I'm Greg Gassad. I'm proud to represent the heart of Texas and the United States Congress and also to chair the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Here's the big news that people across the country haven't heard but need to know. 50 days from today, Donald Trump must by law fire Elon Musk. Last night, 76 House Democrats sent a clear message to President Trump.
The clock is ticking. Since the beginning of this administration, Trump and Musk have exploited Musk's designation as a so-called special government employee to allow Musk to receive over $8 million a day in federal government contracts and subsidies while ignoring our conflict of interest rules and while funneling more and more money to himself and to his companies. But the law is crystal clear. A special government employee like Musk must leave the federal government after 130 days.
That means that Musk must leave office by May 30th. That means that 50 days from today, Donald Trump must fire Musk. 50 days from today, Musk's reign of terror must end. And that day cannot come soon enough. We would be here for hours if I tried to recount every single one of Musk's illegal actions or abuses or attacks on working Americans. But let me give you just a few. In his eighty days in power, Elon Musk has fired more veterans from the federal government than anyone else in
history. Elon Musk has fired independent watchdogs that were investigating his own companies for corruption and for breaking the law. Elon Musk called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, tried to shut down the phone lines that seniors used to get their checks. They degraded the system so much that we were being warned that it was on the verge of crashing and collapse. Elon Musk demanded access to Americans most sensitive and private medical records and tax
information. Elon Musk tried to steer billions of dollars of government contracts towards his own companies while already collecting $8,000,000 a day from the federal government. Elon Musk fired nuclear safety workers, air traffic controllers, and people trying to combat ongoing disease outbreaks. This must end. If we're up to the American people, I think Elon Musk will be fired tomorrow. But a typical government employee would have been gone
weeks and weeks ago. A typical government employee would have been held accountable for these crimes and for this corruption. But Musk relies on his so-called special government employee status. That gravy train runs out in 50 days. And when I say fire Elon Musk, I'm not talking about Trump and Musk hiding the ball and letting Musk continue to do what he's doing without his title. This is what I mean.
Follow the law. No more going around cabinet secretaries to slash key programs starting in 50 days. No more privileged access to government information. No more directing government contracts to himself. No more running cabinet meetings, no more running the White House. That is our demand. And we are making it clear that we are putting every option on the table, legislative, legal and public pressure, and making it clear to the president that he's got 50 days.
Thank you all very much for joining us. And next, I'm proud to hand over the microphone to Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury, who is the ranking member and runs, truly runs our DOGE subcommittee. Well, good morning, everyone.
I'm Congresswoman Melanie stands for and deeply proud to represent New Mexico's First Congressional District and to be serving in a leadership role in the fight against Elon Musk in the Doge Subcommittee of the Oversight and Accountability Committee. Now, let us be clear. Elon Musk has unleashed absolute chaos on the American people. He has fired 10s of thousands of Americans. He has dismantled vital agencies that provide vital services to the American people and people across the world.
He has fired firefighters, veterans, teachers. He's partially dismantled the Social Security system and made it so that our seniors are not able to get access to vital programs and benefits which they work their entire lives to earn. He has dismantled vital programs that are life saving at the Health and Human Services Department, Department of Education, at the VA system. He has been mining our data.
I think it is vital to understand that just two weeks ago Elon Musk announced a merger between his private AI company Twitter, Now X, and his departure of the federal government after he has spent days and days and weeks and weeks mining vital data. The American people, we're talking IRS data, Treasury data, Social Security data.
What is he doing with this data? We don't know because neither he or any other member of DOGE have appeared before a public body to answer any questions Underoath. And most egregious, which is what we warned of when he took office is the self dealing. We know that since he has been in office, he is in deals to put his own star leak in place at the FAA. We know that he just inked A multibillion dollar contract with the Department of Defense with his private rocket company.
We know that he is trying to secure a contract with NOAA in order to take over that satellite program. And we know. Or at least we. Suspect. With very strong suspicion that he is planning to take over AI contracts across the federal government. So we are putting you on notice. Elon Musk, you are fired. The American people are firing you and you must clear out and get out of this office. Today, myself and Senator Warren are introducing legislation to ensure. That this.
Kind of corrupt abuse and grift and scammers coming into the federal government through a special government employee can never happen again. So we must ensure that we have accountability. And with that, I say, Mr. Musk, you're fired. And Mark Takano, we'll share more. Thank. You, that's what we're going to say. Mark Takano, you're hired. Have good. Well, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Mark Takano. I am the ranking member of the Veterans Affairs Committee.
Let me just start off by saying that Elon Musk is not above the law. He is a billionaire, not a public servant, and certainly not elected by anyone in this country. In his brief stint in the federal government, it seems like he's gone out of his way to hurt the very people we are supposed to be helping. As the ranking member of the Veterans Affairs Committee, I'm especially angry at how he has treated our veterans.
These men and women sacrifice for our country, but he sees them as disposable line items on a spreadsheet. For most people, disrespecting our veterans like that would get them fired. For Elon Musk, it just means bigger contracts. But we all know the truth. Elon donated $277,000,000 to Trump's campaign, so the rules don't seem to apply to him. While the law is clear, Musk's 130 days are up on May 30th, and that is only 50 days from now.
We are demanding that the White House makes a clear and public statement that they will follow the law if the Trump administration refuses to fire him. It's not just unethical, it is illegal. Breaking the law is not new to the Trump administration, but I promise you that I and every single one of my colleagues on this stage will not stand for it.
It's time to fire Elon Musk. And now I'd like to I hand it over to my colleague, my fellow colleague from California, Luce Rivas. Thank you, Luce Rivas, congresswoman from California's 29th District in Los Angeles. Our message today is very clear. Elon Musk needs to go. The law is also very clear. In 50 days, Elon Musk needs to be out of the office, and for the good and well-being of our country, that date cannot come soon enough.
For 80 days, this unelected, unconfirmed billionaire has held the keys to the Oval Office. And for 80 days, his twisted perception of efficiency has done nothing but cause pain and harm to working families, veterans, senior citizens and many more. My office has been bombarded with constituent calls, worried that their Medicaid and Social Security benefits will be cut. Over. Half of the people in my district rely on Medicaid, including 133,000 children and 45,000 seniors.
My district has the ninth highest Medicaid enrollment in the whole country. Republicans just approved a proposal to cut millions of Americans Medicaid benefits just so they can give Elon Musk and his billionaire friends another tax break In service to himself. Elon has managed to only increase his company's monetary share of federal government procurement. I guess this is what he and Doge Bros mean by efficiency. Elon Musk serves no one but himself and his fellow billionaires.
And that's why I stand today with my colleagues to send the message that he needs to go. Thank you so much. I think. That's the outcome. I think I want to thank first, of course, our our chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Greg Kasar, for bringing us together and for helping really lead our efforts to hold
Elon Musk accountable. I'm Robert Garcia from Long Beach, CA You've heard today from a lot of our members with the damage that Elon Musk has done, whether it's been to air traffic controllers, the Social Security, to the Department of Education attacking veterans. All of this has already disqualified Elon Musk from doing anything in serving our government, and he needs to go today. We're also calling to ensure that he knows that he's on notice that he only has 50 days left.
He wants to continue as a government employee. But I also want to make one thing really clear. It's been also Elon Musk that has been partnering with Donald Trump in weaponizing the Department of Justice.
The Department of Justice, his US Attorney, the appointed US attorney here, and Martin have gone after people and continue to attack individuals that are also speaking out in their First Amendment rights to protest against Elon Musk's illegal actions and unconstitutional actions across the country.
Now, I know that personally because I personally attacked Elon Musk. Donald Trump sent the Department of Justice against me to investigate me, to try to intimidate me and others of which he was not successful in doing. But it also has been other members of the Progressive Caucus as well. Elon Musk sent and work with Pam Bondi, our attorney General, to attack other members like Jasmine Crockett and others.
And probably most chilling has been Elon Musk and his ability to get the DOJ to get the Attorney General to go after and intimidate protesters who are protesting 100% within their rights in front of Tesla dealerships or against his businesses. People out in the community in the country have a right to stand up and not support companies led by Elon Musk. Elon Musk, in turn, sends the Department of Justice against protesters and against organizers and against members of Congress.
That is not right. It is unethical. It is unconstitutional. And Elon Musk has no business serving the government, the president, and all he does is continue to damage himself and damage our country. Elon Musk must be fired today. And with that, I'm going to introduce our next speaker from Los Angeles, Brad Shroom.
Hello, I'm Brad Sherman from California's best name city, Sherman Oaks. Our Constitution is clear in Article 2, Section 2 that the officers need of a federal government needs Senate confirmation. That's not just the cabinet officers, that's two or three steps below the cabinet officers. There's one exception, a man who's more powerful than any of the cabinet officers, Elon Musk. They have used this special
government employee ruse. I think it's unconstitutional and illegal, but it ends on May 30th. My criticisms of Mr. Musk focused on my 2 committees from Foreign Affairs. I've learned that 1.6 million people are going to die without American health and food aid. Half a million of those will die due to lack of vaccines. And when HIV infects someone on another continent, that's one more chance for the disease to mutate and come back here in a
form we cannot deal with. But then let's not talk about big numbers. Let's talk about Peter Dundee, 10 year old boy infected with HIV from his mother and childbirth. An orphan, he was cut off from his antivirals. He died in February and his blood is on the hands of Elon Musk, whose response is, whoops,
made a mistake. From a financial services standpoint, I'm concerned that a man who is under investigation from the SEC would arrange for the firing, dismissals, early retirement and buyouts of many hundreds of of SEC investigators. But I'm particularly want to focus on something you made out of focused on this man says he was serving without compensation, but he has actually received an undisclosed portion of $37 billion.
Now, everybody else in government, not only us, but even our, our, our, our aides have to file one of these financial disclosure statements. But what we don't have is 1 for Milan. So what happened The day Trump was elected, Elon Musk knew he'd be heading this organization. One week later, the whole world found out that it would be called Doe. Weird name?
What's with that? Dogecoin was bid up $37 billion by those who knew that it would get this big boost from the unusual name in the one week between the election and the announcement of the name. Now true, Bitcoin also went up at the same time, but those coin went up six times as fast.
And until we get. A disclosure statement from us, we will not know what portion of that $37 billion went to him from buying Doge the day after the election and selling and now it's gone down again, selling it the day of the announcement. So I can't imagine a worse person to have involved in making our national policy, except of course, the president. Thank. Thank you, Congressman Sherman.
Thank you to my colleague, Representative Kassar, to who has organized this for a press conference to illuminate this important date and deadline. I'm Gabe Amo. I represent Rhode Island's first rational district. I've worked for two presidences, presidents and two presidencies at the White House. And I have worked with many special government employees. And I can say by far, there's been no worse special government employee than Elon Musk.
And we've seen this function deployed to help in humanitarian crises like the operations allies. Well, welcome or help rebuilt HealthCare.gov Or do life saving work in public health emergencies. What we've seen is Elon Musk creating emergencies, emergencies for American families. He will face devastation. Our colleagues, our Republican colleagues, go forward. With horrific.
Cuts to Medicaid. We've seen an emergency created with the erosion of Social Security, being able to do its basic functions, long wait time, closures of offices. We've seen an emergency created for our environment with their cutting of NOAA US the the privatization of the National Weather Service as an aspiration only so Elon Musk can make more money, more billions forth the richest man in the world. So look, I think the proper HR function would be immediate
termination. But we've got May 30th. We've got 50 days. This special government employee has been special in all the wrong ways, healing our economy, partnering with Donald Trump to do the worst to the people who need our help the most. And so I look forward to that day and it for some reason, and you know, there are lots of reasons that that number in the billions. We don't see action from the Trump administration to terminate Elon when his tenure is up.
We will, we will act. We will put on public pressure. We will act in every form possible because he has got the goal. He had been bad for America while only being good for himself, his bank account and his billionaire buttons. So I am hopeful that with this team, with Democrats in the House, that we will make our voices heard to ensure that February 30th is the day where he is walking out with a box in his hand to leave the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to never, ever return.
And with that, I'll turn it back to Greg. He's sending me in. The press thinks that we can't do hard things. You just saw a press conference of seven members of Congress in 15 minutes. So I don't know if y'all have seen that before, but the message is very succinct and very clear. We don't expect that Trump and Musk will follow the law because they want to. We have to make sure that they follow the law. So we are putting Trump and Musk
on notice. If you break the law and try to stay in power, we will support every legal, political, public pressure tactic available us to to us to enforce the law. And Americans are already fed up with Elon Musk. Scott, 50 days and we're ready to take your questions. I think I have to taking CNN first because I think they're sponsoring the room of the Year. That's OK. If not, go ahead. They think they can win
elections with unlimited money. But in Wisconsin, we showed that organized people can beat big money. And in fact, we have turned what Elon Musk thought was his greatest strength, having unlimited cash, into his
greatest weakness. Every dollar that Elon Musk started spending in that election started bringing him down because the American people, whether you are an independent, conservative, progressive, whatever you are, don't think that the richest man on earth should be able to buy politicians for himself in order to funnel funnel money to himself and to other billionaires.
And I think that that is the kind of message that the Democratic Party needs in order to win back the trust of working class voters, not just to win back the House, but actually to be the kind of party that this country needs in this moment. So and go ahead. And I'm happy to pass along to others here as well. Yeah. I mean, there were articles leading up to the Wisconsin race of pundits out there saying, well, maybe going after the richest man on earth isn't a good idea.
But I think the people beat the pundits in that argument, where I think the overwhelming number of people said, no, we don't want the richest man on earth controlling our government, making us work longer hours for less pay and taking our taxpayer money for himself. That's attacking the American. The richest man on earth is attacking the American people and trying to take over our government is deeply wrong.
People know that in their gut. And this is exactly the kind of fight that I think Democrats need to make any market knowing. So it was an important test that was passed that that, that the people prevailed over a billionaire's obscene attempt to buy an election literally by an election, literally by votes. And but I, I, I just going to take vigilance from growing, growing engagement of the of more and more people.
I think people are beginning to tune in, but we're facing, you know, executive orders from Donald Trump to, you know, suppress votes and to require, you know, ridiculous ID requirements. And so look, the the battle against the billionaire is just the beginning. But it's reassuring to know that we can beat a billionaire. But we've got all sorts of other things that we've got to confront. And the people I'm encouraged are going to wake up and pay more attention.
There's a lot of lessons to take from Wisconsin, but I think one of the primary lessons is that not only is Elon Musk's agenda deeply unpopular, and he's one of the most unpopular political figures in modern history, he's toxic to the Republican brand. And I think that's what was revealed by the Wisconsin race and that American democracy is not for sale.
And you've seen in the days after the Wisconsin race that Republicans themselves, whether they're members of Congress, people who are in Trump's inner circle and people who are in the constellation of the GOP world, have been saying Musk has got to go because he is toxic to the president and to the GOP brand.
Why is he toxic? Because of all of the things that we've laid out, the ways in which he's disrupted the economy, the ways in which he's carelessly and recklessly fired thousands of people, the ways in which he has inflicted harm on people across the world, and the ways in which he has literally tried to buy elections. And the American people are fed up with it. And that's why they want him to go as well. My whole life.
I've been working to try to get Democrats to turn out to vote, particularly in special elections. I want to thank you, Elon Musk. He did a better job at it than I ever did. Yeah. People were always suspicious the billionaires were running the government behind the curtain, but now Elon Musk is out there bragging about it in public. And I think that's really devastating to the brand, Brian. I think you'll be hearing about those as we get closer to the
day. But we are asking the president to make clear by May Day, by May 1st whether he's going to follow the law or try to buck the law. But there are many options at our disposal but. Well, I'm, I'll make clear again, there are many options in the courts available to fire Elon Musk. There are legislative options available for us to fire Elon Musk. And most importantly, I think public pressure will do the trick to make sure we fire Elon Musk.
He has 50 days to resign under the law, or else even more of those legal and legislative options would be on the table. I do want to push back a little bit on the narrative that we've been unsuccessful in the courts. There are now over 170 court cases that have been filed against the administration for egregious breaches of the law. And in almost nearly every on the case, on the merits of the case itself, we have won the American people and the Constitution is one.
In a number of cases, there have been outcomes, including some of the recent Supreme Court decisions that question jurisdictional questions, but not the merits of the case itself. It is very clear that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are breaking the law, and the law is very clear on the service of an SGE. And if he tries to stay beyond his allocated time, their courts will be involved. And so we will pursue legal avenues, absolutely.
To say, in addition to the ending of his tenure, I'll be announcing at a Tesla dealership in my district legislation to require him to file this, the financial disclosures. We need to know what he was. Do we? We know that he owns a lot of Tesla stock and basic stock. We need to know what else he was doing, particularly in the crypto. And sorry, say your name in outlets. I I know many of you, but this
is yeah, no problem. Yeah, I'll, I'll, I want to hand it over to those who haven't gotten a chance to to speak up yet, But Republican members of Congress know that what they're doing is deeply unpopular. They know that it is deeply unpopular for them to continue supporting A billionaire who is calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme.
Republican members of Congress know it's deeply unpopular for them to support a billionaire who's trying to take away working class Americans healthcare in order to pay for billionaire tax cuts. So these Republican members of Congress now have to decide whether they want to continue to ask, act as Trump, Musk employees or as members of Congress. Otherwise they're going to lose
their elections. The budget that just passed today where the House and Senate agree that they're coming after your healthcare, the Republicans are coming after your healthcare, they're coming after veterans benefits in order to pay for billionaire tax cuts. That passed by one vote. If one member, Republican member of Congress had voted with their district instead of with Trump, Musk, they could have stopped
this. And so now it's on every single Republican member of Congress. If you have a Republican member of Congress, they can make the difference if they come out and say we're going to go with Musk and Trump and take away your health care or whether they're going to go with their constituents. So it's got them very nervous. And if we succeed in getting Musk out in the next 50 days, it'll be the greatest victory by Democrats so far of the Trump
administration. Well, a lot of the whispers from our Republican colleagues have gotten louder. I'll speak by positions on both the Foreign Affairs and the Science Based and Technology Committee. You know, a lot of the work there is about American leadership in the world. And I'll say what you will about our differences and policies. You know, there's no way that we are America first when you cut at the bone of America's leadership with regard to USAID, with American leadership.
If you start to be anti science and we can't have the the same pipeline of talented people working on issues that are sort of not controversial protecting our coastlines, you know, if you're on the science committee, that's something that you shouldn't care about. And so I, I would say that I, what I've heard and directly from a lot of our colleagues is they're, they're afraid about American leadership in the
world. This week's panic over terrorists illustrates that we are are seeing a policy that's putting America last, that is putting Putin. 1st. This is something that I call on my Republican colleagues to to stand up. You'll have friends on the other side of the aisle if you demonstrate some courage. But if you are silent, you are complicit and you are letting Elon Musk do whatever he wants to hurt your constituents as
well as ours. And so I am hoping that you know, when folks spend the next two weeks at home that they hear a little something, something. And I'm certain they are going to hear from their constituents. Elon Musk has got to go. I. Want to add on to that, we've all, as members, heard whispers from Republican colleagues that pull us aside and say, oh, I don't agree with these cuts or I don't agree with those cuts, but why are they all silent?
Why aren't they going public? I focused my comments earlier on the cuts to Medicaid because of the high enrollment of Medicaid in my district. But the highest Congressional District in the country with Medicaid constituents is David Baldeo in Bakersfield, CA 67% of his district are on Medicaid. Rely on Medicaid for healthcare over 2/3. I can't imagine him winning his re election if there are cuts to Medicaid where his constituents will be directly affected.
And that's a Republican district. He needs to speak up and others too, not just Democrats. And I'll just add a little more color. It's not just whispers and the first few days that Elon Musk started doing what he was doing. I work a lot on bipartisan issues. I have a lot of friends across the aisle. And when you spend time with
folks, they tell you stories. In fact, I will say 1 chairman, one Republican chairman told me that his best friend from Graduate School was a nuclear engineer who got science, got fired by an NSA in that first round of probationary firings. When I talked to another Republican chairman who I work with on issues that are really important in my district, I was told that one of the cabinet secretaries had promised him they wouldn't touch those programs, but Elon Musk had gone
in and fired people. So they know what's going on. But the problem is, is that they are cowed by the reality that Elon Musk has unlimited amount of money to spend on these elections. And I think that's why Wisconsin is such a profound moment for the Republican Party. Because if he's a liability and not an asset, bye bye, right? They want nothing to do with him because he's created so much chaos and toxicity for the party.
So I don't think that the vast majority of our Republican friends are going to miss Mr. Musk. Question. Yes, a culture of corruption has infected the Republican Party. Elon Musk, the tax cuts, the Medicaid cuts, the tariffs. It's all part of one story. Everything the Trump administration has done is to make Trump, Musk, their billionaire friends or their buddies on the Republican side of the aisle richer. And every time it's meant that working families get screwed.
So we need an investigation into insider trading by people like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green. We need an investigation into whether any K St. lobbyists or other big firms were tipped off by Donald Trump's actions. We need to look into the way that the president's son basically went and told foreign leaders, come and bribe me, come and make a deal, come and cut us a check. So Trump's tariffs aren't about helping workers.
They're about making working families pay more so that Trump can get bribes from companies for exemptions, so that Trump and his buddies can tip people off and skew the stock market for themselves. So basically, while your retirement funds get screwed over, Donald Trump can make his friends rich. And we need to root out this culture of corruption. That's why I believe we need to
ban congressional stock trading. We need to get big money out of politics and make sure the Democratic Party's message very clearly is that we are against corruption. We're against these corrupt billionaires and for the everyday working person. And we're against having powerful people not fill out personal financial disclosures. Your question focuses on kind of the macro level of was the market going to go up and do people know it? There's also the individual company level.
He's announced that he's going to exempt certain companies. So you may have one importer who pays the tariff and another one who doesn't on the exact same goods. And I will just wonder on what basis he's going to decide the winners and the losers and which companies survive and which don't. I think we know what happened. Congressman Garcia is going. To close this out, thanks. I just two things. Let me go back to one piece of the last question and I'll close out.
Let me just first show that it's very clear Republicans are cowards. And we should be very clear that a lot of Republicans, everyone here has actually heard stories, whispers, things that Republicans are saying to us, to others, but they refuse to actually call them out publicly because they're cowards. They're scared of Donald Trump, they're scared of Elon Musk's fortune. They're scared of a primary challenge. And so that should be very clear.
At the same time, they also saw what happened in Wisconsin, what happened immediately after that. You saw Peter Navarro, trade representative of Donald Trump's, publicly start calling out Elon Musk or see other Republicans being a little bit more comfortable in criticizing Elon Musk. I believe there was a cabinet meeting, I think maybe today, who was not there, Elon Musk. And so there's no question that since Wisconsin, Elon Musk himself knows that he is
becoming a more toxic brand. I mean, the man can't even go and play video games anymore because the people that he's playing with are all harassing him online. And so he is himself feeling more and more isolated. He's posting less on X. He's distressing himself a little bit more from the administration. And I think that he understands that he's the most unlikeable person in this country. So let's we got to continue that
pressure. As far as the the second part, every reporter in DC should be hounding Marjorie Taylor Green right now and asking her about her stock trades. Some of us were actually at the Doge committee just yesterday where before the tariff announcement happened, where she
was talking up the stock market. And what I want to know and we want to know is what did Marjorie Taylor Green know before that announcement happened and what stocks did she and her family trade leading up to that announcement? And so I think that what's what she is has likely done is going to be a scandal and incredibly important for the not just us as Congress to investigate, but for the Press of the man and ask those questions. And it goes beyond just Margie
Taylor Green, I think. I think we all know instinctively that Donald Trump, his cronies and his bill and her friends have used this tariff crisis to enrich themselves. And so it's up to us to investigate that with everything that we can through the oversight committee. But also Republicans have responsibility to the public to do to do the same because we have proof of what Donald Trump does. He sells his brand name. He enriches his son-in-law to take billions from the Saudis.
He breaks the involvement clause of the Constitution. These, these folks are grifters. Donald Trump's a grifter, Elon Musk is a grifter. And all they care about is enriching themselves. And the biggest grift that they've ever tried to do is what they're doing right now, which is taking all of the wealth and all of the hard earned money and benefits that the American worker has worked for and
created. Taking all that money and then providing themselves a massive tax rate to themselves and their companies that we all know is coming down the pipeline. The world going to try to fight. So the biggest view on Musk grift and Donald Trump grift is on its way. And we have everything we can to stop it. With that I will close this out.