Billionaire Elon Musk arrived on Capitol Hill Tuesday and learned about something new — budget rescissions, an obscure legislative tool that could bring legal heft to his federal budget slashing effort and enshrine the cuts into law.

At a lunch meeting, Republican senators explained how the White House could put the billions of dollars of savings Musk has amassed into what’s called a budget rescissions package, and send it to Congress for a vote to rescind the funding. Musk seemed thrilled, they said.

“He was so happy,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who is among those championing the effort. “He didn’t know.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said senators seemed to be asking for “just better communication, wanting to know what’s going to happen next.”

But Hawley said, “I don’t know that anyone at the White House knows what’s going to happen next.” He said Musk’s team seems to “just kind of go from one thing to the next.”

It was Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who introduced the idea of using budget rescissions during the lunch meeting.

“I love what Elon is doing. I love the cutting into waste. I love finding all the crazy crap that we’re spending overseas,” Paul said afterward. “But to make it real, to make it go beyond the moment of the day, it needs to come back in the form of a rescission package,” he said.

The libertarian-leaning senator has long stood as among the most persistent budget hawks in the Senate, one who routinely votes against federal spending bills. He said he’s planning to oppose the federal funding package that’s expected next week, which is needed to prevent a federal government shutdown when money expires March 14.

Thune and other GOP leaders did not immediately make any comments on the rescission plans.

Trump lawyer Blanche confirmed at Justice

The Republican-led Senate voted Wednesday o confirm Todd Blanche as deputy attorney general, placing President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense attorney in a key Justice Department post.

Blanche, who just months ago was defending Trump against indictments brought by the department, will be the second in command under Attorney General Pam Bondi, another close Trump ally. He was confirmed in a 52-46 vote.

During his confirmation hearing, Blanche sought to assure Democrats that politics would play no role in his decisions as deputy attorney general.

Musk echoes call for Chauvin pardon in post

Elon Musk amplified podcaster Ben Shapiro’s plea for President Donald Trump to pardon former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chavin for the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

“The inciting event for the BLM riots that caused $2 billion in property damage in the United States and set America’s race relations on their worst footing in my lifetime was, in fact, the railroading of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd,” Shapiro claimed.

He added that Chauvin — who’s concurrently serving a federal sentence of 21 years and 221/2 years on state charges after pleading guilty to depriving Floyd of his civil rights and being convicted by a jury of murder and manslaughter in 2021 — is actually innocent.

“Something to think about,” Musk said on X, while retweeting a clip from Shapiro’s show.

Floyd died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin forced his knee into the man’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, all while Floyd was face down, begging for help and telling officers he couldn’t breathe. Chauvin’s actions were documented on video.

But even if Trump were to pardon Chauvin, it would not affect his conviction on state charges, meaning the disgraced officer would remain behind bars despite having his federal record expunged.

— From news services