Texas, on Sunday compared tech mogul Elon Musk to a “prime minister,” praising Musk for speaking out against an early version of a stopgap funding bill last week.

If there were any doubts about Elon Musk’s political influence in the contemporary Republican Party, they were largely erased last week. After all, the world’s wealthiest individual managed to play a leading role in derailing a bipartisan spending bill negotiated by the GOP’s own elected congressional leaders.