Mike Johnson shocked Capitol Hill last night when he removed Ohio Republican Mike Turner as the House Intelligence Committee chairman. Historically, the intel committee has been made up of mature members who get along with leadership, and until Trump’s first term, it was rarely at the center of Capitol Hill drama. Turner is one of the waning Republicans from the pre-Trump era left standing, and is well regarded among Democrats and many Republicans. (Intel Democratic ranking member Jim Himes said Johnson’s decision sent “a shiver down my spine.”) The immediate conventional-wisdom assumption was that Johnson fired Turner, an unwavering supporter of Ukraine, on Trump’s orders, a charge that the speaker and the Trump camp denied. And yet that assumption seems perfectly plausible given Trump’s unique interest in the House Intelligence Committee during his first term. Some insiders have speculated, however, that the situation may be more nuanced. Unlike other committee leadership posts, House Intel isn’t decided by the Republican steering committee—the intel chair serves at the pleasure of the speaker. I was told by one Republican operative that Turner may simply have been a casualty of the biennial chess game that every House leader plays in trying to make everyone happy with their committee assignments. Put simply, in order to please other members, Turner got the shaft. Committee assignments are the most divisive choices a speaker makes. Members who don’t get their preferred assignments tend to harbor jealousy and bitterness toward leadership that can linger for years. But the removal of a chairman is another thing altogether—a humiliation that abruptly concludes the peak of Turner’s career. Rick Crawford, his successor, makes sense on paper: He’s next in line in seniority, and, unlike Turner, is more of an isolationist, which is increasingly in vogue in the G.O.P. John Boehner used to punish his rebels by taking away committee assignments, which partially explains why the Freedom Caucus eventually, and gleefully, pushed him out of office. Johnson, however, only has a three-member margin. After Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz vacate the House to serve in the Trump administration, it will be nearly impossible to pass a party-line vote with any Republican defectors—including, hypothetically, a former intel committee chair still mighty pissed off about losing his post. In this environment, every House Republican has the capacity to blow up—or even just slow down—every bill that goes to the floor. If provoked, an aggrieved member can stir up mischief by not showing up for tight votes. It did not escape notice within House Republican circles that Turner missed votes both on Wednesday and today.

Some of Trump’s henchmen, too, are privately suspicious of Musk, whom they view as a quasi-libertarian who’s opportunistically leaning into border issues and race panic to cosplay Trumpian bona fides. “In his heart, does he really believe those things?” said one MAGA figure. Elon is not “100 percent fluent in the native tongue of MAGA,” another source said, but he became the movement’s premium sponsor despite a lack of institutional knowledge. Meanwhile, he’s more unpredictable and erratic than Trump himself. “Nobody is quite sold on who he actually is,” the source added. Indeed, Musk’s proximity to Trump has alienated certain people charged with operating the next White House. Some have whispered that Musk is dismissive of chief of staff Susie Wiles—whom the staff exalts—and that he parades into meetings unbidden. “He’s not great to the staff,” said a source familiar with the situation. “He wanders into these meetings—six months of work and he can throw it out.” Others close to the president-elect rejected that characterization as inaccurate, and even, perhaps, an attempt to drive a wedge between Trump’s allies where none exists. When asked for comment, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung offered this: “These sources are full of shit and have no idea what they are talking about. Instead of making up outright lies, they should focus their time on self-reflection to better understand what happened in their lives that led them down this dark path. It is a well-known fact that Susie has helped President Trump assemble the most competent and experienced team in history to implement the America First agenda the people of this country voted for.” Critics presume that familiarity will breed contempt, especially once Musk moves into an office across the street from Trump’s own. But in strange ways, Musk’s gonzo political style seems to have worked in his favor. The Musk management philosophy—which can be distilled as a maniacal focus on microscopic details in the spirit of breaking down an enterprise before building it back up—hasn’t been fully tested in the realm of politics. The person who came closest was probably Trump himself, who saw his first-term agenda hamstrung by his lack of knowledge about Washington procedures and mores. Musk, too, is a neophyte in the ways of Washington, and without allies on the Hill. Anyway, Musk could buy an army of operatives to teach him the ways of Washington—he’s already hired Chris Young and has been working with Generra Peck and Phil Cox on his America PAC. Meanwhile, he has the resources to fund primary challenges against incumbents who thwart Trump’s agenda—Chris LaCivita would be a natural ally in this endeavor—and he has law firms and public affairs shops dying to work for him. “He’s in such a unique spot—there’s no historic parallel, other than a really powerful presidential spouse, like a Nancy Reagan, whom you had to keep happy,” one K Street veteran told me. “At the same time, everyone is like, How long can this last?” Trump has shown there are limits to Musk’s sway—he rejected Musk’s advocacy of Howard Lutnick for treasury secretary in favor of Scott Bessent, for instance, and declined to support Rick Scott for Senate majority leader. There are also frustrations with Musk on the Hill, where his last-minute intervention in Mike Johnson’s spending bill led the government to the brink of a shutdown. “Senators get the joke a little bit more,” said a former Senate aide. “They see Musk as a crazy donor. Everyone is being polite, but most people question the longevity he has here. There’s too much ego for the whole relationship to not blow up.” And yet, Sam Nunberg, the political consultant and Trump 2016 advisor, disagrees with this increasingly popular sentiment that the bromantasy must end. “Everybody keeps saying that Trump may be getting tired of him, but here’s the thing: Elon’s still there,” Nunberg said. “He’s the largest donor of all time. He ran his national get-out-the-vote movement. He campaigned in Pennsylvania and targeted young males. He runs the largest [electric] automotive company, and that’s one of his side projects. He’s not going anywhere.”

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