President Trump promised voters he would end the war in Ukraine.
He has pushed Moscow and Kyiv toward a deal for months. The war hawks in both parties can barely hide their fury.
And one Pennsylvania Republican just turned his fire on Elon Musk with a demand nobody expected.
A Republican Congressman Wants Elon Musk Sworn In
US Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) sat down with Kaitlan Collins on CNN’s The Source and demanded that Congress haul Elon Musk in for questioning.
His ammunition came from a Wall Street Journal report. The paper claimed the SpaceX and Tesla chief ordered a slowdown of Starshield, the military-grade version of Starlink that Ukraine’s forces use on the battlefield. According to the Journal, the throttled connection left many Ukrainian drones useless and had Trump administration officials offering conflicting accounts of who knew what.
Collins asked point-blank whether Musk was the man responsible.
“Well, that’s what the report says, but we gotta investigate,” Fitzpatrick said. “We gotta call the witnesses, gotta bring ’em in, put ’em under oath, and get to the bottom of it because this is a very, very serious matter.”
But he wasn’t finished. The congressman told Collins the Starshield lapse “costs human lives,” then added, “There’s gotta be consequences to that.”
Then came the legal threat.
“If it is in fact Mr Musk that ordered this, that is likely a violation of the law because he has authority, decision-making authority over Starlink, the civilian commercial product, but not Starshield, which is a military-grade national security tool,” Fitzpatrick said.
Collins wanted to know whether that meant putting Musk himself in the witness chair. “This is an investigation. You gotta interview everybody, yes,” he replied.
And Fitzpatrick made sure viewers knew exactly who his allies were. “I’ve spoken to several of my colleagues across the aisle over the past several days,” he told CNN, describing “a strong, strong resolve to, immediately upon our return, get to the bottom of this through oversight.”
Translation: the Pennsylvania Republican and his Democrat friends plan to roll back into Washington, DC with an investigation already loaded.
Elon Musk Already Pointed to Who Holds the Switch
There’s one small wrinkle in the congressman’s theory.
Musk addressed the Starshield speed limits on X back when Ukrainian officials first started complaining, days before Fitzpatrick ever sat down at CNN.
“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” Musk wrote.
So Musk and Fitzpatrick actually agree that no private citizen should run a military satellite network. Musk simply says no private citizen does.
President Trump denied that either he or Musk caused the problem. “And from what I understand, it’s the same as it’s always been,” the President said.
Collins brought up Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who insisted the administration had no hand in it. Fitzpatrick brushed that off too, calling the answers “wildly insufficient” and grumbling about “a lot of finger-pointing.”
Funny how a man so eager to hear from witnesses doesn’t seem all that interested in the answers the witnesses already gave.
The timing matters here. President Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, and according to The Hill, the administration warned Kyiv it could lose intelligence sharing and weapons sales routed through Europe if it kept striking Russian energy infrastructure. Russia then accused Ukraine of hitting two oil refineries anyway.
Musk summed up his frustration on X in five words: “And so the slaughter continues.”
Brian Fitzpatrick Keeps Teaming Up With Democrats on Ukraine
Fitzpatrick isn’t some neutral umpire calling balls and strikes. He co-chairs the Congressional Ukraine Caucus.
Earlier in 2026, he joined forces with US Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to go around House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) with a discharge petition. All 215 House Democrats signed it. Fitzpatrick and a couple of fellow travelers supplied the rest.
The petition forced a vote on the Ukraine Support Act, a bill carrying $1.3 billion in assistance for Kyiv plus up to $8 billion in direct loans. The bill also carried provisions that would override presidential actions to terminate existing sanctions on Russia. In plain English, Congress would get to tie the President’s hands at the negotiating table.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-FL) called the bill “a cudgel to fight against President Trump.”
Fitzpatrick saw it differently. “It’s going to send a great message to the soldiers of Ukraine,” he said. The bill cleared the House in June 2026 and then stalled out in the Senate.
But the congressman found a fresh target soon enough. After President Trump struck a deal with Vladimir Putin for Russia to ship more than 300,000 tons of diesel to the US, which the President pitched as a way to bring fuel prices down, Fitzpatrick vowed to force a vote blocking Russian oil purchases. He even slapped Ronald Reagan’s name on the bill.
“It will be forced to the Floor via discharge and it will pass overwhelmingly,” Fitzpatrick wrote on X.
So the scorecard reads like this. Fitzpatrick tried to handcuff Trump on sanctions. He moved to kill Trump’s diesel deal. And now he wants one of Trump’s most famous allies under oath.
The Endless War Crowd Found Its Next Scapegoat
Three swings at the same peace push in a single year looks a whole lot like a strategy.
Fitzpatrick belongs to the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, the RINO foreign policy crowd that never made peace with Trump’s America First approach. That faction has hungered for a showdown with Moscow for well over a decade, and it treats every step toward a negotiated settlement as a betrayal. Escalation never seems to bother them, even with a nuclear-armed Russia on the other side of the board.
Listen to his own words on CNN. Fitzpatrick said Americans “need to stand by them unequivocally and unapologetically,” talking about Ukraine.
Unequivocally means no conditions, no end date, and no price tag too high. That’s the language of a blank check, and American taxpayers have heard it plenty of times before.
And then there’s the nuclear question nobody on CNN wanted to touch. Back in September 2022, Musk ordered SpaceX engineers to shut down Starlink coverage in parts of Ukraine during a counteroffensive because he feared it could provoke Russian nuclear retaliation. The hawks in both parties never seemed to forgive him for that one.
Maybe the Journal’s report holds up under scrutiny. Maybe it doesn’t. Musk flatly pointed at the government, and the President says nothing changed. But Fitzpatrick skipped right past both explanations and jumped straight to talk of consequences, which says more about his priorities than it does about any satellite.
Notice the echo, too. US Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Starshield restrictions “must stop immediately” and warned that “lives are at stake.” Fitzpatrick’s CNN talking points sounded like they rolled off the same printer.
Mediaite, the left-leaning site that wrote up the interview, couldn’t resist piling on the President either, pointing to Trump’s waiver of Russia sanctions and his remark to Newsmax that he finds Zelensky harder to deal with than Putin. The media always seems to know which side of this fight it’s on.
But Trump isn’t wrong to want this war over. The fighting since Russia’s full-scale invasion has dragged on for more than four years. Every extra month means more bloodshed overseas and more pressure on Washington to keep the money flowing.
This Congress wraps up in January, and Fitzpatrick doesn’t have much runway left. Expect a lame-duck scramble once lawmakers return, with hearings, a fight over calling Musk, and another discharge petition aimed at the diesel deal.
The real target sits in the Oval Office. Musk just makes the easiest name to put on a hearing room placard.
And if the hawks get their hearing, Musk probably won’t be the last name on the witness list. The President’s own negotiators would make a much juicier target.
Sources: Mediaite, “House Republican Says ‘We Gotta Investigate’ Elon Musk, Says Billionaire May Have Broken the Law After Bombshell Report”; The Hill, “Amid Ukraine uproar, Musk says decisions to restrict Starshield up to president”; Euronews, “Musk points to Trump behind any slowdown in Ukraine’s Starshield system”; Ground News, “Trump Says neither He nor Musk Responsible for Ukraine Starlink Access”; Denver Gazette, “Ukraine says SpaceX’s Starshield throttling hampers defense”; Dhaka Tribune/AFP, “Musk calls on Ukraine’s Zelensky to ‘go’ after satellite slowdown row”; eNCA, “Musk suggests US govt behind any slowdown in Ukraine’s Starshield system”; Axios, “House Republican, invoking Reagan, moves to block Trump’s Russia oil deal”; Associated Press via CFJC Today, “House passes bill to aid Ukraine and impose new sanctions on Russia”; Office of Rep Gregory Meeks, joint statement on the Ukraine Support Act discharge petition; Euromaidan Press, “US House discharge petition reaches 218 signatures, forcing vote on Ukraine aid”