The president-elect and the world’s richest man combined Wednesday to smash a short-term spending compromise orchestrated by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to keep the government open until early in Trump’s new term.
The stop-gap measure is packed with nearly $100 billion in aid for Americans hit by multiple national disasters, economic aid for farmers, a federal commitment to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and a criminalization of revenge porn.
But the Trump-Musk blocking maneuver plunged the capital into one of its classic year-end crises, pitched Johnson’s hopes of keeping his job into extreme doubt and offered a preview of the chaos that may churn in Trump’s second term.
