Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., says Elon Musk should be required to comply with the same stringent conflict of interest rules that federal employees have to follow.

Musk, a close adviser to President-elect Donald Trump who poured millions into his campaign effort, has been tapped as the co-lead of the president-elect’s government efficiency effort.

The outside group, called the Department of Government Efficiency, is charged with advising the incoming administration on cutting government spending. Musk — the world’s richest man, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — is the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and the owner of the social media site X.

“He either needs to divest his ongoing interests or he needs to fence off every part of his advice to the president to stay out of areas where he has clear financial conflicts,” Warren told Morning Edition host Michel Martin, echoing concerns she laid out in a letter to Trump’s transition team earlier this week. Musk’s companies received significant federal funding and have regulatory issues before the government.

Warren spoke with NPR about what she sees as Musk’s conflicts of interest.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Michel Martin: The emails from your office to the Trump transition team detailed a number of potential conflicts of interests surrounding Musk’s business interests and his apparently close relationship with Trump. The letter is quite extensive, but can you just enumerate a couple of them so people know what you’re talking about?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Think of it this way… Elon Musk owns many companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and X. The federal government has many touchpoints with all of those companies, including lots of federal contracts worth billions of dollars and lots of ongoing investigations about whether or not those companies have followed the regulations and including whether or not Mr. Musk himself has followed the law. So, there he is in the middle of all of this interaction with the federal government and whispering in Donald Trump’s ear about pretty much everything. And the concern of the American people is, is he actually whispering things that are good for the American public or just things that are really good for Elon Musk?

Martin: From what you describe, I think what you seem to be saying is that Musk’s interests are so extensive that he cannot avoid conflicts of interest. Is that what you’re saying?

Warren: Well, the first thing I’m saying is this is the Trump transition team’s own ethics rule. And I’m saying the one thing that’s clear in that ethics rule is even the appearance of a conflict of interest is a no no. Mr. Musk cannot be giving advice about electric cars, for example, at the same time that he has a huge ownership stake in Tesla. He can’t be giving advice about federal contracts for SpaceX at the same time that he’s selling his services to the federal government to launch rockets into space. He can’t be giving advice about starving the law enforcement arms of these regulatory agencies at the same time that they are investigating Mr. Musk and Mr. Musk’s companies.

Martin: There is a long history of business executives advising presidents informally. I mean, business executives are often invited on presidential missions, for example. Are you suggesting that there is something of an order of magnitude different about Elon Musk’s relationship with the Trump team?

Warren: I don’t have to suggest it, he has been given an official title by the president-elect. This is not just the ordinary lobbying that lots of people show up, including CEOs, and say, do this thing to help my business. He has been tasked with the job of rethinking how all parts of government work, and the Trump administration itself has said the appearance of a conflict of interest is wrong because they recognize that it undercuts people’s confidence in how those decisions are being made. Are they being made on behalf of the American people at large, or are they being made on behalf of enriching one billionaire?

Martin: So the Trump transition team has responded to your letter in a manner of speaking. They’ve responded to several news outlets by offering the same statement. And that statement, I’m sure you’ve heard it by now. It’s issued under the name of Karoline Leavitt, who is a spokeswoman for that transition. And she referred to you, with what has been seen as a derogatory reference, saying that, “Pocahontas can play political games and send toothless letters, but the Trump-Vance transition will continue to be held to the highest ethical and legal standards possible — a standard unfamiliar to a career politician whose societal impact is 1/1024th of Elon Musk’s.” What do you say to that?

Warren: Look, they can call me whatever name they want. They’re just looking to distract from the underlying problem. And that is they issued one ethics rule saying no one who is working in the transition will have even the appearance of a conflict of interest. And here’s Elon Musk with both the appearance and actual conflicts of interest all over the place. And they just don’t want to stop and wrestle with that.

Martin: Well, the Trump transition team seems to be suggesting that they’re not going to respond at all. They called it a toothless letter. Is that the case? I mean, do you have any method of enforcing oversight in this matter, or is the main tool of oversight bringing this to public attention?

Warren: The main tool is to bring it to public attention and to call it out over and over on behalf of the American people. Look, the Trump administration took on the commitment not to have people who had an appearance of a conflict of interest or an actual conflict of interest. That means it is now on them to explain how best buddy Elon Musk is whispering in the ear of the president of the United States at the same time that his companies have extensive contracts with the federal government and he himself and those companies are under extensive investigation by different parts of the federal government.

ATLANTA — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office cannot continue prosecuting the Georgia election interference case involving President-elect Donald Trump, the Georgia Court of Appeals has ruled.

However, the court declined to dismiss the case itself. Fulton County prosecutors quickly notified the court that they intend to appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.

“While this is the rare case in which DA Willis and her office must be disqualified due to a significant appearance of impropriety, we cannot conclude that the record also supports the imposition of the extreme sanction of dismissal of the indictment under the appropriate standard,” the appeals court judges wrote. The three-judge panel voted 2-1 to disqualify Willis.

The case has been thrown into disarray since Willis admitted to a personal relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired for the case.

A trial court had ruled in March 2024 that Willis could remain on the case amid the misconduct allegations only if Wade resigned his appointment. Several defendants appealed that ruling and the case has largely been halted since this summer.

Trump is unlikely to face trial until 2029, if at all. Trump’s lawyers have separately asked the courts to dismiss his charges entirely now that he is president-elect.

The Georgia case represents the last remaining criminal charges against Trump.

Whatever happens to Trump’s Georgia charges, the 14 other remaining co-defendants could face trial in the sweeping racketeering case as soon as late next year.

If the Georgia Supreme Court ultimately takes up the case and upholds the decision, it would fall to the director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to appoint a new prosecutor. That prosecutor would have the discretion to decide whether to continue the case.

Trump’s Georgia attorney Steve Sadow wrote in a statement that the appeals court ruling was “well-reasoned.” He wrote: “As the Court rightfully noted, only the remedy of disqualification will suffice to restore public confidence.”

The district attorney’s office has not responded to a request for comment.

A romantic relationship at the center of misconduct allegations

The case focuses on efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result by pressuring state officials and election workers, submitting a slate of false electors and attempting to tamper with sensitive voting equipment. Four have pleaded guilty.

Then in January 2024, co-defendant Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official, accused Willis of misconduct that threatened to derail the case. Roman alleged that Willis enriched herself by taking fancy vacations with Wade, funded by his compensation for the prosecution. Willis and Wade testified in front of the judge, saying she paid her own way on the trips or reimbursed him in cash for her share of the expenses.

Fulton Superior Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that Willis’ romantic relationship with Wade created the appearance of a conflict of interest, but did not require her disqualification.

McAfee wrote that, “an outsider could reasonably think that the District Attorney is not exercising her independent professional judgment totally free of any compromising influences. As long as Wade remains on the case, this unnecessary perception will persist.”

The Court of Appeals was initially scheduled to consider the appeal in December, before abruptly cancelling oral arguments not long after Trump won a second term.

Trump had faced four separate prosecutions. He was convicted in New York for charges related to hush money payments, and a judge recently ruled that the president-elect can’t claim presidential immunity to overturn that conviction. The two federal cases against Trump were dropped after he won election last month.

In the Georgia case, a key legal question in the proceedings has been whether state law requires the disqualification of a district attorney only for an actual conflict of interest or merely just the appearance of impropriety.

“After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” concluded Judge Trenton Brown, writing for the majority. “The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring.”

“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” Brown continued.

Judge Todd Markle concurred. Brown and Markle were both appointees of former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. Judge Benjamin Land, appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, dissented.

“For at least the last 43 years, our appellate courts have held that an appearance of impropriety, without an actual conflict of interest or actual impropriety, provides no basis for the reversal of a trial court’s denial of a motion to disqualify,” Land wrote.

The decision caps a tumultuous year for Willis. At the onset of 2024, Willis was seen as a rising star on the national stage, as she spearheaded not only the indictment of a former president, but also pushed ahead on other high-profile cases, like a racketeering case involving rapper Young Thug. In May, she defeated a challenger in the Democratic primary.

But as the year wore on, those marquee cases stumbled or fell apart.

McAfee has quashed several counts in the Georgia election interference indictment, but 32 felony counts still remain.

President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t been sworn in yet but he’s already running Washington again in his familiar style of upheaval and intraparty drama, starting with the decision to kill a bipartisan spending bill without a strategy to avoid a government shutdown.

Trump and his newest top lieutenant, Elon Musk, upended the bipartisan agreement on Wednesday designed to keep the government running into next year largely by mounting an opposition campaign on X, Musk’s social media platform.

Musk’s posts provoked a number of rank-and-file Republicans to announce their opposition to the deal even before Trump made it clear he also opposed it–a maneuver that spoke to how much power Musk — the richest man in the world — now yields in the GOP broadly and with Trump specifically. Musk’s X bio now reads: “The people voted for major government reform.”

The clash also provoked a sense of deja vu from Trump’s first term, where the president would frequently change the policy parameters around legislation in real time and often by surprise announcement on social media. Republicans are, once again, scrambling to figure out what exactly Trump wants the party to try to pass–and if its even possible.

The meltdown also exposed how politically vulnerable Speaker Mike Johnson remains as he approaches a consequential Jan. 3 House floor vote to become the chamber’s leader again. Already at least one Republican, Rep. Tom Massie of Kentucky, says he plans to oppose Johnson leaving almost no room for further defections and raising the specter of a U.S. House once again thrown into chaos if the GOP cannot elect a speaker because the chamber cannot function without first electing its constitutionally-mandated leader.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., went so far as to suggest Thursday on X that House Republicans should elect Musk as speaker next year — a politically possible but largely preposterous notion even if the Constitution technically allows for a speaker to not be a member of Congress. Paul said there would be “joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever lovin’ minds.”

Democrats, likewise, seemed knocked off guard by the legislative collapse but less eager to help Johnson find a way out of it a second time. “House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown, or worse,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Wednesday. Part of what doomed the deal was the inclusion of unrelated measures like a pay raise for members of Congress, who have not seen a pay increase since the 2008 financial crisis.

The Trump-Musk gambit also ignored the reality in the Senate, where any deal to keep the government open requires some element of bipartisan support for it to pass as Democrats still control the chamber. It also provides a preview of the coming budget conflicts in the next Congress, where Republicans will take control but still require Democratic support to pass the 12 annual appropriations bills–which Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are already combing through to find spending cuts to domestic programs as part of their mandate under Trump’s incoming Department of Government Efficiency.

In a joint statement with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, Trump said he wanted a deal to now include an increase to the debt ceiling, the nation’s borrowing limit, so it would happen “on Biden’s watch.”

Trump later told NBC he even supported scrapping the debt ceiling entirely — a proposal generally supported by budget experts as debt ceiling political conflicts have pushed the nation dangerously close to default on several instances in the past decade–including under Trump’s first term.

Adding to the dramatic twists as a shutdown approaches: liberal Democrats signaled their support for it. “I agree with President-elect Trump that Congress should terminate the debt limit and never again govern by hostage taking,” posted Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on X.

The government will begin shutdown operations at midnight Friday, but it would take weeks for the full effect of a shutdown to be felt by everyday Americans. One thing is certain: shutdowns are a bad deal for taxpayers. They don’t save any money and the shutdowns of recent years have cost billions in lost productivity.

ATLANTA — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office cannot continue prosecuting the Georgia election interference case involving President-elect Donald Trump, the Georgia Court of Appeals has ruled.

However, the court declined to dismiss the case itself. The decision will likely be appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.

“While this is the rare case in which DA Willis and her office must be disqualified due to a significant appearance of impropriety, we cannot conclude that the record also supports the imposition of the extreme sanction of dismissal of the indictment under the appropriate standard,” the appeals court judges wrote. The three-judge panel voted 2-1 to disqualify Willis.

The case has been thrown into disarray since Willis admitted to a personal relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired for the case.

A trial court had ruled in March 2024 that Willis could remain on the case amid the misconduct allegations only if Wade resigned his appointment. Several defendants appealed that ruling and the case has largely been halted since this summer.

Trump is unlikely to face trial until 2029, if at all. Trump’s lawyers have separately asked the courts to dismiss his charges entirely now that he is president-elect.

The Georgia case represents the last remaining criminal charges against Trump.

Whatever happens to Trump’s Georgia charges, the 14 other remaining co-defendants could face trial in the sweeping racketeering case as soon as late next year.

If the Georgia Supreme Court takes up the case and upholds the decision, it would fall to the director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to appoint a new prosecutor.

The case focuses on efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result by pressuring state officials and election workers, submitting a slate of false electors and attempting to tamper with sensitive voting equipment. Four have pleaded guilty.

Then in January 2024, co-defendant Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official, accused Willis of misconduct that threatened to derail the case. Roman alleged that Willis enriched herself by taking fancy vacations with Wade, funded by his compensation for the prosecution. Willis and Wade testified in front of the judge, saying she paid her own way on the trips or reimbursed him in cash for her share of the expenses.

Fulton Superior Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that Willis’ romantic relationship with Wade created the appearance of a conflict of interest, but did not require her disqualification.

McAfee wrote that, “an outsider could reasonably think that the District Attorney is not exercising her independent professional judgment totally free of any compromising influences. As long as Wade remains on the case, this unnecessary perception will persist.”

The Court of Appeals was initially scheduled to consider the appeal in December, before abruptly cancelling oral arguments not long after Trump won a second term.

Trump had faced four separate prosecutions. He was convicted in New York for charges related to hush money payments, and a judge recently ruled that the president-elect can’t claim presidential immunity to overturn that conviction. The two federal cases against Trump were dropped after he won election last month.

In the Georgia case, a key legal question in the proceedings has been whether state law requires the disqualification of a district attorney only for an actual conflict of interest or merely just the appearance of impropriety.

“After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” concluded Judge Trenton Brown, writing for the majority. “The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring.”

“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” Brown continued.

Judge Todd Markle concurred. Brown and Markle were both appointees of former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. Judge Benjamin Land, appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, dissented.

“For at least the last 43 years, our appellate courts have held that an appearance of impropriety, without an actual conflict of interest or actual impropriety, provides no basis for the reversal of a trial court’s denial of a motion to disqualify,” Land wrote.

The decision caps a tumultuous year for Willis. At the onset of 2024, Willis was seen as a rising star on the national stage, as she spearheaded not only the indictment of a former president, but also pushed ahead on other high-profile cases, like a racketeering case involving rapper Young Thug. In May, she defeated a challenger in the Democratic primary.

But as the year wore on, those marquee cases stumbled or fell apart.

McAfee has quashed several counts in the indictment, but 32 felony counts still remain.