Trump Has Shocking New Demand as Government Hurtles Toward Shutdown

Trump floated completely abolishing the debt ceiling on Thursday, surprising Democrats and Republicans alike.

The shocking demand comes as the president-elect revealed his opposition to the bipartisan spending bill, bringing the federal government another step closer to a shutdown.

Trump told NBC News over the phone that it would be the “smartest thing” Congress could do.

“I would support that entirely.… The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,” Trump said.

He went on to assert that the debt ceiling is a frivolous, imaginary concept intended to scare people into abiding by it. “It doesn’t mean anything, except psychologically,” he said.

This isn’t necessarily new for Trump, who signed laws to lift the debt ceiling three separate times during his first term while also suggesting the debt ceiling be killed off in 2017. “It complicates things, it’s really not necessary,” he said of the debt ceiling then.

Still, it goes against the rest of his party, as Republicans often campaign against raising the debt ceiling, let alone abolishing it entirely. That’s not the case with Democrats. Pennsylvania Democratic Representative Brendan Boyle has been advocating for his Debt Ceiling Reform Act since 2023, a law that would weaken Congress’s ability to use shutdown as a threat to pass legislation. The bill currently has 55 Democratic Party co-sponsors.

Already, at least one Democrat has backed Trump’s demand.

“I agree with President-elect Trump that Congress should terminate the debt limit and never again govern by hostage taking,” Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote on X.

President-elect Donald Trump and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a peculiar exchange after the progressive lawmaker lost a bid to become her party’s ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. The interaction appeared laden with sarcasm but perhaps also revealed something deeper about shifts in American politics.

“Really too bad that AOC lost the Battle for the Leadership Seat in the Democrat Party. She should keep trying. Someday, she will be successful!” Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon. Ocasio-Cortez replied Wednesday, in a post followed by a laughing-crying emoji, “Damn you know it’s bad when even Trump is feeling bad for me.”

The 35-year-old Ocasio-Cortez lost her leadership bid to 74-year-old Representative Gerry Connolly—whose challenge to the popular young congresswoman was boosted by Democratic power broker former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Ocasio-Cortez’s loss was, for many, a sign that the Democratic Party learned few lessons from the 2024 election, remaining wedded to the sclerotic old guard and unwilling to embrace the popular change agents for whom America has an apparent appetite.

While Ocasio-Cortez appears to be taking the loss on the chin, a number of MAGA social media users accused her of failing to realize that Trump’s praise was tongue-in-cheek (apparently missing that the congresswoman’s reply was itself sarcastic).

But other users weren’t so sure Trump’s praise was insincere.

Corey Moss-Pech, a sociologist at Florida State University, tweeted, “What Donald Trump understands and Dem elites don’t is young people moving away from Dems is why he won. This is why he said this and why he said Dems couldn’t get student loans canceled. He wants young people disillusioned with Dems. And the party is happy to comply!”

Moss-Pech’s theory seems probable. In 2016 and 2020, Trump attempted to appeal to Bernie Sanders supporters disillusioned with the political establishment by calling the party’s nomination process rigged.

This election cycle, Trump heaped sincere praise on Ocasio-Cortez in a similar manner. And, notably, he chose to do so during what New York magazine called his “Gen-Z pivot.”

In his appearance on internet personality Adin Ross’s livestream in August, Trump was asked his opinion on a number of celebrities and politicians. When it came to Ocasio-Cortez, he initially said, “Fake,” but quickly changed course, veering into praise and comparing her favorably to former Argentine first lady Eva Perón.

“But in all fairness, look, but she knows it. She’s got a thing going. It’s a good thing—good thing for her,” Trump told Ross. “She’s got a spark that’s pretty amazing, actually. She’s got a good spark. So, I’ll change it. I’ll say spark.… She’s got a lot of sizzle.”

Following Election Day, Ocasio-Cortez solicited the opinions of voters who supported both herself and Trump in the 2024 election, seeking to understand split-ticket Trump-AOC voters. Many respondents indicated that they liked Trump and Ocasio-Cortez because both, to them, signified real change.

Rand Paul thinks the richest man in the world should be speaker of the House.

The Republican senator suggested on X that Musk take the position, after he helped kill Speaker Mike Johnson’s spending bill, pushing the federal government closer to shutdown.

“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Paul posted on Thursday. “Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk … think about it … nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds).”

The speaker of the House does not need to be an elected official, although it always has been in the past. Still, the likelihood of this MAGA fantasy coming to fruition seems low, as President-elect Trump himself told Fox News Thursday that Johnson would remain speaker so long as he “acts decisively and tough” on the upcoming spending package.

Even without the speakership, Musk’s influence on the president-elect and the greater Republican Party is undeniable. He has already been appointed to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency and has been a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago. His oversize role was called into question recently after he and Trump publicly disagreed on raising the debt ceiling.

“It’s not Donald Trump asking for this, it’s very clearly President Elon Musk asking for this,” Representative Dan Goldman told The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell. “The fact that Donald Trump has been completely AWOL during these negotiations to the point where only after Elon Musk publicly tweets about his displeasure about this budget deal, all of a sudden, Donald Trump, chief of staff to Elon Musk, comes trotting in and blows up the deal.”

Georgia’s Court of Appeals disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis Thursday from prosecuting the 2020 election interference case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants over a conflict of interest. 

Willis’s office filed a notice Thursday afternoon indicating that it intends to appeal the court’s decision, which, if taken up, would move the case to Georgia’s Supreme Court. 

Trump and eight of his 18 co-defendants filed an application with Georgia’s appeals court in March, asking it to reconsider Judge Scott McAfee decision to allow Willis to continue to prosecute the case after she was accused of having an improper relationship with her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade. McAfee had allowed her to stay on the grounds that she cut ties with Wade.

“After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” Judge E. Trention Brown wrote in the appeals court majority opinion. 

“The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring.”

“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” Brown wrote. 

The court affirmed, however, that the indictment against Trump should not be dismissed. 

“The appellants contend that the trial court erred in denying their motions to dismiss the indictment. The State responds that the appellants have failed to show that the trial court erred in finding that the appellants had not shown ‘that [their] due process rights have been violated or that the issues involved prejudiced [them] in any way,’” Brown wrote. 

He noted that dismissing the indictment would be an “extreme sanction” and should only be used for “unlawful government conduct.”

The Fulton County district attorney’s office indicted Trump, alongside 18 others, in 2023 on felony charges in a large-scale racketeering case for attempting to interfere in Georgia’s state election. It’s unclear what exactly Willis’s disqualification will mean for the case.

Trump’s lawyers had argued in a legal filing two weeks ago that the case ought to be tossed “well before” he was sworn in as president, and that both the state and district court “lack jurisdiction to entertain any further criminal process against President Trump as the continued indictment and prosecution of President Trump by the State of Georgia are unconstitutional.”

Fulton County Chief Senior Assistant District Attorney F. McDonald Wakeford hit back at the lawyers’ request, arguing that the “Appellant does not specify or articulate how the appeal—or indeed, any other aspect of this case—will constitutionally impede or interfere with his duties once he assumes office,” implying that the case would proceed regardless of Trump’s return to the White House.  

This story has been updated.

While Republicans are quickly falling in line over Elon Musk’s missives, Democrats are pointing out that the unelected billionaire bureaucrat may have actually eclipsed Donald Trump.

The president-elect didn’t deliver his opinion on the proposed continuing resolution until the end of the day Wednesday, when he demanded via his vassal JD Vance that Republicans raise the debt ceiling. Meanwhile Musk had already been ranting about it for hours online, threatening to unseat any Republicans who supported it.

During an appearance Wednesday night on MSNBC’s The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, Representative Dan Goldman pointed out that the president-elect was clearly no longer calling the shots.

“It’s not Donald Trump asking for this, it’s very clearly President Elon Musk asking for this. The fact that Donald Trump has been completely AWOL during these negotiations to the point where only after Elon Musk publicly tweets about his displeasure about this budget deal, all of a sudden, Donald Trump, chief of staff to Elon Musk, comes trotting in and blows up the deal,” Goldman said.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also called out the unelected billionaire for trying to steer the government into a shutdown.

“The US Congress this week came to an agreement to fund our government. Elon Musk, who became $200 BILLION richer since Trump was elected, objected,” Sanders wrote on X. “Are Republicans beholden to the American people? Or President Musk? This is oligarchy at work.”

Wisconsin Representative Gwen Moore asked her X followers, “Remind me who elected Elon Musk.”

Representative Don Beyer shared a screenshot of Musk agreeing with a post calling for the government to be shut down until Trump’s inauguration. “The richest man in the world says he wants to shut down the government, forcing millions of American workers—including our troops—to go without pay through the holidays,” wrote the Virginia Democrat. “Republicans are following his orders. This is insane.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson has come under heavy pressure to scrap the lengthy bill, and has been reportedly considering a “clean” bill that would not include many of the provisions that Democrats had fought for, such as $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers and $100 billion for disaster relief.

Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern posted a selfie Johnson had previously taken with a smiling Musk and Trump.

“Johnson negotiated w/ Democrats to keep the government open, then went back on his word (abandoning help for farmers & disaster victims) because, apparently, out of touch billionaire Elon Musk now calls the shots,” McGovern wrote. “At least we know who’s in charge. Grow a spine, Mr. Speaker!”

“President Musk” was predictably trending on X Thursday morning, which would maybe be impressive if Musk didn’t own the website that declared it.

It’s well documented that Trump, ever the showman, doesn’t much care to share the spotlight with members of his inner circle, so it’s possible that Musk may receive pushback for his promotion from billionaire bureaucrat czar of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to unelected president of the United States—how’s that for democracy?

On Wednesday, the conservative House Freedom Caucus introduced the Disaster Offset and Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Act, which sees the government’s budget slashed by over $100 billion—but conspicuously leaves military spending alone, which happens to be where Musk gets a hefty portion of his government contracts.

It looks like House Speaker Mike Johnson might be at risk of losing his job.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie said Wednesday that he would not vote for Johnson in the upcoming House speaker election in January, according to Punchbowl News’s Melanie Zanona.

Johnson came under fire Tuesday after introducing a 1,547-page continuing resolution to keep the government open until March. The behemoth bill, which includes $100 billion for disaster relief and opens the door to a pay bump for members of Congress, invited a firestorm from the small-government people, including technocrat billionaire Elon Musk and a slate of sycophantic Republicans.

That latter group includes Massie. The Kentucky Republican has seemingly become preoccupied by the potential goings-on of the Department of Government Efficiency, which plans to slash government spending in the trillions (while leaving the military budget completely untouched).

“DOGE is like the U.S. Constitution. It’ll be great … if you can get my fellow lawmakers to follow it,” Massie wrote in a post on X last week. When DOGE co-czar Vivek Ramaswamy said he’d “welcome” Massie’s help, the representative replied, “Count me in!”

Depending on how Johnson proceeds, and how willing Republican lawmakers are to jump off the bridge that is a government shutdown, the House speaker could find that he has trouble shoring up support to keep his gavel in the new year.

If the Republicans fail to select a House speaker in a timely manner, that could mean trouble for anyone actually interested in certifying the results of the presidential election on January 6, which the chamber is legally required to do—resulting in a constitutional crisis.

Johnson’s leadership team began discussing a second plan Wednesday, a “clean” bill that would cut many of the provisions of the massive stopgap measure, including funding for disaster relief, according to Politico.

With a Friday deadline to fund the government looming and Republican lawmakers at loggerheads over House Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposed stopgap spending bill, the conservative House Freedom Caucus is touting a plan to slash federal spending that conveniently leaves the bloated Pentagon budget untouched.

On Wednesday night, the House Freedom Caucus lampooned Johnson’s bill in a post on X, calling it a “Cramnibus” and enumerating demands that include a vote on the Disaster Offset and Government Efficiency Act, or DOGE Act: a piece of legislation introduced Tuesday evening by Republican Representative Chip Roy of Texas.

The DOGE Act would cut nondefense discretionary spending—which, per the Congressional Budget Office, “funds an array of federal activities in areas such as education, transportation, income security, veterans’ health care, and homeland security”—by roughly $114 billion, from just over $710 to $597 billion.

Stephen Semler, a policy analyst and co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, posted that the proposed DOGE Act would shrink these necessary programs, but curiously “reduces Pentagon spending by $0.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Roy appeared on Fox to criticize Johnson’s spending bill, which he said was too expensive.

“How is that a signal to the world that we’ve pulled our financial thing together as a country? It’s not,” Roy said, before promoting the DOGE Act as the solution. “We’ve offered all sorts of opportunities,” he added. “For example, we have a bill that I filed yesterday—it’s called the DOGE Act—that would cut nondefense spending by 13 percent to pre-Covid levels. That’s $113 billion. That would pay for all of this. We just wanted to get a vote on that.”

Responding to the DOGE Act, the antiwar organization Code Pink wrote on X, “Republicans are suddenly interested in ‘government efficiency,’ but they refuse to touch the Pentagon budget. The Pentagon is the ONLY government agency that has never passed an audit and can’t account for TRILLIONS in public resources.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson appears to be getting cyberbullied by “efficiency” czar Elon Musk, over his continuing resolution.

Johnson’s resolution, which was released Tuesday, grants $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, $100 billion for disaster relief, and enough money to keep the government open until March. It also opens the door for pay raises for members of Congress, among a slate of other things buried in the 1,547-page bill.

But not everyone is happy, especially Musk, the unelected billionaire who wants to slash government funding for pretty much everything except the military through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk wrote in a post on X Wednesday.

The right-wing technocrat’s threat is no joke, as his deep pockets and misinformation efforts were essential to Donald Trump’s victory in November. “Stop the steal of your tax dollars! Call your elected representatives now. They are trying to railroad this thing through today!” a miffed Musk posted on X an hour later.

Musk’s threats didn’t stop coming Wednesday, as he descended into a deluge of hysterics over what some internet trolls dubbed the “omnibus” bill, and Republicans have already begun cheering Musk on.

“In five years in Congress, I’ve been awaiting a fundamental change in the dynamic. It has arrived,” wrote North Carolina Representative Dan Bishop in a post on X. Bishop lost a bid to become his state’s attorney general but was rewarded for loyalty when Trump nominated him for a position in the Office of Management and Budget.

“By now, they should know that I mean what I say,” Musk replied.

From his slew of pissed-off posts, it seems that Musk is mostly mystified by the bill’s length and the fact that it may allow a pay bump for members of Congress.

“This is insane! This is NOT democracy! How can your elected representatives be asked to pass a spending bill where they had no input and not even enough time to read it!!??” Musk wrote in another post. Musk, the unelected bureaucrat, sure has a lot of opinions about what democracy is.

Did Musk have an alternative? No, of course not. His answer to the government funding running out is just to wait until Trump can arrive to save the day.

“No bills should be passed Congress until Jan 20, when @realDonaldTrump takes office. None. Zero,” Musk wrote, as if Trump’s very presence in the White House would magically fund the essential services the government offers.

Musk shared a post from one account called Wall Street Mav, which advocated to “just close down the govt until January 20th. Defund everything. We will be fine for 33 days.”

“YES,” Musk wrote in response. And so the wannabe co-president openly advocated for a government shutdown. Of course, it makes sense. Why struggle to cut government funding when you could simply advocate that the government stop funding itself?

During an interview with Newsmax Wednesday morning, Johnson had gushed over his direct line with Musk and co-efficiency czar Vivek Ramaswamy and indicated that they were all on the same page about the measure.

“I was on a text chain last night with Elon and Vivek about DOGE, cause I’m super excited about that, and I said, ‘Guys, these are the necessary things.’ They don’t like spending either, they said, ‘We know this is not you personally, Mr. Speaker,’ and we got to get through this,” Johnson said.

“Everybody understands the necessity,” he said. Do they? Because Musk seems to be doing his best to tank the stopgap measure via a major social media meltdown.

Donald Trump’s forthcoming presidency might not hinder the proceedings surrounding his Georgia election interference charges, according to an attorney for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

In documents filed to the court on Wednesday, Willis’s office urged an appeals court to reject the president-elect’s request to throw out the case in light of the Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity. But the filing also suggested that state prosecution isn’t necessarily beholden to federal statute. The lawyer argued that Trump’s legal representation had failed to demonstrate why state prosecution should be subject to a Justice Department mandate preventing the prosecution of sitting presidents, reported ABC News.

“Appellant does not specify or articulate how the appeal—or indeed, any other aspect of this case—will constitutionally impede or interfere with his duties once he assumes office,” Fulton County Chief Senior Assistant District Attorney F. McDonald Wakeford wrote.

“The notice makes mention of these concepts without actually examining them or applying them to the present circumstances,” Wakeford continued in the filing. “In other words, Appellant has not done the work but would very much like for this Court to do so.”

Willis’s office believes they have wiggle room to proceed, due to a lack of legal precedent related to court proceedings against sitting presidents.

“Given these vague statements, to simply invoke the phrase ‘federalism and comity concerns,’ without more, offers nothing of substance,” the filing said.

Trump and 18 of his allies face racketeering charges in Georgia for their participation in the fake elector conspiracy, including ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and former white House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Four individuals have already pleaded guilty, including the architect of the scheme Kenneth Chesebro, though he has since attempted to withdraw his plea.

Planned Parenthood’s public funding is, once again, on the line.

The Supreme Court Wednesday agreed to hear South Carolina’s case against the reproductive health nonprofit. Prosecutors argue that Planned Parenthood’s locations in Charleston and Columbia should not be able to participate in the state Medicaid program.

Those locations currently service hundreds of patients covered by Medicaid and offer many more services than just abortion care, including physicals, cancer screenings, STI testing, and birth control access, reported Reuters. The organization does not use the public funds for abortions but rather for family planning, according to the Associated Press. The case is scheduled to be argued in the spring.

“Pro-life states like South Carolina should be free to determine that Planned Parenthood and other entities that peddle abortion are not qualified to receive taxpayer funding through Medicaid,” John Bursch, an attorney with the right-wing Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the state, told the Associated Press.

This is the latest abortion-related case picked up by SCOTUS since the court overturned nationwide abortion access provided by Roe v. Wade in 2022. It could also be another win for conservative-leaning states who want to see Planned Parenthood stripped of all government money.

It’s the third time that South Carolina’s defunding case has reached the Supreme Court. The state initially moved to cut off Planned Parenthood from funding in 2018. In 2020, the nation’s highest judiciary rejected the state’s appeal. Three years later, the justices intervened in a lower court’s ruling, ordering it to reconsider the case after a relevant ruling had been issued by the nine-judge bench.

South Carolina has one of the most prohibitive abortion policies in the nation, restricting access after just six weeks, before most individuals know they’re pregnant and just one week before drug store pregnancy tests can detect pregnancy hormones in their earliest, and least reliable, window.

Planned Parenthood has said it gets less than $100,000 in South Carolina, and that Medicaid does not pay for abortions except in emergency events that compromise a pregnant person’s life or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.