🎯 Axios PM: Pleading with Elon

Good Wednesday afternoon. Today's newsletter, edited by Sam Baker, is 517 words, a 2-min. read. Thanks to Sheryl Miller for copy editing.

House Republicans are trying to talk Elon Musk down from the ledge as he continues to heap criticism on President Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill."

• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he called Musk yesterday — but Musk didn't answer, Axios' Andrew Solender reports.
• "There's a sense that Elon is still learning about the full number of wins in the One Big, Beautiful Bill," one House Republican told Axios.

⚡️ Why it matters: With over $400 billion at his disposal, the Tesla and SpaceX owner could drown Republicans in opposition cash. And he's saying GOP lawmakers who voted for the bill should be "fired."

• Musk trashed the bill yesterday as a "disgusting abomination," and the criticism has continued today.

👀 Zoom in: There is also simmering anger behind the scenes.

• Johnson told colleagues in a closed-door meeting that Trump is "pissed off" at Musk, according to a source familiar with his comments.

📞 Johnson said he had a "great conversation" with Musk on Monday morning, before the social media rampage began, in which Musk said he would support Republicans in next year's midterms.

• "I think he's flat wrong," about the bill, Johnson said at a press conference today. "I think he's way off on this, and I've told him as much."

💰 The latest: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said today that the bill would increase the federal deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

• Go deeper.

California, New York and Texas have the greatest shares of the roughly 1.1 million international college students in the U.S., Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick reports.

• Massachusetts and Illinois round out the top five, per data from NAFSA, an international education nonprofit.

Go deeper.

What you need to know: America is the only country where:

• 340B hospitals mark up medicines.
• PBM middlemen charge rebates and fees.
• Foreign countries free ride off U.S. investment.

It's time to crack down on middlemen and foreign free riders.

Learn more.

1. 🇰🇷 Lee Jae-myung was elected today as South Korea's new president. Lee — who was stabbed in the neck last year — has said that President Trump is bringing "the law of the jungle" to foreign policy, and he may be more open to working with China than his predecessor, The New York Times reports (gift link).
2. 🇷🇺 Russian President Vladimir Putin told President Trump today that Russia will "have to respond" to the massive Ukrainian drone attack on its strategic air bases. Go deeper.
3. 📖 Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary under former President Biden, writes in a forthcoming book that she has left the Democratic Party and is now an independent. "Independent," out Oct. 21, will urge Americans to "embrace life as Independents." Go deeper.

It's been 100 years since Goodyear launched its first blimp — vessels that have now become a fixture of major cultural events and an icon of corporate marketing.

• The company is celebrating with blimp flights this week over the area of northeast Ohio that housed the airships' original hangar, AP reports.

🛞 Goodyear launched its first blimp on June 3, 1925. It now has four of them — three in the U.S. and one in Germany.

The strategy: To lower prescription drug costs in America, let's address the real reasons Americans pay more: PBMs and 340B hospital markups driving up prices and foreign countries not paying their fair share.

See how.

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