Elon Musk tries to nuke Trump's GOP tax plan

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Elon Musk tries to nuke Trump's GOP tax plan | The Excerpt
On Thursday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY Senior Congress Reporter Riley Beggin has the latest after Elon Musk launched an attack on President Donald Trump's sweeping tax and policy bill. A new analysis finds nearly 11 million Americans would lose insurance under Trump's tax bill. Trump bans travel from twelve nations. The Education Department says Columbia University fails to meet accreditation standards. Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed retaliation against Ukraine during a call Wednesday. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise tells us how a recent Ukraine drone attack shows familiar-looking drones can be terrifying weapons.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Thursday, June 5th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, Elon Musk tries to nuke Trump's tax plan, plus we take a look at this week's travel ban, and let's talk about drones.
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An explosive tweet fired off by President Donald Trump ally Elon Musk yesterday sent a tremor through the White House as it aims to shore up senate support for Trump's tax bill. For more on that story, my colleague Dana Taylor spoke with USA TODAY senior Congress reporter, Riley Beggin.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for coming on the show, Riley.
Riley Beggin:
Of course.
Dana Taylor:
Let's start with this very strongly worded tweet for Musk. What did it say exactly, and what's the reaction been so far?
Riley Beggin:
What he posted on his platform X is that his followers, which there's more than 220 million of them, should call their lawmakers and urge them to, quote, "Kill the bill." This is a reference to this sweeping GOP tax bill that Republicans are working on. It's already passed the House, and it's here in the Senate. A lot of things still to work on here, so it's certainly a bomb that's been thrown in the middle of this.
Dana Taylor:
This comes on the heels of some strongly worded tweets from Musk Tuesday. What happened there?
Riley Beggin:
On Tuesday, he called the bill a, quote, "disgusting abomination," also very strong words, and suggested that Republicans who voted for the package should face primary challenges. For context, Elon Musk has put a lot of money into political races over the last cycle. He's said he's done with it, but this may indicate that he wants back in. The other thing I'll mention is that, when he says all the Republicans who voted for this package should face primary challenges, that is all of them. All the Republicans in the House voted for this bill except for just two. So it's certainly a sweeping demand.
Dana Taylor:
Musk, on the one hand, has been a huge help to Trump funneling around $300 million into his campaign. Then on the other, he's now leading the criticism surrounding this big budget bill. What are you hearing on this front?
Riley Beggin:
It's definitely been a surprise to Republican lawmakers who've been working on this and have been working relatively closely with him and with the Trump administration on cutting back government spending. House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Wednesday that he thinks that Musk is, quote, "flat wrong," and he seemed really surprised by the comments. Johnson said he reached out to Musk and wasn't able to get through. Then Musk is responding to this in a public platform. He seemed a little taken aback. At the same time, I'll say the rank and file lawmakers and senators have said, "The people who care about this is the media. This doesn't matter to us. Elon Musk is not a legislator. In the end we will do what's right for our constituents."
Dana Taylor:
Riley, as you mentioned, at the end of the day, Musk can say only once he's technically no longer a special employee with the Trump administration. Bottom line it for us here. Could Musk's social posts actually impact the Senate's consideration of Trump's budget priorities?
Riley Beggin:
I think the biggest impact you're going to see potentially from Elon Musk's commentary here is making those Republicans who already feel that this package is too expensive more resolute in their objections. There are senators who are considering this legislation right now, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin or Rand Paul of Kentucky, who have drawn pretty bold red lines saying, "This is too expensive. I'm not going to vote for it unless we can cut the amount of spending that's in this package." So we can expect potentially them to dig in even further, be less swayed when knowing that the richest man on Earth is on their side. But in the end, we'll have to see. They can lose three votes in the Senate and still get it through. So if everyone else hangs together, it may be just fine for them.
Dana Taylor:
Riley Beggin is the senior Congress and campaigns reporter for USA TODAY. It's always good to have you on The Excerpt, Riley.
Riley Beggin:
Thank you for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said about 10.9 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage through 2034 under Trump's tax bill, including more than a million undocumented residents. The legislation that cleared the House would require non-disabled Americans on Medicaid to work at least 80 hours per month or qualify for an exemption, like being a student or caregiver. The bill also would strip coverage to immigrants who get Medicaid through state-funded programs. The CBO had earlier estimated nearly four million people would lose health insurance coverage through 2034 if Congress did not extend COVID-19 pandemic era tax credits that have made ACA plans more affordable for consumers.
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It was another day of whiplash news out of the Trump administration. Trump issued a travel ban blocking the entry of foreign nationals from 12 countries into the United States. He cited national security risks posed by citizens of the targeted nations, which include several Middle Eastern and African countries. He also partially restricted the entry of foreign nationals from seven other nations. Those under the full ban range from Afghanistan to Haiti and Sudan. In his announcement, Trump pointed to last weekend's fiery assault on pro-Jewish demonstrators in Colorado. The suspect is a native of Egypt who came to the US on a tourist visa in late 2022 and stayed after the visa expired. Trump's move revives a controversial policy from his first term that is likely to be challenged in court.
Meanwhile, in separate news, the Education Department yesterday sent a letter urging Columbia University's accreditor to rescind its century-old accreditation status, which the Ivy League school relies on to receive federal financial aid funding. The announcement comes as President Trump's administration continues to intensify its pressure on selective universities over accusations of rampant antisemitism and liberal bias.
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President Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin told him during a call yesterday that a plan to retaliate against Ukraine's recent surprise drone attack that destroyed dozens of Russian bombers. Trump in a post on Truth Social described the 75-minute phone call with Putin as a good conversation but added it was not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace. The call was the first time Trump has spoken to Putin since he publicly warned the Russian president last week that he was playing with fire by attacking Ukraine amid peace talks. For more on Russia and Ukraine's peace negotiation process as well as NATO's role in that and other critical security concerns gripping Europe, be sure to tune in today beginning at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time when you can hear my colleague Dana Taylor's conversation with Council on Foreign Relations' senior fellow, Max Boot.
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A recent Ukraine drone attack shows that familiar-looking drones can be terrifying weapons. I talked about drones with USA TODAY national correspondent Elizabeth Weise. Thanks as always for joining me, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Happy to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
Just starting with what we've seen recently in Europe, how have we seen drones used as part of warfare there?
Elizabeth Weise:
People have been using drones in warfare for decades. In fact, the US first used them in Afghanistan in 2001. But things really took a major, major turn probably about two years ago in the war in Ukraine. After Russia invaded Ukraine, it was clear that Ukraine just didn't have the resources, the backing, the armament that Russia did. So they began to iterate on the fly, and one of the things they started working with is the use of drones to do surveillance, to send out bombs, and as we saw earlier this week, to perform a major attack that destroyed dozens of Russian bombers deep with inside Russia. So we've really entered a new phase.
Taylor Wilson:
Beth, I think folks have different ideas of drones in their head when they hear that word. How different are war drones like these from play drones?
Elizabeth Weise:
That is what surprised me, and that was kind of the impetus behind the story is that if you like to watch action movies, and I certainly do, you tend to think of drones as they may be a little smaller than a car and they're an unmanned aerial vehicle that somebody someplace else is piloting and they carry bombs or whatever, but they're big, they're an expensive piece of military technology. What's changed is that the drones that the Ukrainians are using, and that increasingly the Russians are using against the Ukrainians, they're just off-the-shelf drones that you could buy. People buy them online. You can go into a store and buy them. A lot of them come from China.
But then what the Ukrainians started doing is they would take these off-the-shelf drones, which are pretty sophisticated in and of themselves, and they would write new software for them. They would fabricate new components for them. They're doing a lot of 3D printing to allow them to do different things. So if you were to be in a battlefield and you saw one going by, it wouldn't look all that different from the ones you might see if you're out at the beach and somebody's got a drone up taking pictures of the water. That actually was a big surprise to me.
Taylor Wilson:
Considering that, Beth, you spoke with one expert who said the nature of warfare has transformed. How does the US military approach this technology?
Elizabeth Weise:
The US has been concerned about drones and working on the concept of both protecting people against drones and how you use them on the battlefield for a couple of decades. There actually was a congressional report that just came out April 1st looking into this: How can we protect ourselves against drones, and how might they be used both in military settings and in terror settings? So people are thinking about them. I think in the US, the big concern is that they might become an avenue for terrorists to attack. That hasn't really happened yet, but it is something that people are thinking about.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, of course, drones are being used for all kinds of nonviolent, non-war related purposes. What are some of the innovations we've seen, Beth, and how are these things becoming a bigger part of our daily lives?
Elizabeth Weise:
That's the thing to remember is that here, and across much of the world, drones are really remarkable technology that make all these fantastic things not only available but cheap in ways that you never could have imagined. I first started seeing them when I was covering agriculture about 20 years ago. Farmers were just thrilled because you could send a drone out into a field to inspect it without having to walk through it or drive something through it. You can use them to inspect power lines, bridges, buildings. Insurance companies use them because, especially if there's been a claim maybe after a big storm, you send out drones, you can look all over a building. If you've looked at Zillow or any of the real estate sites and you see those gorgeous images of coming up on and over a house so that you can see its gardens, that's all shot with drones.
They're used in search and rescue operations. We use them actually in the military. In fact, the people that I talked to at Virginia Tech, which has the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership program, they actually trained USA TODAY videographers 10 years ago in how to use drones to capture footage of big things like floods, forest fires. I remember when our photographers first started going out with drones and you had to call in a special photographer who had the training who could take a drone up, you got these incredible shots. Now you see them everywhere. So it's a remarkable innovation. Far from being a toy, they're just a multi-million dollar industry that has made a lot of things better. But like all things, humans can always find a way to make them deadly.
Taylor Wilson:
Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with USA TODAY. Thanks, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Happy to be here.
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Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. If you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.