Donald Trump’s first term in office was a shitshow on Capitol Hill. Congress was constantly turned upside down with sudden missives from the president. (In 2018, he even egged on the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.) Based on the past week, those will be considered the good old days in Trump’s second term.
At the dawn of unified rule in Washington, Republicans couldn’t even agree on whether to keep the lights on. What had been a relatively formulaic affair, a bipartisan deal struck by Speaker Mike Johnson to avert a government shutdown, turned instead into 48 hours of pure chaos. Without the support of dissident House conservatives, he would need to work with Democrats to craft a bill that would receive the support of two-thirds of the entire House. By Wednesday morning, both sides had reached a compromise bill that kept the government running into March and crammed in a host of other priorities, including disaster relief, funding for farmers, as well as funding for childhood cancer research, new restrictions on American investments in China, and a ban on revenge and deepfake pornography. This was always going to spark anger from hard-right Republicans, but then Elon Musk started tweeting about it.
The world’s richest man, owner of X, and key Trump ally posted hundreds of times about how the legislation was a wasteful abomination, often making false claims like that it would fund “bioweapons labs.” He wanted other provisions stripped out and even threatened to bankroll primary challenges against Republicans who supported the bill, starting a panic among Republicans. Not to be outdone, Trump weighed in against it, adding his demand they increase the debt limit too. (Without further action, the government is expected to breach the debt ceiling by the middle of 2025.)
Republicans immediately balked and Johnson came back with a stripped down bill that did what Trump and Musk wanted, keeping the government open, providing aid for disaster victims and farmers, while also preventing the government from hitting the debt ceiling until 2027. Trying to steamroll the opposition, Trump threatened to primary any Republican who supported a bill that didn’t include a debt limit increase, specifically targeting Chip Roy, a senior member of the restive, right-wing Freedom Caucus. Debt limit increases have long been anathema to hard right Republicans concerned about the deficit. Only last year, an effort to raise the debt ceiling under then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy sparked a crisis that required Democrats to bail him out and sowed the seeds of his ouster in the fall.
“Why would I say that the right thing to do is make sure you don’t have a debt ceiling, and the sweetener is spending more money?” said Rich McCormick of Georgia of the new proposal on Thursday. “As a conservative that is insulting to me.”
With Musk and Trump now on board, Johnson pushed forward with a vote, only to see 38 Republicans defy their leaders and vote no, along with all but two Democrats. The next morning, Republicans huddled for hours in hopes of reaching a satisfactory resolution that would not only fund the government but let everyone get home for Christmas. At one point according to Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Johnson was asking members to raise their hand to signify which legislative path that they preferred. The compromise Johnson put forward stripped the debt limit increase from the bill, among other things, but included a closed-door promise to House conservatives to pair a future debt limit increase with $2.5 trillion in long term budget cuts.
Speaking after the meeting, Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin expressed his sympathy for the speaker. “I think the equivalent of what Mike Johnson has had to do over the last couple weeks is like trying to eat a live porcupine,” he said. “The porcupine has been consumed.”
For Democrats, dumping the debt-limit hike Trump craved was sufficient to win their support for a less expansive bill than they had negotiated before. They had denied the president-elect a legislative win he publicly demanded and kept the government open. While Democrats were dismayed to lose various provisions in the original deal, none of them was worth shutting down the government over. All fell into line on Friday night and supported the bill.
In contrast, 34 Republicans, most from the party’s hard right, did not. There were idiosyncratic reasons for some to object, but there were 20 members returning in 2025 who had objected to both bills, voting no on both Thursday and Friday. It showed the outlines of just how big the rump of dissident Republicans could be in the next Congress to frustrate Johnson’s ambitions.
Musk took a victory lap on Friday night on X, celebrating that his constant posting had drastically changed to the bill. “Your actions turned a bill that weighed pounds into a bill that weighed ounces!” he posted, which included stripping out the provision about China, where he has major investments through Tesla. Democrats immediately made Musk out to be the new Republican puppet-master. “You have a unelected wannabe oligarch who has made billions of dollars since this election . . and they cave to him and almost shut down the government for that,” said Brad Schneider of Illinois, who also called out the billionaire’s posts that same day in support of a far right political party in Germany. “And put those two together, and it’s even worse. So this is one where two wrongs make a bigger concern.”
Though a shutdown was averted, the fight leaves House Republicans deeply uncertain over their prospects over the next two years. When asked if he had any worries about what would happen with an even smaller majority in January, Mike Simpson of Idaho sarcastically predicted “it’s gonna be smooth. We’re all gonna be together.” With Matt Gaetz’s resignation to dodge what is expected to be an ugly report from the Ethics Committee, Republicans can only afford to lose one vote in the House.
The next major piece of business will be the swearing in of the new Congress on January 3, the same day the House must pick its speaker. Johnson, who narrowly won the first time after multiple rounds and candidates, will face a difficult challenge holding on to the gavel. Thomas Massie, a gadfly Republican from Kentucky, has already said that he would not vote for Johnson and other Republicans have expressed dissension with his leadership, which has relied on Democratic votes for critical legislation. Trump’s favor might save him though, at least in the short term. “Remember, if we don’t have a speaker, then we can’t certify the election, all right?” said Carlos Gimenez of Florida. “And I think somebody else is going to be really upset about that.”
And even if Johnson manages to avoid defenestration on January 3, he still has to manage a paper thin majority that will range from Mike Lawler, who is expected to run for governor of New York as a moderate, to Marjorie Taylor Greene who recently floated Musk for Speaker. Northeastern moderates will want to restore the deduction for state and local taxes, fiscal conservatives will want to cut entitlement spending to reduce the deficit, defense hawks will want to increase military spending. It is impossible to satisfy all of these impulses, let alone on wider divides such as Ukraine and abortion. A diminished Johnson, still trying to cling on to the gavel, will have to steer his conference around all of these pitfalls in order for Republicans to pass any legislation of substance. A major early bill planned for the cherished conservative goals of tightening immigration and slashing taxes now seems far more perilous to achieve, especially given Johnson won’t be able to rely on Democratic support. The debt-ceiling fight will reemerge in the spring. And through it all, there will be two impulsive billionaires ready to sic their devoted followers on Republicans who displease them.
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