Republicans Secretly Freaking Out Over Elon Musk’s Latest Announcement

Republicans may be glad that Elon Musk is gone from the White House, but they’re not happy he’s taking his money with him.

The world’s richest man said at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday that he believes he’s “done enough” when it comes to political spending.

“I think in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk said.

But that news was not welcomed by Republicans, who feared that they could be losing their “whale” before the midterm elections, per Politico.

Musk was Donald Trump’s top financial backer in the 2024 election, spending at least $250 million in the final months of the president’s campaign after Trump was shot in July.

But Trump wasn’t the only beneficiary of Musk’s immense wealth: America’s top political donor also dropped north of $3 million on a key Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April, which much to the party’s chagrin saw the Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel lose by double digits. (Musk-backed groups, including America PAC and Rebuilding America’s Future, spent another $19 million to sponsor Schimel.)

The unpopular Tesla CEO became a central figure in the Wisconsin race, and it’s unclear if his desperate and sometimes illegal attempts to help Schimel win—including bribing voters to ideologically side with the conservative candidate—did more harm than good at the voting booth. Regardless, Schimel’s poor performance has led political observer to wonder if the entire experience left a bad taste in the billionaire’s mouth.

If it did, it would come at an especially inopportune time for Republicans, who are quietly hoping that there’s still enough favor in the tank to influence Musk to support Winsome Earle-Sears for Virginia governor, who “faces a major cash disadvantage against Democrat Abigail Spanberger,” according to Politico.

Republicans had come to rely on Musk’s seemingly endless cashflow. In the wake of the November election, Musk declared that his super PACs would “play a significant role in primaries.” In the following months, Musk threatened to use his money to fund primary challengers to Trump’s agenda and go after Democrats, and that he would be preparing “for the midterms and any intermediate elections, as well as looking at elections at the district attorney level.”

If Musk sticks to his word this time, Republicans can wave that cash goodbye. Still, some conservatives are crossing their fingers that the unlikable billionaire will return to party politics—along with his open faucet of cash.

“I believe he means it right now,” GOP consultant Josh Novotney told Politico. “But every election is unique. So he may be motivated to be active again in the future.”

Democrats, meanwhile, don’t expect Musk’s influence to dissipate all at once. Instead, strategists on the other side of the aisle predict that Musk’s money will begin to flow through dark channels that will make it harder to track his influence.

“I believe he will start moving his money in the background, through nonprofits,” Pat Dennis, president of major Democratic super PAC American Bridge, told Politico. “It’ll be a lot more of that now.”

Disney and ABC News are attempting to broaden the scope of The View to decenter politics, following increased scrutiny from President Donald Trump.

Multiple sources told The Daily Beast that ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic had met with the executive producer of the daytime talk show, as well as the panel of hosts, to ask them to tone down their discussion of politics.

Hosts Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin, and Ana Navarro have been steadfast critics of the Trump administration. Karamehmedovic suggested that the hosts focus less on political discussions, emphasizing the well-rated episodes that focused more on celebrity guests. While it wasn’t an order, the message was clear. But the hosts weren’t interested in caving to the pressure.

One source familiar with the meeting told the Beast that the hosts had fought back against Karamehmedovic, saying, “This is what our audience wants. Isn’t it gonna look kind of bad if we’re all of a sudden not talking about politics?”

The hosts noted that some viewers specifically sought them out for their political commentary. Griffin served as a White House aide during Trump’s first administration and has provided searing rebukes of her former boss’s current antics in the White House.

The women did not bend and decided the request was “silly” and that “they were just going to keep doing their thing,” according to one source.

Multiple sources said that Navarro, a Republican host who spoke in support of Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention, also spoke to Disney’s CEO Bob Iger during the company’s Upfront presentation day last week, and the executive told her once again to tone down the political rhetoric.

Iger has become a regular target for Trump. Earlier this week Trump threatened “Fake ABC News” and called out Iger for coverage of the Qatari jet scandal. Earlier this month, the president posted on Truth Social criticizing ABC News host Martha Raddatz’s coverage of Pope Leo XIV’s selection, and specifically called out Iger to “do something about the losers and haters he’s got on his low rated shows.”

House Republicans passed Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget early Thursday, advancing a reconciliation package to the Senate that had been jammed through committee hearings held largely in the dead of night.

But in the process of sneaking the budget to the upper chamber, Republicans tacked on an unexpected and dangerous provision that had nothing to do with Medicaid, overtime tax, or reducing the federal deficit. Instead, they added a detail that would hamper federal courts’ ability to “hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders,” according to Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

The addendum follows repeat losses for the president in the court system. Since January, the judiciary has been the only branch of government standing in Trump’s way when it comes to enacting his executive orders, perhaps most notably on his attempts to end constitutional rights such as birthright citizenship and habeas corpus.

“Now is not the time to limit the ability of federal courts to enforce their judicial orders,” Chemerinsky implored in a column on JustSecurity earlier this week.

A Pew Research Center survey from April indicated that the vast majority of the American public—Republicans and Democrats—want the Trump administration to end an action if it’s deemed illegal by a federal court. But the provision in the reconciliation bill would make that goal all the more difficult by retroactively requiring a “security”—such as a bond—to be paid by a plaintiff before an order is issued.

That detail would effectively render countless court orders, across the board, unenforceable, according to Chemerinsky, since “federal courts rarely have required plaintiffs to post bonds.”

“Even when the government had been found to violate the Constitution, nothing could be done to enforce the injunctions against it,” Chemerinsky noted. “In fact, the greatest effect of adopting the provision would be to make countless existing judicial orders unenforceable. If enacted, judges will be able to set the bond at $1 so it can be easily met. But all existing judicial orders where no bond was required would become unenforceable.”

The budget passed by just a hair Thursday morning, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in voting against it and 215 Republicans voting in favor.

After two Israeli Embassy employees were shot and killed on the streets of Washington, D.C., Wednesday night, Republican Representative Randy Fine responded by suggesting Gaza should be nuked.

Fine was asked on Fox News Thursday morning how the shooting would affect the ceasefire the U.S. has proposed to Hamas and Israel to end Israel’s 19-month bombardment of Gaza, resulting in the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. Fine’s response was to blame “Muslim terror” and compare Palestinians to the Nazis and imperial Japan during World War II.

“The fact of the matter is the Palestinian cause is an evil one,” Fine said. “We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here. There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this culture, and it needs to be defeated.”

The bigoted answer from the freshman lawmaker is only the latest example of his prejudice toward Palestinians and Muslims. Last year, when Fine was running for a vacant Florida congressional seat, he threatened Muslim Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar by warning them on X that the “Hebrew Hammer” was coming and telling them to “consider leaving before I get there. #BombsAway.”

Fine has remarked in the past that “we have a Muslim problem in America” and that “while many Muslims are not terrorists, they are the radicals, not the mainstream.” At a minimum, Fine should be censured for his remarks, as Tlaib was censured for much less by House Republicans. But Fine’s GOP colleagues have engaged in similar bigotry against Palestinians, and several others have also called for nuking Gaza. Fine is unlikely to get even the slightest rebuke from any Republican leader, let alone President Trump, who endorsed him last year.

Four Supreme Court Justices wanted to make it legal for taxpayer dollars to fund religious charter schools.

The Supreme Court produced a 4–4 deadlock on Thursday on the question of whether an Oklahoma religious school could take part in the state’s publicly funded charter school programs. While the decision is unsigned, thanks to the even split, it is likely that Chief Justice Roberts sided with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan in opposition to the measure, while conservatives Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito likely voted in favor of allowing religious charter schools access to public funds. Justice Amy Comey Barret recused herself due to attorneys from her alma mater, Notre Dame Law School, representing the religious schools.

The deadlock leaves in place an Oklahoma ruling that a Catholic public charter school is unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court sidestepped the question, deferring to the lower court decision.

The four judges who voted in favor of the measure seem to be ignoring that earmarking public funds for religious schools is a clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. This clause prohibits the government from “establishing” a religion and from blurring the lines between separation of church and state.

“The fact that the Court split 4–4 in this case, with Justice Barrett recused, is not especially surprising,” said CNN Supreme Court Analyst Steve Vladeck. “The surprise is that the court had agreed to take this case up, with Justice Barrett recused, in the first place. That had led some folks to wonder if Chief Justice Roberts might be willing to join the other four Republican appointees in favor of public funding for religious charter schools. Today’s affirmance without an opinion suggests that he isn’t, at least for now.”

* This story has been updated to remove references to the Lemon test.