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(WASHINGTON) — A new legislative push led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., is seeking to bar special government employees like tech billionaire and senior Trump adviser Elon Musk from communicating with government agencies that interface with their companies, and would require federal employees like Musk to meet new ethics requirements.

Warren and Stansbury introduced a bill this week in the Senate and House, respectively, that would prevent special government employees (SGEs) like Musk – who lead companies worth $1 billion or more – from interacting with federal agencies that interface with his companies.

SpaceX and Tesla together have received billions of dollars in government contracts over the past ten years.

While the legislation introduced by Warren and Stansbury does not mention Musk or his companies by name, Musk’s proximity to Trump in the early days of Trump’s second term has made him a clear target of Democrats who have been outspoken about their opposition to Musk’s key role in orchestrating massive cuts to the federal government, with little input from lawmakers.

The bill, titled the SGE Ethics Enforcement & Reform (SEER) Act of 2025, would create what the lawmakers are calling a “bright-line rule” that makes new provisions explicitly applicable to owners of a “large company,” which the bill defines as any for-profit company making over $1 billion.

Democrats, including Warren, have also raised concerns that Musk’s companies could be unfairly benefitting from Musk’s influence over Trump’s policies.

Since 2015, Musk’s companies SpaceX and Tesla have been awarded at least $24 billion in federal contracts, according to government spending data and public announcements. SpaceX has won nearly $23 million worth of contracts, which includes nearly $6 million that the Space Force recently awarded SpaceX for launch missions.

“No special Government employee, as defined in section 202 of title 18, United States 23 Code, who is not on an advisory committee or a chair or vice chair on an advisory committee may have direct or indirect communications in their official capacity with an agency or office that contracts with, regulates, or has a pending enforcement action against a large company – (1) that the special Government employee owns; or (2) for which the special Government employee serves as a senior executive or director,” the bill reads.

The new bill would also implement a new requirement for government employees designated as “special government employees” to resolve conflicts of interest between their private-sector and governmental work during their service.

Unlike other cabinet and high-level positions that are subject to congressional scrutiny via the Senate confirmation process, Musk, in his advisory role, is designated a “special government employee,” a status Congress created in 1962 for temporary executive branch hires to perform limited duties for no more than 130 days.

“Unelected billionaire Elon Musk should not be acting as co-president of the United States and making $8 million a day from government contracts while he’s at it. My new bill would crack down on conflicts of interest and create stronger ethics rules for Elon Musk and all Special Government Employees. Government should work for the American people, not billionaires lining their own pockets,” Sen. Warren said in a statement provided to ABC News.

Those working for the government as special government employees are not paid by the federal government and can continue to collect payment from outside entities while performing their work for the government, which Warren and Stansbury say runs the risk of creating possible conflicts of interest.

The legislation aims to address those concerns by applying the same standard ethics rules that apply to regular federal employees to special government employees after they render 60 days of government service. These rules guide federal employees to avoid using their office for personal gain, to steer clear of conflicting financial interest, to maintain impartiality, to avoid outside activity or employment that could raise conflict of interest questions, and more.

The new legislation would also apply tougher scrutiny to the process of acquiring a conflict of interest waiver for this kind of work.

Musk has appeared alongside Trump as recently as Thursday, when he was present at a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

ABC News has previously reported that Musk could be taking a step back from his current role in the administration. His term would be up around the end of May but it had been widely rumored that the White House could take steps to keep him on or extend his employment status in some way.

“Elon has done a fantastic job. Look, he’s sitting here, and I don’t care. I don’t need Elon for anything other than I happen to like him,” Trump told reporters during the meeting.

Trump has acknowledged that Musk will eventually need to return to Tesla to run the company. However, when reports that Musk could depart the White House in May surfaced, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refuted them.

“Elon Musk and President Trump have both publicly stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at [the Department of Government Efficiency] is complete,” Leavitt said earlier this month.

The bill introduced by Warren and Stansbury faces an uncertain future on Capitol Hill. It does not currently have a Republican co-sponsor and it’s unlikely to get the GOP support it would need to move through either chamber of the Republican-controlled Congress. Many Republicans have praised Musk’s efforts to slash federal spending and have remained hesitant to criticize Musk’s work at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Still, the bill comes as Democrats are looking to demonstrate that they are fighting against the Trump agenda on all fronts. Warren has been particularly focused on the Musk-led effort to dismantle federal agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that she was instrumental in creating.

ABC News’ Soorin Kim contributed to this report.

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(ANNAPOLIS, Md.) — At the U.S. Naval Academy, it’s not what’s on the shelves that’s drawing attention — but what’s missing.

The institution’s Nimitz Library has been stripped of 381 titles, according to a list published in the New York Times, including works exploring race, gender, and national identity.

The culling includes “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi, “Bodies in Doubt” by Elizabeth Reis, and “White Rage” by Carol Anderson. None was banned outright — just rendered “not immediately available,” a Naval Academy spokesman, Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, said. The books, he said, had been placed in a room where patrons could no longer access them.

President Donald Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” has been extended to cover the country’s military academies. With language targeting what it called “discriminatory equity ideology” and “gender ideology” — which he later called “the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies” — the order set in motion extensive removals, reviews and institutional confusion.

“There isn’t any clear criteria,” Katherine Kuzminski, director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security, told ABC News. “It leaves leadership scrambling — how do we ensure compliance without being accused of overcorrecting?”

Kuzminski said military leaders, bound by a strict code to obey lawful orders, are grappling with what she called the ambiguity of the policy. “Particularly in the Air Force,” she noted, “when the Tuskegee Airmen learning module was removed from basic training for a few days, leadership was trying to follow through with the best of intentions.”

Department of the Navy leadership determined which books required removal at the Naval Academy library, Hawkins told ABC News.

Initially, officials searched the Nimitz Library catalog, using key word searches, to identify books that required further review, Hawkins said. Approximately 900 books were identified during the preliminary search, he said, and department officials then closely examined the preliminary list to determine which books required removal to comply with directives outlined in executive orders issued by the president.

That ultimately resulted in nearly 400 books being selected for removal from the Nimitz Library collection, he said.

Historians and former military officials told ABC News the implications are chilling. Richard Kohn, a military historian and former chief historian for the Air Force, sees the move as a “cleansing” effort. “It reveals a certain kind of weakness in the current administration’s confidence,” he said. “They’re determined to appeal to their MAGA constituency by rolling back decades of progress on race, religion, and diversity.”

For Kohn, removing these books from the shelves sends a clear message to cadets: To get ahead in the military, avoid certain ideas.

Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Thomas Keaney, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced international Studies, spoke about how far the academies have come — and how far he said they risk falling back. “When I was there,” he said, “it was a whites-only institution,” he said of the U.S. Air Force Academy. “It was the poorer for it.” Education, he insisted, is about exposure. “You are not harming people by letting them read,” he said.

In a letter to the secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, Democratic Reps. Adam Smith and Chrissy Houlahan called the book removals “a blatant attack on the First Amendment” and “an alarming return to McCarthy-era censorship.”

They demanded to know who ordered the removals, the process used and which titles were being purged, while urging an immediate halt.

The academies have issued carefully worded responses — or none at all — when asked by ABC News for comment.

The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy did not respond to repeated requests. The U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Air Force Academy and U.S. Coast Guard Academy issued brief statements affirming compliance with executive orders but offered few specifics.

“The Coast Guard Academy is conducting a comprehensive review of its curriculum to ensure compliance with all executive orders,” a spokesperson said.

The U.S. Naval Academy spokesman confirmed that “nearly 400 books” had been removed from its Nimitz Library, explaining the move as an effort “to ensure compliance with all directives outlined in Executive Orders issued by the President.”

He emphasized what he called the library’s robust collection — some 590,000 print books and thousands of academic resources — framing the book removals as minor compared to the size of the overall collection. “The Naval Academy’s mission,” the spokesperson added, “is to develop Midshipmen morally, mentally and physically … to prepare them for careers of service to our country.”

At the U.S. Air Force Academy, a spokesperson noted that a curriculum review was underway “to ensure our compliance with executive orders.”

But outside voices in military academic circles warned that the issue goes beyond compliance, saying it strikes at the core of intellectual development.

“You can’t make ideas safe for people, but you can make people safe for ideas,” said Kohn, who specializes in civil-military relations. “If you don’t mentor students in the academies to understand what’s going on in American society, you don’t really educate them.”

Keaney, the former U.S. Air Force officer, was more circumspect but equally concerned. “I don’t think anyone is going to be hurt by reading anything — however nutty or outside their own culture it is,” he said. “You’re not harming people by exposing them to ideas. On the contrary, you’re training them to be discerning leaders. Give them a chance. Don’t leave them to deal from ignorance.”

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