Billionaire Elon Musk targeted congressional Republican leaders Thursday, attacking Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader John Thune on social media over the cost of Donald Trump’s domestic agenda after openly breaking with the president.

Musk shared two previous social media posts from Johnson and Thune where the GOP leaders had voiced concern about the budget deficit and national debt and added: “Where is the Mike Johnson of 2023!?” and “Where is the John Thune of 2020??”

Musk, the former Department of Government Efficiency chief, has blasted the megabill over recent projections it would grow the budget deficit. A Johnson spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday, though Johnson said earlier Thursday that Musk was a “good friend” and that they’d planned to speak.

Thune sidestepped a question about the feud Thursday. “I don’t have an observation about that,” he told reporters when asked about Musk’s attacks.

Musk, a GOP megadonor, has stepped up his attacks on the megabill in recent days and told his millions of social media followers to “kill the bill.” He’s also threatened to target or primary Republican incumbents in the midterm elections.

Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley said he wants to see changes to a provision in the House-passed “big, beautiful bill” that could limit judges’ ability to enforce court orders.

Under the provision, U.S. courts can’t use federal funds to enforce a contempt order unless the party bringing the case gives a so-called security — or posts a bond.

Democrats planned to challenge the measure under the so-called Byrd rule, which limits provisions that can be included in reconciliation legislation to those that impact the budget. They and some legal scholars claim the provision would hamstring the federal court system and weaken judges’ power at a time when the Trump administration is already acting with disregard for the law.

“If it does meet the Byrd test, there needs to be some changes,” Grassley (R-Iowa) said. He declined to provide further details.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune sounded supportive Thursday of the House-passed 10-year moratorium on enforcing state and local artificial intelligence laws, but conceded it remained an open question if it would comply with the chamber’s rules.

“That issue got fairly carefully litigated in the House,” Thune said in response to a question from POLITICO. “The goal is to make sure that we aren’t losing the race in AI and making sure that we have a policy that’s consistent.”

Still, when asked whether the moratorium would comply with the chamber’s Byrd rule, which blocks anything but budgetary issues from inclusion in reconciliation, Thune said: “We’ll see.”

Thune’s measured support for the state AI law freeze was his first comment on the provision that has triggered opposition from some Republicans, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), as well as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

Democrats, led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), have vowed to challenge the provision as the legislation advances. House Speaker Mike Johnson has defended it.

House Oversight Committee Democrats have once again failed to subpoena Elon Musk to testify on Capitol Hill.

The panel rejected the minority party’s request Thursday morning for the former DOGE chief to appear before lawmakers in a party-line, 21-20 votes. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), the committee’s acting ranking member, argued that Musk, DOGE and the Trump administration threatened “the privacy and security of all Americans,” and Musk should answer to the American people for actions over the last several months.

“Since President Trump’s inauguration, he has given Elon Musk free reign to terrorize our civil servants,” said Lynch, appearing before a number of giant posters, including one that read, “Was Elon Musk on drugs when he stole your private data?”

Lynch continued, “Musk has been operating without any oversight whatsoever, while posing a very real risk of violating security and privacy laws.”

After Lynch made his request for a vote on a motion to subpoena Musk, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) — who was presiding over committee business in the absence of chair James Comer (R-Ky.) — called up the motion as a voice vote, then claimed the “nays” prevailed. But Democrats cried foul, as they outnumbered Republicans present at the start of a scheduled hearing on the federal government’s use of artificial intelligence, and thus would have had the support to adopt the motion.

Democrats then demanded a roll call vote, forcing Mace to ultimately suspend the hearing while Republicans trickled into the hearing room to participate. During that long delay, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who is running against Lynch and two other colleagues to be the ranking member on the committee to succeed the late-Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), asked whether the panel was not voting on the motion because Republicans knew they would lose. Mace argued that the panel was simply preparing for a recorded vote.

Oversight Committee Democrats previously tried to subpoena Musk months ago, with that vote also failing along party lines. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who notably missed that initial vote, was present this time around.

Pity Speaker Mike Johnson this morning.

Not only does he have to deal with Elon Musk trying to sabotage the “big, beautiful bill,” Johnson is now staring down Senate tax writers who are doubling down on threats to scale back his carefully negotiated deal to raise the state and local tax deduction cap.

Senate Finance Republicans left the White House on Wednesday without decisions on key tax provisions in the bill. But two things are clear: Senators want to make President Donald Trump’s business tax incentives permanent, not just extend them for five years as the House did. And to help pay the roughly half-trillion-dollar price, they’re ready to carve up the House’s deal to quadruple the SALT deduction limit.

SALT Republicans don’t have the same leverage in the Senate that they do in the House — because they simply don’t exist in the other chamber.

“There’s not a single [Republican] senator from New York or New Jersey or California,” said Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). That means there’s not much appetite “to do $353 billion for states that, basically, the other states subsidize.”

But Senate Republicans are keenly aware of the House’s precarious math problem. If they send a package back to the House with significant SALT changes, it could derail the timeline for Trump’s biggest legislative priority.

“We are sensitive to the fact that, you know, the speaker has pretty narrow margins, and there’s only so much that he can do to keep his coalition together,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) told reporters. “At the same time it wouldn’t surprise people that the Senate would like to improve on their handiwork.”

Where’s Trump? The president on Wednesday didn’t directly tell lawmakers not to meddle with the House’s SALT deal. But he, too, is playing the numbers game. “He said, ‘You do this, do we lose three votes here? If you do that, do you lose three votes here?’” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told reporters after the meeting.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune also conceded the difficult calculus on SALT, telling reporters “we understand that it’s about 51 and 218” and “we will work with our House counterparts and the White House” to move the megabill.

There’s been a breakthrough elsewhere, though: With Commerce preparing to release its draft bill Thursday, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told POLITICO on Wednesday that he’s satisfied a planned spectrum auction will protect national security, with specific frequencies used by the military shielded through 2034.

One potential wrinkle: Rounds later suggested to POLITICO that the deal that was still being finalized Wednesday could look to free up other frequencies “that the business community is going to be concerned with.”

What else we’re watching:

— Appropriations moving: Speaker Johnson plans to meet Thursday with top GOP appropriators about what funding totals to use in drafting the dozen government funding bills they’ll write this summer. House Appropriations is forging ahead with markups Thursday on two of the 12 bills, even before GOP leaders and his dozen subcommittee chairs — “the cardinals” — have settled on numbers for the full slate.

— Senate Banking meeting: Senate Banking Republicans will propose provisions that would change the pay scale for Federal Reserve employees and zero out funding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of the Senate version of the GOP megabill, according to a committee staff memo obtained by POLITICO. Banking Republicans are scheduled to meet Thursday morning to discuss the proposal.

— Lutnick on the Hill (again): Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is back on Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify in front of House Appropriations. Expect him to be back in the hot seat after Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) grilled him Wednesday over the Trump administration’s tariffs.

Jasper Goodman, John Hendel and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Lawmakers seem to have reached a breakthrough over language for a spectrum provision in the GOP’s tax and spending megabill, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told POLITICO Wednesday.

The House proposal aimed to open up 600 MHz of spectrum for commercial use, alarming national security hawks, who warned that it would encroach on important military and intelligence frequencies. Rounds, a senior Senate Armed Services Committee member who was among those who pushed back, said on Wednesday that, per this emerging agreement, key spectrum bands would be protected from the auctions through 2034.

“It’s looking better than it has in the past, and I think we’re going to be able to get everything that we had concerns with,” he said, cautioning that the deal was still pending. “Final paper I have not seen, but it looks good.”

Asked earlier Wednesday about Rounds’ threats a day earlier to vote against legislation that doesn’t address his spectrum concerns, Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said, “I am confident we’ll get it done.”

The secretive board overseeing the Capitol Police has narrowed its search down to two choices for the next chief of the department: former Phoenix Police Chief Michael Sullivan and former Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the private deliberations. The people said a final decision was expected imminently.

Before serving as interim in Phoenix, Sullivan had stints at the Baltimore Police Department as deputy commissioner of compliance and deputy commissioner of operations, according to his Linkedin profile. He’s also been a deputy chief at the Louisville Metro Police Department.

Alles, a former Marine Corps major general, served as the director of the Secret Service during President Donald Trump’s first term before departing the role in April 2019 as part of a department-wide shakeup. Trump derisively referred to Alles as “Dumbo,” the New York Times reported at the time. Since then, he served in a senior role at the Department of Homeland Security until March of this year, according to Alles’ LinkedIn profile.

Notably, the Capitol Police Board appears poised to go outside the department for a chief yet again, passing over Sean Gallagher, the interim head of the department and assistant chief, who has been with the department for more than two decades and served in a wide variety of roles across the agency. Gallagher was part of the leadership team during the Jan. 6 insurrection, weathered a no-confidence vote by the union and eventually worked to help stabilize the agency after a time of tectonic tumult.

The union signaled it was opposed to Gallagher’s selection as interim chief, with union chair Gus Papathanasiou saying in a Tuesday statement: “We’re astounded the Board would even consider [Gallagher] for the role. The Capitol Police force cannot continue to see problem officers ‘fail upwards’, winning promotions instead of demotions commensurate with their actions.”

The Capitol Police Board is composed of Senate Sergeant at Arms Jennifer Hemingway, House Sergeant at Arms William McFarland and Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin. They are tasked with replacing former chief Thomas Manger, who retired last month after four years at the helm.

The board’s potential choice of another outside candidate, instead of promoting internally within the Capitol Police ranks, signals residual doubts about those who were in leadership roles for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“They’re going to have to learn about our mission, the uniqueness of it, but the structure of oversight as well, and there is a learning curve there,” Manger said in a recent interview, talking about anyone who comes to lead Capitol Police from an outside law enforcement agency.

Others who had been in the mix included external and internal candidates from the force, including former Deputy Chief JJ Pickett, Deputy Chief Tom Loyd and Assistant Chief Jason Bell.

Several former Republican governors in the Senate have sounded alarms over a controversial House GOP plan to help pay for the Trump megabill by pushing billions in federal food aid costs to states.

Now there’s a would-be governor raising similar concerns. Behind the scenes in recent days, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama raised issues over the provision with GOP leaders and pushed for the plan to be scaled back, according to three Republicans granted anonymity to describe the conversations.

Tuberville, who announced a gubernatorial bid May 27, confirmed his worries in a brief interview Wednesday.

“Everybody that’s going to be in state government is going to be concerned about it,” he said. “I don’t know whether we can afford it or not.”

The House provision affecting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would financially hammer deep-red states like Alabama, forcing governors and state legislatures to foot billions in new costs or cut benefits to low-income families. The Republicans say Tuberville appears to be increasingly worried about a multi-billion-dollar bill hitting his desk should he be elected governor.

Tuberville, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump who supports the House bill’s strict new work requirements for SNAP, isn’t the only Republican who’s raised concerns about the House plan. At least two dozen other GOP senators have quietly raised concerns about how their states could be hit.

Senate Republicans involved in the talks have been surprised that current GOP governors have not raised more public concern about the House GOP plan. Many House Republicans assumed the Senate would strip the proposal out of the megabill, but the Senate GOP is now considering a host of options to scale down but not fully strip out the cost-sharing measure.

Senior Republicans have discussed one option to force every state to pay five percent of the cost of SNAP benefits for the first time, adding extra penalties for states with the highest payment error rates, according to three other Republicans with knowledge of the conversations.

“I think a lot of governors are saying the Senate is not going to do this to us,” said one Republican with direct knowledge of the conversations. “No, we absolutely might.”

Republicans involved in the talks say they will likely need to maintain some version of the provision in order to achieve the needed spending cuts while also paying for a $60 billion farm bill package in the House version of the bill. The Senate parliamentarian appears likely to nix one smaller source of savings from the Agriculture bill — a provision creating a national clearinghouse to crack down on duplicate benefits across SNAP, Medicaid and other programs.

Sen. Jim Justice, who served as West Virginia’s governor until January, said both current and future governors need to “analyze this very, very, very seriously” and “voice their opinions.”

“Because if you’re asleep at the switch, and you miss what the cost is going to be … you can put a state in a tough spot,” he said.