Trump brings chaos back to Washington by attempting to kill bipartisan budget deal with Musk’s help

 

President-elect Donald Trump delivered a likely death blow to bipartisan congressional budget negotiations on Wednesday, rejecting the measure as full of giveaways to Democrats after billionaire ally Elon Musk whipped up outrage toward the bill and cheered on Republican lawmakers who announced their opposition.

Trump’s joint statement with Vice President-elect JD Vance, which stopped the bill in its tracks, punctuated a daylong torrent of social media posts by Musk attacking the legislation for what he described as excessive spending.

“Stop the steal of your tax dollars!” Musk wrote on his social media platform X as he dangled primary challenges against anyone who voted for the budget deal, a threat Trump later echoed in a post of his own.

The episode showcased the growing political influence of Musk, whom Trump has selected alongside entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental task force formed to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and reduce regulations.

Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky, said his office was flooded with calls from constituents.

“My phone was ringing off the hook,” he said. “The people who elected us are listening to Elon Musk.”

In his statement with Vance, Trump said Republicans should restart negotiations over the legislation, arguing that “anything else is a betrayal of our country.” He also called for including an extension of the debt ceiling while President Joe Biden is in office.

“Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch,” they said. “If Democrats won’t cooperate on a debt ceiling increase now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate over the debt ceiling now.”

Trump’s opposition to what was considered must-pass legislation reinjected a sense of chaos and political brinkmanship that was reminiscent of his first term in office. It was a dramatic turn of events for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who negotiated the bill and has been undermined by Trump as he faces reelection for his post in just a couple of weeks. Republicans have a slim majority, raising the possibility of a replay of leadership disputes that paralyzed the House a year ago.

Many lawmakers were in the middle of holiday and year-end celebrations with staff when Trump came out against the legislation.

“I’ve been here 14 years, OK? So nothing up here surprises me anymore,” said Rep. Steve Womack, a senior Republican appropriator from Arkansas. “We shouldn’t be in this mess.”

The Biden administration criticized the possibility of a shutdown.

“Republicans need to stop playing politics with this bipartisan agreement or they will hurt hardworking Americans and create instability across the country,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a veteran of Washington’s budget battles, was concerned about the lack of a clear plan for resolving the dispute.

“There’s got to be a second part of the strategy,” he said.

Norquist has been enthusiastic about Musk’s ability to generate public attention for efforts to reduce the size of government. But he suggested that the owner of a space rocket company wasn’t the right person to spearhead a congressional spending debate.

“He doesn’t know politics like he knows physics,” he said.

But others were thrilled with Musk’s involvement.

“In five years in Congress, I’ve been awaiting a fundamental change in the dynamic,” posted Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican from North Carolina. “It has arrived.”

Musk began criticizing the measure as soon as it was released Tuesday evening, and he continuously posted about it Wednesday.

“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” he wrote. He also called it “one of the worst bills ever written.”

Sometimes Musk amplified false claims, such as the idea that the legislation included $3 billion for a new football stadium in Washington. In reality, the legislation would transfer ownership of the land from the federal government to the city, paving the way for eventual development.

Musk appeared emboldened by the experience.

“The voice of the people was heard,” Musk wrote. “This was a good day for America.”

Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries said the fallout would be Republicans’ fault.

“You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow,” he wrote on X.

Thousands of Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab workers will walk off the job on Thursday morning, in the crucial final days of the holiday season, after union officials said the retailer failed to come to the bargaining table to negotiate contracts.

The strike is a challenge to Amazon's operations as it races to fulfill orders during its busiest season of the year, although union-represented facilities represent only about 1% of Amazon's hourly workforce. In the New York City area, for example, the company has multiple warehouses and smaller delivery depots.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said unionized workers at facilities in New York City; Skokie, Illinois; Atlanta, San Francisco and southern California will join the picket line to seek contracts guaranteeing better wages and work conditions.

The Teamsters union has said it represents about 10,000 workers at 10 of the company's U.S. facilities. Workers at seven of those facilities will walk out on Thursday, the Teamsters said.

An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The union had given Amazon a deadline of Sunday to begin negotiations, and workers at facilities voted recently to authorize a strike.

Teamsters local unions are also putting up picket lines at hundreds of Amazon Fulfillment Centers nationwide, the union said in a statement on Wednesday.

Observers said Amazon is unlikely to come to the table to bargain, calculating it could open the door to additional union actions.

“Amazon clearly has developed a strategy of ignoring their workers’ rights to collectively organize and negotiate,” said Benjamin Sachs, a Harvard Law School professor of labor and industry.

He noted that more than two years after workers at a Staten Island warehouse became the first in the United States to vote to unionize, Amazon still has not recognized the group.

RIGHT TO ORGANIZE

Item 1 of 2 Amazon’s LDJ5 sortation center is seen, as employees begin voting to unionize a second warehouse in the Staten Island borough of New York, U.S. April 25, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid./File Photo

[1/2]Amazon’s LDJ5 sortation center is seen, as employees begin voting to unionize a second warehouse in the Staten Island borough of New York, U.S. April 25, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid./File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Amazon, which has said it prefers direct relationships with workers, has challenged union drives while saying workers have the right to organize.

The company has filed objections with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over the 2022 Staten Island election, alleging bias among agency officials, among other issues. Further, Amazon challenged the constitutionality of the NLRB itself in a September federal lawsuit.

The Seattle-based company has also said the Teamsters "attempted to coerce" workers illegally to join the union.

The Teamsters said the Staten Island warehouse could join the strike at any time, as well as another southern California facility that had earlier voted to join the walkout.

Amazon is unlikely, at least initially, to come to the table with the Teamsters because there is little legal pressure to do so, said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied unions. He noted that there has been no apparent penalty to Amazon for ignoring the Staten Island workers' demands.

"It's been a very successful strategy, the work continues there and there is still no contract," said Rosenfeld.

In recent years, Amazon.com has faced worker walkouts in Spain and Germany, among other regions, over pay and working conditions.

As the world's second-largest private employer after Walmart , Amazon has long been a target for unions. Some workers have said Amazon's emphasis on greater speed and efficiency can lead to injuries, while Amazon has said it pays industry-leading wages and regularly introduces automation designed to reduce repetitive stress.

The company will face other union actions in the months ahead. Workers at a Philadelphia Whole Foods in November filed to hold a union election, the first since Amazon acquired the grocery chain in 2017.

Last month, an administrative judge ordered a third union election at an Alabama warehouse after ruling Amazon had acted unlawfully to thwart unionization there.

Earlier this year, Amazon announced a $2.1 billion investment to raise pay for fulfillment and transportation employees in the U.S., increasing base wages for employees by at least $1.50 to around $22 per hour, a roughly 7% increase.

 Luigi Mangione, the suspect indicted on murder charges in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, will now face federal charges that could attract the death penalty, the New York Times reported late on Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear what charges the suspect would face in the federal case but they will be in addition to the New York state murder indictment, the report added, citing people familiar with the matter.

Federal charges would potentially allow prosecutors to pursue the death penalty, which has been outlawed in New York for decades, it said.

The U.S. Department Of Justice did not immediately respond to request for comment.

In the state case against him, Mangione, 26, has been indicted on 11 counts, including first-degree murder and murder as a crime of terrorism.

He would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted on all of those counts.

Ivy League-educated Mangione was charged with murder on Dec. 9 for the killing of Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel before a company conference, following a five-day manhunt.

The killing of Thompson has ignited an outpouring of anger from Americans struggling to receive and pay for medical care.

Mangione suffered from chronic back pain that affected his daily life, according to friends and social media posts, though it is unclear whether his own health played a role in the shooting.

Some prominent critics of President-elect Donald Trump - including three officials in his first administration - are instructing their accountants to safeguard against the possibility of Trump ordering investigations into their tax records after he returns to the White House, according to interviews with Reuters.

Several American administrations in the 20th century misused the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. tax collection agency, to target opponents by ordering audits of their tax filings, historians say.

Six Trump critics, including two national security officials and one CIA officer in his first administration, told Reuters they fear a malicious IRS audit. Five are taking protective measures in response to the former president's vows to seek retribution against perceived enemies. "We are going through our finances with a fine-tooth comb," one of the former national security officials told Reuters.

On the campaign trail Trump repeatedly called for the prosecution of perceived enemies, including Democratic President Joe Biden and his family, prosecutors who brought criminal cases against him while he was out of power, and former intelligence officials who investigated alleged ties between his 2016 election campaign and Russia.

This week Trump filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register newspaper and its former top pollster, alleging interference in the Nov. 5 election.

While Trump has not spoken publicly about using the IRS as an instrument of revenge, Mark Zaid, a whistleblower attorney representing two of the Trump critics who spoke to Reuters, said many such clients fear that they could be targeted by the IRS with groundless audits. Even if no issue is found with their taxes, he said, an audit would force them to spend money on legal and accounting fees and stress them emotionally.

A Trump spokesman referred Reuters to an interview that aired on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Dec. 8.

'THEY WENT AFTER ME'

Asked if he wants to see investigations of his political enemies, Trump told the interviewer: "No, I don't think so." He then added: "If they were crooked, if they did something wrong, if they have broken the law, probably. They went after me. You know, they went after me and I did nothing wrong."

Since he won the election, Trump has been less vocal about going after his enemies. He has not named any of the individuals who spoke to Reuters.

The critics Reuters interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity. They fear that talking publicly will make them more likely to be targeted.

Another of the former national security officials told Reuters they have directed their accountant that there can be no "gray areas" in their tax returns and they must be audit-proof.

A Republican strategist said he and his accountant are in negotiations with the IRS over more than $100,000 in back taxes. "We are hoping to settle with the IRS before Trump takes office," the strategist told Reuters.

Fifteen other prominent Trump critics did not respond to interview requests or declined to be interviewed.

They include two senior officials in Democratic President Barack Obama's administration, former CIA director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James Clapper, and former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney.

Brennan headed the CIA during an intelligence community investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that concluded in a January 2017 report that the effort was aimed at swaying the vote to Trump.

A 2018 bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report and Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2019 reached similar conclusions and found contacts between Trump campaign aides and Russian officials. Both probes, however, found that the campaign did not conspire in Moscow's interference operations.

Last year, Trump reposted on his Truth Social platform a fabricated image of Brennan, Clapper and others behind bars with a caption suggesting they be tried for treason.

Cheney was vice-chair of the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters and voted to impeach the former president. During the election, she campaigned for his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a post on his Truth Social site on Wednesday, Trump said the FBI should investigate Cheney for her role in the Jan.6 investigation. "Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble."

A spokesperson for Cheney did not respond to requests for comment.

COMPLEX TAX SYSTEMS

The U.S. has one of the most complex tax systems in the world. But, in general, tax audits are rare. For all returns filed for tax years 2013 through 2021, the most recent long-term data available, the IRS audited just 0.44% of individual returns.

An audit typically requires a taxpayer to produce receipts, bank statements or other documents and can involve costly accountants' fees. A major audit can last months and even years with the possibility of a fine. In extremely rare cases - less than 400 in 2023 - people can be jailed for willful criminal tax evasion.

The IRS said in a statement to Reuters that they operated without political bias.

"Audits and collections are handled by career, non-partisan civil servants, and the IRS has safeguards in place to protect the exam and collection process," the IRS said.

Three of those who told Reuters they were worried about the prospect of heightened IRS scrutiny of their finances cited the cases of former FBI director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, who were selected for the most intrusive type of examination, called a National Research Program audit.

"Would I be surprised if I got an IRS audit? No." said the former CIA official.

The FBI leaders infuriated Trump during his first term over their handling of the Russia investigation. In his first term Trump repeatedly called both men corrupt and said they should be investigated. In June 2024, Trump reposted a warning by his former White House advisor Steve Bannon that McCabe should be worried about being targeted if Trump wins reelection.

Comey was subjected to an IRS audit in 2019, when Trump was still in office. McCabe was audited in 2021, after Trump left office, but when the IRS was still under the leadership of Trump's choice to head the agency, according to The New York Times.

The audits concluded that the IRS owed Comey and his wife $347, according to The New York Times. McCabe and his wife owed a small amount, which they paid, The Times reported.

A 2022 IRS inspector general's report cleared the IRS of wrongdoing in the Comey and McCabe audits. The IRS is barred by law from discussing individual audits.

NIXON AND THE IRS

Several previous U.S. administrations have used the IRS to seek retribution against political enemies, according to the 1989 book "A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics, and the IRS," by former New York Times investigative journalist David Burnham, who died in October.

Those presidents include Calvin Coolidge, a Republican, and Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat.

Richard Nixon, a Republican, also ordered the agency to audit people on his enemies' list - but the IRS commissioner at the time refused, said Timothy Naftali, a historian and former director of the Nixon Presidential Library in California.

"There's certainly a lot of people in the Nixon era who were quite convinced that Nixon had audited them," Naftali said.

Brian Davis, an accountant in Virginia who has handled audits for clients, said under U.S. laws put in place after Nixon left office a president cannot directly order an audit.

However, "the fact that Comey and McCabe got those audits, it certainly raised some questions," he added.

Comey and McCabe declined requests for interviews.

Jamie Raskin, a senior House Democrat who was a lead prosecutor in Trump's second impeachment, said many members of Congress are keeping a close eye on who Trump will target, and how.

"Everybody is clearly following the various threats being leveled against private citizens and public officials," Raskin said.