump, made himself a fixture at Mar-a-Lago since the presidential election and is on regular speaking terms with like-minded political world leaders, from Argentina’s President Javier Milei to Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Trump has said Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, — a joke name that references the cryptocurrency Dogecoin and appeals to Musk’s sense of humor.
“We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good,” Musk said Wednesday on X.
Trump has said that Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside the government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to drive structural reform — some of which could only be done through Congress.
“If it’s a commission, it’s outside the government” and Musk could not have a White House office or official government title, said Richard Painter, a White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration. “Then, the president takes the advice or doesn’t.”
If it were a true government agency, however, Musk would run afoul of federal conflict of interest laws unless he divested from his businesses or recused from government matters involving them, Painter said.
Trump could grant a rare waiver exempting Musk from those laws, a move that has been politically unpopular in the past, Painter said.
Tesla, SpaceX, and X didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday about whether Musk would recuse himself. The Trump transition team also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
However it is structured, Musk’s ideas are expected to have an influence.
Regulating auto safety
Tesla, the electric vehicle company that made Musk the world’s wealthiest person, has had repeated skirmishes with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates vehicle safety. So any cuts to NHTSA funding or staffing could help Tesla.
The agency has forced Tesla to do recalls it didn’t want, and it has opened investigations of Tesla vehicles, some of which raised questions about Musk’s claims that Tesla is close to deploying autonomous vehicles without human drivers. The agency also is working on regulations that cover vehicle automation.
Auto safety advocates are worried that a Department of Government Efficiency co-chaired by Musk could propose draconian cuts at NHTSA.
“That could be incredibly problematic because that would impact every rule-making from all of the agencies that currently oversee companies that Musk owns,” said Michael Brooks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, a watchdog group.
If implemented, Musk’s plan for efficiency at NHTSA could mirror what he did when he took over Twitter — draconian staff cuts, said Missy Cummings, director of the autonomy and robotics center at George Mason University and a former safety adviser to NHTSA.
While Cummings concedes there is room for much of the federal government to become more efficient, she said that NHTSA is already understaffed and she predicted that Musk would try to slow or stop NHTSA investigations or handicap the agency so it would have trouble enforcing regulations.
“It would just leave it as a shell of the agency that it was,” she said. “Their whole job would be to put out commercials reminding people to just wear seat belts.”
Space exploration
Launching test flights out of South Texas, SpaceX’s mega-rocket Starship is how NASA intends to land astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than a half-century. NASA has awarded more than $4 billion to SpaceX for the first two human moon landings coming up later this decade under the Artemis program. Musk has been at odds with the Federal Aviation Administration for slowing Starship over what he contends is excessive bureaucracy.
SpaceX also has racked up multiple contracts with NASA over the past decade for launching supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station. The contracts for crew flights alone from 2020 through 2030 total $5 billion.
More recently, in June, NASA awarded an $843 million contract to SpaceX to provide the vehicle for deorbiting the International Space Station at the end of its lifetime in early 2031, directing it to a fiery re-entry over the Pacific.
SpaceX also has multiple contracts with the Defense Department, some classified and said to be worth billions. In addition, the Pentagon has purchased internet services in Ukraine from SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. The militarized version of Starlink is called Starshield.
Social media and AI
The social media platform X is another Musk company that has drawn scrutiny from federal regulators. The Federal Trade Commission has probed Musk’s handling of sensitive consumer data after he took control of the company in 2022 but has not brought enforcement action. The SEC has an ongoing investigation of Musk’s purchase of the social media company.
Musk has been forceful with his political views on the platform, changing its rules, content moderation systems, and algorithms to conform with his world view. After Musk endorsed Trump following an attempt on the former president’s life last summer, the platform has transformed into a megaphone for Trump’s campaign, offering an unprecedented level of free advertising that is all but impossible to calculate the value of.
Musk’s strong interest in AI is also likely to play a role. He’s in the process of building an AI supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, for his AI startup xAI.
However environmental groups have raised concerns about pollution generated by the facility’s gas turbines and its strain on the local power grid, prompting attention from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The facility is located near predominantly Black neighborhoods that have long dealt with pollution and health risks from factories and other industrial sites.
