He’s no doubt Texas’ most high-profile resident, but until recently, Elon Musk was busy in Washington whittling down the federal government.
However, Musk announced Wednesday evening that he is leaving his role as a special government employee and top adviser to President Donald Trump. His job heading the Department of Government Efficiency was always supposed to be temporary. But in a recent interview with CBS, Musk was critical of the president’s “big, beautiful bill.”
He called it a “massive spending bill that increases the federal deficit” and “undermines the work of DOGE.”
But just because he’s leaving the Trump administration, that does not mean Musk’s political influence is ending on the national stage or certainly here in Texas.
Lauren McGaughy, an investigative editor and reporter with The Texas Newsroom, said Musk has posted on his social media platform, X — formerly Twitter — about his departure from the administration.
“He actually reshared some other posts from people who noted that, you know, that limited 130 days that he had as a special government employee is actually coming to an end this Friday,” he said. “Musk has implied through these reposts that there’s no problem between him and Trump – there’s no beef there, that this was really just the natural end of something that was always going to be temporary.”
However, McGaughy said Musk’s critique of Trump’s domestic policy bill is important context.
“The timing of that, the release of that partial part of that interview is interesting,” she said. “CBS is actually going to release more of it on June 1, and so I’m interested to see what else Musk actually had to say in that broader interview.”
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Musk is still politically powerful, and McGaughy said she expects his influence to continue.
“How closely he works with the president remains to be seen,” she said. “Musk also had another interview this past weekend where he said that he’s going to pull back on his federal campaign spending. … [He said he plans to] return back to his businesses, which is what he’s promised the shareholders of Tesla, that he’ll spend less time in DC and more time on his businesses.”
Many of those businesses are based in Texas, and McGaughy said the billionaire might be spending some more time in the Lone Star State.
“SpaceX is here. He’s about to increase launches down at the South Texas launch site up to 25 times a year from just five times a year. They’re expanding production at the Starlink facility outside of Austin. He’s promised to spend more time with Tesla; the Gigafactory headquarters is also just outside of the Austin area,” she said. “I’m going to be watching his potential return to Texas more full-time.”
McGaughy said she is also curious to see how Musk’s priorities do in the Texas statehouse as the regular session wraps up next week.
“I’m working on a story about what he got from the Texas Legislature this year,” she said. “They’re about to wrap up, and he definitely had some priorities pending in our state Capitol, as he was spending so much time in the nation’s capital.”
