Donald Trump plans to accompany billionaire Elon Musk to a SpaceX launch in Texas on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the president-elect’s plans.

Musk, who emerged as a top donor and Trump surrogate during the 2024 election, has been an influential person in Trump’s orbit since the election.

The world’s richest person has sat in on Trump’s calls with world leaders, and has chimed in on his Cabinet picks.

Recently, he publicly advocated for Howard Lutnick to be Treasury secretary and used his social media platform to back Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) for Senate majority leader (Scott flamed out).

Musk flew with Trump to Washington last week and also joined him over the weekend for the Ultimate Fighting Championship match at Madison Square Garden.

SpaceX is scheduled on Tuesday to launch its sixth, suborbital flight test of its Starship rocket, which Musk hopes will eventually transport humans to the moon and Mars. Trump has marveled at SpaceX and Starlink and would frequently bring it up during final weeks of the campaign.

After winning the election, Trump spoke at length about Musk deploying Starlink services to get internet to parts of the country impacted by Hurricane Helene.”He’s a character. He’s a special guy. He’s a super genius. We have to protect our geniuses,” Trump said. “We don’t have that many of them. We have to.”

A negative sign looms for Matt Gaetz: Nearly a dozen GOP senators won’t commit to confirming him for attorney general, saying they want to let the process play out.

And many, even if they aren’t insisting on seeing the potentially damaging House Ethics report on the recently resigned lawmaker, assume the information will have to come out.

“He’s got an uphill climb,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a senior member of the conference who said she looked forward to meeting with Gaetz and the Judiciary Committee’s review of the nomination.

Promising to follow the vetting process doesn’t mean senators will necessarily oppose a nominee, but it’s notable given GOP senators are clearly wary of crossing President-elect Donald Trump. And it contrasts heavily with more Trump-aligned senators, many of whom have indicated they will support Gaetz no matter what. Given the litany of allegations against the Florida firebrand, including that he had sex with a minor, it leaves plenty of room for senators to opt against him later. Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, Trump has called at least one senator personally to talk about Gaetz, and the attorney general nominee makes a few calls of his own. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he got a call from Gaetz on Thursday evening, and Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said both Trump and Gaetz have called him. Cramer said Trump asked him to give Gaetz “a shot” and Cramer didn’t pick up the Gaetz call because he didn’t recognize the number.

“That was kind of the whole conversation,” Cramer said. “He’s the disrupter that the department needs. That’s the bottom line. And he doesn’t know that anybody else really will be.”

The House Ethics Committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday, as pressure intensifies on the panel to release their investigative findings about Gaetz — a report they’ve worked on for more than a year. The committee could vote to publish the report, bury it, or share it with senators. Many senators believe the report may come out in other ways if the panel tries to keep it under wraps.

Kennedy encouraged lawmakers on the committee to “follow the rules” but added that “we live in a Washington, D.C. version of la la land and, as we all know, this place leaks like a wet paper bag.”

Incoming Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) refused multiple times to say whether he’d demand access to the House Ethics report on Monday, vowing his committee’s professional staff would obtain information on Gaetz. He added that questions on the former congressman’s conduct should wait until after confirmation hearings.

“You guys are all asking me these questions that would be better asked after the hearing, then we got some answers for you,” the Iowa Republican said.

Grassley declined to answer whether he would interview cooperating witnesses on Gaetz’s alleged conduct who have spoken with the House Ethics Committee.

Senators on the Judiciary Committee conducting their own investigation seemed to be a popular Plan B among lawmakers, if the House Ethics Committee doesn’t share the report. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Monday said that though he agrees with Speaker Mike Johnson in not wanting to disrupt the “integrity” of the ethics process, he sees that as “separate from the likelihood that whatever was in there is going to be released.”

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), seen as a likely swing vote, said of the prospect of seeing the Ethics report: “If I feel like I don’t have sufficient information down the road, I’ll make that known.”

Still, it’s unlikely a truncated Senate investigation would have the breadth of the unreleased House Ethics report. An attorney told ABC News on Monday that two of his clients testified to the House Ethics Committee that Gaetz paid them for sex — and one of the women added that she witnessed the then-congressman having sex with a 17-year-old minor back in 2017.

There is a vocal group of GOP lawmakers who say they’ll back Trump’s nominee picks, including Gaetz, no matter what.

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t” be confirmed, said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who touted his strong rapport with Gaetz as a member of the House

“I’m gonna vote for Matt Gaetz,” said Sen.-elect Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who said he didn’t need to see the Ethics findings.

Only Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have openly questioned the selection. Any nominee will only be able to lose three votes — with Vice President-elect JD Vance breaking the tie — to secure confirmation.

Democrats, meanwhile, are still eying ways to usurp the nomination. Some want to try and obtain information on Gaetz from federal agencies while they still have control of the committees, but not all members of the Judiciary Committee think that’s even possible.

“He’s made the nomination, and we’ll have to go through the ordinary process in the appropriate Congress,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said.

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

Rep.-elect Sarah McBride said a resolution from Rep. Nancy Mace to ban transgender women from women’s bathrooms in the Capitol was a distraction in a Monday statement.

“This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing,” McBride, a Delaware Democrat who is set to become the first openly transgender member of Congress, said.

“We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars. Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on,” she added.

Mace (R-S.C.) said earlier Monday she was introducing a measure to amend the House’s rules to prohibit transgender women from using women’s restrooms at the Capitol. House Republicans are putting together a rules package to govern the House that is set to be voted on in early January.

Asked if she planned to talk to McBride, Mace said: “No, Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say.”

Facing a government shutdown deadline in just over a month, Congress is quickly running out of time to do anything but punt funding levels into next year — unless bipartisan talks begin in earnest.

Congressional leaders have yet to announce the start of negotiations over a more comprehensive funding deal, raising the odds that lawmakers will resort to a stopgap in late December that kicks the next funding cliff into President-elect Donald Trump’s first months in office. Even if Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer started talking now, it could already be too late to pass final funding measures by the Dec. 20 deadline.

That’s because it usually takes Congress about a month to clear bills with updated spending levels once leaders have reached a deal on overall totals for military and non-defense spending. Johnson indicated Congress was running out of time in an interview Sunday.

“We’re running out of clock. December 20 is the deadline,” Johnson said in an interview with Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re still hopeful we might be able to get that done. But if not, we will have a temporary measure. I think it would go into the first part of next year and allow us the necessary time to get this done.”

Johnson and other Republican lawmakers have said they’ve been waiting to hear from Trump before they decide to close out funding discussions or punt them into next year. But the president-elect has not weighed in, at least not publicly.

While Democrats are eager to cut a deal that updates federal agencies’ funding through next September, congressional Republicans are divided on the decision.

“There are different points of view, as you would expect, about whether or not we ought to try and finish everything up this year or push it into next year,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), his chamber’s next majority leader, said Monday night.

Many Republican appropriators and other GOP lawmakers want to wrap up spending negotiations before year’s end, to update funding for the Pentagon and other federal agencies, as well as avoid an extra distraction next year as they work to enact policy that defines their first 100 days in control of Congress and the White House.

On the other side of the argument, Johnson said over the weekend that he thinks it would be advantageous for Republicans to kick the deadline into Trump’s second term. That’s the preference of many House conservatives and could save the speaker from potential backlash as he prepares for a January vote to keep his gavel.

Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.

Rep. Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee, said Monday she wants her panel’s report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz to be released to the public.

“It should certainly be released to the Senate, and I think it should be released to the public, as we have done with many other investigative reports in the past,” she told a small group of reporters.

Both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are pushing for access to the report after President-elect Donald Trump tapped Gaetz to be his attorney general last week. Gaetz resigned from the House hours after the announcement — amid rumors that the Ethics report could be released in the coming days — complicating the decision to publish the findings of the investigation.

The panel investigated several allegations against Gaetz, including that he had sex with a minor. Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

Wild (D-Pa.) added that she would wait to see what other members of the panel do before taking any other action. The panel, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, is set to meet Wednesday.

Wild said she discussed the committee’s work with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries “in general terms” but that he “hasn’t seen the report and he hasn’t given me any thoughts or direction or what he thinks needs to be done. He’s deferring entirely to the Ethics Committee, as he should.”

House Ethics Committee members are set to meet privately Wednesday as debate rages over whether the panel should release its report on its investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz. But even if they elect not to release it, that might not be the end of the road.

The committee doesn’t disclose its agenda. But Ethics members are under intense scrutiny as they figure out how to address the report, which lawmakers in both chambers have said they would like to review, particularly given Gaetz’s attorney general nomination.

The committee could vote to adopt or release a report during its closed-door meeting. If the vote is along party lines — the same number of Democrats and Republicans sit on the committee — a tie means the motion fails and defers to the majority, which is Republican. (Reminder: There is precedent for Ethics releasing reports about former members.)

It’s also possible that they postpone that vote, dragging this out further.

Here’s a breakdown of what could happen if members vote not to release the report, and other ways the investigative findings could see the light of day.

Someone leaks it to the press: Ethics Committee members and staff don’t take the prospect of a leak lightly, if the panel votes to keep the report under wraps.

Part of that is wanting to protect the credibility of the panel, but members also take an oath, pledging: “I will not disclose, to any person or entity outside the Committee on Ethics, any information received in the course of my service with the Committee, except as authorized by the Committee or in accordance with its rules.”

So even if Democrats want this to come out, many don’t want to be responsible for breaking that oath — or the potential consequences, like censure or expulsion at the hands of their colleagues.

Using the House floor: Some lawmakers are privately theorizing that, should the committee block the release of the report, a lawmaker could go to the House or Senate floor and read it into the congressional record rather than leak it to the media.

That’s what happened when The New York Times and The Washington Post were waiting for a Supreme Court decision on whether they could leak the Pentagon Papers — so then-Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) read the papers on the Senate floor on June 29, 1971. He made it through 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page leaked document before submitting the rest into the record. (It resulted in a Supreme Court case, Gravel vs. USA.)

Any member who dares to take this step could face near-immediate consequences, including censure or expulsion. Republicans could quickly bring up a privileged resolution, bypassing Ethics and Rules, to punish whoever comes to the floor with the report.

“Let’s say a Democrat chose to go ahead and do that on the floor, the downside would be that it would blow up the Ethics process. Now that may not be the world’s biggest loss, because in the House it’s been pretty weak, but you would then simply be saying: ‘We’re no longer gonna abide by the rules, because we don’t believe in the rules,’” said Meredith McGehee, an independent expert in government ethics.

Sharing it with senators: Even if the Ethics panel doesn’t want to make the report public, they can vote to share it with the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of potential confirmation hearings. Some Republican senators have called to see the report, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn.

McGehee pointed to another option: Instead of handing over the report, House members could make the report available in a secure room where senators could — gulp — venture to the House to read it. That, of course, would cut down on some leak risks associated with distributing copies of the report to the entire Judiciary staff.

Sober warning: Staff-driven leaks have happened before, but typically not in a situation with so much at stake. In addition to losing a job, there are also real concerns of political violence if a staff leaker’s name became public.

House Ethics Chair Michael Guest said Monday that his panel will make its own decision about releasing the report into Matt Gaetz, regardless of Speaker Mike Johnson’s opinion that it should be kept under wraps.

Guest (R-Miss.) told POLITICO in a brief interview that he and Johnson had spoken over the weekend. He added that all Ethics Committee members can now review the report, when only he and Rep. Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the panel, previously had a copy of it, according to two people familiar with the matter.

“We did talk this weekend,” Guest said, noting Johnson shared the same views he has publicly — that the panel should not release the report. Guest has not heard from anyone in the Trump administration, he added.

“I appreciate Mike reaching out,” Guest said. “I don’t see it having an impact on what we as a committee ultimately decide.”

The panel, which is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, is slated to meet Wednesday, potentially to vote on whether to publish the report.

Both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are pushing for access to the panel’s findings after President-elect Donald Trump tapped Gaetz to be his attorney general last week. Gaetz resigned from the House hours after the announcement — amid rumors that the Ethics report could be released in the coming days — complicating the decision to publish the findings of the investigation.

The panel investigated several allegations against Gaetz, including that he had sex with a minor. Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

Guest also said all members of the panel have access to the report, should they choose to review it. Republican members of the Ethics panel met privately on Monday.

“The members have access to the report, so any member that wishes to view the report will have access to the report in the draft form,” Guest said.

Johnson told reporters Friday he planned to reach out to Guest, and publicly urged the Ethics Committee to not release its report. The speaker has argued that the Ethics Committee should follow typical precedent, which is not releasing reports about members who are no longer in the House. When a reporter noted that the committee previously did publish its findings about lawmakers who resigned, Johnson said if the precedent had “been broken once or twice, it should not have been.”

Democratic-aligned health care advocacy groups are putting together a strategy to fight Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be HHS secretary.

During an organizing call on Monday, the details of which have not been reported publicly, more than 200 people from several dozen of those groups, along with other advocacy organizations, discussed strategies to oppose Kennedy’s nomination. That included which Republican senators to target and the most effective way to talk to them, according to Brad Woodhouse, executive director of Protect Our Care.

“We’re nowhere near conceding he’s going to be the next HHS secretary,” he said.

On the call, Woodhouse’s organization launched a new “Stop RFK War Room” effort focused on persuading not only GOP moderates like Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, but others like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who survived polio, or Sen. Tom Tillis of North Carolina, who is up for re-election in 2026. Normally, the group would be prioritizing its lame duck work, but it sees Kennedy as such a serious threat that it’s starting now and delaying its lame duck work until after Thanksgiving, Woodhouse said.

Protect Our Care is hiring teams in several states, including Alaska, Idaho, Maine and West Virginia, to lobby senators at the state and local level through experts and personal stories, with events slated to begin as soon as next week.

Woodhouse acknowledged that while some of Kennedy’s ideas might have broader support — like his efforts to ban certain food additives — his views on vaccines and his plans to cut the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration are “too dangerous” to take his nomination laying down.

“Just because Hannibal Lecter has a couple good ideas on something, doesn’t mean I want to invite Hannibal Lecter to dinner,” he said.

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition effort is continuing to churn through potential picks for the next head of the Transportation Department, with the current crop of names including a former reality TV star, a former executive at Uber and a former Republican lawmaker from California who regularly lambasted his state’s high-speed rail ambitions.

According to three people familiar with discussions happening among Trump and his inner circle, including his transition team, the latest names to bubble up to succeed Pete Buttigieg atop DOT include former House lawmaker and Fox News contributor (and star of MTV’s The Real World) Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) and Emil Michael, a former executive at Uber. All three were granted anonymity to discuss the inner workings of the transition effort.

Also in the mix: former Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), who spearheaded efforts to ensure California’s troubled high-speed rail project did not get federal money, according to an official close to Denham and familiar with the transition team’s thinking, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the effort.

Duffy is “on the short list” and Michael is “very much in the mix,” said a person familiar with the transition discussions, granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak with the media. And, according to a third official who is close to the transition effort, Trump interviewed Duffy over the weekend.

However, Duffy has been sharply critical of Trump in the past, which could imperil his selection. He told Fox News in 2017 that a debt ceiling deal Trump struck with Democrats was “bad” and “foolish,” suggesting that Trump “shot from the hip” and “missed the target.”

And Denham’s stock appears to be rising. Denham, who served on the Transportation Committee when he was in the House, recently fielded a call from the transition team asking him to consider the role, one of the officials confirmed. The official said Elon Musk has “made positive comments about him.”

Michael is a former Uber chief business officer turned SpaceX investor. The Egypt-born, Silicon Valley entrepreneur has also invested in other technology and consumer companies. According to his personal biography, he regards his outreach efforts in Russia and China during his time at Uber as one of his career highlights.

MIAMI — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis intends to hold interviews and “extensive vetting” to help him decide who should replace Marco Rubio in the Senate.

The seat will soon open up after President-elect Donald Trump announced he planned to nominate Rubio to be secretary of state, which will necessitate Rubio resigning from his role. DeSantis under Florida law will be tasked with appointing Rubio’s successor, and he said in a post on X Monday morning that he would likely finish the selection process “by the beginning of January.”

The governor also expanded on some of the qualities and policy priorities he would be looking for.

“Florida deserves a senator who will help President Trump deliver on his election mandate, be strong on immigration and border security, take on the entrenched bureaucracy and administrative state, reverse the nation’s fiscal decline, be animated by conservative principles, and has a proven record of results,” he wrote.

The person he picks will remain in the role until at least 2026, which is when a special election to finish the final two years of Rubio’s term would be held. There would then be a regularly scheduled election in 2028 for a full term.

Possible contenders close to DeSantis include Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, Attorney General Ashley Moody, former Florida House Speaker Jose Oliva and chief of staff James Uthmeier.

Some members of Trump’s inner circle have been pushing for DeSantis to select Lara Trump, the Republican National Committee co-chair who is also Trump’s daughter-in-law. She said in interviews over the weekend that she hadn’t yet spoken to DeSantis but would be “honored” to be considered.

DeSantis said he’d already seen “strong interest from several possible candidates” and was continuing to gather names and conduct initial vetting for the job.