Sources tell WIRED that Elon Musk has wanted a government shutdown in part because it would potentially make it easier to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

Unelected White House official Elon Musk is desperate for the federal government to grind to a halt — so he can continue dismantling it.

By design, budget reconciliation mostly addresses the parts of federal spending that are not part of the appropriations process. This includes mandatory programs like Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance, student loans and farm aid that get automatically funded unless Congress makes changes to their structure.

The spending measure, which passed the House earlier in the week, was presented to the Senate as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. The vote in the Senate was 62-38, with 37 Democrats opposing the bill along with Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who wanted the measure to codify Trump’s cuts to foreign aid.

Democrats are facing intense pressure to push back against the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an unofficial department created by executive order and nominally led by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk,

A government shutdown would also add to an already chaotic federal government, as Trump and advisor Elon Musk have laid off more than 100,000 federal workers and consolidated fede