Musk6 America Pac
estb 10 24}:
SEE SEVEN 6 25 POST BREAKUP
TESLA NODE BAD? SEE TESLER2
SEE STARLINK AFRICA STATE DEPT FUCKERY CORRUPT CRONY CAPL
ENFORCER TAG RETALIATION DARK MONEY
SEE DIRTY TRICKS TROLL
SEE PRIVacy
voter fraud BS fail 3rd party fuckery
:{::{{SEE DOGE}: budget vivek mtg ~ checks
mass deport arrEst gov evers LIE DISINFO rule of law --> FASCISM
:{nazi salute speech to AFD no guilt CRUELTY --> FEAR = :{FASCISM}: STARVING KIDS AID THRU WOODCHIPPER (ireland opera was state dept $, so was---)} [
9LHxV3GeM)
see disinfo putin
SEE FAIL
SEE KID KILLER FAMINE USAID CUTS kid cancer bill
MARS // PREPPER DISASTER CAP’L LIBTARD
see dereg see corp bad actor
saudi funded twitter buy; zuck follows on disinfo 1 25
musk burned 1/2 value xitter to make it alt rt gop trump platform --> oligarch
on call trump zelynsky b/c he wandered by?!
PO biden for elec car summit snub?
dtr trans woke mind virus
pvt security weapons in H deputized // brownshirts
BAK 6 25
SEE TOOL BELOW
===
musk bogus rbg pac
unmasking Musk's Secret Money Spending on Sketchy "RBG PAC" BY JON GOLINGER Fifteen years ago, the United States Supreme Court issued its deeply flawed opinion in Citizens United v. FEC, striking down prohibitions on corporate spending on election campaigns and paving the way for “independent expenditure committees” — commonly known as SuperPACs — to pour unlimited funds into election ads. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined three of her Court colleagues in a vigorous dissent, authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, opposing the Citizens United decision as wrongly decided on both the law and the facts. The dissenters asserted that the decision would blow open the doors to corporations and wealthy individuals dominating elections with massive ad spending. Justice Ginsburg and her dissenting colleagues were right — and in the 2024 presidential election the disastrous results of Citizens United were more evident than ever. In fact, one corporate CEO’s millions were used to exploit Ginsburg’s own name, image, and reputation to fund
campaign ads aimed at persuading a key election demographic
— women between the ages of 18
and 54 in four swing states — to
buy the claim that Trump’s and
Justice Ginsburg’s opposing positions on the issue of abortion were
somehow “alike.”
The $20 million spent by that
corporate CEO — Elon Musk — was
used to co opt Justice Ginsburg’s
name for a pro-Trump political
committee that exploited loopholes in federal campaign disclosure laws to hide Musk’s last
minute funding of the mysterious
“RBG PAC” independent expenditure committee until after Election
Day, when it was too late for voters
to factor that into their decisions.
A new Public Citizen report examines how this happened, why it
matters, and how to fix it.
The report’s extensive review of
RBG PAC campaign records, digital-ad targeting data, and a web of
recently-deleted websites, social
media, and video ads revealed
a carefully coordinated scheme
to maximize RBG PAC’s election impact while depriving voters of information vital to enable
them to evaluate the credibility of
RBG PAC’s advertising messages.
Disclosure likely would have
defeated the deceptive purpose of
the whole enterprise.”
New data detailed in the
“Unmasking Musk” report
includes:
• Less than 24 hours after Musk
— the Super PAC’s only funding source — gave $20,500,000
t, RBC PAC spent nearly all of
the money on ads, mailers,
and text messages. But none
of the pre-election campaign
finance filings or ads reviewed
disclosed Musk’s involvement
to enable voters to evaluate
the credibility of the ads.
• RBG PAC spent Musk’s money
on: $17.8 million worth of digital ads and 15 and 30 second
videos; $1 million worth of
mailers; $1.6 million worth of
text messages
• RBG PAC ran 110 different versions of abortion-themed ads
on Facebook and Instagram
between Oct. 25 and Nov. 5
(Election Day) that cost more
...
han $1 million and were seen
on a screen more than 6.6 million times.
• RBG PAC ran Facebook and
Instagram ads primarily targeting women between the
ages of 18 and 54 in four key
swing states: Pennsylvania,
Michigan, North Carolina, and
Wisconsin.
The messages, imagery, and
targeting of the RBG PAC ads all
appeared designed to achieve one
objective: to soften the perception
of Trump’s anti-abortion positions in order to win Trump votes
from pro-choice women in states
that could swing the election.
As described in the “Unmasking
Musk” report, the information that
RBG PAC presented to its target
voters before the election asserted
in various ways that Trump’s position on abortion was aligned with
former Supreme Court Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg’s position on abortion. This assertion has no reasonable merit and Justice Ginsburg’s
family quickly disputed it in the
press. Knowing that Musk was
funding the ads may have alerted
voters about what was going on
— but there was no way for them
to know. None of the RBG PAC ad
information analyzed in the report
disclosed before the election that
Elon Musk was in any way associated with RBG PAC, much less
that it had been entirely funded
by Musk.
While the Citizens United majority’s decision striking down reasonable limits on SuperPAC campaign
spending was deeply flawed and
wrongly decided, the majority
opinion did get something right:
it affirmed the constitutionality of
campaign finance disclosure laws
and encouraged the adoption of
robust transparency requirements
to empower voters, stating: “The
First Amendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits
citizens and shareholders to react
to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way. This transparency enables the electorate to
make informed decisions and give
proper weight to different speakers
and messages.”
Unfortunately, while the Court
reaffirmed campaign finance disclosure as valuable, constitutional,
and a theoretical prophylactic to
reduce the corrupting influence
of big money, in Washington, D.C.,
the rules and laws needed to actually make disclosure a meaningful counterweight to the flood of
money in elections have failed to
move forward because of powerful
corporate lobbyists.
Promisingly, hope has flowered on the ground level in the
states, when it comes to campaign
finance disclosure. Over the past
five years, voters in three states
— statewide voters in Alaska and
Arizona and municipal voters in
San Francisco, California — have
demonstrated their strong support
for greater campaign finance disclosure by passing ballot initiatives
that have survived legal challenges
all the way up to the U.S. Supreme
Court.
If adopted by Congress, all
three of these voter-approved state
campaign finance disclosure laws
would be major improvements on
current federal campaign finance
disclosure law. If the Sunlight on
Dark Money campaign ad disclosure law adopted by San Francisco
voters had been in place federally
for the 2024 presidential election,
it would have required the RBG
PAC ads to list the names of their
top three donors and the amount
those donors contributed to fund
them — on RBG PAC YouTube ads
and digital ads, on its website, and
on campaign mailers. Alongside
their campaign messages, RBG
PAC ads would have had to disclose: “Paid for by RBG PAC — top
donor is Elon Musk Revocable
Trust ($20,500,000).” Targeted
voters would have had more complete context for the RBG PAC ads
they were receiving and been able
to consider the merits and credibility of RBG PAC ads’ questionable
claims accordingly.
The elaborately deceptive RBG
PAC scheme funded by Elon Musk
should motivate Congress to follow
the peoples’ lead and shine sunlight on dark money. The results of
meaningful campaign finance disclosure, while straightforward in
practice, can have a powerful and
positive impact on boosting public
trust in our damaged democracy.
Musk
---
AN OCT 2026
Threats against federal judges in the United States have reached record levels this year, with the U.S. Marshals Service investigating more than 500 threats by September — a surge legal observers say reflects rising politicized hostility toward the judiciary.
In an article for the Guardianpublished Sunday, investigative journalist Jason Wilson argued that El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele is seeking to export his authoritarian playbook to the U.S. by calling on President Donald Trump to impeach “corrupt judges.”
Wilson noted that Bukele has made repeated public attacks on the US judiciary — including describing the country as “facing a judicial coup” — and that his latest call was amplified by pro‑MAGA figures such as tech billionaire Elon Musk.
He writes that the timing of this intervention is significant, as the U.S. judiciary is already under unprecedented pressure from threats, harassment, and rhetorical assaults tied to the current Trump administration. Wilson cites figures showing hundreds of threats to federal judges in 2025, plus numerous instances of attacks on judges at the local level.
The writer traced Bukele’s tactics back to actions his government took in 2021, when loyalist legislators dismissed constitutional court justices and the attorney general to install allies. He argued that although the U.S. system makes removal of judges difficult, the tactic being tested is not direct removal but delegitimisation and intimidation.
According to Wilson, the Trump administration is using sustained attacks on the judiciary, repeating claims that courts are not co‑equal branches and targeting judges who rule against it, as a tool to discourage judicial review. He warned that consistent threats and undermining of institutional legitimacy may lead judges to hesitate in decisions that conflict with the administration’s agenda, weakening one of democracy’s key checks.
The article quoted Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, who said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”
"That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in several countries, including by Bukele," the article noted.
---
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REV DR PJT steve davis
Musk Connections: SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), Boring Company
Other Corporate Connections: Board of Advisers, Atlas Society; Former owner, Mr. Yogato; Former owner, Thomas Foolery
DOGE Deployments:“Day-to-day leader.” SSA, GSA
Musk’s Long-Time Right-Hand Man
- Davis was appointed CEO and President of the Boring Company in 2018. The Boring Company is an infrastructure company that claimsto be building a system of tunnels in cities across the country. By digging tunnels underneath urban environments, the company claims it will “solve traffic, enable rapid point-point transportation and transform cities.”
- Initial reviews of the Boring Company’s tunnels found they failed to be the project that Musk hyped them up as. Musk claimed his tunnels would be able to sustain mass transit, with autonomous vehicles going faster than 100 miles per hour. Among several drawbacks, his tunnels seem to mostly fit individual cars, are likely to result in bottlenecks, and very likely will not be able to match the capacity of already-existing subway systems.
- Technology journalist Paris Marx criticized the entire project as the “Bullshit Company,” arguing that “He [Musk] wants credit for putting vehicles in tunnels despite us having run trains in tunnels for over a century and buses in them for several decades. Elon Musk is not an innovator; he’s a narcissist who thinks he knows better than the experts in the fields he decides to enter.”
- Davis started working at SpaceX in 2003 but has been involved with Musk since 2002, just after Musk and Thiel sold PayPal. He is said to be a hard-line Musk loyalist.
Day-To-Day Leader Of Doge
- The New York Times described Davis as the “day-to-day leader of DOGE.” He is reportedly the main person in charge of the operation. His authority seemingly surpasses the actual appointed head, Amy Gleason.
- Davis is used by Musk as an aggressive cost-cutter at his companies. Musk compared him to chemotherapy: “‘Steve is like chemo,’ Mr. Musk said at a transition meeting before President Trump took office. ‘A little chemo can save your life; a lot of chemo could kill you.’”
- Davis helped Musk construct DOGE after Trump was elected. He was in charge of interviewing potential DOGE recruits, and “met with agencies that employed engineers to assess the technical talent that DOGE might tap, three government officials said.”
- Davis reportedly pushed government officials to allow him to send government-wide emails. This push for access suggests he may have played a large role in emailing the government-wide “Fork in the Road” resignation offer in January.
Davis Was In Charge Of Slashing Costs At X And Spacex, Leading To Disastrous Consequences
- Davis was known for meticulously cutting costs at Musk’s companies. He was so involved in the restructuring of Twitter after its purchase that he, his wife, and newborn reportedly lived in makeshift quarters at Twitter’s headquarters.
- Court documents from lawsuits filed after the Twitter take-over indicate that Davis “pushed workers to violate rent contracts and demanded they violate local permitting laws — all to meet Musk’s cost-cutting goal.”
- In 2007, Davis’ cost-slashing led to a rocket mishap at SpaceX: “Mr. Davis removed components from SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket that prevented fuel from sloshing inside the vehicle, three former colleagues said. That caused the fuel to unbalance the rocket during a test flight, and it shut down midair before reaching orbit.” The March 2007 launch failure was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Air Force (USAF).
Davis Helped Musk Run America Pac, A Super Pac That Was Accused Of Breaking Election Laws And Abusing Its Workers
- Davis helped run Musk’s Super PAC, America PAC. He helped imagine a scheme to pay registered voters $47 for signing a pledge that would identify them as potential Trump voters in the lead-up to the 2024 Presidential election.
- America PAC hired canvassers and maintained abusive working conditions for them. In October 2024, Wired reported that “America PAC door knockers were flown to Michigan, driven in the back of a U-Haul, and told they’d have to pay hotel bills unless they met unrealistic quotas.”
- America PAC hosted a $1 million giveaway for registered voters in battleground states who signed a petition supporting the Constitution. The PAC was sued by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner for the giveaway. It was also criticized by “some election experts who say it is a violation of the law to link a cash handout to signing a petition that also requires a person to be registered to vote.” One day after the election, Pennsylvania judge Angelo Foglietta denied Krasner’s bid, allowing the giveaway to continue.
- In March 2025, Elon Musk personally donated $1 million to a man who signed a petition opposing “activist judges” in the midst of a Wisconsin Supreme Court election. America PAC also announced that anyone supporting the petition would receive $100.
Davis Helped Musk Secure Government Contracts And Regulatory Approvals At Spacex And The Boring Company
- Davis opened SpaceX’s D.C office in 2008. In Washington, he negotiated with Federal agencies for SpaceX regulatory approvals. Among his projects was the SpaceX launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas. The project faced inquiries and regulatory requirements from the FAA, Texas Department of Transportation, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, to name a few.
- The Boring Company has had to navigate a “morass of morass of national, state and local rules to build its tunnels” and has faced a litany of regulatory challenges. Davis was responsible for persuading public officials to score contracts and approvals for projects across the country.
- During Davis’ leadership, the Boring company was sued by Los Angeles residents for one of its projects. A tunnel system the company built in Las Vegas is closed because of safety concerns. The company was fined more than $100,000 by the Nevada OSHA department for maintaining an unsafe workplace. Toxic debris falling from conveyor belts were among the worker complaints to OSHA. Bloomberg has also reported that workers at his Las Vegas tunnel had to wade through toxic sludge.
Davis Is Ideologically Committed To Libertarianism
- Davis served on the board of advisors of the Atlas Society, a group dedicated to Ayn Rand’s libertarian philosophy. “The group is dedicated to exploring the philosophy of Ayn Rand, known for equating government bureaucrats with ‘looters and moochers.’” He has appeared at Ayn Rand conferences to speak about the work he has done with Musk,and has even quoted Atlas Shrugged off the top of his head. He has a cameo in Atlas Shrugged II.
*As Elon Musk’s DOGE continues to tear through agencies with little oversight or transparency, the Revolving Door Project is publishing profiles of reported DOGE employees: who they are, where they came from, and any conflicts of interest that might make their unfettered access to the federal government dangerous to the public. Read them all here.
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WALL ST ON PARANDE HMN?
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AN 6 25
During his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump not only rallied his hardcore base of 2016 and 2020 — he led a MAGA coalition that ranged from Christian nationalists to tech bros to the Manosphere. And he also reached out to independents, some of whom voted for centrist Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 but voted for Trump in 2024 because of their worries about inflation.
That game plan didn't give Trump the "landslide" victory that he claimed it did: Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by roughly 1.5 percent in the popular vote, which is a narrow victory — not a landslide. But it was enough to get him past the finish line.
Four and one-half months into his second presidency, however, a MAGA feud has erupted between Trump and Tesla/SpaceX/X.com leader Elon Musk over the president's "big, beautiful bill." After Musk called the bill a "disgusting abomination," Trump attacked him during a Thursday, June 5 press conference with visiting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
READ MORE: 'The dumbest civil war ever': Right-wing billionaire bro feud goes kaboom
The U.S. president told reporters, "I am very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot…. Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore."
In an article published the following day, Salon's Amanda Marcotte argues that the feud between Trump and Musk underscores the divisions between "techbro fascists" and other parts of the MAGA coalition.
"As (Musk) and Trump snipe at each other publicly," Marcotte writes, "the efforts to pretend this is a friendly disagreement are falling apart. Even if Musk fails in his efforts to kill Trump's bill, this battle is exposing a deeper truth that (White House adviser Stephen) Miller can't hide with his lies about Trump winning in a 'landslide': The MAGA coalition is fragile and some of the differences are starting to tear at the seams less than half a year into the second Trump term. Trump's slim win in 2024 was no doubt due in large part to Musk, and not just the eye-popping quarter-billion-plus Musk spent to push the old man's orange carcass over the finish line."
Marcotte continues, "It's because Musk and other influential figures, especially those associated with Silicon Valley or who pretend to be former liberals, were able to convince a chunk of more secular, largely male voters to throw their lot in with the Christian nationalist base that is the backbone of the MAGA movement. But while these two groups joined together based on a shared animosity towards racial minorities and women, it was always a far more uneasy alliance than Musk or Trump wanted to admit. And now, it's getting shakier as two narcissistic billionaires are at odds."
READ MORE:Revealed: The 'Big Beautiful Bill' contains an ugly favor for one of Florida’s top industries
The Salon journalist emphasizes that the "trouble within fascist paradise" has been "brewing for reasons that run deeper than Musk and Trump's competing egos or Silicon Valley's dependency on government funding."
"The atheistic world of pseudo-intellectualism that Musk and his minions come from," according to Marcotte, "was always going to have friction with the Christian nationalists who actually run the MAGA-ified Republican Party…. This budget fight exposes how delusional that attitude always was. It's not about religion, per se, but the culture clash between the Musk fanboys and the Christian nationalist debate is driving much of this. Musk and his acolytes envision a technofascism that sucks all the money out of social services and puts it into the tech industry, even as it pursues goals typically disliked by the Christian right, such as clean energy production."
Marcotte continues, "Meanwhile, the Christian Right wing of the party, while happy to pass huge cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare, is largely leaving untouched Social Security or Medicare, which their working-class and aging base depends on. The tech bro fascists may hate the liberals they live next door to, but at the end of the day, they're still part of the urban, atheistic, educated class that the MAGA movement demonizes. That difference was not going to be papered over forever."
READ MORE:'He. Is. Lying.' Republican blasted for spinning Medicaid cuts as 'transitioning
*Amanda Marcotte's full Salon article is available at this link.
5 05 25 tes takedn
- It started with Elon complaining that Donald's Murder Budget didn't steal healthcare and food from enough Americans
- Then Elon said he had bought the presidency for Donald (fact check: true), and called Donald ungrateful
- That triggered all-out war
- Donald threatened to cut off Elon's federal contracts
- Elon called Donald a pedophile
- Then Elon said Donald should be impeached
drop big bomb epstein files
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an comm dr? 6 25
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts, on Tuesday released a report chronicling over 100 examples of "unethical or potentially corrupt actions" that either benefit billionaire Elon Musk or one of his companies and which took place while Musk played a key role in the Trump administration.
According to the report, the past few months have been very profitable for Musk, who officially departed the White House last week. "Since Election Day, Musk's staggering net worth has increased by over $100 billion," the report states.
After spending some $290 million to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump and other Republicans last fall, Musk was tapped by Trump to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a body tasked with slashing government personnel and spending. DOGE's sweep of government has led, for example, to the hollowing out of the U.S. Agency for International Development and contract cuts at many other agencies.
Last week, Musk announced that he is departing the White House, just ahead of an official May 30 deadline for his departure as a special government employee. That designation allowed the world's richest man to play a key role in the Trump White House without facing Senate confirmation.
During that time, Musk "maintained extensive financial conflicts of interest through his ownership or stake" in several companies, including the electric vehicle company Tesla and his aerospace firm SpaceX, per the report, which was first written up by Rolling Stone.
According to the report, "not every action listed below represents a violation of federal law. In many cases, Musk has violated norms at an astonishing pace." However, "in other cases, Musk has engaged in action that may have violated the statutory prohibition regarding federal employees; participation in particular matters in which a government official has a financial interest, laws against bribery and gratuities, or the regulations prohibiting use of one's government position for private gain."
The report, titled Special Interests Over the Public Interest: Elon Musk's 130 Days in the Trump Administration, sorts the listed actions into 15 main categories, such as "official government time and resources [that] have been spent promoting Musk's businesses." In that first category, the report gives the example of the time that Trump turned the White House lawn into a Tesla showroom.
In a category titled "Musk's parochial interests over the public interest," the report highlights how Musk has appeared to influence Trump's actions toward South Africa, Musk's country of birth.
Musk has been critical of a law passed in South Africa earlier this year, which allows the government to seize land under set circumstances. The law is meant to help rectify the economic exclusion that Black South Africans faced during apartheid. In February, Trump issued an executive order freezing aid to South Africa over the law.
The report also details federal government contracts that Musk's various ventures have either secured or are being considered for. For example, in February, NASA chose SpaceX to provide launch services for a space telescope, a contract worth $100 million. SpaceX is also reportedly being considered to construct part of Trump's "Golden Dome" missile defense shield.
Warren's report also gives instances in which "largely guided by Musk's DOGE, the Trump administration has hamstrung the agencies overseeing Musk's companies, gutting their staff, throwing sand in the gears of their operations, and embedding DOGE staff loyal to Musk." The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in particular has been a target of DOGE.
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rww
06/04/2025
by
- Timothy Noah @ The New Republic: Meet Elon Musk’s Puppet Master: Russell Vought
Elon Musk may have “left Washington” last week, but the Department of Government Efficiency won’t miss a step. That’s because Musk was never running DOGE in the first place. I’m not suggesting that Amy Gleason was in charge. Gleason, you may recall, is the government official whom the White House last February named as a sort of papier-mâché acting DOGE administrator as part of its legal sleight of hand to shield Musk from litigation. Gleason is a data expert who worked for Musk, not the other way around. No, I’m talking about Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.
- Zachary Leeman @ Mediaite: Judge Warns Mike Lindell to Stop Posting About and Discussing Defamation Trial on Social Media
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was warned by the judge presiding over his defamation trial to stop discussing the proceedings on social media.
- David Edwards @ Raw Story: Mike Lindell's trial attorneys won't argue his vote-rigging claims are true
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's attorneys have declined to argue that his election-rigging claims are true at a defamation trial in Colorado this week.
- David Moye @ HuffPost: Marjorie Taylor Greene Freaks Out After She Finally Reads Bill She Voted For
"I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there," she said about a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill that the House passed last month.
- Hunter Walker @ Talking Points Memo: Internal Docs Raise Questions About Trump IRS Pick Billy Long’s ‘No-Show Jobs’ And ‘Strange’ Schedule Inside A Powerful Agency
It’s not quite clear what is happening with former Missouri Congressman Billy Long and his associates at the federal Office of Personnel Management, where he has been a senior advisor to the director since March.
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RS raw 6 25
'Reign of corruption' revealed as Senate Dems share Musk 'dodgy dealings' list
Jennifer Bowers Bahney
:{June 3, 2025
:{Elon Musk is seen with a bruised eye that Musk claimed he received at the hands of his son, X Æ A-12, as he attends a press conference with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 30, 2025.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has issued a new report raising questions of "corruption, ethics, and conflicts of interest" perpetuated during Elon Musk's time heading up President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, according to a preview by Rolling Stone.
The report, titled “Special Interests Over the Public Interest: Elon Musk’s 130 Days in the Trump Administration,” features a list of 130 questionable actions by Musk, his companies, and family members that culminated in a "reign of corruption," according to senior writer Tim Dickinson.
Last week, Trump announced that Musk was leaving his post as "special government employee" to focus more on his businesses, which have taken a hit since he became involved in promoting Trump's MAGA agenda.
"The Warren report is focused on Elon’s use of political power to boost his businesses, or secure special benefits — from regulatory relief to rich new contracts — that favor his fortunes and his family," Dickinson wrote.
ALSO READ: FBI silent as far-right podcaster demands Trump execution and Kash Patel torture
“Not every action listed… represents a violation of federal law,” the report said, instead arguing that “Musk has violated norms at an astonishing pace” while taking actions that are “hurting the American public.”
Rolling Stone previewed the list's 15 categories that include blatant White House promotion of Musk's Tesla electric vehicles, lucrative contracts for SpaceX and Starlink, and a concerted effort by the Trump DOJ to drop up to $2.5 billion in federal penalties against Musk's companies.
The report also claimed that Musk perpetuated an "intimidation campaign" via his X social media business, as well as "weaponizing federal power" and "influence-peddling in Congress."
The report concluded that, far from displaying transparency, "Musk himself has hidden his norms-busting activities behind a veil of secrecy...failing to make public his vast financial holdings, or what if any waivers of federal ethics requirements he may have received."
Read the Rolling Stone article here.
no lnx
===
an 5 25
Trump's administration has now officially opened an investigation into a progressive advocacy group that has long been a thorn in the side of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now looking into whether Media Matters for America (MMFA) — which focuses on debunking claims propagated by right-wing media — illegally colluded with advertisers on the social media platform X (which is owned by Musk). The FTC probe comes amid a lawsuit by Musk in which he's seeking damages from MMFA, alleging that the group damaged his relationship with advertisers and prompted a mass exodus of advertising dollars from the platform.
MMFA published a report in 2023 finding that ads sometimes appeared next to extremist content on X. The report found that major advertisers like Apple, IBM and Oracle had ads placed in close proximity to accounts that tweeted pro-Nazi content. Musk's lawsuit alleged that MMFA misrepresented data and insisted that the chances of an advertiser's paid post appearing next to extremist tweets were "rare."
READ MORE:'Extreme response': 11 Republicans slam Trump admin attorney Alina Habba
"Media Matters knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform,” the complaint read. “Media Matters designed both these images and its resulting media strategy to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.”
In response to Musk's lawsuit, MMFA President Angelo Carusone called the litigation "frivolous" that was "meant to bully X's critics into silence."
"Media Matters stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court," he said.
Click here to read the Times' article in full (subscription required).
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comm dr an 5 25
More than a million people in some of the world's most impoverished countries could be fed for three months and hundreds of thousands of children's lives could be saved if $98 million in ready-made meals and other rations were able to leave four warehouses run by the U.S. foreign aid agency dismantled by the Trump administration.
But instead, there is no end in sight to the food languishing in the facilities—or to the starvation of millions of people in Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, and other parts of the Global South facing high levels of hunger and malnutrition.
Some of the 66,000 tonnes of food, including grains, high-energy biscuits, and vegetable oil, are slated to expire as soon as July, when they will likely be turned into animal feed, incinerated, or otherwise destroyed, Reuters reported Thursday.
The warehouses are located in Houston, South Africa, Djibouti, and Dubai, and are run by the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. Many of the staff who help run the warehouses are scheduled to be fired on July 1 in the first of two rounds of cuts that will effect nearly all of USAID.
Contracts with suppliers, shipping companies, and contractors have been canceled since USAID was taken over by the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, with the White House saying the agency—with a relatively small budget of just $40 billion—was responsible for "significant waste."
Since DOGE, run by tech billionaire Elon Musk, targeted USAID in one of its first full-scale attacks on a federal entity, the agency is being run by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The State Department's Office of Foreign Assistance has not yet approved a proposal to give the stranded food stocks to aid organizations for distribution, two former USAID staffers told Reuters.
That office is being led by Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old former DOGE employee who is overseeing the complete decommissioning of USAID, which has provided humanitarian assistance in conflict zones and the Global South for more than six decades.
Max Hoffman, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said the massive waste of life-saving food rations was the result of President Donald Trump and Musk deploying "some idiot 20 year old staggering around USAID turning things off without the faintest idea of the consequences."
Some of the rations were intended for Gaza, where half a million Palestinians are currently facing starvation and the rest of the population of 2.3 million people are suffering from acute levels of food insecurity due to Israel's total blockade on humanitarian aid which was reimposed in March after a brief cease-fire. Thousands of children have been hospitalized with acute malnutrition since the beginning of the year, but Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza has left health providers with extremely limited means to treat them.
The entire population of Gaza could be fed for a month and a half with the food rations that are on the verge of rotting in the four warehouses, Reuters reported.
Nearly 500 tonnes of high-energy biscuits in Dubai are among the stocks that will expire in July, a former USAID official told the outlet. They could feed at least 27,000 acutely malnourished children for a month.
The food aid was also scheduled to go to Sudan, where famine has been confirmed in at least 10 areas as the country faces the third year of a civil war.
Action Against Hunger is one of many aid groups that have had to scale back operations after losing significant funding due to U.S. cuts; the group said last month that its suspension of work in the Democratic Republic of Congo had already directly led to the deaths of at least six children.
In addition to USAID's warehouses full of soon-to-be-expired food, the U.S.-based company Edesia, which makes the peanut-based Plumpy'Nut, told Reuters that USAID's cuts to transportation contracts had forced the company to open an additional warehouse. A $13 million stockpile of 5,000 tonnes of Plumpy'Nut, which is used to prevent severe malnutrition in children, is in the warehouse now—but could be used to feed more than 484,000 children.
"The dismantling of USAID and cuts to humanitarian aid has been devastating and unacceptable," said Oxfam America.
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AN 5 25
'Just gaslighting': The Cybertruck is 'all but doomed' amid 'universal scorn and derision'
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an 5 25
An internal Trump administration document reportedly shows that anti-fraud checks recently installed at the Social Security agency have found just two cases of potentially improper benefit claims out of more than 110,000—a rate of 0.0018%.
The documents, first reported Thursday by Nextgov/FCW, further undercut President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's narrative that Social Security is brimming with fraud. Musk falsely
in March that "40% of the calls into Social Security were fraudulent."
The anti-fraud checks for Social Security have been applied only to benefit claims made over the phone. According to the internal document, "No significant fraud has been detected from the flagged cases." Earlier this year, amid widespread outrage, the Social Security Administration (SSA) walked back a proposal to scrap many of its phone-based benefit claim services.
Nextgov/FCW noted Thursday that the Trump administration's deployment of the anti-fraud tools beginning last month "did cause delays, as SSA changed its phone procedures to add the checks on the backend."
"The lags stem from the three-day hold placed on telephone claims in order to run the anti-fraud [checks], a move that 'delays payments and benefits to customers, despite an extremely low risk of fraud,'" Nextgov/FCW reported, citing the internal document.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement that "the Trump-Musk Social Security takeover has only meant more chaos and confusion for Americans."
"Every one of DOGE's so-called 'mistakes' is a backdoor cut to people's benefits," said Warren. "There's nothing efficient about making it harder for people to access the checks they’ve earned and are owed."
On social media, Warren called the revelations in the internal administration document "a HUGE scandal."
It's long been clear that Social Security fraud is minuscule, with an inspector general report published last year estimating that just 0.84% of Social Security benefits paid out between 2015 and 2022 were dispensed improperly—and even those improper payments were not necessarily fraudulent.
The new reporting out Thursday bolstered warnings that the Trump administration's hunt for fraud is a mere pretext for slashing Social Security benefits and weakening the program.
"Turns out there ISN'T rampant Social Security fraud, but Elon's witch hunt, driven by his insane conspiracy theories, IS keeping seniors from getting their benefits as quickly as they should be," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wrote on social media. "THIS is Republican governing: hunting for nonexistent fraud while breaking Social Security."
Frank Bisignano, the newly confirmed SSA administrator, has close ties to Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and has defended the president's false claim that tens of millions of "dead" people are receiving Social Security benefits.
CNNreported earlier this week that as SSA combs "through its databases to check whether beneficiaries are alive or dead" at Trump and Musk's behest, agency staffers are "seeing more people coming in to be resurrected" after being falsely deemed deceased.
"I've been saying it all along," former SSA chief Martin O'Malley wrote Thursday. "Elon Musk is the biggest fraud, not Social Security."
NOW READ:The backlash is here — and Republicans have no one to blame but themselves
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AN PP 5 25
Reporting Highlights
- “Maximum Pressure”: The State Department conducted a monthslong campaign to push a small African country to help Musk’s satellite internet company, records and interviews show.
- “Ram This Through”: Working closely with executives at Starlink, the U.S. government has made a global push to help expand Musk’s business empire in the developing world.
- “Crony Capitalism”: Diplomats said the events were an alarming departure from standard practice — because of both the tactics used and the person who would benefit most from them.
In early February, Sharon Cromer, U.S. ambassador to Gambia, went to visit one of the country’s Cabinet ministers at his agency’s headquarters, above a partially abandoned strip mall off a dirt road. It had been two weeks since President Donald Trump took office, and Cromer had pressing business to discuss. She needed the minister to fall in line to help Elon Musk.
Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet company, had spent months trying to secure regulatory approval to sell internet access in the impoverished West African country. As head of Gambia’s communications ministry, Lamin Jabbi oversees the government’s review of Starlink’s license application. Jabbi had been slow to sign off and the company had grown impatient. Now the top U.S. government official in Gambia was in Jabbi’s office to intervene.
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency loomed over the conversation. The administration had already begun freezing foreign aid projects, and early in the meeting, Cromer, a Biden appointee, said something that rattled Gambian officials in the room. She listed the ways that the U.S. was supporting the country, according to two people present and contemporaneous notes, noting that key initiatives — like one that funds a $25 million project to improve the electrical system — were currently under review.
Jabbi’s top deputy, Hassan Jallow, told ProPublica he saw Cromer’s message as a veiled threat: If Starlink doesn’t get its license, the U.S. could cut off the desperately needed funds. “The implication was that they were connected,” Jallow said.
In recent months, senior State Department officials in both Washington and Gambia have coordinated with Starlink executives to coax, lobby and browbeat at least seven Gambian government ministers to help Musk, records and interviews show. One of those Cabinet officials told ProPublica his government is under “maximum pressure” to yield.
In mid-March, Cromer escalated the campaign by writing to Gambia’s president with an “important request.” That day, a contentious D.C. meeting between Musk employees and Jabbi had ended in an impasse. She urged the president to circumvent Jabbi and “facilitate the necessary approvals for Starlink to commence operations,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by ProPublica. Jabbi told confidantes he felt the ambassador was trying to get him fired.
The saga in Gambia is the starkest known example of the Trump administration wielding the U.S. government’s foreign policy apparatus to advance the business interests of Musk, a top Trump adviser and the world’s richest man.
Since Trump’s inauguration, the State Department has intervened on behalf of Starlink in Gambia and at least four other developing nations, previously unreported records and interviews show.
As the Trump administration has gutted foreign aid, U.S. diplomats have pressed governments to fast-track licenses for Starlink and arranged conversations between company employees and foreign leaders. In cables, U.S. officials have said that for their foreign counterparts, helping Starlink is a chance to prove their commitment to good relations with the U.S.
In one country last month, the U.S. embassy bragged that Starlink’s license was approved despite concerns it wasn’t abiding by rules that its competitors had to follow.
“If this was done by another country, we absolutely would call this corruption,” said Kristofer Harrison, who served as a high-level State Department official in the George W. Bush administration. “Because it is corruption.”
Helping U.S. businesses has long been part of the State Department’s mission, but former ambassadors said they sought to do this by making the positive case for the benefits of U.S. investment. When seeking deals for U.S. companies, they said they took care to avoid the appearance of conflicts or leaving the impression that punitive measures were on the table.
Ten current and former State Department officials said the recent drive was an alarming departure from standard diplomatic practice — because of both the tactics used and the person who would benefit most from them. “I honestly didn’t think we were capable of doing this,” one official told ProPublica. “That is bad on every level.” Kenneth Fairfax, a retired career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, said the global push for Musk “could lead to the impression that the U.S. is engaging in a form of crony capitalism.”
The Washington Post previously reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has instructed U.S. diplomats to help Starlink so it can beat its Chinese and Russian competitors. Multiple countries, including India, have sped up license approvals for Starlink to try to build goodwill in tariff negotiations with the Trump administration, the Post reported.
ProPublica’s reporting provides a detailed picture of what that push has looked like in practice. After Gambia’s ambassador to the U.S. declined an interview about Starlink — a topic seen as highly sensitive given Musk’s position — ProPublica reporters traveled to the capital, Banjul, to piece together the events. This account is based on internal State Department documents and interviews with dozens of current and former officials from both countries, most of whom requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
In response to detailed questions, the State Department issued a statement celebrating Starlink. “Starlink is an America-made product that has been a game changer in helping remote areas around the world gain internet connectivity,” a spokesperson wrote. “Any patriotic American should want to see an American company’s success on the global stage, especially over compromised Chinese competitors.” Cromer and Starlink did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the office of the president of Gambia. Jabbi made Jallow available to discuss the situation.
During the Biden administration, State Department officials worked with Starlink to help the company navigate bureaucracies abroad. But the agency’s approach appears to have become significantly more aggressive and expansive since Trump’s return to power, according to internal records and current and former government officials.
Foreign leaders are acutely aware of Musk’s unprecedented position in the government, which he has used to help rewrite U.S. foreign policy. After Musk spent at least $288 million on the 2024 election, Trump gave the billionaire a powerful post in the White House. In mere months, Musk’s team has directed the firing of thousands of federal workers, canceled billions of dollars in programs and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, which supported humanitarian projects around the world. African nations have been particularly hard-hit by the cuts.
At the same time, Musk continues to run Starlink and the rest of his corporate empire. In past administrations, government ethics lawyers carefully vetted potential conflicts of interest. Though Trump once said that “we won’t let him get near” conflicts, the White Househas also suggested Musk is responsible for policing himself. The billionaire has waved away criticisms of the arrangement, saying “I’ll recuse myself” if conflicts arise. “My companies are suffering because I’m in the government,” Musk said.
In a statement, the White House said Musk has nothing to do with deals involving Starlink and that every administration official follows ethical guidelines. “For the umpteenth time, President Trump will not tolerate any conflicts of interest,” spokesperson Harrison Fields said in an email.
Executives at Starlink have seized the moment to expand. An April State Department cable to D.C. obtained by ProPublica quoted a Starlink employee describing the company’s approach to securing a license in Djibouti, a key U.S. ally in Africa that hosts an American military base: “We’re pushing from the top and the bottom to ram this through.”
Musk entered the White House at a pivotal moment for Starlink. When the service launched in 2020, it had a novel approach to internet access. Rather than relying on underground cables or cell towers like traditional telecom companies, Starlink uses low-orbiting satellites that let it provide fast internet in places its competitors had struggled to reach. Expectations for the startup were sky high. Bullish Morgan Stanley analysts predicted that by 2040, Starlink would have up to 364 million subscribers worldwide — more than the current population of the U.S.
Starlink quickly became a central pillar of Musk’s fortune. His stake in Starlink’s parent company, SpaceX, is estimated to be worth about $150 billion of his roughly $400 billion net worth.
Although the company says its user base has grown to over 5 million people, it remains a bit player compared to the largest internet providers. And the satellite internet market is set to become more competitive as well-funded companies launch services modeled on Starlink. Jeff Bezos’ Project Kuiper, a unit of Amazon, has said it expects to start serving customers later this year. Satellite upstarts headquartered in Europe and China aren’t far behind either.
“They want to get as far and as fast as they can before Amazon Kuiper gets online,” said Chris Quilty, a veteran space industry analyst.
In internal cables, State Department officials have said they are eager to help Musk get ahead of foreign satellite companies. Securing licenses in the next 18 months is critical for Starlink due to the growing competition, one cable said last month. Senior diplomats have written that they hope to give Musk’s company a “first-mover advantage.”
Africa represents a lucrative prize. Much of the continent lacks reliable internet. Success in Africa could mean dominating a market with the fastest-growing population on earth.
As of last November, Starlink had reportedly launched in 15 of Africa’s 54 countries, but it was beginning to spark a backlash. Last year, Cameroon and Namibia cracked down on Musk’s company for allegedly operating in their countries illegally. In South Africa — where Starlink has so far failed to get a license — Musk exacerbated tensions by publicly accusing the government of anti-white racism. Since Trump won the election, at least five African countries have granted licenses to Starlink: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho and Chad.
Now Musk’s campaign of cuts has given him leverage inside the State Department. A Trump administration memo that leaked to the press last month proposed closing six embassies in Africa.
The Gambian embassy was on the list of proposed cuts.
An 8-year-old democracy, Gambia’s 2.7 million residents live on a sliver of land once used as a hub in the transatlantic slave trade. For two decades until 2017, the nation was ruled by a despot who had his opponents assassinated and plundered public funds to buy himself luxuries like a Rolls-Royce collection and a private zoo. When the dictator was ousted, the economy was in tatters. Today Gambia is one of the poorest countries in the world, with about half the country living on less than $4 a day.
In this fragile environment, the telecom industry that Jabbi oversees is vitally important to Gambian authorities. According to the government, the sector provides at least 20% of the country’s tax revenue. Ads for the country’s multiple internet providers are ubiquitous, painted onto dozens of public works — parks, police booths, schools.
It’s unclear why Starlink’s efforts in Gambia, a tiny market, have been so intense.
Cromer’s efforts on behalf of the company started under the Biden administration, as she documented last December in a cable sent back to Washington. Last spring, Starlink began the process of securing necessary approvals from a local utilities regulator and the Gambian communications agency. The utilities regulator wanted Starlink to pay an $85,000 license fee, which the company felt was too expensive. Cromer spoke to local officials, who then “pressured” the regulator to remove “this unnecessary barrier to entry,” the ambassador wrote.
Gambian supporters of Starlink felt that its product would be a boon for consumers and for economic growth in the country, where internet service remains unreliable and slow. “The ripple effects could be extraordinary,” Cromer said in the December cable, contending it could enable telehealth and improve education.
Opponents argued that local internet providers were one of Gambia’s few stable sources of jobs and infrastructure investments. If Starlink killed off its competition and then jacked up its prices — in Nigeria, the company announced last year it would suddenly double its fees — authorities could have little leverage to manage the fallout. When Musk refused to turn on Starlink in part of Ukraine during the war there, it heightened concerns about handing control of internet access to the mercurial billionaire, industry analysts said. One Musk tweet about foreign regulators’ ability to police his company caught the attention of Gambian critics: “They can shake their fist at the sky,” Musk said in 2021.
The ultimate authority for granting Starlink a license lies with Jabbi, an attorney who spent years in the local telecom sector. Gambian telecom companies that don’t want competition from Musk see Jabbi as an ally.
Jallow, Jabbi’s top deputy, told ProPublica that the ministry is not opposed to Starlink operating in Gambia. But he said Jabbi is doing due diligence to ensure laws and regulations are being followed before opening up the country to a consequential change.
After Trump’s inauguration, Jabbi’s position pitted him against not only Starlink but also the U.S. government. In the weeks after the February meeting where Cromer reminded Jabbi about the tenuous state of American funding to his country, the ambassador told other diplomats that getting Starlink approved was a high priority, according to a Western official familiar with her comments.
The stance surprised some of Cromer’s peers. Cromer had spent her career at USAID before President Joe Biden appointed her as ambassador. Her tenure in Gambia often focused on human rights and democracy building.
In March, when Jabbi and Jallow traveled to D.C. to attend a World Bank summit, the State Department helped arrange a series of meetings for them. The first, on March 19, was with Starlink representatives including Ben MacWilliams, a former U.S. diplomat who leads the company’s expansion efforts in Africa. The second was with U.S. government officials at the State Department’s headquarters.
The meeting with the company quickly became contentious. Huddled in a conference room at the World Bank, MacWilliams accused Jabbi of standing in the way of his nation’s progress and harming ordinary Gambians, according to Jallow, who was in the meeting, and four others briefed on the event. “We want our license now,” Jallow recalled MacWilliams saying. “Why are you delaying it?”
The conversation ended in a stalemate. In the hours that followed, Starlink and the U.S. government’s campaign intensified in a way that underscored the degree of coordination between the two parties. The company told Jabbi it would cancel his scheduled D.C. meeting with State Department officials because “there was no more need,” Jallow said.
The State Department meeting never happened. Instead, 4,000 miles away in Gambia’s capital, Cromer would try an even more aggressive approach.
That same day, Cromer had already met with Gambia’s equivalent of a commerce secretary to lobby him to help pave the way for Starlink. Then she was informed about the disappointing meeting Starlink had had in D.C., according to State Department records. By day’s end, Cromer had sent a letter to the nation’s president.
“I am writing to seek your support to allow Starlink to operate in The Gambia,” the letter opened. Over three pages, the ambassador described her concerns about Jabbi’s agency and listed the ways that Gambians could benefit from Starlink. She also said the company had satisfied conditions set by Jabbi’s predecessor.
“I respectfully urge you to facilitate the necessary approvals for Starlink to commence operations in The Gambia,” Cromer concluded. “I look forward to your favorable response.”
In the weeks since, Jabbi has refused to budge. The U.S. government’s efforts have continued. In late April, Gambia’s attorney general met in D.C. with senior State Department officials, according to a person familiar with the matter, where they again discussed the Starlink issue.
Diplomats were troubled by how the pressure campaign could hurt America’s image overseas. “This is not Iran or a rogue African state run by a dictator — this is a democracy, a natural ally,” said another senior Western diplomat in the region, noting that Gambia is “a prime partner of the West” in United Nations votes. “You beat up the smallest and the best boy in the class.”
Gambia is not the only country being leaned on. Since Trump took office, embassies around the world have sent a flurry of cables to D.C. documenting their meetings with Starlink executives and their efforts to cajole developing countries into helping Musk’s business. The cables all describe a problem similar to what happened in Gambia: The company has struggled to win a license from local regulators. In some countries, ambassadors reported, their work appears to be yielding results. (The embassies and their host countries did not respond to requests for comment.)
The U.S. embassy in Cameroon wrote that the country could prove its commitment to Trump’s agenda by letting Starlink expand its presence there. In the same missive, embassy officials discussed the impact of U.S. aid cuts and deportations and cited a humanitarian official who was reckoning with America’s shifting foreign policy: “They may not be happy with what they see, but they are trying to adapt as best they can.”
In Lesotho, where embassy officials had spent weeks trying to help Starlink get a license, the company finalized a deal after Trump imposed 50% tariffs on the tiny landlocked country. Lesotho officials told embassy staff they hoped the license would help in their urgent push to reduce the levies, according to Mother Jones. A major multinational company complained that Starlink was getting preferential treatment, embassy documents obtained by ProPublica show, since Musk’s firm had been exempted from requirements its competitors still had to follow.
In cables sent from the U.S. embassy in Djibouti this spring, State Department officials recounted their meetings with the company and pledged to continue working with “Starlink in identifying government officials and facilitating discussions.”
In Bangladesh, U.S. diplomats pressed Starlink’s case “early and often” with local officials, partnered with Starlink to “build an educational strategy” for their counterparts and helped arrange a conversation between Musk and the nation’s head of state, according to a recent cable. The embassy’s work started under Biden but bore fruit only after Trump took office.
Their efforts resulted in Bangladesh approving Starlink’s request to do business in the country, the top U.S. diplomat there said last month, a sign-off that Musk’s company had sought for years.
Do you have information about Elon Musk’s businesses or the Trump administration? Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at joshua.kaplan@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383. Brett Murphy can be reached at 508-523-5195 or by email at brett.murphy@propublica.org.
Anna Maria Barry-Jester contributed reporting.
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FAIL? doge wall of recip constantly lessened and corrected; not transparent; “savings” massively offset by loss of irs $ to tax dodgers; huge court costs, science res R&D cut will lead to losses for decades?!
TESLA BOARD WANTS TO REPLACE HIM AS CEO; TRUMP SHOWED HIM THE DOOR? 5 25
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4 25 MSNBC EX usaid HEAD SAYS 3.3M KIA AIDS MALARIA BC OF CUTS
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an intercept 5 25
The Intercept reports Donald Trump’s Pentagon budget proposal will almost certainly lavish Special Government Employee and Trump Senior Advisor Elon Musk and his company SpaceX with new expensive projects.
“No matter how you slice it, the Pentagon budget is obscenely high at a time when the fundamentals of our diplomatic infrastructure are being decimated, the social safety net is being shredded, and medical and scientific research are under attack,” said William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
In addition to Trump’s plan to budget an undisclosed sum for “U.S. space dominance,” the most obvious project benefiting Musk is a missile shield, dubbed the Golden Dome.
READ MORE: Trump’s toadies are peddling a dangerous new lie
“… Pentagon [funds] have as much to do with pork barrel politics and techno-fantasies like the Golden Dome as they do with a sound defense strategy,” said Hartung, who added that it was clear current resources going to the Pentagon “are not only excessive but are more likely to undermine than promote our security.”
The Golden Dome project involves launching a network of surveillance satellites to detect and track enemy missiles targeting the United States. Musk wants to use his SpaceX resources to build both the satellites and the rockets. The Intercept reports SpaceX is already the top Pentagon supplier of launch services and low-Earth-orbit communications systems.
However, Reuters reports SpaceX is proposing to provide Golden Dome technology to the Defense Department through a “subscription service,” similar to Tesla’s $12.99 monthly EV-charging services to non-Tesla owners. Such a subscription will charge U.S. taxpayers considerably more than $12 a month while putting technical knowledge of Musk’s seek-and-strike missile system under an intellectual property lock.
Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said there is also no determining what happens to the system, or if it would even be usable should a new president refuse to renew Musk’s contract.
READ MORE:'You see falls in politics — but not like this': DeSantis’ star imploding amid fraud scandal
“With his subscription model plan, Musk is looking to both retain control of these systems and keep taxpayer dollars flowing his way,” Murphy told the Intercept.
Democratic lawmakers are already calling for the Pentagon’s acting inspector general to review Musk’s role in the bidding process for the missile defense shield.
“Mr. Musk’s formal or informal participation in any process to award a government contract raises serious conflict of interest concerns, including the possibility that SpaceX is a top contender for the Golden Dome contract because of Mr. Musk’s position in the government,” lawmakerswrote.
If the inspector general finds Musk provided an advantage to SpaceX in the bidding process, lawmakers could then request the findings be remanded to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, which would be more likely to happen under a future Democratic administration.
*Read the full Intercept report here.
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AN 5 25
Some people would like to believe that Elon Musk is no longer a danger to democracy because his polls are in the basement and he’s apparently on his way out of Trump’s White House.
They’re wrong. Musk still has Trump’s ear, and even after he leaves he’ll be back in the White House at least once a week. More troubling, Musk continues to expand his power in ways that pose growing threats to democracy in America and around the world.
Today I’d like to discuss these major dangers and get your input about which you believe is the most dangerous and requires most constraint.
1. His fleet of satellites.More than 7,000 of them now surround Earth like a cloud of gnats, providing space-based internet service to the ground. No other private corporation or nation comes close. And almost every week, Musk is adding to his fleet — flinging dozens more satellites into the sky. This gives him not only a near monopoly on space satellites and internet communication, but also unrivaled geopolitical power over every nation and military in the world, including the United States.
2. His data about every American.Musk and his DOGE team have gained sweeping access to databases that store personal information about tens of millions of Americans — not just your name, home address, and Social Security number, but also medical diagnoses and treatment, notes from therapy sessions, financial history, and detailed income information. And Musk is gaining more data almost every day, along with increasing capacity to analyze it. Armed with this, he could potentially control just about anyone by threatening their jobs, families, and reputations.
3. His capacity to bankroll elections.With his virtually unlimited bank account, Musk can potentially get anyone elected (or prevent the election of anyone he opposes). Although his donations didn’t help — and probably hurt — Brad Schimel in the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Republican lawmakers are reportedly terrified over the prospect of facing primary challengers funded by Musk if they oppose Trump’s agenda. Musk has also been rewarding members of Congress supporting the impeachment of judges who have ruled against parts of Trump’s agenda. And, of course, his money will be a major force in the 2026 midterms.
4. His use of X to support right-wing causes and to harass and intimidate.Because he owns the platform and can manipulate its algorithm, Musk’s posts are now received by over 215 million followers around the world. Through them, he’s supporting right-wing movements, encouraging harassment of people he opposes, and even contributing to threats of violence toward judges who have ruled against Trump. Posts targeting judges’ family members have been viewed more than 200 million times. Pizzas are being sent anonymously to the homes of judges and their relatives, which authorities view as a we-know-where-you-live warning.
So, today’s Office Hours question: What’s the single most dangerous aspect of Musk’s power that must be constrained (when there’s the political will and muscle to do it)?
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AN 525
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers hit back Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump's border czar suggested the Democratic leader could be arrested for distributing guidance to state employees on what to do if confronted by federal immigration agents.
The guidance is straightforward and unremarkable, instructing state employees to "stay calm," ask federal agents for their name and badge, contact an attorney, and decline to answer questions or provide agents access to any documents without a lawyer present.
"State employees may not grant [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] or another agent access to any such data or information absent authorization from their legal counsel pursuant to a valid judicial warrant," the guidance reads.
In a speech addressed to Wisconsinites and the nation, Evers said that the "goal of this guidance was simple—to provide clear, consistent instructions to state employees and ensure they have a lawyer to help them comply with all federal and state laws."
"But Republicans and their right-wing allies, including Elon Musk, lied about this guidance, spread misinformation, accused me of doing things I didn't do or say, and fueled a fake controversy of their own creation," Evers said.
One Republican member of the Wisconsin State Assembly on Friday morning posted an AI-generated image of Evers in handcuffs at the state capitol, with Trump standing behind him in police uniform.
"I'm used to Republicans and the right wing lying about me. It comes with the job," Evers said Friday. "But, this time, these lies came at a cost. I haven't broken the law. I haven't committed a crime. And I've never encouraged or directed anyone to break any laws or commit any crimes."
"But when President Trump's hand-picked appointee, Tom Homan, was asked about me and this guidance after he apparently threatened to arrest elected officials across the country, he said, 'Wait 'til you see what's coming,'" the governor continued.
"Overnight, Republican lawmakers piled on, encouraging the Trump administration to arrest me."
Watch Homan's comments to reporters:
Homan's thinly veiled threat against Evers and other officials came days after FBI agents arrested Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan on obstruction charges alleging that she helped an undocumented immigrant evade arrest by misdirecting federal authorities. Dugan's legal team says she is innocent and will be vindicated in court.
Evers said Friday that Homan's threats are "chilling" and "should be of concern to every Wisconsinite and every American who cares about this country and the values we hold dear."
"These threats represent a concerning trajectory in this country," said Evers. "We now have a federal government that will threaten or arrest an elected official—or even everyday American citizens—who have broken no laws, committed no crimes, and done nothing wrong."
"And as disgusted as I am about the continued actions of the Trump administration, I am not afraid," he added. "I have never once been discouraged from doing the right thing, and I will not start today."
Watch Evers' remarks in full:
The Wisconsin governor's full address is transcribed below:
Good morning, Wisconsin. Governor Tony Evers here.*
I’m speaking to you today as your governor but also as a concerned American.
Yesterday, a Trump administration official, in not so many words, apparently threatened to arrest me for distributing guidance that asked state agency employees to consult with an attorney if federal agents show up at state buildings with legal documents.
The goal of this guidance was simple—to provide clear, consistent instructions to state employees and ensure they have a lawyer to help them comply with all federal and state laws. Nothing more, nothing less.
But Republicans and their right-wing allies, including Elon Musk, lied about this guidance, spread misinformation, accused me of doing things I didn’t do or say, and fueled a fake controversy of their own creation.
Now, I’m used to Republicans and the right wing lying about me. It comes with the job. But, this time, these lies came at a cost. I haven't broken the law. I haven't committed a crime. And I’ve never encouraged or directed anyone to break any laws or commit any crimes.
But when President Trump's hand-picked appointee, Tom Homan, was asked about me and this guidance after he apparently threatened to arrest elected officials across the country, he said, "Wait 'til you see what's coming." Overnight, Republican lawmakers piled on, encouraging the Trump administration to arrest me.
Chilling threats like this should be of concern to every Wisconsinite and every American who cares about this country and the values we hold dear.
We live in the United States of America, folks. We are a country of laws. The rule of law matters. Following the law matters.
In this country, the federal government doesn't get to abuse its power to threaten everyday Americans. In this country, the federal government doesn’t get to arrest American citizens who have not committed a crime. In this country, we don't threaten to persecute people just because they belong to a different political party.
These threats represent a concerning trajectory in this country. We now have a federal government that will threaten or arrest an elected official—or even everyday American citizens—who have broken no laws, committed no crimes, and done nothing wrong.
And as disgusted as I am about the continued actions of the Trump administration, I am not afraid. I have never once been discouraged from doing the right thing, and I will not start today.
I swore an oath when I took this office to support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of Wisconsin and to faithfully discharge the duties of this office to the best of my ability. I will never waver from that promise.
I hope and pray every elected and appointed official in this country, including the president of the United States of America, will do the same.
Forward, and for Wisconsin, always.
Thank you.
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fec musk bribery
Former GOP officials question Musk $1 million payouts to pro-Trump voters
o troye
Others who signed the letter included Donald Ayer, deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush; Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission; and Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey.
'Obvious risks': 8 state treasurers confront Tesla chair over Elon Musk’s ability to lead
AN 4 25
cadwaller
One of the voices in the film is Anne Applebaum, a journalist and historian, who’s an essential guides to this present moment. Her latest book, Autocracy Inc, lays out comprehensively but simply how networked autocracies and countries with autocratic features are with one another. These are political and financial technological alliances that link Russia to China to Venezuela to Iran.
Anne’s point is that the bad guys are helping each other out all the time in all sorts of ways. And we’re watching a new US-UK axis being built in real time between Farage and Musk. Wendy Siegelman, a brilliant open-source investigator who had a career in corporate finance before becoming a one-woman kleptocracy exposure machine and who has been a hugely valuable resource and ally helping with my investigations over the years, posted this week about a disturbing new company she’d found.
X.AI London Ltd was incorporated in the UK’s Companies House on December 12. And look who’s the person with significant control:
We don’t know what that company is for but if Musk did want to pour £100m into the next UK election, as it’s been reported, this is how he could do it.
Why Musk is so obsessed with Britain and Keir Starmer’s government is its own mystery. Anyone? A residue of his roots in South Africa and a desire to decolonise the coloniser? I’m reaching here…
At the end of Autocracy Inc, Anne Applebaum makes a case for why democracies have to take a leaf out of the bad guys’ playbook and find ways of working together with the first line of attack being against the entire offshore financial system that enables kleptocracies to steal, launder and shelter money. One of the small rays of hope and prompts to action,she cites is Alexei Navalny’s crowdfunded YouTube investigations into corruption:...
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ENFORCER
an 4 25
A report published in The Washington Post on Thursday revealed tech billionaire Elon Musk funnelled substantial funds in late March to support Republican Congress members who backed legislation aimed at impeaching judges or limiting their authority. The report cites new filings, indicating this effort aligns with his campaign to penalize judges who make rulings unfavorable to the Trump administration.
"The spending,which totaled $144,400 in support of nearly two dozen members of Congress, was disclosed Tuesdayin filings to the Federal Election Commission.While the amount is a fraction of the millions he shelled out for Republican candidates before the November election, the spending so early in the 2026 midterm cycle further cements the billionaire’s long-term involvement in GOP politics despite a decisive loss for his preferred candidate in this month’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race," The Post reported.
The filings from the principal campaign committees of the members provide only a limited view of Musk's political expenditures during the first quarter of 2025, per The Post. Additional funding channels managed by Musk, such as his America PAC, are not obligated to submit reports until the end of July.
ALSO READ:Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice says future colleague was 'bought and paid for' by Dems
In several instances, Musk's contributions were reportedly made right after House members introduced or supported legislation aimed at specific judges.
Reps. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisc.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are among the lawmakers who received donations from Musk after introducing steps to limit judges' powers.
Earlier this month — when liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford defeated conservative Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, despite Musk spending tens of millions of dollars to back Schimel — the billionaire faced heavy criticism.
But despite this loss in Wisconsin, Musk intends to continue making efforts to support GOP candidates, per the Post.
ALSO READ:'Wakeup call' for Republicans as special election results send warning signs to Trump
One specific target of Musk's efforts has been Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who has made several rulings unfavorable to the Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Boasberg cited a “willful disregard" and found probable cause that the Trump administration could be held in criminal contempt of court after officials defied his order to not remove Venezuelan migrants from the country based on a centuries-old wartime law.
Boasberg, first appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, said he would launch proceedings to determine whether to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt.
ALSO READ:'Stolen': Elon Musk boosts conspiracy about Wisconsin election results
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an 4 25
A video of a by anti-Elon Musk protesters was posted on March 18, 2025, by an account on X called EndWokeness.
The next day Musk replied to the post, “Some people just want to watch the world burn,” an iconic line from the 2008 Batman film “The Dark Knight.” Alfred, the Wayne family’s faithful butler, says the line to Bruce Wayne – Batman – to describe the motivations behind the Joker’s chaotic acts of violence.
Musk – and Alfred – was right. Some people do, in fact, say they think that society should be burned to the ground. It’s part of a psychological measure political psychologists created called “need for chaos.”
New data from the Center for Political Communication at the University of Delaware suggests that those people – the ones who want society to burn – are the ones with more, not less, trust in Musk. They also report more trust in the Department of Government Efficiency, the government entity Musk advises, which the Trump administration claims it created to cut government waste and fraud.
Yet, critics point out that Musk and DOGE’s seemingly indiscriminate approach to spending cuts risks damaging the infrastructure necessary for American innovation.
This desire to watch the world burn doesn’t come out of nowhere.
Fear of losing status
Somewhat like the Joker, whose perpetual sense of victimhood – “You wanna know how I got these scars?” – drove his need for chaos and destruction, people can develop a need for chaos in response to a sense that they are losing.
When political psychologists introduced this concept of “need for chaos” in 2021, they described it not as a psychological trait, but as a character adaptation that occurs when some people experience a cultural and political situation that makes them feel like they are losing status and power. For some people, this feeling triggers a desire to “burn it all down” – “it” being society, institutions, the world – maybe to rebuild it all anew, or maybe just to see it all destroyed.
Only a small percentage of the U.S. population – less than 15% – tends to score high in need for chaos. But even so, understanding this minority is important to gaining insight into this political moment.
For example, people who score high in need for chaos exhibit greater support for political violence and a willingness to knowingly share hostile and false information online. And in our data, those higher in need for chaos report holding more trust in Musk, DOGE and Trump than people who score lower in the need for chaos measure.
Who wants to burn it down
We are political psychologists who study the link between psychological traits and political beliefs. Last month, the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication ran a national survey that we designed to understand where the public stands on various political issues and how those beliefs relate to psychological traits, including need for chaos.
In our national study of 1,600 Americans conducted between Feb. 27-March 5, 2025, by YouGov, we asked respondents how much they agreed or disagreed with the following statements:
• “I fantasize about a natural disaster wiping out most of humanity such that a small group of people can start all over”
• “I think society should be burned to the ground”
• “We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions; we need to tear them down and start over”
• “I need chaos around me – it is too boring if nothing is going on”
Similar to prior work by author Kevin Arceneaux and his colleagues, our data shows that a very small number – fewer than 20% of the sample – agrees strongly or agrees somewhat with each item.
However, looking at need for chaos among groups of varying ages, education levels and media habits, we find the highest need for chaos scores among people under age 40, those with less education, and those who pay the least attention to politics.
Burning it down through government policy
Our new data also shows that while people highest in need for chaos report having more trust in Musk, DOGE, and President Trump, these chaos-seeking folks report having less trust in “people in general,” journalists or the federal government. These findings hold even when statistically accounting for other factors, among them party, race, gender, education and ideology.
Musk’s penchant for wielding chainsaws as a symbol of DOGE’s work provides some insight into why chaos seekers may like what they see in Musk.
It’s not clear exactly what Musk’s aim is with his work at DOGE, as he eliminates the jobs of hundreds of thousands of government workers.
What is clear, however, is that by many accounts, the mass firings and the gutting of agencies, like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Institute for Peace, are sowing chaos. And a significant portion of Americans want just that.
Dannagal G. Young, Professor of Communication and Political Science, University of Delaware and Kevin Arceneaux, Director of the Center for Political Research and Professor of Political Science, Sciences Po
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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why after election? mar 11 2025
musk-trump-100-million-donation-political-operation
Elon Musk has told the White House he plans to give $100 million to President Trump's political operation, according to a person familiar with his plans.
Why it matters:The contribution is unheard of in both amount and type: Musk, who is technically a special government employee, is the world's richest person.
- Musk donated more than $250 million to a pro-Trump super PAC during the 2024 election campaign. That made Musk Trump's biggest financial booster.
- Now, he is the face of the DOGE team that's driving the Trump administration's huge cuts to the federal workforce and agencies.
- The New York Times first reported the latest planned contribution.
Zoom in:Trump's political team has set up a pair of organizations: MAGA Inc. and Securing America's Greatness. It is not clear if Musk will give to either of those two groups, or if he plans on giving to another one that will be controlled by Trump's team.
- MAGA Inc. and Securing America's Greatness are run by Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio, who were top advisers on Trump's 2024 campaign and have close ties to the Trump White House.
- The two groups have raised around $500 million -- a massive sum that will be used to help expand the Republican majorities in the midterm elections and to pressure Republicans to support Trump's agenda.
- Representatives for Musk and the White House did not respond to Axios' requests for comment in the evening.
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AN GUK 4 25
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor tell The Guardian that corporate city-states are back in fashion thanks to Trump politics indulging tax-hating millionaires and billionaires to start their own high-tech fiefdoms.
A “glorified gated communit[ies]” like Próspera on a Honduran island and Elon Musk’s distant proposal of “a handful of people and robots eke[ing] out survival on two barren orbs (a radically depleted Earth and a terraformed Mars) appear to be catching on with ultra-wealthy members of the Trump circle.
End-time communities were on the rise in 2023, when a campaigning Donald Trump promised to hold a contest that would lead to the creation of 10 “freedom cities” on federal lands. And since election, “would-be country starters have been on a lobbying blitz, determined to turn Trump’s pledge into reality.” Próspera Chief of Staff Trey Goff called the new energy in DC “absolutely electric, and legislation “paving the way for a bevy of corporate city-states” complete by the end of the year, Klein writes.
READ MORE: 'And everybody cried': Trump hijacks Oval Office meeting to claim 'highest mark' on cognitive test
It’s a fantasy word evolved from the “doom-prepping” movement of the first Trump administration, only now fueled by ultra-wealthy “religious end-timers.” It also hastens the degradation of the only world humanity realistically has, Klein and Taylor say.
“Indeed, in a strange twist on the Old Testament tale, Musk and his fellow tech billionaires, having arrogated god-like powers to themselves, aren’t content to just build the arks. They appear to be doing their best to cause the flood. Today’s right-wing leaders and their rich allies are not just taking advantage of catastrophes, shock-doctrine and disaster-capitalism style, but simultaneously provoking and planning for them,” says Klein, a Canadian author.
There is no second planet to occupy, however, and reducing humanity to a tiny dome on a distant island or mountain peak requires a commitment to letting a huge swathe of humanity die. So, how do you break the apocalyptic fever?
“… We help each other face the depth of the depravity that has gripped the hard right in all of our countries,” Klein writes. “We must first understand … [that] we are up against an ideology that has given up not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world – on its beauty, on its people, on our children, on other species. The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”
READ MORE:'Screw up royally': How 'ignorant' Trump has 'broken the cardinal rule in American politics'
Second, Klein advises countering “their apocalyptic narratives with a far better story about how to survive the hard times ahead without leaving anyone behind. A story capable of draining end times fascism of its gothic power and galvanizing a movement ready to put it all on the line for our collective survival. A story not of end times, but of better times; not of separation and supremacy, but of interdependence and belonging; not of escaping, but staying put and staying faithful to the troubled earthly reality in which we are enmeshed and bound.”
Read the full Guardian article at this link.
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4 25
trump wants to put tesla protestors on el salv conc camp; musk praise bukele?
an
Legal experts pounced President Donald Trump’s proposal of sending U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to international prisons.
The Washington Post reports Trump openly mulled the possibility of off-siting U.S. citizens to foreign prisons on Air Force One, saying “we have some horrible criminals, American grown, born.” He added that he’s “all for” sending them to prisons in El Salvador, where he has already detained some Venezuelan migrants to public outcry.
After protestors attacked Tesla dealerships, vehicles and charging stations over controversial figure and Trump adviser Elon Musk, Trump hoped protestors would “get 20 year jail sentences … in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”...
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narvarro made up ron anagram, tossed under bus in 48 min recd?
beef elon car assembler bag of bricks
Tech billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk's brother, Kimbal Musk, also a businessman, said Tuesday President Donald Trump's top trade advisor Peter Navarro is "truly a moron."
"What he says here is demonstrably false,” Musk said in a post on the social platform X while reacting to a video in which Navarro claimed Tesla is seen as a “car manufacturer” but is actually just a “car assembler.”
“@realDonaldTrump Mr President, if Peter Navarro has lied to you about Ron Vara, what else has he lied to you about?” Kimbal Musk wrote. “Put America first and fire him!”
ALSO READ:'Car assembler': Top Trump aide hits back at Elon Musk’s criticism
“Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks,” Musk added.
On Monday, Navarro called Elon Musk a "car assembler," saying that people consider him a car manufacturer — which he is not.
“When it comes to tariffs and trade, we all understand in the White House and the American people understand that Elon’s a car manufacturer, but he’s not a car manufacturer. He’s a car assembler in many cases,” Navarro, who is an architect of Trump's controversial policy on tariffs, said on CNBC.
Navarro was trying to clear the air after the DOGE head called him out over Trump's tariff policy over the weekend. Navarro referred to Musk as a "car person," while insisting that he does not have major disagreements with the DOGE head.
ALSO READ:'Warning to the GOP': WSJ sounds alarm over 'MAGA backlash'
This clash between Navarro and the Musk brothers came as Trump has imposed a series of sweeping global tariffs, including a 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles.
Kimbal is the DOGE head's younger brother who operates a restaurant chain named The Kitchen, serves on Tesla's board, and has previously held positions as a director at SpaceX and Chipotle. He has also co-founded and invested in various food and tech startups, such as Square Roots, an indoor agriculture company, and Nova Sky Stories, a producer of drone light displays that he acquired from Intel.
ALSO READ:'Basic betrayal': CEOs terrified of Trump retaliation won’t speak out against policies
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an 3 25
although the vast majority of anti-Elon Musk demonstrations in the United States and other countries have been peaceful, some critics of the Tesla/SpaceX/X.com leader and Donald Trump ally are resorting to destroying Teslas or committing acts of vandalism. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is describing these incidents as acts of "domestic terrorism," but some civil libertarians fear that her approach could create problems for Musk opponents who are protesting in a nonviolent way.
In a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) press release published on Thursday, March 20, Bondi declared, "Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars."
The U.S. attorney general and Trump loyalist discussed federal charges against three people accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at Tesla vehicles
READ MORE: Republicans have no moral authority to decide what 'domestic terrorism' is
Wired's Caroline Haskins, in an article published on March 22, reports, "Civil liberties experts claim treating alleged attacks against Tesla cars and infrastructure as terrorist activity could give federal and local law enforcement broad authority to surveil people protesting Elon Musk’s role in the government. The terrorism designation could also allow Musk and other Tesla executives to access information authorities uncover in their investigations."
Haskins notes that Bondi's statement "comes ahead of hundreds of grassroots 'Tesla Takedown' events protesting Musk and his influence in Washington that are scheduled to take place at Tesla facilities across the U.S. this weekend. The demonstrations have multiplied since they began in mid-February, with some attracting hundreds of people each."
President Trump put Musk in charge of an advisory group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is helping the Trump Administration with mass layoffs of federal government workers. And many Musk critics are arguing that Musk has way too much power for someone who was never elected to office.
"Most of the protests have been peaceful, and the organizers of some of them have said that they don't endorse property damage," Haskins explains. "But they are happening amid a string of alleged arson and vandalism cases targeting Tesla dealerships and charging stations, including one in Las Vegas Tuesday morning, (March 18), as well as others in Colorado and Boston. By labeling these and other incidents involving Tesla domestic terrorism, the FBI can file broader search warrants than in other types of cases."
READ MORE:'Clear and present danger': Experts alarmed at 'insanity' of Musk getting secret war plans
Haskins continues, "Under the Patriot Act, law enforcement gets 'special authorities' while investigating terrorism, including 'single-jurisdiction search warrants' from magistrate judges that apply anywhere in the U.S. instead of a single geographic area, according to a 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office. With a court order, law enforcement can additionally get 'confidential education records' from any school or agency in the course of a terrorism investigation, the report notes."
Michael German, a former FBI special agent who is now with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School, fears that instead of focusing on extremists who are actually committing acts of violence, a DOJ/FBI probe could end up targeting anyone peacefully expressing "anger or animosity towards Tesla or Elon Musk."
German told Wired, "We've seen a lot of abuse of FBI investigative authorities, particularly around domestic advocacy groups."
READ MORE:'Are you prepared for violence?' Angry voters confront Dems over being 'too nice' to GOP*
*Read the full Wired article at this link.
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2 NAT SEC PROBLEMS
AN 3 25
The first is whether Elon Musk is working, at least in part, for China’s Xi Jinping. Consider:
(1) China is the location of Musk’s largest Tesla factory in the world in which China invested $2.8 billion. The state-of-the-art facility was built in Shanghai with special permission from the Chinese government, and now accounts for more than half of Tesla’s global deliveries.
(2) China is the world’s biggest market for Teslas and is the only electronic vehicle market where Tesla sales are continuing to grow.
(3) Chinese investors have been funneling money into Musk’s other businesses.
(4) China is a hotbed of other technologies that Musk would like to get his hands on.
(5) In 2022, Musk told The Financial Times that China should be given some control over Taiwan by making a “special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable.”
(6) In 2023, at, he called Taiwan “an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China,” and compared the Taiwan-China situation to Hawaii and the United States.
(7) On X, the social platform he owns, Musk has long used his account to praise China, encouraging more people to visit the country.
(8) One of the Pentagon’s biggest worries is that China has developed a suite of weapons capable of attacking U.S. military and non-military satellites.
(9) The Pentagon now relies heavily on Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellite communications network for military personnel to transmit data worldwide.
(10) SpaceX launches most of the Pentagon’s military satellites on its Falcon 9 rockets, which take off from launchpads SpaceX has set up at military bases in Florida and California.
(11) SpaceX has become so valuable to the Pentagon that the Chinese government has said it considers SpaceX to be an extension of the U.S. military.
(12) The Pentagon has hired Musk’s Space X to build it a new constellation of low-earth orbit satellites to spy on China, Russia and other threats.
(13) Perceived missile threats from China — nuclear weapons or hypersonic missiles or cruise missiles — have led Trump to sign an executive order instructing the Pentagon to start work on “Golden Dome,” a space-based missile defense system, in which Musk’s Space X would almost surely be involved for rocket launches, satellite structures, and space-based data communications systems.
(14) Musk and his SpaceX have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting U.S. secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders — leading to at least three federal reviews, including one by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General and another by the Air Force and the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.
So … is Musk working for Trump, for the United States, for China, or for himself — or for all of the above?
The question of Musk’s allegiance becomes more weighty by the day.
This morning, for example, he met with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon brass. According to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the meeting had been arranged at Musk’s request to give Musk details about America’s preparations for war with China — the most sensitive and secret information anyone can receive.
It appears that after the scheduled meeting and its subject matter were reported yesterday, the meeting mysteriously morphed into something more innocent. Apparently, Trump decided Musk shouldn’t be briefed on war preparations with China.
Musk arrived shortly before 9 a.m. and left about 90 minutes later. When a reporter asked what Hegseth and Musk discussed, Musk shot back: “Why should I tell you?” Trump and Hegseth deny China was even mentioned.
The underlying question is whether Musk can be trusted.
Not even his position in the Trump regime is clear. Congress has not confirmed him for any role. He hasn’t been “vetted” by the FBI, as are all senior appointments. His finances haven’t been reviewed by anyone; they certainly haven’t been made public. He hasn’t even taken the oath of office, pledging his allegiance to the United States and the Constitution.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Musk’s connection to Putin. According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk has been in regular contact with the Russian President —a close partner of China, which has supported Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Which raises the second huge national security concern at the heart of the Trump regime: Is Trump working for Putin? I don’t have to list all the evidence that prompts the question. That evidence also keeps mounting by the day.
Trump and Musk: Manchurian heads of the United States?
NOW READ:Dark Enlightenment: How a radical ideology is fueling the movement to gut our government
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tsla stock dn 15 one day
an 3 25
Senator schools Musk on 'what makes America great’ after billionaire calls him a 'traitor'
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an 3 25
South African centibillionaire Elon Musk — one of President Donald Trump's closest advisors — is now reportedly scheduled to receive a top-secret briefing involving the United States' top-secret plans in the event the nation goes to war with China.
The New York Times reported Thursday evening that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO will be visiting the Pentagon on Friday to get "access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded military secrets." Those war plans are detailed in "20 to 30 slides" that reveal exactly how the U.S. would plan to fight a war against the world's most populous nation and second-largest economy. The Times Julian E. Barnes, Maggie Haberman, Eric Lipton, Ryan Mac and Eric Schmitt noted that the briefing comes despite Musk having "extensive financial interests in China."
"If a foreign country was to learn how the United States planned to fight a war against them, it could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making the plans far less likely to succeed," the reporters wrote.
READ MORE:'We're against it': Fox host says the quiet part out loud in segment about disabled kids
Some Musk critics expressed worry that China has significant leverage over the centibillionaire. Progressive activist Murshed Zaheed opined that the Times' reporting included "bats--- crazy" details about Musk's potential conflicts of interest toward the end of the report. In the final five paragraphs of the article, the Times reported that the Tesla factory in Shanghai — which was "built with special permission from the Chinese government" — is responsible for "more than half of Tesla's global deliveries." Tesla also has a $2.8 billion loan agreement with Chinese lenders "for production expenditures."
Consultant Matt Ortega pointed out that Chinese President Xi Jinping could simply tell Musk to "provide us with the U.S. war plan or we will close your Shanghai factory." Journalist Radley Balko exclaimed that Musk getting access to Chinese war plans was "insanity." Former FBI counterterrorism official Frank Figliuzzi called Musk getting the war plans a "clear and present danger." And author and journalist Tim Weiner reminded his followers that Vivek Ramaswamy — who co-founded the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with Musk — once said in 2023 that the tech billionaire would "jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need."
"If you give the war plans to Musk, you might as well give them to China," Weiner wrote on Bluesky.
Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell implied to the Times that Musk's visit was merely casual, saying: "The Defense Department is excited to welcome Elon Musk to the Pentagon on Friday. He was invited by Secretary Hegseth and is just visiting."
READ MORE:'Mob boss government': Trump deal with law firm over executive order ripped as 'shakedown'
Click here to read the Times' report in full (subscription required).
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an 3 25
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trump in WH ad said collusion sp boycott
am 3 25
The ongoing protests at Tesla dealerships — the electric vehicle company led by South African centibillionaire Elon Musk — appear to be getting under the skin of President Donald Trump's administration.
The website TeslaTakedown.com (https://www.teslatakedown.com/) has become a hub for people seeking out ways to protest Musk's sweeping budget cuts and mass firings of federal workers as part of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Recently, Attorney General Pam Bondi went on Fox News (https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lkdrpwmbko2r) to threaten people who protested at Tesla dealerships with criminal prosecution. While she referenced acts of vandalism, Bondi also appeared to say the DOJ was closely watching anyone in the proximity of a Tesla dealership.
"If you're gonna touch a Tesla, go to a dealership, do anything, you better watch out, because we're coming after you," Bondi said. "And if you're funding this, we're coming after you. We're gonna know who you are."
READ MORE:(Opinion) The more Trump reveals himself, the stronger the voter backlash against him grows (https://www.alternet.org/the-stronger-the-backlash-against-them-will-be/)
Bondi's threat was met with mockery on social media. On Bluesky, journalist Adrian Bonenberger wrote (https://bsky.app/profile/bonenberger.bsky.social/post/3lkdv55zl2k23): "Hello DOGE? I would like to report more waste in government." University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald sarcastically remarked (https://bsky.app/profile/electproject.bsky.social/post/3lkduxtvzp22r) that Bondi's threat was "a great advertisement for Tesla. Makes me want to go out and buy one." And Cornell University historian Larry Glickman wryly commented (https://bsky.app/profile/larryglickman.bsky.social/post/3lkduqxu2wc2x) that the attorney general's warning was an example of the "wonderful free enterprise system at work, where the consumer is sovereign and the state stays out of the way."
"Next week: the SEC investigates finance media who downgrade Tesla stock," wrote (https://bsky.app/profile/ejfagan.com/post/3lkdvm2gfzc2e) University of Chicago assistant political science professor E.J. Fagan.
Intelligence and policy professional Eric Robinson observed (https://bsky.app/profile/uticaeric.bsky.social/post/3lkduzigvrs2o) that driving a Tesla under Trump's second term has become "a mark of failure."
"The most powerful weapon against Elon Musk is making Tesla ownership relentlessly, powerfully, eternally uncool," Robinson wrote.
READ MORE:'Staff hates him': 'Furious' GOP operatives 'revolt' against Musk — 'but they're petrified' (https://www.alternet.org/staff-hates-him-furious-gop-operatives-revolt-against-musk-but-theyre-petrified/#)
Some of Bondi's critics were outraged at the DOJ's heavy-handed approach to Constitutionally protected free speech and called out the administration's hypocrisy compared to the pardons of January 6 defendants. Comic Elizabeth Alice Croydon Some contrasted the Tesla protests with the January 6 insurrection, with comic Elizabeth Alice Croydon remarking (https://bsky.app/profile/misslizzy.bsky.social/post/3lkdvsm4xd22n) that "trashing the Capitol and killing cops is cool but hold a sign at a Tesla dealership and you’re done." Progressive YouTuber Keith Edwards tweeted (https://x.com/keithedwards/status/1900550708463538262): "If the Capitol were a Tesla dealership, this administration would care that it was attacked,"
Writer Craig Calcaterra slammed (https://bsky.app/profile/craigcalcaterra.bsky.social/post/3lkduzoteqs2q) the "blatant unconstitutionality of this fascist s---."
"Can you imagine how this plays to regular people?" Calcaterra continued. "Does the administration believe that there's a big silent majority of Americans who think that protecting Elon's Musk's s----y car company should be a top national priority?"
"Come and get me, Pam," wrote (https://bsky.app/profile/brianralexander.bsky.social/post/3lkdvnv3t622h) author Brian Alexander. "Because I'm going."
READ MORE:'Never seen people so mad': Democrats call for Schumer to resign (https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/democrats-schumer-resign/)
Watch the video of Bondi below, or byclicking this link. (http://alternet.org/pam-bondi-protesters)
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an 3 25 see wisc 3 anno
Fresh from spending nearly $300 million to influence the 2024 elections, the richest person in the world has set his sights squarely on Wisconsin. Elon Musk is apparently not content with taking a chainsaw to the lives of thousands of hard-working federal employees engaged in providing health care to rural American children and veterans, with slashing Medicaid for millions of our most vulnerable citizens, with cutting projects seeking desperately needed cures for cancer, Ebola and other deadly diseases and with eviscerating foreign assistance that thousands of people all over the world rely on for survival. Musk is now also carpet bombing Wisconsin with millions of dollars for negative ads and cash infusions to influence the outcome of the upcoming April 1 election to fill an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
After 30 years of distinguished service, the Court’s most senior justice, Ann Walsh Bradley announced her retirement last year. Now, with the fast-approaching election to determine her successor in just a matter of days, voters will decide the ideological composition of the majority on the court and therefore the future direction of Wisconsin and quite possibly the nation.
In January, when Musk announced he was invading our state, he falsely proclaimed on Twitter: “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud.” He’s wrong on all counts. In the first place, candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court don’t run for election with party labels. Our judicial elections are nonpartisan – at least they are supposed to be. Secondly, voting fraud does not occur in our state because we have long had strong safeguards in place to prevent it. Voting fraud is a complete and total non-issue in Wisconsin and a distraction from real and serious attacks on democracy such as ongoing voter suppression proposals and laws that already make it more difficult to vote here than previously.
But the unelected Musk, whose craving for national attention and power rivals that of his partner Donald Trump, has a direct financial interest in a matter that could end up before the state’s high court. Wisconsin is one of nearly half the states in the nation that prohibit auto manufacturers from being able to directly sell their vehicles to the public because it would provide those manufacturers with a competitive advantage over independent dealers. Musk’s car company, Tesla, has sought and been refused an exemption to the law by state courts, most recently in December. A sympathetic Wisconsin Supreme Court influenced by Musk’s heavy spending in the current election – already well over $12 million and rising — is in his crosshairs as well as enhanced overall political influence and power beyond our state.
In a campaign that is already the most expensive judicial election anywhere in the nation in U.S. history, Musk may end up as the single largest campaign spender through his “Building America’s Future” Super PAC and other avenues to influence the outcome in Wisconsin with his limitless out-of-state millions. How much will he spend? No one knows. But it is very important that Wisconsinites know that Musk has quickly emerged as the single most dominant source of campaign cash and political influence in this election and in our state.
It will be up to Wisconsinites to decide if they approve or not of this unelected richest person in the world buying control of our highest court while at the same time continuing his unprecedented destruction of so many vital national services and safeguards Wisconsinites depend on.
The voters of Wisconsin can prevail over Musk and his millions by turning out in force – by returning their absentee ballots in time to be counted, or by showing up and voting early in person or at their polling place on the first day of April – Election Day. At the ballot box, each of us still has more voice and control over our destiny than even the richest person in the world who can’t vote here and who knows and cares little or nothing about Wisconsin other than as a place for him to sell more Teslas and ruin more lives.
On the evening of March 6 Musk’s multimillion dollar Space X Starship exploded in the skies over the coast of Florida shortly after it was launched. Thank goodness no lives were lost but it was nonetheless a spectacular failure. The April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election could be another spectacular failure for Musk and his gargantuan bankroll. It is entirely in the hands of Wisconsin voters to decide.
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Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.
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'Staff hates him': 'Furious' GOP operatives 'revolt' against Musk — 'but they’re petrified'
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President Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s “Maganomics,” are a “dangerous combination of economic nationalism and the techno-right," economist Jonathon Portes wrote in The Guardian Thursday, citing a framework laid out by Harvard economist Dani Rodrik.
Portes, according to his bio, served as chief economist at the United Kingdom's Department for Work and Pensions from 2002 to 2008 and chief economist at the Cabinet Office from 2008 to 2011. He was also the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
For Portes, "economic nationalism" is exemplified by Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon – who, the economist wrote, want "to rebuild America’s traditional industrial strength behind tariff walls while deporting as many immigrants as possible." Elon Musk, meanwhile, represents the techno-right with his “AI-enabled libertarian future."
READ MORE: 'Massive cuts down the road': How MAGA is laying its 'pretext' to gut Social Security
“Musk’s vision is essentially that of Ayn Rand – that human progress and prosperity depends on the selfish actions of heroic individuals, and the sole role of government is to protect the (economic) freedoms of such individuals,” Portes wrote.
According to Portes, there is a "third element" to the president's economic framework: the Trump administration's participation in a massive transfer of wealth that benefits elites
Portes described this element as the "use of state power to benefit Trump and his supporters," writing it "hardly qualifies as an economic ideology, but is too big to be ignored."
Portes pointed to Musk's attempted takeover of a "lucrative" contract with the Federal Aviation Administration" and "Trump’s proposal of a sizable strategic crypto reserve" as examples of this "gigantic wealth transfer."
READ MORE: 'He’s getting bad advice': Trump is 'wreaking havoc' with the 'very good economy' he inherited
As Portes explained, there's little appetite among those in power to keep Trump's economic framework in check.
"There is little or no sign that elected Republican officials will push back either on principled or self-interested grounds," the economist wrote.
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SpaceX/Tesla/X.com leader Elon Musk has never held public office, but his prominence in U.S. politics increased considerably with the 2024 presidential election. Musk, a major donor to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, now heads an advisory group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and is aggressively pushing dramatic cuts to the United States' federal workforce.
Many Democrats are vehemently opposing the Trump Administration and DOGE's mass layoffs of federal workers, and according to Tech Dirt's Mike Masnick, GOP senators are worried as well — fearing that the layoffs will hurt them politically.
In an article published on March 10, Masnick reports, "Republican Senators are so aware that Elon Musk is literally running the government now that they're getting his personal cell phone number to beg him to reverse his mistakes. This would be concerning enough on its own — but it's especially alarming given that just weeks ago, the DOJ (U.S. Department of Justice) explicitly claimed in court that Musk has no authority whatsoever over DOGE or government decisions."
READ MORE: House Republican leader wants reps to 'publicly' denounce Senate GOP’s delay of key vote
Masnick adds, "The stark contradiction between what's happening and what the DOJ claimed came into sharp focus last week when the Washington Post reported that Republican senators were literally getting Musk's personal phone number to call him when they need his DOGE team to 'get problematic cuts reversed quickly.'"
The Tech Dirt reporter stresses that it is "particularly absurd" for the DOJ to be "claiming that Elon Musk had nothing to do with DOGE" when GOP senators are so anxious to talk to him on the phone.
"Yes, this is how our government now works," Masnick warns. "Musk's wrecking crew destroys stuff, and a select few Republican officials get to call him and plead with him to try to put broken things back together again — even as many of them are not easily restored."
During his 2025 State of the Union address, Masnick notes, President Trump bragged that DOGE is "headed by Elon Musk" — which contradicts the DOJ claim.
READ MORE:Senator schools Musk on 'what makes America great’ after billionaire calls him a 'traitor'
"When the president directly contradicts his own DOJ's court filing on national television," the Tech Dirt reporter observes, "it's more than just embarrassing — it's a sign of how completely the constitutional structure of our government has broken down. The DOJ is supposed to represent the executive branch's legal positions truthfully to the courts. Instead, we have the Department (of Justice) filing demonstrably false statements while the president openly admits the truth."
Masnick adds, "In any other administration, this would be a massive, ongoing, frontpage crisis. With Trump, it’s yet another story that is covered for a day and forgotten."
READ MORE:'Investors are starting to play defense' as business class fears 'growing chaos' from Trumponomics
*Read the full Tech Dirt article at this link.
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hayes aha: trump will get rid of tesla competition; [ we lose mkt/capitalism AND democ!?
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lies disinfo conspir holywood celeb sean penn ben stiller [jew?] no dollars gaza condom 70k play dublin embassy paid by state dept
:{nazi salute speech to AFD no guilt CRUELTY --> FEAR = :{FASCISM}: STARVING KIDS AID THRU WOODCHIPPER (ireland opera was state dept $, so was---)} [
9LHxV3GeM)
lawrence o’D last word
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CRUELTY --> FEAR = FASCISM
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'Shatter the consecrated space': Trump administration sued over raids in churches
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'Big balls' Musk fires back at Mike Myers and SNL for mockery in 'far-left propaganda' skit
AN 3 25
Saturday Night Live (SNL) opened its latest episode with a satirical sketch mocking the controversial Oval Office meeting between PresidentDonald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The meeting, which took place on Friday, was widely criticizedfor its chaotic and contentious tone, raising concerns about U.S. support for Ukraine against Russian aggression.
In the cold open, James Austin Johnson portrayed Trump, Bowen Yang played Vance, and Mikey Day took on the role of Zelensky. The sketch humorously exaggerated the real-life tension, with Trump and Vance berating Zelensky for his perceived lack of gratitude for U.S. aid.
The sketch also poked fun at Trump's disdain for Zelensky's casual attire, with Trump sarcastically thanking him for "dressing like casual Star Trek."
In a surprise cameo, Mike Myers appeared as Elon Musk, bursting into the Oval Office dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, wielding a chainsaw. The sketch also mocked the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) alleged budget cuts.
Following the broadcast, the real Elon Musk responded on X (formerly Twitter), dismissing the show as "far-left propaganda" and claiming that DOGE has advocated for hiring more air traffic controllers, not firing them, according to Newsweek.
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A Florida Republican group is facing backlash after extending a formal invitation to Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, who arrived in Florida on Thursday from Romania. The accused human traffickers were reportedly granted travel clearance following intervention from high-ranking Trump administration officials who “took an interest in their case.”
38-year old Andrew Tate, along with Tristan, 36, are under investigation in both Romania and the UK.
According to the BBC, they were first arrested in Romania in 2022, where they “face trial on allegations of rape, trafficking minors and money laundering, all of which they deny.” They are also, BBC reported separately, “facing separate, unrelated charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK.”
The Tates are “vocal supporters” of President Donald Trump, “have a large US following and are popular figures among some elements of the American right.” Andrew Tate has been called a self-professed misogynist influencer.
READ MORE: ‘Did I Say That? I Can’t Believe I Said That’: Trump’s Remarks Again Fuel Memory Questions
President Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell, “raised the Tate brothers with Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu at the Munich Security Conference,” BBC notes. “Hurezeanu said he had not considered Grenell’s approach as a ‘form of pressure.’ Grenell told the Financial Times his support for the brothers was evident.”
On Thursday, Vox reported on the “intra-MAGA fight playing out right now over Andrew Tate,” and explained that “Tate became a far-right podcasting star in the 2020s with his explicitly sexist philosophy of masculinity. He quickly gained a wide following among both young men specifically, and several
MAGA
, including Trump’s own former personal attorney and current adviser
, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump Jr.”
Indeed, last month Tate appeared on “The Benny Show,” with guest Alina Habba, formerly President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and now Counselor to the President.
“I’m a big fan,” Habba told Tate, as Mediaite reported.
READ MORE: Trump’s DHS Can Now Spy More Easily on LGBTQ Americans
“I think that your anger is the same that President Trump has for our country and the time is now for us to stop being wimps. I think that’s exactly the right sentiment. And I also have to say that I sympathize with you because I think you go through a lot of the same show me the person, I’ll find the crime that President Trump has gone through.”
Currently pinned to the top of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans’ page on the social media site X is their invitation to the Tate brothers.
Bipartisan condemnation against the Tampa Bay Young Republicans came quickly.
“They BRAGGED about their abuse of women. On VIDEO. What the hell has happened to the Republican Party?” asked former Republican Ron Filipkowski, now the editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch.
Well-known veteran journalist Charlie Sykes, the former Bulwark editor-in-chief, remarked, “Florida YRs embrace sex traffickers.. because of course.”
Mediaite contributing editor Sarah Rumpf commented, “Tampa Bay YRs endorsing abusing women and sex trafficking. Take note, YR women. The Tates’ criminal cases in multiple countries are still pending, but what they’ve admitted — bragged about! — is enough to make the moral decision clear here.”
CNN’s S.E. Cupp, a Republican, wrote: “YRs…I know it seems that way, but you don’t HAVE to embrace every evil asshole just to ‘own the libs.'”
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said the Tate brothers are not welcome in his state. His communications director, Bryan Griffin, separately wrote: “It’s not a matter of speech. It’s a matter of conduct. Conservatism is not impartial to morality. In fact, the right must become more selective about the people we amplify. This is a different situation from the smear campaigns of the left. Their admissions alone are repugnant.”
“Wrong move,” remarked Florida State Senator and former Florida Republican Party Chair Blaise Ingoglia. “You can believe in free speech and still not give women-abusing scumbags a platform.”
One of the sharpest criticisms came from Rafael E. Struve, the Director of Communications at Bienvenido, which he describes as “a national political organization that specializes in mobilizing Hispanic conservative voters” to elect Republicans.
“As a former YR club chair,” Struve wrote, “I get it—any press is good press, and controversy’s a cheap thrill. I’ve seen some dumb moves for clicks, but come on Tampa Bay…what the hell is this? You’re rolling out the red carpet for a pair of self-styled pimps and predators, calling it ‘free speech’ as if you’re some sort of First Amendment heroes? These creeps are on record bragging about pimping out and battering women, and you’re still handing them a mic—and then you have the gall to compare them to President Trump?”
“I’m trying to understand what broke in your heads to greenlight this,” he continued. “Platforming trafficking suspects and porn peddlers doesn’t make you free speech rebels—it makes you look desperate and dumb. Dragging President Trump into this, as if his fight’s anything like their circus, is especially insulting. You’re better than this—for your club’s sake, I genuinely hope you’ll ditch the graphic, delete the post, and figure out why you thought this was a win.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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A political action group tied to Elon Musk that has sought to influence Wisconsin’s high stakes Supreme Court election canceled a social media ad this week after it featured the wrong person.
The ad by the group Building America’s Future attempted to attack Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate in the race. However the ad featured a photo of a different Susan Crawford. Instead of showing the judge, the ad, which attacked Crawford’s record on crime, featured former Harvard Law School Professor Susan P. Crawford.
Derrick Honeyman, a spokesperson for Crawford’s campaign, said in a statement the ad was a “fraud.”
“Maybe an audit is needed of the staff at Musk’s shady far-right group,” Honeyman said. “Wisconsinites shouldn’t trust a single thing from these guys.”
First reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the ad ran for four days and cost $3,000.
Building America’s Future has promised to spend more than $1.5 million on airing anti-Crawford ads in a number of television markets across the state. Another Musk-associated PAC has invested $1 million in canvassing and field operations in support of the conservative candidate, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel.
Musk’s support of Schimel comes as Tesla has sued the state of Wisconsin over a law that prevents car manufacturers from owning dealerships in the state.
The Supreme Court race will determine the ideological swing of the body. The race between Crawford and Schimel could break spending records for a Wisconsin judicial campaign after 2023’s race set the previous record at about $50 million.
Both candidates have been supported by contributions from billionaires. Crawford has received help from George Soros and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker while Schimel received donations from Illinois billionaire Liz Uihlein, Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks and outside help from Musk.
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Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.
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AN 2 25
Elon Musk is weighing in on a consequential state election, Politico reported Wednesday. A group that Musk funded in the past has poured at least $1.5 million into the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, and he is posting about the race on social media. The group, Building America’s Future, is set to run ads later this week.
The spending is “a sign that even as Musk races to overhaul Washington, his influence extends beyond it,” write Politico’s Jessica Piper and Liz Crampton.
“Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!” Musk posted on his website, X, last month. This was in reference to the court’s ruling to allow drop boxes for absentee ballots in the 2024 election.
READ MORE:The right comes for one of its own on the issue of 'family values'
The race is between Democrat-backed Susan Crawford and GOP-backed Brad Schimel, although it is ultimately a nonpartisan election. The results will decide whether the majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is conservative or liberal.
“The high-stakes Wisconsin bellwether race will be the biggest test yet for both parties — and for Musk, who spent millions of dollars to help Trump win the election and is now looking to influence politics in the states,” Piper and Crampton write.
“It feels like a very clear sign that he knows what we know, which is that this is the most important election of the new Trump era,” said Yasmin Radjy, executive director of Swing Left, a progressive group.
“Susan Crawford has nationalized this race on her own, but we can’t control what happens outside of our campaign,” Schimel campaign spokesperson Jacob Fischer told Politico.
READ MORE:'Off-the-charts bonkers': Trump draws brutal mockery for suing Brazilian judge
Musk gave to Building America’s Future in 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Last year, the group was a major backer of several Republican-aligned super PACs, including two groups — Duty for America and Future Coalition PAC — that aimed to boost Trump with minority voters. It also helped fund a third super PAC, Stand For Us PAC, that spent in down-ballot Republican primaries,” Piper and Crampton write.
The Wisconsin race is important because Democrats in the state legislature drew new maps, so the makeup of the state Supreme Court could influence upcoming 2026 elections in the U.S. House.
In a statement, the Crawford campaign called Schimel “extreme.”
READ MORE:'Constrained by the Constitution': Why some Trump orders are no more than 'glorified press releases'
“In D.C., Elon Musk has taken control of Americans’ private financial information and cut funding for hungry kids. Now, Musk is trying to buy off Brad Schimel and take over control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court so that Schimel can rubber-stamp an extreme agenda of banning abortion and cozying up to corporations,” they said.
But Schimel, a former attorney general, suggested he will not be influenced.
"Ultimately, the only answer to (the outside spending) is that the individual running for office — and frankly, this applies to all offices for the judicial or legislative or executive branch — you can't be for sale," Schimel said at a forum Tuesday. "People want to support you. It should be they're supporting you because they like the things that you stand for, not because they're buying some result."
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SALON AMANDA 2 25 RWW
Musk does not read to most people as a religious man. The tech billionaire who is attempting to take over the entire federal government through his "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) was once even regarded as an atheist.
"that there's some superconsciousness watching over our every movement." He argued that evolutionary theory was better than a supernatural explanation for making sense of our world. As he ransacks the federal government, trying to push out federal employees and lay waste to the ability of regulatory agencies to do their work, the last thing most people will assume motivates him is Christian fervor.
Over the summer, Musk told Jordan Peterson during an interview that while he's not "a particularly religious person," he would say, "I’m probably a cultural Christian."
For Musk personally, it probably doesn't. But his efforts to evacuate the federal government of the every day, non-political employees nonetheless serve a Christian nationalist agenda, which Musk is no doubt aware of. The secular-seeming brand of DOGE serves a useful propagandistic purpose by concealing how much Musk is following the Project 2025 playbook developed by Christian nationalists for the explicit purpose of remaking America in the fundamentalist image. Musk is the obnoxious, trolling face of the operation, but he works hand-in-glove with the Project 2025 author who called for an "army" of people with a "Biblical worldview" to replace the existing federal workforce. The explicit plan is to replace federal workers who Musk forces out with people who pass "ideological purity tests,"largely based on their eagerness to make America something very much like a theocracy.
While Musk is snagging most headlines with his loud-mouthed antics, his partner in the federal purge operation is Russ Vought, a self-described Christian nationalistwho Trump appointed to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought has developed the justification for ignoring the clear language of the Constitution, arguing this is a "post-constitutional" moment, in which law-breaking is justified to impose his theocratic vision on the country. Having Musk cover for Vought is savvy. Polls may show people's approval of Musk sinkingthe more they see of him, but his clownishness and personal success probably soften people's willingness to see him as the threat he is. Vought, however, is every inch a type most Americans know well and loathe: the creepy religious fanatic.
Project 2025 was clear that its primary goal was to "use government power" to "restore the American family," which is defined strictly in terms of male-dominated heterosexual couples with children. In its list of alleged threats to the "family," the playbook lists phrases like "sexual orientation," "gender equality" and "reproductive health." The document goes into elaborate detail about how federal offices can be used to implement this compulsory and narrow heterosexuality, from abortion bans to replacing reproductive health services with abstinence-only lectures to even reimagining child support programs to bully women into remarrying ex-husbands.
The secular-seeming brand of DOGE serves a useful propagandistic purpose by concealing how much Musk is following the Project 2025 playbook developed by Christian nationalists for the explicit purpose of remaking America in the fundamentalist image.
If one looks away from Musk to Trump officials who have legal appointments, the Christian nationalist agenda that Musk is assisting becomes more obvious. Last week, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner announced the suspension of rules barring discrimination against LGBTQ people in low-income housing and even homeless shelters. The move will especially affect queer teenagers, who are often homeless after being kicked out by right-wing parents. Turner justified putting teenagers on the street by declaring, in his official statement, that this is what "the Lord established from the beginning." Project 2025 called for HUD to end "corrosive progressive ideologies across the department’s programs." Drastically reducing the existing HUD workforce so MAGA apparatchiks could control people's housing access — based no doubt on their prejudices — is outlined in this vision.
The purge at the Department of Justice (DOJ) has largely been covered as part of Donald Trump's "revenge" tour against everyone who tried to hold him accountable for alleged crimes during and after his first term in office. That is absolutely part of it, of course, but it also helps lay the groundwork for the Project 2025 goal of using DOJ powers to force the Christian right's agenda on normal people. Trump's new attorney general, Pam Bondi, has already been hinting in public that she is open to using federal prosecutors to prosecute doctors who mail abortion pills to women in states where clinics have been forcibly shut down. Louisiana is queuing up her first opportunity, by demanding the extradition of a New York-based doctor to their state, where they plan to put her on trial for providing abortion pills to a Louisiana teenager.
Related
Musk took all their power, so Republicans remake Congress into a ministry of disinformation
If Bondi bites, as legal experts Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo explained at Rewire News, that opens the door for a broad Christian nationalist agenda outlined in Project 2025 to terrorize people for providing birth control, sex toys, or even sex education materials. The document argues that prosecutors can revive the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that criminalized the mailing of "obscene" materials, which were broadly defined to cover all of these items. Project 2025 does not hold back from characterizing even basic sex education in this way, defining obscenity so broadly that even providing a "how to use a condom" manual — online or in a paper pamphlet — would be enough to be charged with a crime. Flushing the DOJ of good lawyers, so that they can be replaced with far-right hacks who hate birth control and queer people, is a first step to making this theocratic vision a reality.
If that sounds preposterous, it's worth noting that demonizing contraception and sex ed was central to Musk's illegal efforts to end USAID. He and Trump both repeatedly attacked a program in Mozambique that provided $5 million in contraceptives, though they inflated the number exponentially to make it $100 million and falsely claimed it was going to "Hamas" instead of young women in Africa. They've also suspended HIV-prevention drugs from being distributed overseas to anyone who isn't a pregnant or breastfeeding woman, who are at risk of transmitting the virus to babies. Anyone who isn't a baby is clearly considered deserving of death, because Christian fundamentalists believe you only get the virus through "sin."
Musk's past atheism and tendency to sleep with many different women hasn't stopped him from warming to the Christian right's loathing of sexual freedom. He's started echoing Christian right propaganda that paints the birth control pill as dangerous and unnatural. His friend, fellow tech billionaire Peter Thiel, has heavily invested in publications that promote the far-right Christian view that sex is only for marriage, and within marriage, it's only for procreation. (Thiel exempts himself from following his own prescriptions, as he's married to a man.)
Musk isn't ready to say he believes in God, but this shift to the right on sexual health issues is part of his larger embrace of Christian nationalism. Over the summer, he told Jordan Peterson during an interview that while he's not "a particularly religious person," he would say, "I’m probably a cultural Christian." He tried to frame this as a positive thing, with vague claims to believe in "the teachings of Jesus," but as Victor Tangermann of Futurism pointed out, this is ridiculous. Pointing to Musk's "long track record" of treating other people like dirt, hoarding wealth, and stoking discord, Tangermann writes, has nothing to do with the Jesus "who deeply opposed wealth inequality and supported the poor and outcasts." As David French at the New York Times pointed out, the illegal cuts to USAID have taken money from "Christian organizations, including evangelical organizations, that serve poor and marginalized people at home and abroad."
But Musk has indeed embraced the cultural mores of Christian nationalists, whose faith is less about Jesus and more about using power to enforce their racist, sexist, and anti-queer views on the rest of Americans.
and has explicitly noted, "the more religious, the less educated, and the poorer, the higher the birth rate." It's not much of a leap to see what his conclusion is: that to drive up birth rates, he needs to make ordinary people poorer, less educated, and more religious. He may not believe in God, but he certainly finds it useful to force right-wing Christianity on others as a means of control.
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{Elon Musk's war on Head Start childhood education exposes how "pro-natalists" are really anti-woman}:
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*in partnership with The Guardian.
In May 2024, a flashy ad went viral on social media warning that “across the country, there are real cases of fraud and abuses of the [election] system that have eroded our trust”. The ad pledged that “whistleblowers” who shared evidence of election fraud “will be rewarded with payment from our $5m fund”.
This reward was courtesy of a just-announced group, the Fair Election Fund, which has deep connections to Elon Musk’s political network, according to materials obtained by Documented.
The Fair Election Fund pledged that “the bulk of the group’s budget will be devoted to paying whistleblowers” for sharing their stories, and that it would launch “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns” that would “highlight these cases”.
It was followed by another ad that ran in swing states during the Olympics and told viewers “you could be eligible for compensation” for sharing evidence of election fraud.
Despite the group’s high-profile, deep-pocketed backers and lucrative bounty offers, it never revealed any evidence of voter or election fraud. Instead, the group took a series of unrelated detours into tangential areas like third-party ballot access, and its effort to uncover fraud reaffirmed what numerous studies, court rulings and bipartisan investigations have concluded: voter fraud is extremely rare.
The lack of evidence has not stopped Republicans in Congress and state legislatures from continuing to push restrictive voting laws aimed at addressing this phantom threat. Meanwhile, Musk is claiming that “fraud” justifies his efforts to slash government operations, but similarly has not revealed much evidence.
The Fair Election Fund has now gone radio silent. Sitemap data shows that the website has not been updated since October, and the X/Twitter account for the group has not posted since November. The group’s spokesperson, former representative Doug Collins, became Trump’s veterans affairs secretary, and is now also leading the office of government ethics.
Close ties to world’s richest man
The Fair Election Fund is a fictitious name for another 501(c)(4) non-profit, Documented can reveal, and operates within a network run by Musk’s top political advisers. The group received funding from the same dark-money vehicle Musk has used to channel his political spending, and also routed funds to another Musk-backed non-profit.
The group is housed within a non-profit now called Interstate Priorities, formerly known as the For Which It Stands Fund. Formed on 3 January 2023, the non-profit raised $8,226,000 from a single donation in 2023.
The group is led by Victoria “Tori” Sachs, a Republican operative who was also executive director of And to the Republic, a group also formed in January 2023 that supported Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, including by funding DeSantis’s private jets and hosting quasi-campaign events.
The naming of the two Sachs-led groups – And to the Republic and the For Which It Stands Fund – and the timing of their creation in January 2023 suggests that the group that now houses the Fair Election Fund was originally intended to support DeSantis’s run, which Musk initially supported.
Sachs’s involvement continued through 2024, with her name appearing on records that accompanied the Fair Election Fund’s broadcast purchases.
Since 2022, Musk has been secretly channeling his political spending through a dark-money non-profit called Building America’s Future. That group is run by Generra Peck and Phil Cox, two Republican operatives who were involved in DeSantis’s failed presidential bid and now advise Musk. Building America’s Future reportedly backed the Fair Election Fund in 2024. It also provided half of And to the Republic’s overall fundraising in 2023.
The Fair Election Fund has other ties to the Musk advisers who lead Building America’s Future. Cox’s digital marketing firm IMGE LLC, which provides services to several groups in the Musk-backed, Building America Future-tied universe, manages the Fair Election Fund’s Facebook page, and an IMGE employee appears to be responsible for articles on the Fair Election Fund’s website.
The Fair Election Fund/Interstate Priorities also acted as a conduit to support other Musk-backed groups. The group’s 2023 tax return shows that it made a $1,550,000 grant to Citizens for Sanity, which Musk funded in 2022 through Building America’s Future, and which aired racist and transphobic ads that election cycle. That grant made up almost the entirety of Citizens for Sanity’s funding in 2023.
In the 2024 election cycle, Musk publicly disclosed at least $277m in political contributions to Super Pacs that worked to elect President Trump and other Republicans. It is not known how much he may have given to other politically active groups that disguise their donors.
A detour into third-party ballot access
The Fair Election Fund’s goal of exposing election fraud seemingly turned up nothing of significance.
Out of its $5m fund, the group announced $75,000 in “bounty” payments, releasing $50,000 in July 2024 and $25,000 in September 2024. The Fair Election Fund promised that it would “highlight” the election fraud stories it gathered through these payments via “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns”, but it never did so, which suggests that none of the evidence generated was consequential or credible.
Instead, the group took a detour in July 2024: it launched a $175,000 ad “blitz” targeting North Carolina state board of election (NCSBE) members who delayed placing third-party presidential candidates Cornel West and Robert F Kennedy Jr on the ballot. At the time, Republicans and their allies believed that West and Kennedy would act as spoilers to help Trump, by siphoning left-leaning votes away from the Democratic presidential nominee.
Ironically, the NCSBE had delayed a decision on West’s and Kennedy’s ballot eligibility based on evidence that petitions were obtained through fraudulent means – concerns that would seem to align with the Fair Election Fund’s stated mission of exposing election fraud.
The Fair Election Fund ads declared that the Democratic members of the NCSBE were “blocking your voting rights”, and offered a reward for evidence of the members’ “shady backroom deal”. The group also projected images on the side of the NCSBE’s building, and drove mobile billboards around the agency’s headquarters.
The Fair Election Fund also ran digital ads in North Carolina featuring Black voters, some of which asserted that “African American voices are not being heard”, while others declared “Support Equality, Support Inclusion, Support [Cornel West’s] Justice for All Party”. The group pushed similar efforts in states such as Michigan.
Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, who sought to keep West off of ballots in North Carolina and elsewhere, was a frequent target of the group. In October 2024, the group announced that it would be running a six-figure ad buy to “troll” Elias. The ads included mobile billboards around the Elias Law Group office as well as a full-page ad in the Washington Post, which declared: “We beat Marc Elias and his racist voter suppression lawsuits … He tried to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters who support Cornel West, but the Fair Election Fund stopped him.”
The Fair Election Fund then veered into a series of efforts to chase other trending rightwing conspiracy theories.
For example, over the summer, the Fair Election Fund seized on to a far-fetched conspiracy theory about the online fundraising platform ActBlue, claiming to have found “60,000 potential discrepancies” in ActBlue-facilitated contributions to the Biden-Harris campaign, based on an investigation conducted “from late July to early August”. The group claimed to have “spent $250,000 on these initial findings” – a jaw-dropping sum to spend on a brief review of campaign finance records.
The group then announced a $50,000 ad buy in several swing states soliciting evidence from people who claim to have been “defrauded by ActBlue”. No evidence from this “investigation” has been made public.
In fall 2024, as conspiracy theories about noncitizen voting gained momentum, the Fair Election Fund announced that it would be launching a “six-figure investigation into noncitizen voting in seven key swing states”. The results of this “six-figure investigation” were never made public.
You’re on the free list for*The Shakedown
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tools lil sis
mapping-the-billionaire-winners-of-the-2024-election
December 12, 2024
Author(s): Derek Seidman
Issues: Billionaires, Money in Politics
This is the first in a new series of LittleSis posts mapping out billionaire power in current U.S. politics, including the new Trump administration. To see the latest posts in this LittleSis series, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on*X*,*Bluesky*,*Facebook*, and[Instagram
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It’s nothing new that, in 2024, billionaires once again plowed massive amounts of cash into the presidential and congressional elections. Dozens upon dozens of billionaires backed Trump and Harris with huge donations. According to one study, billionaire families spent a mind-boggling $2 billionon the recents elections.
That said, the sheer amount of cash flowing from just a tiny handful of billionaire donors — with $994 million from the top ten contributors alone, measured beforefinal-quarter contributions of 2024 were even disclosed — is astronomical. Moreover, the crassness of Trump’s open embrace of the ultra-wealthy feels shocking even by the standards of U.S. billionaire rule. Trump’s transition is refusing to disclose donors, and Trump’s authoritarian style and total disdain for any ethics around conflicts of interests, will give billionaires even more unchecked power.
The extent of directbillionaire influence within the administration is seen in the very make-up of Trump’s transition team and top appointees, whose ranks include multiple billionaires. Two of those billionaires — Linda McMahon and Howard Lutnick — are co-chairing Trump’s transition team, and thus overseeing the set-up of his incoming administration. Trump has further nominated McMahon for Education secretary and Lutnick for Commerce Secretary. Meanwhile, billionaire Scott Bessent is set to become Treasury Secretary, meaning two billionaires — Lutnick and Bessant — will occupy core positions overseeing financial and economic policy.
Trump has also appointed two billionaires, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, as co-chairs of the new Department of Government Efficiency, which is tasked with advising the administration on government cuts and austerity. Musk, of course, is the wealthiest person alive, and Musk, Lutnick, and McMahon are known to be especially close with Trump.
All told, according to a November 2024 Americans for Tax Fairness report, “the combined wealth of President-elect Trump’s wealthiest nominees and transition team officials,” amounts to $313 billion — and this number has since climbed well over $400 billion with Elon Musk’s net worth skyrocketing. As former labor secretary Robert Reich has said, Trump’s regime “will be a billionaires’ ball.”
This post looks at some of the billionaires and billionaire groups — Wall Street elites to crypto tycoons, fossil fuel barons to Elon Musk — that are set to benefit from the incoming Trump administration.
*Wall Street Billionaires
A host of powerful Wall Street billionaires lined up behind Trump as major donors and fundraisers toward his reelection and as donors to his GOP allies.
These Wall Street billionaires, concentrated in private equity and hedge funds, included Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone (worth $53.8 billion), Ken Griffin of Citadel (worth$47 billion), Paul Singer of Elliott Management (worth $6.2 billion), John Paulson of Paulson & Co. (worth $3.8 billion), and Nelson Peltz of Trian Partners (worth $1.7 billion).
Two Wall Street billionaires — Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessant — are also set to become Commerce Secretary and Treasury Secretary, respectively. Other financial billionaires, like JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, have reportedly been serving as a “sounding board” for Trump.
All told, according to *Sludge*, “[d]onors from the securities and investment industry contributed a total of $193.8 million to the Trump campaign and outside spending groups supporting him, more than any other industry,” as of September 22, 2024.
Wall Street’s support for Trump has not been entirely smooth. Some billionaires like Schwarzman, Peltz, Griffin and others had previously disavowed Trump, especially after the January 6, 2021 capitol insurrection, before crawling back.
Moreover, there are tensions between Wall Street and Trump over issues like tariffs (which Wall Street opposes) and mass deportations (which Wall Street also opposes, but for purely economic reasons, not any humanitarian grounds). Overall, the financial industry is not a fan of the volatility and unpredictability that can come with a Trump regime.
But all this is rivalled — and indeed, for most Wall Street barons, outweighed — by the enormous potential to enrich themselves under Trump.
Trump has promised to reduce the corporate tax rate and to weaken regulatory bodies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and Wall Street is salivating over a potential mergers and acquisitions boom under Trump.
There’s also the potential for Wall Street to cash in on the privatization of public assets. For example, Trump backers John Paulson and Bill Ackman are big investors in the federal government’s housing finance companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which, theNew York Times reports, could be privatized under Trump and deliver huge windfalls to investors.
One private equity executive, commenting before the election, summed up Wall Street’s perspective on Trump: “We’ll get richer if he wins.”
To be sure, many Wall Street barons, from Michael Bloomberg to Jonathan Gray, backed Kamala Harris. But they will not be hurting under the new Trump administration (Gray, in fact, is President and Chief Operating Officer of Blackstone, where he’s second-in-line to the Trump-backing Schwarzman).
*Crypto Billionaires
The 2024 election cycle signaled the clear emergence of the crypto elite as a major political player. Prominent crypto billionaires — such as Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (worth $2.7 billion each), Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong (worth $13.7 billion), investor Marc Andreessen (worth $1.9 billion), Ripple Labs’ Brad Garlinghouse, and others — plowed millions towards pro-crypto PACs while crypto billionaires donated and fundraised for Trump.
All told, a triad of crypto-led PACs — Fairshake, Project Progress, and Defend American Jobs — spent more than $265.5 million dollars during the 2024 election cycle, according to the Lever,who declared that “the cryptocurrency industry is perhaps the biggest winner of the 2024 election cycle.”
The crypto industry has been volatile and faced fines, with growing calls, including from the Biden administration, for stronger regulation. Many crypto billionaires backed Trump, who courted the industry and said he’d be the first “crypto president,” betting that he’d stem these regulatory calls and also replace current SEC head Gary Gensler.
It appears the Trump-backing crypto barons will now get their wish, with top Trump cabinet appointees and power players who are very friendly to the industry. Howard Lutnick, the billionaire Trump ally who Trump nominated as Commerce Secretary, is deeply pro-crypto and personally tied to the industry. Trump also tapped pro-crypto billionaire Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary, who one crypto executive called the “perfect pick” who will be “most pro-innovation, pro-crypto Treasury [secretary] we’ve ever seen.”
Many crypto leaders want the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), rather than the more powerful SEC, to supervise the industry, and Trump has signaled support for this. Trump has also nominated the crypto-allied Paul Atkins to head the SEC, fulfilling the crypto billionaire bloc’s wish to ditch Gary Gensler, who it sees as an ardent foe.
The denizens of Trump World are adamantly pro-crypto, with numerous figures — JD Vance, Howard Lutnick, Elon Musk, Robert Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and others — tied to or invested in the industry. Trump’s own media company, Trump Media and Technology Group, which operates Truth Social, and which Trump has a 53% stake in that he says he’ll retain, is in talks to buy Bakkt, a cryptocurrency trading venue, while the Trump family has a newly-created crypto project called World Liberty Financial. The former CEO of Bakkt is Kelly Loeffler, who Trump has nominated to head the Small Business Administration, and Loeffler’s husband still runs Bakkt’s parent company.
Crypto saw a major downturn in 2022, and one of its shining stars, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested on fraud charges and subsequently found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison. But the industry’s started to bounce back, with Bitcoin hitting record highs and surging more after Trump’s victory. The industry and its billionaires have also attained cultural cachet in the Trumpian conservative universe as edgy, rule-breaking, and futuristic.
Another tech and crypto billionaire investor, David Sacks, publicly flipped toward supporting Trump during the election and helped line up Silicon Valley donors behind him with a fundraiser Sacks’ personally hosted. Now, Trump has named Sacks his artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency czar.
All told, crypto’s massive backing of Trump is reaping major rewards for industry billionaires, who will have pro-crypto regulators and close access to the administration, and who are set to see their wealth bloom even higher.
The rise of an aggressive, anti-regulatory pro-Trump donor bloc deeply overlaps with a split in Silicon Valley that turned some tech billionaires toward Trump. The Guardianestimates that the tech industry spent at least $394.1 million on the election, with the bulk of that coming from Elon Musk.
Tech’s Trump backers are already getting one top demand from their wishlist: Trump is replacing Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, a tough regulator of AI and corporate mergers, with a more industry-friendly chair.
But to be sure, Kamala Harris and the Democrats had their own massive bench of Silicon Valley billionaire donors, including Reid Hoffman, Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Ben Horwitz, and Laurene Powell Jobs. And while they wanted Harris to win, as Hoffman made clear in a somewhat conciliatory post-election Financial Times op-ed, his ilk will try to find a way to do just fine under a Trump administration.
*Elon Musk
Among Trump’s billionaire backers, Elon Musk is in a class of his own. Musk is worth over $433 billion. He is, by far, the world’s richest person. He owns and runs a constellation of influential, omnipresent corporations, including X (formerly Twitter), Tesla, and SpaceX. Few people in the world are more famous — or more powerful and wealthy — than Elon Musk.
When Musk endorsed Trump and threw himself into Trump’s election, it represented more than a mere endorsement. Musk is fusing the vast business operation, influence machine, and popular following that runs through him with the MAGA movement and Trump himself. Through this, he stands to benefit financially, but also attain higher heights of influence for his reactionary conspiracy-peddling and hyper-libertarian ideology. In short, Musk is fomenting true oligarchic power.
Musk spent at least $264 million to reelect Trump, according to investigative news outlet *Sludge*. He plowed the money into his very own America PAC, which focused on new voter turnout for Trump in swing states. Musk oversaw the PAC’s day-to-day operations. He even offered a $1 million daily giveaway to voters (for this, he’s being sued for fraud) and workers for America PAC have complained of horrible treatment.
Musk has now emerged as a close confidant of Trump and his family. And with Trump’s reelection, Musk stands to benefit as much as anyone. Since Trump was elected, Musk’s net worth has skyrocketed by around $130 billion.
There are several ways that Musk stands to benefit from the Trump administration. Musk oversees a truly massive business empire of electric vehicles, space satellites and space rockets, social media, artificial intelligence, and more. All these business interests are deeply impacted by government regulations and government contracts.
Though Musk pushes a hard libertarian ideology, he benefits from vast government subsidies. “Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule,” notes the *New York Times*. “The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies.”
The New York Timesalso notes Musk’s “numerous and adversarial” entanglements with federal regulators. “His companies have been targeted in at least 20 recent investigations or reviews, including over the safety of his Tesla cars and the environmental damage caused by his rockets,” they write.
As the premier Trump insider, Musk will now have direct influence within, and allies overseeing, the government agencies — from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB, which Musk wants to “delete”) — that carry out regulation, oversee investigations, and reward government contracts.
All this, of course, poses enormous conflicts of interest, with Musk openly influencing the very government entities that impact his own business operations and wealth.
Musk’s influence and cultural cachet also stand to grow further. His social media platform, X, which Musk dominates as a user and content shaper, will likely deepen as basic communications and media infrastructure for the MAGA movement.
Moreover, Trump has appointed Musk to head up the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy. It’s an advisory body, not an official government agency, and it remains to be seen how much power and influence DOGE will actually have. It could be a lever for implementing hyper-austerity, or it could be a plaything for two libertarian billionaire bros. But the precedent of awarding a huge donor, and the world’s wealthiest person, with their own “department,” is ominous.
It’s worth noting that while Musk also has discrete interests tied to specific companies, his vast business empire gives him a larger, generalized power and set of interests located at the very heart of U.S. capitalism and its future. Space technology, electric vehicles, AI, social media: this is all at the center of research and development and hardening geopolitical rivalries. Like Amazon and Jeff Bezos, Musk business operations dominate, and are even synonymous with, the very infrastructure that billions of people and governments worldwide depend on.
*Fossil Fuel Billionaires
Trump rode to reelection promising to “drill, baby drill” and achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the world. He sought $1 billion from the fossil fuel industry in exchange for advancing its interests. While the $1 billion mark fell short, Trump was strongly backed by oil and gas billionaires, and the fossil fuel industry will benefit from an ultra-friendly administration.
The industry gave more than $75 million to Trump and his allies in 2024, with $15 million of this coming from three oil billionaires who own private companies: Harold Hamm (Continental Resources), Kelcy Warren (Energy Transfer) and Jeffery Hildebrand (Hilcorp Energy).
Other billionaire fossil fuel donors included George Bishop of GeoSouthern Energy and coal magnate Joseph Craft III, as well as fossil fuel-tied “mine operators, shipbuilders, engineering firms, hedge funds and little-known oil producers,” said theNew York Times.
Trump has promised to ramp up fossil fuel production in the U.S., reapprove the Keystone XL oil pipeline, pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, reauthorize oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and weaken EPA regulations, among other things.
Trump has signaled his clear intention to follow through with these promises by making industry-friendly appointments tied to top energy and environment positions. These include fracking executive (and drinker of fracking fluid) Chris Wright as Energy Secretary, Lee Zeldin as Environmental Protection Agency head, and Doug Burgum as Interior Secretary.
Wright is a fossil fuel zealot who, as Energy Secretary, will run the department with huge influence over U.S. energy, environmental and nuclear policies. The American Petroleum Institute, the industry group for Big Oil, praised the appointment of Wright and congratulated Trump on his victory.
Lee Zeldin is a Chair of America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a policy group backed by Christian Nationalist oil baron Tim Dunn, a major Trump donor who has publicly stated he wants to end the classification of CO2 as a pollutant.
But Doug Burgum, who served as governor of the fracking powerhouse state of North Dakota and has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry, stands to be the major player directing Trump’s energy policy. As Interior Secretary, he’ll oversee hundreds of millions of acres of federal land that oil companies are itching to drill on. But even more, he’ll be coordinating the administration’s “energy dominance” agenda as Trump’s “energy czar,” heading up Trump’s National Energy Council and occupying a seat on the National Security Council.
All told, oil billionaires like Hamm stand to benefit greatly from a new Trump administration that promises to be a close ally of fossil fuel interests, even if this means intensifying the climate chaos that’s destabilizing the world and causing massive human dislocation and suffering.
*Potential Fractures in Billionaire Rule?
There are other billionaire and corporate blocs set to benefit from Trump’s rule, such as private prison and detention companies like CoreCivic and GEO (who Trump Attorney General nominee Pam Biondi lobbied for). And there are a slew of massive individual billionaire donors, from the railroad heir magnate Timothy Mellon to ultra-right shipping barrons Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, who gave enormous sums to Trump and other Republicans.
While we face daunting challenges in a period of intensified direct billionaire rule, it’s also worth remembering that there is potential for fissures within the billionaire class. Trump’s cabinet contains blocs that are in tension with each other: neocons versus isolationists, austerity backers who also want vast government subsidies for corporate elites, and people who want to calm markets versus people who want to impose tariffs or just seek political revenge. Trump is notoriously capricious and volatile and is quick to turn on those who were once insiders.
And of course, there’s the fundamental conflict between Trump’s mere rhetoric of populism and his true agenda of billionaire rule that will further immiserate the working class. This will be a challenging period for progressive forces, but the left should seek to monitor and, to the extent possible, exploit divisions among billionaires.
Note: Maps in this post may be updated as new information comes along
This is the first in a new series of LittleSis posts mapping out billionaire power in current U.S. politics, including the new Trump administration. To see the latest posts in this LittleSis series, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on X, Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram.
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TROLLING RIP WOOD CHIPPER AGY, taking names off buildings
ED MARTIN THREATED HUNT EDGE OF EARTH JRNL BIG BALLS, REHIRE 25 YO KID JDV INDIAN HATE
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Although some of President Donald Trump's nominees enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Senate confirmation votes — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio — others were confirmed along bipartisan lines.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth didn't receive a single Democratic vote, and three GOP senators joined Democrats in voting against him. But a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance got Hegseth, controversy and all, confirmed by a U.S. Senate consisting of 53 Republicans and 47 senators who are either Democrats or independents who caucus with Democrats (including Vermont's Bernie Sanders and Maine's Angus King).
If all senators on the Democratic side vote against a Trump nominee, four GOP defections are needed. And three of Trump's most controversial nominees — Kash Patel for FBI director, Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence director, and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for director of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — appear to be on track for confirmation.
READ MORE:**'Mark my words': George Conway predicts alarming showdown**
According to The Hill's Alexander Bolton, GOP senators are facing intense pressure to confirm Trump's nominees — not only from Trump himself, but also, from Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and X.com (formerly Twitter) and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
"GOP senators are terrified over the prospect of facing primary challengers funded by Elon Musk if they stick their necks out by opposing President Trump's agenda," Bolton reports. "The White House has signaled that Republicans who thwart Trump's agenda by voting against his controversial nominees or opposing efforts by Musk to freeze government funding and slash federal agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, will pay a political price. And that's a threat that carries a lot more weight when Musk, the world's richest person, could easily pour tens of millions of dollars into a Senate Republican primary."
GOP senators, according to Bolton, "have taken Musk's warning to heart."
A GOP senator, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told The Hill that Senate Republicans "who are close to an election" are "voting for certain nominees" because they fear primary challenges.
READ MORE:**Trump is already out gaming America's last line of defense**
The senator told The Hill, "The White House hasn't been too subtle about that. I think they've been fairly threatening."
A Democratic senator, also quoted anonymously, said of Musk, "They're all terrified of the power he's wielding right now."
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lawsuit by a coalition of labor unions Thursday prompted the Labor Department to agree not to release any sensitive economic and privacy data to DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk. Musk’s group has already gained access to sensitive files and computer systems across other key agencies as part of a push to restructure much of the federal government. “There are huge problems with what Elon Musk and his team are doing to access the most critical personal data that this country owns,” says Rob Shriver, senior adviser to the accountability group Democracy Forward, which filed the lawsuit over Labor Department data, and a former acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
Legal challenges have also reversed the Trump administration’s executive order to freeze trillions in federal funding, delayed a buyout offer sent to most of the federal workforce to encourage mass resignations, and at least partially blocked Musk from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system. We also speak with Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman, who calls Musk’s actions “an authoritarian rampage through the government … designed to access information, surveil the country, destroy the institutions of government and advance corporate interests without restraint.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We look now at some of the new legal hurdles facing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as it tries to dismantle and restructure, as it says, multiple federal agencies.
On Thursday, a lawsuit by a coalition of labor unions prompted the Labor Department to agree not to release any sensitive economic and privacy data to DOGE. The agency holds sensitive data likely including worker complaints against Musk and his companies. The lawsuit argues, quote, ”DOGE seeks to gain access to sensitive systems before courts can stop them, dismantle agencies before Congress can assert its prerogatives in the federal budget, and intimidate and threaten employees who stand in their way … The results have already been catastrophic. DOGE has seized control of some of the most carefully-protected information systems housed at the Treasury Department, taken hold of all sensitive personnel information at the Office of Personnel Management, and dismantled an entire agency within a week.” A full hearing on the case is set for today.
This comes as a similar lawsuit filed this week resulted in another agreement Thursday to stop DOGE from accessing millions of sensitive personal and financial records from the Treasury Department. The case was filed by Public Citizen on behalf of the American Federation of Government Employees, the Service Employees International Union and the Alliance for Retired Americans.
For more, we’re joined in by two guests. In Washington, D.C., Robert Weissman is with us, co-president of Public Citizen, which has also sued to stop the Trump administration’s attack on the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID. And in Arlington, Virginia, Rob Shriver is with us, senior adviser to Democracy Forward, which filed the lawsuit over Labor Department data on behalf of a coalition of labor unions. Until days ago, he was the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management under the Biden administration.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Rob Shriver, let’s begin with you. Is DOGE, is Elon Musk committing crimes here?
ROB SHRIVER: So, Amy, that remains to be seen. But I think what we know right now is there are huge problems with what Elon Musk and his team are doing to access the most critical, personal data that this country owns. There are processes in place that protect that data from public disclosure, that make sure that it’s used appropriately and not to engage in retribution or gain competitive advantages. And I think the complaint that Democracy Forward filed on behalf of 4 million workers lays out in great detail the risk and the harm that is already happening.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the information that is at risk here and the young men, 19, what, to 26, who used to work for SpaceX or X or Tesla, Elon Musk’s private companies, who have access to this information.
ROB SHRIVER: Yeah, I think that latter part is incredibly alarming. We don’t know if these individuals are employees of the government. We don’t know if they’ve gone through any vetting process. You know, the background investigation process is not just some technical HR thing that people get annoyed about. It’s meant to determine whether people are subject to blackmail or foreign agents or of such questionable character that they can’t be trusted with sensitive data. So, to bypass that process, which — if that happened, would be a huge problem. We need to know. The American people need to know what has happened to get these people access.
And then, the types of data that you’re talking about include personally identifiable information, personal health records, data about workers’ compensation claims, data about Elon Musk’s competitors, and some of the data that our economy relies upon to be reported out objectively and without political interference.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what the agency that you were in charge of, the Office of Personnel Management — I mean, it sounds so bureaucratic, it’s hard for people to identify with it — what the information you held there is and why it’s so threatening? And can you talk, for example, about Medicaid?
ROB SHRIVER: Sure. So, OPM is essentially the HR agency of the federal government. It issues HR policy. It manages and processes retirements for federal employees. It also manages the largest group health insurance program in the world, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program.
So, in order to carry out all of those functions — which, by the way, are largely nonpartisan, right? Like, most of the time OPM spends, like, just processing these retirement applications, managing health insurance — largely nonpartisan. But to carry out these missions, it has data on millions and millions of Americans, not just the 2.3 million active federal employees, but also the millions more retirees, the 8 million people who are enrolled in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, which includes federal employees, their family members, some of the highest-ranking officials in government, including members of Congress.
So, all of that data is housed at OPM and subject to very strict rules and controls for who gets to access it, for what purpose. There are immense cybersecurity protections, because the country may remember a large data breach in 2015 involving OPM that exposed millions of records of federal employees and family members. So, as a result of that, there are extensive protections in place to prevent something like that from happening again.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, who was with Congressmembers Paul Tonko and Yassamin Ansari, turned away from EPA headquarters. This is Senator Markey speaking at a news conference outside the EPA after they were denied entry.
> SEN. ED MARKEY: We just went in and asked for a meeting with the DOGE representatives. And we were denied. We were turned away. And we just had a couple of simple questions for them. Are they still freezing EPA funding for all of the clean air and clean water programs in our country? Are they blocking the important work, which the EPA does on a daily basis, to protect the people in our country, the families of our country? And they did not give us the answers, in the same way that they are not giving the answers to every other program in our country — Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, all of those health and environmental programs that are so central to the well-being of every family in our country. Trump and Elon Musk and their unqualified, unelected, unwanted henchmen want to be able to carry out their attacks on your environment, your rights, your friends, your neighbors, under the cover of darkness. So we’re outside asking them to step out into the light of day.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Massachusetts Senator Markey, standing outside the EPA. He’s stopped from going inside agencies like this. I mean, we’re talking about Treasury Department, as well, senators and congressmembers, police stopping them from moving in. But the DOGE kids — right? — 19, 20, 21, 22, they are moving in. How much information they’re getting is not clear. I want to bring Rob Weissman into this conversation. Robert Weissman is head of Public Citizen. Can you talk about this, what is happening right now, and what your lawsuit is all about?
ROBERT WEISSMAN: Yeah. Thanks, Amy.
I think the broad story is that Elon Musk and his acolytes are on an authoritarian rampage through the government. It’s only sort of ideological. It may be serving his business interests, we don’t know. But it’s designed to access information, surveil the country, destroy the institutions of government and advance corporate interests without restraint. I think, for Elon Musk, it’s fair to say he views this all as a kind of fun video game he’s going to play for a little while, then walk away. It’s been reported that the White House doesn’t actually know what Musk is doing in detail, but is fine. They have a kind of plausible deniability. When things go really wrong, then they pull it back in and tell him, “Don’t do that again.”
So, we are really in a dangerous time. We’re going to have to rely, at first, on the courts to restrain this. That’s what the Democracy Forward lawsuit is about. It’s what we’ve done at the Department of Treasury, and we were able to get an order yesterday restraining DOGE from accessing information at the Treasury Department, although still allowing two Musk acolytes inside the Treasury Department to get access to information, now down to one because of the resignation you referenced earlier.
This information is people’s tax data. It’s the government’s payment data. So it’s almost everyone in the country, personal information, income and more, access to information about government payees. And it’s not just that they want to see the information. It’s clear and been reported that their desire is to be able to cut off payments to people and organizations and corporations, contractors, whatever, that are due payment through congressionally appropriated money, through contractually obligated money, just to cut it off. That’s their version of efficiency. It has nothing to do with efficiency. It’s all about authoritarian imposition. And by the way, eventually, people who lose money are going to be paid. So the idea that they’re saving money is a lie. They’re going to be costing money, even in the direct sense, beyond the massive harm they’re going to conflict in this country and around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Rob Weissman, Public Citizen recently filed a complaint with the Department of Justice urging an examination into whether FBI director nominee Kash Patel should have registered under FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Explain why.
ROBERT WEISSMAN: Well, in the course of seeking a nomination for a position like director of the FBI, individuals are required to make all kinds of disclosures. That’s considered by the Senate as part of the confirmation process. Kash Patel did not disclose to the Senate in time for his consideration, for his confirmation hearings, that he had been paid by the government of Qatar to do work — we don’t know exactly what. That information has now come out. There’s a question first why it wasn’t disclosed, and that the Senate should be able to ask him, “What were you doing?” and consider whether it wants to confirm as head of the FBI someone who was a paid agent for a foreign country. There’s also the nontrivial legal matter that you’re required to register when you work for foreign governments, which Kash Patel did not do.
Now, an extra interesting twist in this is, the new attorney general, Pam Bondi, also worked for Qatar. She did follow the requirements and register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. But in her first day in office, yesterday, she issued a memo in which she said, “You know what? We’re not going to enforce that law very much. By and large, you can violate the law, unless you’re engaged in espionage on behalf of a foreign country.” So, the new attorney general, who would be overseeing Kash Patel if he were confirmed, has already preannounced that she won’t really investigate this claim against Kash Patel, which is a serious one because it’s plain he didn’t file the registration requirements.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of Pam Bondi, the new attorney general, within her first days in office, she has done everything from ordering investigations into sanctuary cities to reinstating the federal death penalty. Does she have that power?
ROBERT WEISSMAN: Well, the attorney general has a lot of power and a lot of discretionary decision-making authority. It’s very likely she’s going to overstep it. No one should be surprised. She got the job because she was an ardent Donald Trump supporter. She maintained that through her confirmation hearing. She should not have been confirmed. She’s multiply conflicted with companies that the Department of Justice is or will be investigating. She proved herself unqualified by her devotion to Donald Trump and her defense of the coup on January 6.
But we are here where we are, and she’s going to use both the discretionary — legitimate discretionary authority of the attorney general and illegitimate authority of the attorney general. One of her memos yesterday basically informed the Justice Department workforce, “Hey, your job is to work for Donald Trump, and we expect you to be loyal to the president’s mission and priorities.” Well, that’s not the job of the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice is not the president’s lawyer. The Department of Justice are the people’s lawyers and required to uphold the laws of this country. And it’s going to be a tough time in the next few years. We’re going to see how vindictive she is. But the best-case scenario isn’t very good at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Public Citizen has filed a complaint with the Department of Justice and the Office of Government Ethics around President Trump, what, on January 17th, days before he was inaugurated, releasing an official Trump meme coin, which values skyrocketed to over $15 billion. What can you say about this?
ROBERT WEISSMAN: Yeah, in a different time, this would be headline stories for a couple weeks, but there’s too much craziness and danger going on. So, Trump launched this meme a couple days before the inauguration. He’s promoted it on Twitter and on Truth Social since he was inaugurated, saying, “Buy the meme.” When you get the meme, you’re essentially getting nothing. You pay what you pay. And Trump says it’s not an investment, it’s just support for an idea. So, effectively, you’re making a gift to Donald Trump. You can try to resell that gift if you want, but you’re basically making a gift to Donald Trump. That’s illegal for every federal employee except for the president, who can accept gifts. But the president is not permitted to solicit gifts. So we have argued that the idea that he’s asking people to buy this meme, which is valueless thing, not a security, as he says, constitutes the solicitation of a gift, and we’ve asked for an investigation.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, I want to go back to Rob Shriver about the tactics in court and on the streets right now. Tens of thousands of federal workers have accepted the email, the resignation, resigning and being paid for the next eight months. First of all, will they necessarily get that? Now, that’s been stopped. The deadline was supposed to be last night at midnight, and a judge said no. But talk about what this means. You represent so many unions. And also, is the federal workforce, one of the most diverse in the country, is that also why it’s being targeted?
ROB SHRIVER: Well, I think that’s a good question. Certainly, we have worked over multiple administrations to make the federal workforce reflect the diversity of America, through legitimate tactics like making sure we’re recruiting broadly for talent.
I think it’s really important that Democracy Forward went to court and got this extension on the deadline, because the fork-in-the-road offer is unprecedented. It’s not consistent with the legal approaches that an administration can use to do exactly this. Why haven’t they just offered federal employees early retirement across the board? Why haven’t they gone through the congressionally authorized separation program that is implemented by OPM regulations?
And then, in addition to that, there are budgetary questions, right? We’re on a continuing resolution through March 14th. What’s to stop the Republican-controlled Congress, in enacting a new budget, from saying, “We’re not going under this agreement to pay people not to their job”?
And then, lastly, the American people need to ask: What is the plan for delivering essential government services? What is the plan if a bunch of national security workers take this deal? Or if an entire office in a county in Iowa of USDA workers takes that deal, who’s going to help those farmers?
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Rob Shriver, senior adviser to Democracy Forward, former acting director of OPM — that’s the Office of Personnel Management — and Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen.
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tnr new rep
Representative Ilhan Omar’s Republican colleagues are once again calling for her to be deported because they don’t understand U.S. law.
Representative Brandon Gill posted on X Tuesday in response to a post falsely claiming Omar was “hosting workshops” with Somali immigrants about their legal rights in the face of Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation orders.
“America would be a better place if @IlhanMN were deported back to Somalia,” Gill wrote, directing racist vitriol at a fellow member of Congress and a U.S. citizen.
Omar came under intense scrutiny after a whiny Elon Musk shared a link to a fake video that supposedly showed her “conducting seminars” with Somali immigrants on how to “evade” deportation. Musk claimed that she was “breaking the law. Literally. Outright.”
In the video, a clip of Omar explaining in Somali about Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination—a legal right that undocumented immigrants are free to exercise when encountering ICE agents—was spliced together with footage of unidentified people apparently of East African descent sitting in a room.
“She’s a major grifter and she hates America,” Musk wrote in a separate post on X.
Omar was quick to hit back at Musk Tuesday. “Well it just shows you how much he lacks an understanding of what our, of what the laws of this country are,” Omar said during an interview on CNN.
It appears that Gill has joined Musk in his weak understanding of American law—if that wasn’t obvious enough from his call to deport a U.S. citizen.
She clarified that the footage of her had been taken out of context from an interview with a journalist, who asked what her advice would be to undocumented Somalis, and that she hadn’t held a meeting like the one described.
Musk’s attacks against Omar come as she has been outspoken against his unlawful efforts to dismantle USAID.
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Elon Musk is sending his digital minions after Representative Ilhan Omar, all based on a fake video posted by the pitiable right-wing shill Ian Miles Cheong.
On Tuesday, Cheong posted an obviously edited video in which he claimed the progressive congresswoman was “conducting seminars for Somalians who are living illegally in the U.S. without documentation, providing guidance on how to evade deportation.”
The video shows a random room full of unidentified people of seemingly East African descent, then cuts to Omar being interviewed in a completely different room.
The richest man in the world shared the video, clutching at his pearls. “She is breaking the law. Literally. Outright,” he wrote on X of Omar allegedly telling immigrants that they were not required to answer questions if detained by ICE. And that didn’t even happen.
Hundreds of Musk’s fans began flocking to Omar’s page, so much so that she had to clear the air herself.
“Hey Elon, every single person in this country deserves to know their rights. That’s legal. Maybe you should brush up on our laws given the fact you’re breaking them to steal American’s sensitive data,” Omar wrote, in reference to Musk’s aggressive takeover of the Treasury’s payment system. “PS. This video is manipulated, and I wasn’t even at the event shown.”
It’s ironic that a man who spends all day moaning about left-wing misinformation and suppression is using his massive platform to spread his own. And he’s just getting started.
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AN THE CONV 2 25
“It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates,” echoed the introduction line in the manifesto of the Christchurch shooter who killed 51 people in a mosque in 2019. His claim was that white people are being “replaced” by other races and won’t survive without action.
A few years later, the same obsession with birth rates has become a catchphrase of Elon Musk’s daily social media activism.
Don’t get me wrong, Elon Musk is neither a white supremacist nor a right-wing terrorist. Yet, like other people with extremist opinions, he promotes the view that society is in decline and that action is needed to prevent a related apocalypse. These rhetorical overlaps are hardly coincidental. They stem from a reactionary philosophy that has a long history of going viral.
Anxiety that low birthrates inevitably lead to population collapse has been haunting the west since mass consumption became its dominant lifestyle. This flips the older Malthusian fear of exponential population growth that will outpace our ability to produce food. Seen in the bigger picture, both are variations of a generic narrative known as decadence.
The idea of decadence – moral decline triggered by excessive indulgence – informs many parts of everyday sense-making, especially cultural criticism.
Ever read American historian Christopher Lasch’s famous bestseller about the contemporary culture of narcissism? Ever come across the popular meme that claims “weak men create hard times”? Ever followed the Cultural Tutor’s tweets about the loss of beauty in architecture? Ever doomscrolled through Jordan Peterson’s 1,293 YouTube videos? The detail varies, but the overarching theme of decadence is the same every time.
Decadence is a useful double-edged sword as a narrative. It frames the masses as sluggish and in need of discipline. The corrupt elites, meanwhile, simply need to be replaced. It bemoans the erosion of authority and draws on the premise that every society rests upon eternal hierarchies. Too much freedom, fun and flexibility, the story goes, jeopardises order and, thus, prosperity.
Hence, some rules for life: men must subordinate and obey for the sake of the greater good. Women must breed to secure the existence of our people and a future for our children. A new nobility shall replace the liberal elites and recreate culture. Otherwise, civilisation, or at least nations, are at stake. Does this sound familiar?
Ever since the biblical legends of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Hindu myth of Kali Yuga, adversaries of equality and the rule of law accused societies of being decadent.
From ancient populists in the Roman empire to Italian fascists, decadence is the transhistorical scaffolding that binds together the branches of anti-liberal philosophy.
Today, neoreactionary philosopher and advocate of a “dark enlightenment”, Curtis Yarvin, declares in the New York Times that democracy is “dead”. He longs to replace it with an American monarchy. Political scientist Patrick Deneen’s claim of a “nearly complete disassociation of the governing class and a citizenry without a cives” equally draws on a decadence narrative.
All these ideas rest on a cyclical perception of time. Rise and fall. Blossom and decay. Apocalypse and palingenesis, meaning a national or ethnic rebirth.
On my research, I’ve analysed hundreds of German and French neo-fascist magazines. In the end, the data was the same endless repetition of decadence and apocalypticism. I dubbed it conservative crisis narratives.
The politics of crisis
In most cases, there’s no need to worry. Decadence is just a cliché. But that is why everybody can so easily sell own versions of this story – as long as they recap the grand narrative. Facts don’t matter and the devil isn’t in the detail.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Donald Trump’s vice-president J.D. Vance frankly admitted during the 2024 campaign. His confession reveals a sociological truth about the function of crisis narratives.
According to American anthropologist Janet Roitman, who delved into what she calls the “politics of crisis”, such a narrative “cannot be taken as a description of a historical situation nor can it be taken to be a diagnosis of the status of history”. Instead, she elaborates, it is a “necessarily political denunciation”.
Every crisis narrative necessarily strengthens the call for redeemers. “The 2024 election is the last shot to save America,” claims Donald Trump. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” reposts Musk. It’s a scaleable story.
Elon Musk’s philosophy
In France, the far-right philosopher Guillaume Faye, who inspired the identitarian movement, invented a reactionary philosophy called “archeofuturism”. It aims to combine skyrocketing technical progress and a medieval morality of heroism and hierarchies. That’s not far from how Musk answers the decadence narrative with a call to radical long-termism.
The “digital town square” that X claims to be, for instance, is a signifier of the feudal public sphere. Musk’s digital reenactment of ancient Rome’s aesthetics reflects the far-right desire for an American Caesar. Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, the most influential book in pre-fascist Germany, promoted the very same idea.
Musk’s philosophy appears to be that men shall submit to the CEO-king’s long-term ambition. To conquer space, colonise Mars, and merge human brains into one singular artificial intelligence, the individual and its needs become negligible. And that’s what the decadence narrative is all about in the first place.
Felix Schilk, Research Assistant, Faculty of Philosophy , *University of Tübingen
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Tech billionaire, Elon Musk, who leads President Donald Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, has moved to seize control of the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID.
Musk took a dig at USAID on his social media platform X, writing, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”
He also wrote several other posts about the agency, saying things like, “USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” and “USAID is evil.”
Fox News reports that more than 50 senior USAID staff members were placed on administrative leave and subjected to a gag order.
The gag order implies that they were not allowed to communicate with anyone outside the agency without approval.
According to the report, citing congressional sources, signs were also removed from USAID’s headquarters in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., and the DOGE team took over the computer systems.
USAID, an independent agency, is responsible for distributing civilian foreign aid and development assistance to countries around the globe.
The agency was said to have managed approximately $40 billion in appropriations in 2024.
Trump administration had on Sunday placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after refusing to turn over classified material in restricted areas to DOGE.
The development came after initially being refused access to USAID’s classified information.
However, DOGE eventually gained that access on Saturday, allowing them to see things like intelligence reports.
USAID is evil, criminal organization – Elon Musk...
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an 2 25
Elon Musk vowed yesterday to unilaterally cancel hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of government grants after he and his goons gained access to the Treasury Department’s vast payments system over the weekend.
The Treasury system disburses $5.4 trillion a year, or 88 percent of all federal payments, including social security checks. David Lebryk, who had spent more than 36 years in government and was responsible for overseeing the payments system — resigned abruptly Friday rather than turn over the system to Musk.
In short, the world’s richest man bankrolled Trump’s re-election campaign to the tune of some quarter of a billion dollars. In return, Trump tasked him with running a so-called “department of government efficiency,” and allowed him to get his hands on the keys to the kingdom.
But Musk hasn’t been confirmed by Congress. His “department” was never authorized by Congress. No one other than Trump has given Musk any authority. No one knows exactly who Musk’s goons are; they have not been vetted yet are handling some of the most sensitive personal information in the government.
Not even Trump has the authority to stop your Social Security payments, let alone your Medicare or Medicaid or unemployment insurance or your food stamp benefits.
Yet Musk and his goon squad assert they’re able to do so if theybelieve those payments are illegal.
Musk boasted on his social media site X that he was “rapidly shutting down . . . illegal payments.” But who is Musk to decide that a payment is illegal?
Musk’s boast came in response to a post on X by Mike Flynn, Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser, that contained a spreadsheet showing government payments to a number of Lutheran charities (which, by the way, are doing important work, and obtained the grants legally), Flynn claimed that the screenshots showed “there are MANY more organizations cashing in on our hard-earned money.”
But how did Flynn — who Trump pardoned in 2020 after Flynn pled guilty to lying about his contacts with Russians — obtain a screenshot of those government payments? And what else do Flynn, Musk, or any number of Trump insiders know about government payments made to any group or individual?
The conflicts of interest are wild. Musk’s own companies are government contractors that get paid through the Treasury’s payments system. Others contractors compete directly with Musk’s companies. Musk’s goons with ties to the tech sector could benefit financially from steering federal money this way or that,
And why in hell does Mike Flynn have this kind of access? After pleading guilty to a federal crime, Flynn has spent the last few years as the headliner for the ReAwaken America Tour (or RAT for short), a traveling carnival of MAGA politics, Trumpian “prophecies,” anti-vax rhetoric, COVID-19 conspiracies, and Christian Nationalistic messages of revenge against those who oppose Trump. A regular on the tour with Flynn was Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI.
Other Musk goons have gained access to the U.S. Agency for International Development, following a clash with security officials over the weekend. They have effectively closed the agency.
Reminder: USAID is an independent organization whose independence is codified into law. “It’s a coup,” said a current USAID official. It was unclear when, if ever, the agency would be up and running again, the official added.
Last week, Musk’s goons locked career civil servants out of computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management containing personal data on millions of federal employees, including dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades, and length of service.
Senior career employees at the Office of Personnel Management have had their access to some of the department’s data systems revoked.
The actions inside OPM make it harder for anyone outside Musk’s inner circle to know what’s going on.
Friends, this does seem like a coup. Offhand, I can think of at least eight federal laws that have been broken by Musk and his goons over the last few days, and at least two provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
Much of this occurred over the weekend. “Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days!” Musk wrote on X on Saturday.
Hello? Musk’s “opposing team” works for you. Musk works for Trump and Musk.
Musk and his goon squad are riding roughshod over the institutions of our government, negating decisions that hav been made by Congress. They are trampling on our democracy, and getting information about you that they have no right to have.
Democratic lawmakers along with any Republican lawmakers who still possess a shred of integrity should immediately seek an injunction from the federal courts to stop this pillage.
Meanwhile, you might call your senators and representatives in Congress and tell them you don’t want Elon Musk messing with your Social Security or anything else. That number, again, is 202-224-3121.
NOW READ:Greenlight for tyranny as impotent Dems' lack of resistance opens the floodgates
OMFG
an 225
Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE—have been granted access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that contains the personal information of every American who receives tax refunds, Medicare, Social Security, and other payments from the government.
Newly approved Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk surrogates access to the system late on Friday, five people familiar with the situation toldThe New York Times.Bessent's decision came the same day as news that David Lebryk, a career Treasury official who was acting secretary before Bessent's confirmation, would step down after arguing with DOGE members over access to the system run by the Bureau of Fiscal Service that pays out over $6 trillion a year.
"Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote on social media on Saturday. "Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it."
"Americans don't want an unelected and unaccountable billionaire dictating what working families can and cannot afford."
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich also responded with shock to the news: "An unelected billionaire, with no actual congressional authority or governmentt experience, now has access to Treasury payment systems and sensitive information about millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds, and other payments. What could go wrong?"
The news heightens fears that Musk and the Trump administration are attempting to gain authoritarian control over the federal government by ousting or sidelining career civil servants and undermining Congress, which has the constitutional authority to decide how the government should spend its money.
DOGE gained access to the Treasury payment system on the same day that an official at the Office of Personnel Management said that Musk allies had locked career civil servants out of a computer system containing the personal information of federal employees. The news also capped a week in which the Trump administration attempted to freeze all federal grants and loans, a move that has been temporarily blocked by two judges.
Wyden, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter demanding answers from Bessent on Friday when reports first emerged that Musk's team had tried to gain access to the system.
"To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy," Wyden wrote. "I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems."
Other Democratic lawmakers also voiced concerns on social media about the news.
"Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, is rooting around in Social Security and Medicare payment systems. He's reaching his hands into our pockets and firing anyone who tries to stop him. This reeks of corruption—it must stop," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D.-Wash.) wrote.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the news "alarming' and said that Congress must investigate.
People familiar with the situation told The New York Timesthat no payments had yet been blocked and that the stated mission of the DOGE team was to review payments, not to stop them. Musk suggested in a social media post on Friday that he was looking for inapropriate expenditures, but also that blocking funds might be appropriate.
"The DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups," he wrote on social media on Friday. "They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once."
Former Treasury officials told the Timesthat funds are dispersed by a comparatively small staff who rely on the agencies that earmark the funds to vet them. Don Hammond, who ran the system at the turn of the millennium, also toldThe Wall Street Journalthat, while there were certain automatic safeguards in place, it was not the role of Treasury to approve or reject specific payments.
"Legally, if you want to stop a payment from taking place, the place to do that is at the agency level," Hammond said.
Responding to the article on social media on Sunday, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens wrote: "The Treasury system makes the payments (cuts checks). It doesn't decide who to pay or how much. A little like an employer using a payroll processor. Musk has infiltrated the system to stop payments. It's a coup."
In an op-ed published by MSNBC on Saturday, Owens went into greater detail about her concerns, outlining three reasons why Musk might want access to the Treasury payment system.
- He could use it to stop payments to certain programs in order to work around the courts' block on the administration's spending freeze.
- He could access the list of blacklisted federal contractors in order to boost his own or his friend's companies and harm his competitors. (One of the DOGE allies granted access to the payment system, Tom Krause, is also a Big Tech CEO who leads Cloud Software Group, according to The New York Times.)
- He could use it to reduce Social Security or Medicare payments as part of DOGE's goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending.
Owens noted that Musk wasn't "chasing these cuts for their own sake. He's helping congressional Republicans attempt to pay for a new round of tax breaks for corporations and the ultrawealthy—including Musk himself."
"It's nice to believe in a fantasy in which Musk and DOGE work alongside civil servants to improve technology and services for Americans and save a few bucks along the way. But all evidence points to the contrary," Owens continued. "The richest man in the world, whom no one elected to any government position, is seeking unprecedented access to confidential information, including information pertaining to his own business interests, and seems hell-bent on cutting off as much funding as possible for the programs that matter to the rest of us."
Owens pointed to a recent poll finding that only around one-third of Americans approve of DOGE, and that 52% disapprove of Musk.
"Americans don't want an unelected and unaccountable billionaire dictating what working families can and cannot afford," she concluded. "If Musk is going to continue running the government like one of his failed businesses, perhaps someone should force his 'resignation' too."
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an 2 25
Reporting Friday that aides to Elon Musk—the billionaire backer of Republican President Donald Trump who runs the Department of Government Efficiency—locked career civil servants out of computer systems containing the personal data of millions of federal employees raised alarms among observers who said the move is consistent with the administration's efforts to assert authoritarian control over the federal government.
An unnamed official at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) toldReuters that "we have no visibility" into what Musk aides "are doing with the computer and data systems," and "that is creating great concern."
"There is no oversight," the official said, adding that "it creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."
The Reuters report came on the same day that The Washington Post reported that David Lebryk, who has worked in nonpolitical positions at the U.S. Treasury Department since the George H.W. Bush administration, will retire following "a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems."
As the Post noted:
Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses, and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions. The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate.
On Friday, the Trump administration ordered the General Services Administration to create a plan to slash 50% from the independent agency's budget, according to journalist Ken Klippenstein, who reported senior officials were left looking "shell-shocked'" by the directive.
Lebryk's announcement underscored what critics have warned is an aggressive push by Musk and other unelected Trump acolytes to sideline civil servants as part of an agenda in which MAGA sycophants are empowered to weaken government checks and balances and ensure total loyalty to the president, who has repeatedly flirted with authoritarianism.
In a Friday article highlighting Lebryk's announcement, Gizmodo's Matt Novak reported that "while it's not clear why [Department of Government Efficiency] wants access, experts are alarmed because there's basically no plausible explanation that doesn't involve tinkering with critical government functions by sidestepping Congress."
"Lebryk's departure is apparently related to the interference by DOGE-affiliated goons to access these payment systems," Novak asserted.
Common Dreamsreported earlier this week that Trump loyalists in the OPM and Office of Management and Budget associated with Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a far-right takeover of the federal government—are leading a sweeping effort to purge career civil servants and replace them with officials who will do the president's bidding without question.
Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy, toldReuters Friday that "this makes it much harder for anyone outside Musk's inner circle at OPM to know what's going on."
Despite its name, DOGE is a presidential advisory committee, not a federal department—and critics including Novak have accused the billionaire Trump supporter of reaching "his tentacles into virtually every agency."
"Congress famously has the power of the purse," he wrote. "But it looks like DOGE is trying to snatch it."
Earlier this week, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, warned that Trump "is trying every trick he and his Project 2025 cronies can think of to circumvent established civil service protections so they can purge the civil service of experts and replace them with political loyalists."
"The victims here, as is always the case with Donald Trump, are the American people who will see government services and benefits allocated not by nonpartisan civil servants, but by partisan hacks," Connolly added.
Mark Mazur, who served in senior Treasury Department roles during the Obama and Biden administrations, told the Post Friday that the prospect of government officials using the federal payments system in service of personal political motives is without precedent.
"It's never been used in a way to execute a partisan agenda," Mazur stressed. "You have to really put bad intentions in place for that to be the case."
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an 2 25
With only a few weeks until Germany’s election, Elon Musk has unambiguously thrown his support behind the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In a video address to a party rally last week, he appeared to urge Germans to “move on” from any “past guilt” related to the Holocaust.
It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.
Troublingly, the AfD is now firmly entrenched as Germany’s second-most popular political party, behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Like all parties in German elections, however, it cannot win an outright majority. It is also unlikely to be invited to join any ruling coalition that emerges from the February 23 election.
But the AfD’s anti-migrant, anti-government sloganeering has already seriously distorted Germany’s public debate and democratic culture, leaving many to ask whether it even needs to win elections to see its policies implemented.
This was evident following a dramatic week in Germany’s Bundestag.
First, in a radical break with Germany’s political norms, opposition leader Friedrich Merz deliberately drew on the votes of the AfD on Wednesday to ram a radical anti-asylum seeker motion through the parliament.
It was the first time in the history of the Bundestag that a parliamentary majority was reached with the help of the far right. Merz’s action was widely condemned as a “taboo-breaking” step towards legitimising the AfD.
Merz tried to take this a step further with a far-reaching bill to tighten immigration controls on Friday. Although the bill narrowly failed, all of the AfD voted with Merz. Twelve members of his own CDU party refused to back him.
Merz’s courting of the far right is widely seen as politically unnecessary, given his conservative CDU is already leading the national polls, making him the favourite to succeed the Social Democratic Party (SDP)‘s Olaf Scholz as chancellor.
This raises a couple crucial questions heading into the election. Is it insiders or outsiders that are playing the biggest role in bringing the far right into the mainstream? And just how big a role will the AfD play after the election?
The Musk effect
Musk’s embrace of the AfD should come as no surprise, given the integral part he played in Donald Trump’s election victory in the United States. In the German context, however, his behaviour and statements have taken on darker hues.
Germans know only too well what is at stake when democracy is eroded by those who abuse its freedoms to attack it. Had Musk’s now notorious Nazi salutes following Trump’s inauguration been performed in Berlin, for example, he might have faced up to three years in prison.
The catchphrase “never again” has underpinned German politics since the second world war. Yet, the response to Musk’s recent provocations was oddly muted in some sections of the German media.
The German tabloid Bild made embarrassing excuses for his Hitlerian salute, while others spoke vaguely of a “questionable gesture”.
With a few notable exceptions, it was left to activists to remind Germans of the severity of this gesture – projecting an image of Musk’s salute on a German Tesla plant, alongside the word “heil”.
Given the seriousness with which Germany patrols representations of its Nazi past, it was surprising just how few journalists were prepared to state without equivocation that “a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute”.
Merz’s embrace of the far right
Initially, there were some signs Germany’s main political leaders would decry Musk’s attempts to normalise far-right politics in the country.
When Musk called the AfD the “last spark of hope” in December, both Scholz and Merz quickly condemned his meddling.
Scholz has continued to label Musk’s blatant attempts to influence German politics as “unacceptable” and “disgusting”.
Merz claims to be keeping his distance from Musk. But it appears his strategy for winning the election is not far from what Musk is suggesting – mimicking AfD policies and collaborating with the party on anti-immigration votes.
In his most radical break with the centrism that characterised the CDU under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, Merz cracked the “firewall” against working with the far-right this week. Knowing just what it meant, he used the AfD’s support to pass the starkly worded nationalist border protection motion in the Bundestag.
The AfD publicly celebrated their good fortune, calling it a “historic day for Germany”.
Democratic party leaders, meanwhile, registered their shock and dismay. Merkel herself spoke out against Merz, saying it was “wrong” to “knowingly” work with the AfD.
Her intervention appears to have been critical to the immigration bill failing on Friday, with many of her former supporters in the CDU withholding their votes.
What AfD’s rise could mean
Given the two votes in the past week and Musk’s high-profile intervention, many in Germany now fear a CDU victory in the election could signal more collaboration with the AfD.
The Left Party has
as an AfD puppet and demanded Musk be forbidden from entering Germany.
The Greens’ Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice chancellor, has said Merz’s nationalist coalition would “destroy Europe”. He has also warned Musk to keep his “hands off our democracy”, prompting Musk to label Habeck “a traitor to the German people”.
Musk is by no means the cause of the AfD’s popularity, but his embrace of the extremist party has given it a global profile and credibility in circles that might not have otherwise considered supporting it.
Musk has been a controversial figure in Germany ever since his Tesla “gigafactory” arrived in Brandenburg and was promptly accused of felling 500,000 trees and irreparably damaging precious groundwater reserves. Accusations of Tesla breaching German labour laws and even conducting surprise checks on sick workers have also not endeared him to progressive Germans.
As some commentators have suggested, it is probably not coincidental the AfD’s plans for the German economy would benefit Musk’s business interests. Economic self-interest alone seems insufficient, however, to explain why Musk has gravitated to the extreme right.
The same might be said of Merz. Electoral calculations alone cannot explain his risky courting of the far right. He has long been the frontrunner to win the next election. Cosying up to the AfD will only make it harder to form a coalition with either Scholz’s Social Democratic Party or the Greens.....
an 1 25
I’m addressing this post to America’s 2.3 million federal employees.
My message: Don’t accept Elon’s offer.
Yesterday, Musk — via people he’s planted in the Office of Personnel Management — sent an email to all 2.3 million of you, offering to pay you for eight months of work, through September 30, if you’ll resign from the government before February 6. Otherwise, you risk being furloughed (that is, not paid) or fired.
You know what this is about. Not slimming the federal workforce, but substituting Trump loyalists for people like you, who are working for the American public.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said it out loud Tuesday on CNN: "The 2 million employees in the federal government are overwhelmingly left of center.” And now that Trump is elected, "it is essential for him to get control of government.”
But the fact is, neither Musk nor even Trump has legal authority to offer you eight months of pay if you’ll resign by February 6.
Your salaries are funded by the federal agencies and departments you work for, not by the Office of Personnel Management, not by Musk, and not by Trump.
None of them is authorized by Congress to move money from one agency or department to another without Congress’s approval. I know. I used to be a cabinet secretary.
Besides, the funding for your agency or department is guaranteed only through March 14, when the government is expected to shut down unless the debt ceiling is lifted. If not, any commitment for additional pay is worthless.
In fact, Musk (and Trump) are violating the law by agreeing to spend money that the administration doesn’t have. Congress could declare the entire offer illegal — which it is. Then where would you be?
May I also add that you shouldn’t trust Trump or Musk.
Trump has a long history of stiffing workers and contractors.
So, for that matter, does Musk. During the pandemic, Musk gave Tesla employees permission to remain at home if they didn’t feel comfortable reporting to the factory. Then he sent them termination notices alleging “failure to return to work.”
When he bought Twitter in 2022, Musk denied he wanted to lay off 75 percent of its staff (“No way I’m laying off 75 percent of them”) but then fired 80 percent of them (maybe that’s what he meant when he pledged not to fire 75 percent?)
In short, it’s a bum offer. Reject it.
By the way, thank you for your service.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Reich, former secretary of labor
ymail 1 25
Two Viral Essays From Longtime Elon Musk Friends Have Just—Yes, Really—Revealed Musk’s Origin Story As a Global Supervillain
The ten most stunning revelations from the Low and Harris Letters—documents unlike any other this Musk biographer has ever seen—lay bare what really happened to make Musk a threat to the world.
Seth Abramson
Jan 29
RWW 01/29/2025
by
- Rep. Eric Burlison announced the introduction of the Life at Conception Act that will declare "that unborn children are 'persons' under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing their right to life to be legally recognized and protected."
- Wanda Alger seeks to quell concerns about President Donald Trump: "I do not believe that President Trump has deceived us all and is the long-awaited Antichrist, nor do I believe that he is setting the stage for The Beast to take over the world."
- Stew Peters declares that the Holocaust is "a fairy tale" and that "Auschwitz is an emotional amusement park for gullible retards."
- Ali Alexander says that Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute: "You can say it’s not a Nazi salute but you’ll never be able to say what it was which means… it was a Nazi salute."
- Finally, far-right priest Calvin Robinson delivered the same salute at the National Pro-Life Summit, which was also attended by Rep. Robert Aderholt, Charlie Kirk, Kevin Roberts, Ben Carson, Seth Gruber, Kristen Hawkins, Abby Johnson, Kayleigh McEnany, and Matt Walsh.
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an 1 25
Last Friday, President Donald Trump fired 17 inspectors general throughout multiple federal agencies. Now, one of the independent federal watchdogs Trump fired is pushing back.
Reuters reported Wednesday that U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector general Phyllis Fong, who is a 22-year veteran of the agency, was recently escorted out of the building by security after she refused to leave her role following Trump's announcement that she had been fired. While Fong didn't directly comment, she sent an email to her colleagues saying that the Independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency had "taken the position that these termination notices do not comply with the requirements set out in law and therefore are not effective at this time."
Trump defended the firing of the inspectors general — independent officials within federal agencies who monitor waste, fraud and abuse — by saying it was a "very common thing to do." And the White House argued the president's actions were necessary, saying that "rogue, partisan bureaucrats... have been relieved of their duties in order to make room for qualified individuals who will uphold the rule of law and protect Democracy."
READ MORE:**'Law must be followed': Trump's top Senate ally revolts against his firing of gov’t watchdogs**
While Trump is able to fire inspectors general and replace them with new appointees, the Inspector General Act of 1974 requires that he first give Congress a 30-day notice that he plans to fire an inspector general, and list a specific cause for their firing. Even Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is one of Trump's biggest allies in the Senate, co-signed a letter with Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) insisting that the president "immediately" comply with the law.
"While [inspectors general] aren't immune from committing acts that require their removal, and they can be removed by the president, the law must be followed," Grassley and Durbin wrote on Tuesday. "The communication to Congress must contain more than broad and vague statements, rather it must include sufficient facts and details to assure Congress and the public that the termination is due to real concerns about the inspector General's ability to carry out their mission."
Both Grassley and Durbin called on Trump to reinstate the fired inspectors general on an "acting" basis in order to comply with the 30-day waiting period, and requested he appoint "qualified and non-partisan individuals" to replace them. Trump has so far not responded to their letter.
Reuters reported that Fong had been investigating billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — also a top Trump advisor — over his Neuralink brain implant startup before she was fired. She was also investigating the listeria outbreak at Boar's Head that resulted in tainted meat hitting supermarket delicatessens across the country. She was also overseeing the USDA's response to ongoing bird flu outbreak affecting poultry and eggs.
READ MORE:**'Widespread massacre': Trump reportedly purges at least a dozen inspectors general**
Click here to read Reuters' report in full.
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After it was announced Tuesday that President Donald Trump's administration is offering nearly 2 million federal workers "the chance to take a 'deferred resignation,'according to NBC News — allowing workers be paid through September — one reporter noted that the message to employees looked familiar.
ABC News White House policy reporter Cheyenne Haslett reported via X: "NEW: The memo sent to government employees this evening offering them buyouts very closely mirrors an email Musk sent to Twitter employees in 2022 — down to the same subject line 'A Fork in the Road.'"
She added, "The 2022 email tells Twitter employees, 'Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.'"
READ MORE:**'There’s no clarity': Reporter confronts Trump’s press secretary over federal funding freeze**
Furthermore, Haslett wrote, "Compare that to memo: 'The federal workforce should be comprised of the best America has to offer. We will insist on excellence at every level...And another similarity: in the same way the OPM [U.S. Office of Personnel Management] memo requires employees to only respond 'Resign' to the email to seal the deal, Musk asked Twitter employees to 'click yes on the link below' if they wanted to stay on at Twitter."
The email continued, "Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful," Musk wrote in 2022. And this evening, the closing message to government employees by OPM: 'Whichever path you choose, we thank you for your service to The United States of America,'" Haslett noted.
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not invited to ai conf so trashed it? sam a? invited to ribbon cut?
AN 1 25
On his first night back in the White House, President Donald Trump granted broad pardons to roughly 1500 defendants who were involved in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building — including those who violently attacked police officers. Trump also commuted the sentences of 14 defendants, resulting in members of far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys being released from prison.
Journalist Ban Makuch, reporting for The Guardian, warns that "far-right activists and neo-Nazis" are feeling encouraged by Trump's second presidency are determined to "take advantage of the popular awakening of American fascism."
In a Telegraph post, Makuch notes, a neo-Nazi wrote, "Get the bag, infiltrate existing institutions with power, build new institutions while we have breathing room, and tear down anything leftist…. The left is exhausted, extremely unpopular, and has been divested from by their tech bro backers. Now is the time to openly advocate for ourselves. Now is the time to go from defense and survival towards organizing and swift action."
READ MORE:[Anger as Trump set 'to make every American pay even more' with Colombia retaliation
Neo-Nazis groups that are feeling more optimistic, according to Makuch, include The Base and the Aryan Freedom Network.
Joshua Fisher-Birch of the Counter Extremism Project told The Guardian, "These groups see the next four years as a mix of positives and negatives but overall, as an opportunity to enlarge their movement. Extreme-right groups are focusing on mass deportations and seeking to win over potential recruits by concentrating on this issue."
Makuch notes, however, that neo-Nazis are deeply suspicious of the federal government and view Trump as a "race traitor" because he has Jewish grandchildren. The president's daughter, Ivanka Trump, was raised Presbyterian but is a convert to Judaism, and her husband, Jared Kushner, is Jewish.
Fisher-Birch told The Guardian, "Several groups are enjoying fascism being in the public sphere and what they view as liberal and left-wing panic and distress over (Elon) Musk's salute. Several others have noted that they have not benefited from the alliance with big tech and that major social media platforms are still removing their content.”
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AN 1 25
Musk — the world's richest man and top advisor of President Donald Trump — is now being directly criticized by a historian who runs a memorial honoring the victims of one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps.
Newsweek recently reported on an interview professor Jens-Christian Wagner — who runs the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial and museum — gave to the Times of London. That interview came in the wake of Musk throwing up a gesture during an Inauguration Day rally that fascism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat called a "Nazi salute," who added that it was "very belligerent."
"One can only say to him, 'Take a history book and withdraw for three days, read the history book and please be quiet with the poison he's spreading,'" Wagner told the Times. "I think Musk is a mixture of mad and right-wing extremist and that is particularly dangerous."
READ MORE:**'The Holocaust is not a joke': Group that initially defended Musk's salute turns on him**
Wagner's comments come amid a wave of scrutiny over Musk's more recent controversial public statements. Earlier this week, Musk made puns referencing several Nazi leaders on his X account with a crying-laughing emoji, writing: "Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming."
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO's tweet was met with swift condemnation from both the Anti-Defamation League and its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt. In a quote-post, Greenblatt told Musk that "the Holocaust is not a joke," and added that it was "inappropriate and offensive to make light of it."
While Musk has yet to face any major consequences for his gesture or statements, a TV meteorologist was recently fired from her job after five years after criticizing the salute. WDJT-TV in Milwaukee, Wisconsin announced Thursday that Samantha Kuffel was no longer with the station after a conservative talk radio host highlighted two of Kuffel's posts to her personal Instagram account.
One of Kuffel's posts showed a video of the salute with the text: ""Dude Nazi saluted twice. TWICE. During the inauguration. You f— with this man, I don't f— with you. Full stop." The other was a screenshot from the sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, with the character Mac saying: ""Screw that old b—. He's a Nazi."
READ MORE:**Local meteorologist fired after social media post criticizing Musk's salute**
Click here to read Newsweek's article, and click here to read Wagner's interview in the Times of London.
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an 1 25
After the world's richest man made what fascism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat called a "Nazi salute," one leading authority on anti-Semitism gave him the "benefit of the doubt." But any goodwill between the two seems to be gone after Musk made several references to Nazi Germany on his X account.
Rolling Stone reported Thursday that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appears to have fallen out of the good graces of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) following a Thursday post on X in which Musk made several puns invoking the names of notorious Nazi leaders like Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, Reichstag President Hermann Göring and SS Commander Heinrich Himmler.
"Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming," Musk tweeted Thursday with a crying-laughing emoji.
READ MORE:Local meteorologist after social media post criticizing Musk's 'Nazi salute'
"We've said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote, quote-tweeting Musk and mentioning his handle. "[T]he Holocaust is not a joke."
The response from Greenblatt was particularly noteworthy that the ADL stood up for Musk after he made headlines for making what the Guardian called "back-to-back fascist salutes" during an Inauguration Day speech. The ADL's verified account tweeted that Musk "made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute" but added that the organization understands "people are on edge."
"In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath," the ADL tweeted. "This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead."
Berlin, Germany-based newspaper Die Zeitdid not hesitate to condemn Musk's gesture. In an op-ed earlier this week, journalist Lenz Jacobsen wrote that "the gesture speaks for itself" and that there was "no need to make this unnecessarily complicated."
READ MORE:'The gesture speaks for itself': German newspaper blasts Elon Musk's 'Hitler salute'
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an 2x see anno below dec
Tech billionaire and Donald Trump ally Elon Musk lashed out at a Democratic lawmaker on Friday afternoon who accused him of "endorsing a neo-Nazi party."
Following Trump's win over Vice President Kamala Harris, Musk has recently tried to use his influence to tilt Germany’s election, endorsing on his platform, X, the country’s far-right Alternative for Germany party. Musk wrote Thursday night, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
He shared his comment while resharing a post from far-right influencer, Naomi Seibt, who said Germany’s "presumptive next chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) is horrified by the idea that Germany should follow Elon Musk’s and Javier Milei’s example."
Seibt has pushed white nationalist ideology, according to The Guardian. She has also denied that climate change is largely driven by fossil fuels.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) slammed Musk on his platform.
"The AfD's mission is to rehabilitate the image of the Nazi movement. One leader's license plate is an open tribute to Hitler. A top AfD official said about migrants, 'We can always shoot them later...or gas them.' Another described Judaism as the 'inner enemy' in Germany," wrote Murphy.
Speaking with CNN anchor Dana Bash, Murphy railed that Musk's behavior is "not normal."
"AfD is essentially a neo-Nazi party in Germany," he said. "They exist to essentially rehabilitate the image of the Nazi Party," he said.
ALSO READ:New Trump foreign affairs pick has history of forging ties with right-wing authoritarians
The party has "all sorts of very dangerous ideas about ridding Germany of anyone that is not naturally born in that country," Murphy added. "They are an extremist group and it is just extraordinary that maybe the most important adviser to the United States, somebody that has been parading around the halls of Congress as a key adviser to the president is endorsing a neo-Nazi party inside of Germany."
Murphy warned the consequences could be "catastrophic" if the United States takes the official position in favor of neo-Nazis.
The criticism didn't sit well with Musk, who ripped Murphy on X.
"What a huge liar. The AfD policies are identical to those of the US Democratic Party when Obama took office! I don’t think there is a single difference."
While the AfD doesn't explicitly exhibit characteristics of white nationalism, the party's ideology and rhetoric closely align with far-right and right-wing populist ideologies, including elements of white nationalism.
The party's 2016 manifesto explicitly said, "Islam does not belong to Germany" and it has campaigned on slogans including "Burkas? We’re more into bikinis" and "Our country first!"
Furthermore, party co-chairman Alexander Gauland has talked of fighting an "invasion of foreigners."
Watch Murphy's clip at this link.
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robt r 1 25 ymail
First, it was over Trump’s nominee to be Treasury Secretary. The two finalists were Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and Trump’s co-transition chair, and Steven Bessent, the founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital Management.
Lutnick turned for help to Elon Musk, who posted on his X that Lutnick would be a better choice for treasury secretary than Bessent, because “Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change. Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another.”
I’ve spent quite some time around presidents and president-elects and even advised them about personnel decisions. The most basic rule of such advice-giving is you never make your advice public because it puts a president or president-elect in the awkward position of conspicuously backing you or not.
In this case, Trump didn’t back Musk’s candidate, and business-as-usual Bessent will be Treasury Secretary.
The problem for Musk isn’t that he lost this skirmish. It’s that he got into it publicly at all.
Strike one against Musk.
Then it was the matter of visas to foreign skilled workers.
Musk posted that they should be allowed into the United States. “The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk wrote on X. “If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be.”
But several notable MAGAs, such as Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon, disagreed, to put it mildly. Loomer told The New York Times that Musk is “not MAGA and he’s a drag on the Trump transition,” and said she believed that Musk was using his relationship with Trump to further enrich himself. “Elon wants everyone to think he’s a hero because he gave $250 million to the Trump campaign. But that’s not much of an investment if it allows him to become a trillionaire.”
Bannon warned Musk “we’re going to rip your face off.”
Trump seems to have sided with Musk on this one, at least for now, but it’s bad form to start or expose a rift among a president or president-elect’s key advisors.
Strike two against Musk.
Then there was the little matter of Musk’s apparent Nazi salute on stage before Trump’s arrival in Washington’s Capital One arena on Monday.
Musk says it was misinterpreted. Others condemned it as an intentional sign of solidarity with and outreach to far-right groups.
No matter. The last thing a president needs — even one who’s a neofascist like Trump — is to provoke public worry over his administration’s neo-Nazi leanings.
But let’s not call this a strike against Musk, at least just yet.
The bigger problem for Musk is he just cast doubt on Trump’s first major tech investment.
On Tuesday, with much fanfare, Trump announced a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to create at least $100 billion in computing infrastructure to power artificial intelligence — dubbed “Stargate.”
Trump took credit for the companies’ decision to spend up to $500 billion building data centers, which are huge buildings full of servers that provide computing power.
But in two messages on X late last night, Musk said that the venture wouldn’t succeed because it didn’t have sufficient funding. “They don’t have the money," Musk wrote in reply to an OpenAI post on the announcement. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”
I don’t know if Musk is correct or if he’s just pissed off at OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman. (Musk has his own AI company and has sued OpenAI and Altman for violating antitrust law. Altman took to X Wednesday morning to refute Musk’s assertion about insufficient funding.)
But that’s not the point. If you’re a president’s major advisor (and First Buddy, as Musk likes to say), you don’t do a public bowel movement on one of your boss’s first big initiatives.
Strike three.
Musk just moved into his office in the Old Executive Building next to the White House. but he’s already a loose cannon that makes Trump look weak and submissive. My guess is Musk is out within a week.
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01/22/2025
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- Ali Alexander encourages President Donald Trump to declare that "Jesus Christ is King of America and I am his viceroy" and announce that he is "directing executive forces to arrest those responsible for defiling the republic and the name of Jesus Christ."
- Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers rolled out "a bold slate of eight legislative measures aimed at restoring moral sanity in Oklahoma."
- If right-wing activists like Seth Gruber are going to keep complaining about the Johnson Amendment, it would be nice if they actually understood it's history. No, it was not enacted because "LBJ didn't like the Christians who were criticizing him."
- Nazi fanboy Jon Miller says that "anyone who's being honest" can see that Elon Musk "threw an aggressive Sieg Heil."
- Finally, Ryan Helfenbein says that "only by God's sovereign will and sovereign grace" was America able to execute a peaceful transfer of power from the Biden administration to the Trump administration. Well, it's amazing how easy it is when one side isn't orchestrating a violent insurrection to prevent that very thing from happening.
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an 1 25
hmmn
'What did he just do?' Elon Musk sends hate groups 'buzzing' with 'Roman salute' at Trump rally
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an 1 25
Originally, Donald Trump had two people in mind to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory board he has proposed: Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and MAGA businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran in the 2024 GOP presidential primary but gave Trump an enthusiastic endorsement after dropping out of the race.
But according to Politico reporters Adam Wren and Holly Otterbein, the 39-year-old Ramaswamy won't be part of DOGE after all — and was, sources say, pushed out in part because of Musk.
"Musk, the tech tycoon and Donald Trump confidant, made it known that he wanted Ramaswamy out of DOGE in recent days, according to three people familiar with Musk's preferences who, like others for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss them," Wren and Otterbein explain in an article published after Trump's return to the White House. "An ill-received holiday rant on X by Ramaswamy about H-1B visas apparently hastened his demise."
READ MORE: Trump Inauguration dubbed 'a coronation of our country's descent into oligarchy'
A GOP strategist told Politico that Ramaswamy "just burned through the bridges, and he finally burned Elon." The strategist added, "Everyone wants him out of Mar-a-Lago, out of D.C."
Cincinnati native Ramaswamy, according to Politico sources, now plans to run for governor of Ohio — a position presently held by conservative Republican Mike DeWine.
Wren and Otterbein report, "One main reason for some Republicans' frustration with Ramaswamy was a post he made on X during a discussion of H-1B visas. In late December, Ramaswamy criticized American culture, saying that tech companies hire foreign workers in part because of a mindset in the country that has 'venerated mediocrity over excellence.'"
According to one of Politico's GOP sources, "They wanted him out before the tweet — but kicked him to the curb when that came out."
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NEW MUSK WATCH JUDD POP INFO YMAIL 1 25
On January 9, Elon Musk announced to his 213 million followers on X that he would provide a “free” month of internet access to those impacted by the deadly wildfires in Southern California. It would be offered through Starlink, a satellite internet service operated by SpaceX, Musk's space exploration company.
[pix]
But missing from Musk's announcement on X was a costly detail: To claim the free month of satellite internet service, eligible Los Angeles area residents first would have to spend a minimum of $349 on a Starlink hardware kit. "A Starlink kit is currently required to access this free service," Starlink notes on its website. "If you do not already have a Starlink kit, you will need to purchase one from starlink.com/residential or an authorized retailer such as Best Buy or Home Depot." According to Starlink, if you order a kit from the company, it typically takes 1-2 weeks to arrive.
Starting February 10, anyone who purchased a $349 kit and claimed the "free" service will be transferred to "a paid Residential subscription," which is currently $120 monthly. Existing Starlink customers living in eligible areas were given a one-month subscription credit.
The disconnect between Musk's public announcement and the reality of the residential internet offer is part of a pattern in Musk's response to the Los Angeles fires. While the initiatives helped some people, the impact is far more limited than Musk's posts — and the attendant media coverage — suggest.
8 Cybertrucks and a tub of red licorice
On January 12, Musk announced he would "position Cybertrucks with Starlinks and free WiFi in a grid pattern in the areas that most need it in the greater LA/Malibu area." The post immediately earned Tesla and its newest luxury vehicle a wave of press attention.
“Elon Musk sends Tesla Cybertrucks to Los Angeles as wildfires continue,” declared a headline from USA Today. "After Attacking L.A. Wildfire Response, Elon Musk Sends His Products to Help," the New York Times reported. “Elon Musk to provide Wi-Fi to wildfire-stricken areas using Starlink, Cybertrucks,” a Fox Business headline proclaimed. Fox’s Los Angeles affiliate asserted that Elon Musk had “[donated] Cybertrucks to LA communities without power.”
Musk became personally involved in the effort, intensifying the media coverage. On the evening of January 12, Musk, with several Cybertrucks in tow, entered a firefighter command center in the Pacific Palisades to hand deliver Starlink kits. On X, Musk proclaimed that he had appropriated a number of Cybertrucks bound for customer fulfillment. He said the vehicles would instead be dispatched to various impacted neighborhoods to serve as mobile internet hotspots and power banks utilizing the Cybertruck’s 1,590lb battery.
Along with his visit to the command center, Musk promoted the Cybertruck as the ideal vehicle in an emergency situation. Musk advertised its defense capabilities while warning of “armed looters” roaming the streets of Los Angeles during the wildfires. “Cybertruck side panels are bulletproof to subsonic projectiles (handguns, shotgun & Tommy gun), but the glass is not, so make sure to duck if you see anyone wielding a gun,” he wrote in a January 12 post on X. “This is not fiction.” Four days later, Tesla began offering discounts on new Cybertrucks for the first time.
But the actual deployment of Cybertrucks for relief efforts appeared to be limited. According to a post by Tesla later on January 12, eight Cybertrucks with Starlink kits were deployed in the area, including three in the parking lot of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department in Altadena. The company emphasized that the bed of at least one Cybertruck was stocked with snacks. A picture of the truck showed several dozen bananas, two bags of oranges, a tub of red licorice, and other items.
It is possible that more Cybertrucks were deployed, but no further updates were provided by Tesla. There is no evidence that a "grid" of wifi access points benefiting a significant number of Angelenos ever materialized. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
While Musk's announcement generated headlines, other communications companies provided much more extensive assistance to the area with little notice. Spectrum, for example, provided free, no login-required internet at any of its 35,000 WiFi hotspots across the Los Angeles area.
Where did the Starlink terminals go?
The most significant relief effort connected to Musk was the donation of Starlink kits to fire departments and other entities involved in the relief effort. In a January 16 statement, SpaceX said it had donated 1,350 Starlink kits to “fire departments and other disaster response organizations from Orange County to Malibu.”
However, it is unclear how the vast majority of those units were distributed and who is using them.
The Los Angeles County government told Musk Watch it had only received 25 terminals from Starlink. Vanessa Martinez, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Office of Countywide Communications, said the terminals were “put to immediate use to improve communications for first responders.” She said that the cost of the Starlink subscriptions — which, for 25 terminals, would amount to at least $3,000 for one month of service — will be “covered by [SpaceX] during the emergency.” Additionally, at least three donated Starlink terminals were attached to the Cybertrucks provided to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Musk undertook a similar effort last year in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on the East Coast, collaborating with Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), a non-profit disaster response organization, to distribute at least 400 Starlink kits to communities. GEM founder Michael Capponi told Musk Watch he had expected to receive 150 Starlink kits from SpaceX to distribute to firefighters and law enforcement personnel in California early last week.
At one point last week, Capponi said the kits were "in transit" and were expected to arrive imminently. But the kits did not arrive. Capponi said GEM’s role was ultimately called off due to "diminishing need" and SpaceX’s distribution. Musk Watch contacted numerous government agencies and non-profits but could not determine where the other 1,325 Starlink kits were sent. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk's contribution, in context
If SpaceX’s self-reported figure of 1,350 Starlink units donated is accurate, the costs of the hardware on top of a month of free service would be valued at roughly $634,500, based on retail prices. If SpaceX has the agencies return the kits after two or three months, as Capponi said SpaceX has done in previous disasters, the value would be closer to $200,000. (In Europe, Starlink rents kits for less than $20 per month. Starlink does not generally allow customers in the United States to rent kits.)
Regardless, the retail value of the publicly announced contributions by entities connected with Musk would be less than $1 million. (Musk, the world's wealthiest man, has not announced any personal contributions to the relief efforts.) For comparison, Google announced it would contribute "$15 million to organizations providing immediate relief in LA."
With the fires still raging on January 12, Musk took the opportunity to cast himself as a hero, reposting a video that praised him for stepping up “big time” and saving “thousands of lives.” The clip, originally shared by a pro-Trump account, included photos of Musk posing that were superimposed over wildfire footage.
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- Rick Joyner says that Donald Trump will "possibly [be] the best [president] of our lifetime" and he's thrilled "about Elon Musk being so close to him, and potentially even having an office at the White House": "I consider Musk to be a Godsend to help us get our government back on track."
- Rick Green declares that "Elon Musk is our Ben Franklin for this generation."
- Trump plans to name Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone as “special ambassadors" to Hollywood.
- William Wolfe fumes that "classical liberalism and principled pluralism in our multicultural democracy" has resulted in a Muslim being elected to office in Texas.
- Finally, Joel Webbon's primary concern about Andrew Tate is that Tate is Muslim, claiming that if Tate was a Christian, he could "take over the world."
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Billionaire Trump associate Elon Musk’s latest disinformation campaign is targeting the U.K. government, which Musk appears to believe is not sufficiently anti-immigrant. Musk, who has already shaped the incoming Trump administration’s economic policy by proposing cuts to government spending and tech-oriented privatization of services, signifies a “new era” in American politics, says our guest Quinn Slobodian, who is chronicling right-wing tech billionaires’ accelerating attempts to mold the world according to their “destructive” and “nihilist” beliefs. In a far-reaching conversation, Slobodian touches on Musk’s clear admiration of authoritarian strongmen, market deregulation and white supremacist rhetoric....
tech billionaire Elon Musk posted a poll early this morning on X asking, quote, “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government — Yes or No?” The question was part of a series of misinformation-filled posts on Musk’s X social media platform that led The New York Times to report Musk, quote, “appears intent on exercising the same influence in European countries that he did during the American presidential election,” unquote.
Over the past few days, Musk lashed out at the U.K.'s Labour government, also trashed a U.K. politician he had formerly backed, the anti-immigrant populist Nigel Farage with the far-right Reform UK party. Musk's change of heart came after Farage refused to support the release from prison of far-right, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic activist Tommy Robinson. Meanwhile, Musk also falsely accused U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute child rapists, and supported a post on X that urged King Charles to dissolve the British Parliament and call elections to remove the Labour government.
This comes after Elon Musk also backed Germany’s far-right, anti-immigrant party AfD for next month’s elections and is set to host a live discussion on X with its candidate for chancellor. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded to Musk’s endorsements, saying, quote, “I don’t believe in courting Mr. Musk’s favor. I’m happy to leave that to others. The rule is: don’t feed the troll,” he said.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, the richest man in the world — that’s Elon Musk — donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to President-elect Trump’s campaign. He’s now shaping policy for the incoming administration. And it’s believed he’s made, since the election, over $200 billion. Musk attended a New Year’s Eve gala at Mar-a-Lago alongside Trump and has joined him on a number of calls with foreign leaders. Musk will co-head Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Last month, Musk played a key role in pushing Republican lawmakers to kill a short-term government spending deal at the last minute. Musk also got Trump’s support for backing H-1B visas for highly skilled workers despite opposition from Trump’s anti-immigrant base.
...
Topics
Guests
author and professor at Boston University.
Links
- "Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right"
- "Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy"
Billionaire Trump associate Elon Musk’s latest disinformation campaign is targeting the U.K. government, which Musk appears to believe is not sufficiently anti-immigrant. Musk, who has already shaped the incoming Trump administration’s economic policy by proposing cuts to government spending and tech-oriented privatization of services, signifies a “new era” in American politics, says our guest Quinn Slobodian, who is chronicling right-wing tech billionaires’ accelerating attempts to mold the world according to their “destructive” and “nihilist” beliefs. In a far-reaching conversation, Slobodian touches on Musk’s clear admiration of authoritarian strongmen, market deregulation and white supremacist rhetoric.
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Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk posted a poll early this morning on X asking, quote, “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government — Yes or No?” The question was part of a series of misinformation-filled posts on Musk’s X social media platform that led The New York Times to report Musk, quote, “appears intent on exercising the same influence in European countries that he did during the American presidential election,” unquote.
Over the past few days, Musk lashed out at the U.K.'s Labour government, also trashed a U.K. politician he had formerly backed, the anti-immigrant populist Nigel Farage with the far-right Reform UK party. Musk's change of heart came after Farage refused to support the release from prison of far-right, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic activist Tommy Robinson. Meanwhile, Musk also falsely accused U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute child rapists, and supported a post on X that urged King Charles to dissolve the British Parliament and call elections to remove the Labour government.
This comes after Elon Musk also backed Germany’s far-right, anti-immigrant party AfD for next month’s elections and is set to host a live discussion on X with its candidate for chancellor. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded to Musk’s endorsements, saying, quote, “I don’t believe in courting Mr. Musk’s favor. I’m happy to leave that to others. The rule is: don’t feed the troll,” he said.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, the richest man in the world — that’s Elon Musk — donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to President-elect Trump’s campaign. He’s now shaping policy for the incoming administration. And it’s believed he’s made, since the election, over $200 billion. Musk attended a New Year’s Eve gala at Mar-a-Lago alongside Trump and has joined him on a number of calls with foreign leaders. Musk will co-head Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Last month, Musk played a key role in pushing Republican lawmakers to kill a short-term government spending deal at the last minute. Musk also got Trump’s support for backing H-1B visas for highly skilled workers despite opposition from Trump’s anti-immigrant base.
Meanwhile, on Friday, the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit The Washington Post after her editors rejected a cartoon depicting billionaires genuflecting to President-elect Trump. She says it was the first time since she began working at the Post in 2008 she had a cartoon killed because of who or what she chose to aim her pen at. A draft of the cartoon depicts Big Tech owners kneeling at Trump’s feet [offering] up sacks of cash, among them Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos. Just two months ago, the Post featured Ann Telnaes in a video celebrating her work.
ANN TELNAES: I mean, just look at all the autocrats that hate editorial cartoonists. I mean, not in this country, hopefully, but in — you know, a lot of my colleagues overseas are thrown in jail for doing cartoons about powerful people. … A lot of people don’t realize that, you know, we’re journalists. We’re opinion journalists, but we are journalists. And that is our job as editorial cartoonists: to bring up sometimes uncomfortable truths.
AMY GOODMAN: On Friday, Ann Telnaes published an online post titled “Why I’m quitting the Washington Post,” in which she writes, quote, “I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, 'Democracy dies in darkness.'” Of course, she is citing The Washington Post’s motto.
This comes after Jeff Bezos prevented The Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris for president and as Amazon’s Prime Video service announced it’s acquired exclusive licensing rights to a new behind-the-scenes documentary about first lady Melania Trump. Amazon also plans to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and said it would stream the event on Prime Video as a separate in-kind donation worth another million dollars.
For more, we spend the rest of the hour with a person who’s documented the power of Big Tech billionaires and the new techs, specifically, among others, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. Quinn Slobodian is professor of international history at Boston University. His latest book is Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy. He’s written several pieces for The New Statesman on Elon Musk, including one headlined “Elon Musk’s death drive.” Slobodian also recently contributed to The New York Review of Books running symposium about the reelection of Donald Trump, “The Return of Trump—II.” He’s joining us from Boston, just back from the American Historical Association annual gathering here in New York.
Professor Slobodian, welcome to Democracy Now! The power of Elon Musk cannot be underestimated, from here in the United States — and we’re going to talk about the Trump administration — well, many are calling him, of course, “President Musk” and “Vice President Donald Trump” — to, well, the latest kerfuffle in Britain and his support for the AfD in Germany. If you can talk about the significance of all of this?
QUINN SLOBODIAN: Yeah, it’s a pretty extraordinary situation to find ourselves in, right? I mean, if you think back to 2017, there was a lot of concern and attention to the efforts of Steve Bannon to create a kind of transatlantic coalition of far-right actors and parties. Imagine now here we are only a few years later, and there’s a Bannon-like figure but who also happens to be the wealthiest man in the world, overseeing some of the most profitable companies in the planet, who is leading that sort of effort to create a transatlantic coalition. So, the stakes are much, much higher. They are being dealt with with perhaps even less kind of care than someone like Bannon, which is an extraordinary thing to say. But Musk, I think, has entered this field of politics as a kind of scaled-up version of his video game play, with no real thought to the kind of consequences of the disruptive effects that he’s creating, from here to Britain to Germany and beyond.
AMY GOODMAN: And let’s talk specifically about the conversation we’re having on this day, on January 6th, when the vice president, Kamala Harris, who presides over the Senate, will essentially certify her own loss, and this fourth anniversary of what took place January 6th, 2021.
QUINN SLOBODIAN: Well, I think that, you know, the January 6 is apropos for a couple reasons. One is kind of silly but also meaningful, which is, if you look at the character that Musk uses when he plays the game Diablo IV, which he describes as giving him life lessons and allowing him to see the matrix, the guy kind of looks quite a bit like the QAnon shaman, so well known from January 6. So, January 6, in a way, kind of, I think, opened this new era in American politics where the kind of surreal, fringe, often online communities have sort of entered the world of sort of high politics and have scrambled the kind of coordinates of average rules of the game and the normal sort of protocols. I think that Musk is someone who is really a product of that kind of crossover effect, where building up a kind of huge online community, building up the sort of status as a global media influencer, has now the capacity to actually shatter existing coalitions, shatter existing standards of what normal politics is. And his connections now to people like Nigel Farage, until recently, Tommy Robinson, the AfD, Giorgia Meloni, these are signs of kind of a willingness to shatter existing traditional party systems, to embrace disruption kind of for its own sake, and to really harness especially the power of the internet to make possible things that had been previously impossible, so to make certain forms of speech possible, to make certain forms of mobilization possible, and to make things like, you know, the attempted coup d’état in January 6 something that could actually be followed through to its conclusion.
And I think that, you know, the kind of — the horizon of what the kind of politics in real life that someone like Musk is aiming at is broadcast by him frequently on his own Twitter account. Most recently, for example, he celebrated Nayib Bukele, the leader in El Salvador, as having done something that has happened in El Salvador and will happen and must happen in the United States, which, in El Salvador, has been to imprison 2% of the adult population as an absolutely draconian way of cracking down on crime. So, this vision of sort of authoritarian strongman on politics, sort of gloves-off mass incarceration crackdowns, on the one hand, and then a deregulatory kind of unleashing of the free market, on the other hand, is — produced this kind of curious combination of, on the one hand, Elon Musk posting Milton Friedman memes all the time, on the other hand, scaremongering about the, quote-unquote, “genocidal rape tactics” of nonwhite immigrants in the U.K. So, he’s produced this sort of surreal effect, I think, of sort of the strong state and the free market turning the sort of Thatcherist vision, grafting it onto all kinds of online aesthetics and kind of video game dynamics in ways that have really, I think, blindsided, for good reason, sort of mainstream, normal politicians, like Olaf Scholz, Keir Starmer, Biden-Harris, who don’t know how to deal with this kind of chaotic energy, which, unfortunately, has a huge amount of legitimacy behind it, not only his multimillion-dollar — or, multimillion number of followers on social media.
But keep in mind, I mean, he oversees Tesla, which is a car company that is worth more than all the other car companies in the world combined, whose valuation has gone vertical since Trump’s election, whose stocks are held in the portfolios of many, many, many Democrats who might otherwise find Musk, as a person, and his politics objectionable. So, he is a kind of a locomotive who has sort of attached himself to the very dynamics of both the online sort of meme market, but also the very much offline stock market, in ways that makes him hard to reckon with and hard to actually oppose.
AMY GOODMAN: Your most recent piece for The New Statesman is headlined “Elon Musk wants us to have more children: Is demography the new front line of the culture wars?” Explain.
QUINN SLOBODIAN: Well, this is really a fixation of Musk that echoes throughout other Silicon Valley thinkers, too, which is a fear that demographic decline is coming more quickly than many of us realize. And that gets read in sort of two ways. On the one hand, as he frequently says, you know, there will be no human civilization if there are no humans. So there’s this kind of universal fear of the reality of sort of long-term slowing birth rates leading to literally fewer humans on Earth.
But more importantly for him is particular humans on Earth. So, if you look at the kind of conversations he’s had, especially in Italy with members of the Brothers of Italy, the fascist-derived party from which — you know, which Meloni now heads, the fear is the loss of populations of a discrete culture. So he’s worried about the decline of particular European civilizations, particular European cultures, the Italian culture, the British culture. He has endorsed the “great replacement” theory, this notion that liberal politicians are encouraging immigration from nonwhite populations to build their own support, but also, too, to kind of dilute and disorient the native or autochthonous population. So, his pronatalism is not a kind of a general one that sort of hopes that humans can propagate themselves to produce hopefully more solutions to human problems, but it’s the defense of particular human populations which he sees as endowed with more capacity for kind of economic productivity, economic intelligence and sort of economic performance.
So, his immigration policy and his immigration language is now — in the last two weeks has taken a very hard-right turn. Many people have noticed that. In December, you could have seen him still posting about meritocracy and the idea that anyone can make it in the United States if they work hard enough. Since January 1st, almost exactly, the stream of his posts has been dominated by the faces of men who have been charged with sexual crimes, who are from Muslim-majority countries. He is doing everything he can to sort of hype up very clearly racially coded fear of sexual assault and crimes coming from immigrants on non-Western backgrounds, and pairing that with this idea of immigrants from non-Western backgrounds as sort of welfare dependents who are not feeding into the mainstream economy. So, his demographic fears are very much also part of his kind of hard crime, hard borders policy that is now starting to come to the fore as his primary talking point.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you something. I’m looking at a piece in the Financial Times. “Elon Musk lived in apartheid South Africa until he was 17. David Sacks, the venture capitalist who has become a fundraiser for Donald Trump and a troll [of] Ukraine, left aged five, and grew up in a South African diaspora family in Tennessee. Peter Thiel spent years of childhood in South Africa and Namibia, where his father was involved in uranium mining as part of the apartheid regime’s clandestine drive to acquire nuclear weapons. And Paul Furber, an obscure South African software developer and tech journalist living near Johannesburg, has been identified by two teams of forensic linguists as the originator of the QAnon conspiracy, which helped shape Trump’s Maga movement. (Furber denies being 'Q'.) In short, four of Maga’s most influential voices are fiftysomething white men with formative experiences in apartheid South Africa.” Can you comment on this, Professor Slobodian?
QUINN SLOBODIAN: Absolutely. This is something I’ve written about in a couple of my books. The centrality of southern Africa for the far right and for neoliberals is quite extraordinary. Rhodesia, of course, has been seen as a kind of a lost cause for the hard right. People might remember Dylann Roof, the far-right mass murderer, talking about his allegiance to the Rhodesian cause. South Africa, in the time of apartheid, was seen as a kind of a last bulwark against the Black socialism of postcolonial Africa. In the time of transition, in the time of Mandela, in the move to “one person, one vote” universal suffrage, in the end of apartheid, it was cast by the far right and by sort of libertarians and neoliberals as a kind of prosperous site of gold production and manufacturing that was now under assault by a socialist, Black-majority government, the ANC.
And for Musk himself, the experience of growing up there with a very authoritarian, dictatorial father was a very dystopian one, from the way that his biographer recounts it. There’s memories that he recounts, perhaps a little bit gleefully, and perhaps through fabrication, of sort of walking through puddles of blood on the way to rock concerts. He saw it as a kind of a social Darwinist, sort of all-against-all-type environment, which I think has now very much implanted into his mind. I think he discovers that again in the online world of brutal, so-called dungeon-crawling video games, where he spends much of his time, and also in the kind of cyberpunk world of science fiction and films and novels.
So, I think that extrapolation, which is in part based on the reality of very intense intercommunal conflict, but also becomes something that he can kind of embrace to kind of give — to permit his own sort of vision of nihilism, really, and this belief that all alliances are kind of provisional, you need to defend your own. As we know, he’s sort of been clear about sort of building compounds to which he can retreat, expanding his own genetic pool through, you know, a very large family, using the federal government when it’s useful, you know, tapping into federal budgets, becoming effectively a techno contractor for NASA through SpaceX, selling his services as Starlink, but always, I think, very much with this exit end game in mind, the same way that many people in South Africa have their own kind of gated communities into which they can withdraw, if they can afford it, with their own water systems and their own sort of power supplies. This kind of Octavia Butler Parable of the Sower-type reality is one that someone like Musk has sort of sadistically embraced in a way.
And I think that his sort of accelerationism, by which he makes alliances recklessly, one after the other, with whichever kind of far-right politician appears on his video feed and has a kind of a distinctive appearance — you know, Tommy Robinson does look like he might have stepped out of a video game. Naomi Seibt, the Alternative for Germany influencer, who he has done so much to boost, sort of cultivates this sort of anime-like appearance. So, I think that, for Musk and Thiel and others, the experience of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa has, for them, filled this role of a kind of a bad future, which is also inevitable and from which they have to just do everything they can to kind of, you know, hunker down and shield themselves, while also tapping into, of course, the extraordinary profits that are available in doing things like providing surveillance systems, as Palantir does, Thiel’s company; providing weapon systems, as Anduril does, the Palmer Luckey-owned company that Thiel helped back; and the various other ways that the old-fashioned military-industrial complex, I think, is now just being extended with a new kind of Silicon Valley kind of headquarters.
AMY GOODMAN: And then you have Elon Musk changing his symbol on X — and if you can explain — with Pepe the Frog, which was appropriated by right-wing groups, classified as a hate symbol by anti-hate groups due to its frequent use in racist and antisemitic contexts. The term “kek,” a variation of ”LOL,” originated in the online gaming world, frequently used by identitarian right internet users and trolls, BBC reporting Southern Poverty Law Center linked “kek” to a “virtual white nationalist god”? What is going on here?
QUINN SLOBODIAN: Well, this part of it is very much a kind of a replay of the 2016-'17 kind of moment, right? I mean, we all remember when people like Richard Spencer were getting a lot of attention for propagating these memes of Pepe the Frog, using the emoji of a glass of milk to signify whiteness. And so, there is this kind of a very adolescent and juvenile level of kind of provocation, that is well characterized, I think, by Olaf Scholz as trollishness, that Musk, again, in his somehow middle-aged, you know, third or fourth adolescence, still manages to kind of embrace and take a kind of childlike pleasure in. And I think it's actually probably not a good idea to focus too much on, you know, the number of Pepe the Frog memes that he has posted or whatever. I think these are, more or less, surface froth and distraction from the more serious interventions. I think that —
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about —
QUINN SLOBODIAN: — Alternative for Germany is —
AMY GOODMAN: — those serious interventions, and specifically as we move —
QUINN SLOBODIAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — into the second Trump presidency with Elon Musk —
QUINN SLOBODIAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — wielding so much power. What do you expect to see from Trump II?
QUINN SLOBODIAN: Well, as far as Musk’s role in it, I mean, he himself has been openly inspired by not just Bukele, as I mentioned, but also, looking further southward, Javier Milei in Argentina, you know, frequently endorsed him. Trump also has met Milei. And there’s a kind of sense that Milei has, for someone like Musk, sort of given us an example in advance of how you can realize your kind of technolibertarian vision through authoritarian statist means, which seems paradoxical but actually perhaps isn’t. So, if you look at what Milei has done, I think it could help us to sort of understand what Musk might be proposing, at least, and that Trump might help carry out.
So, what kind of things have taken the brunt under Milei? Well, it’s been things like universities, the freezing of the inflation increases for university funding, the freezing of other forms of scientific research, the freezing of the right to protest and collectively bargain, the elimination of cultural programs, the crackdown on other forms of public expression. And these are, I think, you know, previews of the things that in the sort of solutionist mindset, the engineering mindset of someone like Musk, all forms of endeavor that aren’t aimed at cracking this one central wicked problem, whether it’s space travel or the expansion of the military budget, are forms of waste.
So I think that we’ll see a kind of a redirection of funding, obviously, towards hard research and the slashing of funding to things seen as superficial — forms of entitlement, forms of education and research. Those, I think, are the things that probably an austerity-minded Democrat could advocate as much as an austerity-minded Republican, and it’s probably where they’ll be able to create kind of alliances. I think that the attack on free speech in the course of the protests over Gaza since October 6th have given us a kind of a preview of how unwilling Democrats, as well as Republicans, are to actually stand up for the right of academic investigation and expression in this country, and I think that universities will really be the kind of soft targets for many of those early cuts.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at Boston University. His latest book is Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy. We’ll link to your articles on Musk for *The New Statesman.
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This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call,” reads a line in written notes authorities made public last week from Matthew Livelsberger, the driver of the Cybertruck who killed himself in the vehicle shortly before it exploded in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day.
The combat veteran’s writings include poignant passages, as when he expressed the need to “cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”
But Livelsberger also expresses warmed-over manosphere tropes and anti-Democratic clichés from the Republican 2024 campaign.
“Masculinity is good and men must be leaders.”
“Thankfully we rejected the DEI candidate and will have a real President instead of Weekend at Bernie’s.”
“Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans!”
Those sound pretty much like rote red meat talking points slung around by JD Vance, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, or whichever Trumpworld podcaster might be trending at any given time.
But other lines in Livelsberger’s notes invoke something less banal, and more violent, envisioning what reads like a January 6 style attack on the nation’s institutions, but on steroids.
“Military and vets move on DC starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity.”*
“Occupy every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands.”*
“Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete.”*
“Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.”*
Briefing reporters last week after Livelsberger’s life ended in a rented Tesla in front of a Trump hotel, law enforcement officials said Livelsberger appeared to have “no animosity” toward Donald Trump.
While delivering that briefing, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill and FBI Special Agent in Charge Spencer Evans knew that not only did Livelsberger have no animosity toward Trump, but in fact was cheering on Trump, and Trumpism.
McMahill and Evans left that part out, along with Livelsberger’s calls for uprooting people he didn’t agree with from the government and the military “by any means necessary.”
Law enforcement officials weren’t the only ones glossing over the story.
Media reports on Livelsberger, in Nevada and nationally, have downplayed his Trump-friendly extremism, when they’ve mentioned it at all.
When law enforcement officials suggested the Cybertruck driver hadn’t indicated any malice toward Trump (and when they knew but neglected to mention the driver was actually a Trump fan), it seemed a relevant observation at the time, lest the motive for blowing up a truck made and sold by Trump’s right-hand billionaire Elon Musk in front of a hotel with Trump’s name on it might be seen as a statement of disapproval of both men.
Livelsberger’s action clearly wasn’t that. It might have been an homage to them though.
This week law enforcement provided more passages Livelsberger wrote in in the days leading up to the explosion, which show Livelsberger used ChatGPT to learn how to turn a Cybertruck into a garbage fire, was convinced he was being tailed on his way to Las Vegas, and had intended to carry out his plan at the Grand Canyon Skywalk.
And in one of the quotes authorities released, Livelsberger wrote: “As much as the MSM will paint me out to be some terrorist and monster, I had no intent on taking out anyone but myself if that happens. I am deeply sorry to anyone that gets hurt.”
It didn’t go exactly as Livelsberger intended. Seven people were hurt. Blessedly, their injuries were minor.
And the MSM — the mainstream media — did not paint him out to be some terrorist or monster.
Perhaps had bystanders been seriously injured or killed, the media would be paying more attention to the fact that whatever other things were going on with Livelsberger, one of those things was the radicalization of a Trump sympathizer into a violent extremist.
But as if taking its cue from McMahill and Evans, the media coverage has mostly left that part out.
Well, there have been other salacious or compelling storylines to focus on: a Cybertruck exploding in front of a Trump hotel; “very strange similarities” between Livelsberger and Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who killed New Orleans revelers with a truck earlier on New Year’s Day; the prospect of AI’s new role as an instruction guide for DIY explosive devices; and, of course, the tragedy of a hero’s fall.
Livelsberger left behind statements calling for an armed, violent assault on the nation’s most important public institutions, to be carried out by people of whom he approved. He called for a “purge” of people of whom he disapproved from the nation’s institutions “by any means necessary.” And, according to his journaling, he envisioned it all as a triumphant ride on the “Trump, Musk, Kennedy…wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans!”
And we’ve reached the point where the vast majority of the media doesn’t regard that as a particularly important part of the story, if they mention it at all.
Maybe the media hasn’t taken Livelsberger’s political extremism seriously because it happened in a place the media (and the nation) has a habit of not taking very seriously. Bizarre thing happens in Las Vegas, must be a day that ends in a y, etc. In which case Livelsberger’s hope that Las Vegas would be a prime location to place a wake up call was a miscalculation.
Or with everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to members of Congress from both parties to all the billionaires to pockets of the media surrendering in advance to Trump, maybe wake up calls are just passé anymore.
Portions of this column were originally published in the Daily Current newsletter, which is free and which you can subscribe to here.*
Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com.
rww
01/08/2025
by
- Katherine Stewart @ Religion News Service: At Turning Point USA's AmFest, Charlie Kirk takes a victory lap for Trump election
How the onetime Christian student organization convinced pastors to turn their flocks into GOP voters.
- Christopher Mathias @ HuffPost: The Far Right Is Having A ‘Coronation Ball’ At The Watergate Hotel To Celebrate Trump’s Inauguration
Major MAGA figures are set to attend the black-tie event, hosted by a publishing house whose marquee author has advocated for a “dictator” to run the U.S.
- Molly Olmstead @ Slate: They Stormed the Capitol. Now They Want Reparations.
I watched the Jan. 6 defendants’ daylong press conference. It revealed an alarming trend.
- Ryan Mac and Ken Bensinger @ The New York Times: As Elon Musk Embraces Far Right, Some of Its Top Figures Reject Him
Mr. Musk has fallen out with prominent right-wing Americans who say they are worried that their agenda may be sidelined in favor of his own — and that he is willing to silence them on X.
- The Throckmorton Initiative: Eric Metaxas Goes Back on the Warpath Against Bonhoeffer's Relatives
Apparently, Eric Metaxas has changed his mind again about the relatives of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Just over two weeks after Metaxas apologized for saying that Bonhoeffer’s descendants were Jew-haters and pro-Hamas, he did it again.
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an 1 25
the progressive advocacy group Public Citizen on Tuesday launched a new project aimed at tracking the incoming Trump administration's approach to corporate crime, an effort the watchdog said is particularly urgent given that many of the companies currently under federal investigation have connections to the president-elect.
Public Citizen found that of 192 individual corporations currently facing federal probes or cases, a third "have known ties with the Trump administration."
"They or their executives have either contributed to his inauguration, or Trump has nominated their former employees, investors, and lobbyists," the group noted.
Public Citizen said its new Corporate Enforcement Tracker will serve as "a resource for watchdogging ongoing federal investigations and cases against alleged corporate wrongdoing that are at risk of being dropped, weakened, or otherwise modified by the incoming Trump administration."
Corporate prosecutions plummeted to a 25-year low during Trump's first term, and Public Citizen's Rick Claypool—who is heading the new project—predicted that "it's likely Trump's second term will see a similar or worse dropoff in enforcement.
"Corporate crime enforcement fell during Trump's first term," Claypool noted, "even as his administration pursued 'tough' policies against immigrants, protestors, and low-level offenders."
"The five corporations with the most federal investigations or cases against them are Tesla (7), Amazon (6), Pfizer (5), Wells Fargo (4), and SpaceX (4)."
Four of the companies listed on Public Citizen's tracker—Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X—are helmed by billionaire Elon Musk, who donated heavily to Trump's presidential campaign and is set to co-lead a new advisory commission tasked with identifying spending and regulations to eliminate.
Tesla is facing investigations by the Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and other agencies—probes that could be shut down by the incoming administration, which is set to be packed with lobbyists and billionaires.
Reutersreported last week that "Musk's potential to have extraordinary clout with the new administration raises questions about the fate of federal investigations and regulatory actions affecting his business empire, of which at least 20 are ongoing, according to three sources familiar with SpaceX and Tesla operations and the companies' interaction with the U.S. government, as well as five current and former officials who have direct knowledge of individual probes into Musk's companies."
"The inquiries include examinations of the alleged securities violations; questions over the safety of Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) systems; potential animal-welfare violations in Neuralink's brain-chip experiments; and alleged pollution, hiring-discrimination, and licensing problems at SpaceX," the outlet noted.
Public Citizen also highlighted 16 companies that have donated to Trump's inaugural fund as they face federal investigations or enforcement actions: Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Coinbase, Ford, Goldman Sachs, Kraken, Meta, OpenAI, Pfizer, Ripple, Robinhood, Stanley Black & Decker, Toyota, and Uber.
"The five corporations with the most federal investigations or cases against them are Tesla (7), Amazon (6), Pfizer (5), Wells Fargo (4), and SpaceX (4)," the group said in a statement.
Concerns about the fate of investigations into major U.S. companies were amplified by Trump's choice to lead the Justice Department. Public Citizen noted Tuesday that Amazon and Republic Services, two lobbying clients previously represented by Trump attorney general pick Pam Bondi, are among the corporations currently facing federal cases or investigations.
In a separate report published Wednesday, Public Citizen said that Bondi's record as a lobbyist raises "serious questions about potential conflicts of interest" and provides "sufficient grounds for senators to deny her confirmation."
"We depend on the DOJ to vigorously enforce our laws, hold corporate wrongdoers accountable, and protect the rule of law," said Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert. "Pam Bondi is simply inappropriate for this post."
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cmd
Billionaire Megadonors Push State Courts Rightward
by Juliana Broad | November 26th, 2024
Elon Musk, Richard Uihlein, and Jeff Yass are among the billionaire Republican megadonors who aimed extensive resources at this year’s state court races.
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an 12 24
tesla has big plant in china, thus he wants more investment
pres musk govt shutdn // kid cancer
'Unfathomable': Firefighters slam spending bill after Trump 'scuttled' 9/11 first-responders fund
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an 12 24
Tech billionaire and Donald Trump ally Elon Musk lashed out at a Democratic lawmaker on Friday afternoon who accused him of "endorsing a neo-Nazi party."
Following Trump's win over Vice President Kamala Harris, Musk has recently tried to use his influence to tilt Germany’s election, endorsing on his platform, X, the country’s far-right Alternative for Germany party. Musk wrote Thursday night, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
He shared his comment while resharing a post from far-right influencer, Naomi Seibt, who said Germany’s "presumptive next chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) is horrified by the idea that Germany should follow Elon Musk’s and Javier Milei’s example."
Seibt has pushed white nationalist ideology, according to The Guardian. She has also denied that climate change is largely driven by fossil fuels.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) slammed Musk on his platform.
"The AfD's mission is to rehabilitate the image of the Nazi movement. One leader's license plate is an open tribute to Hitler. A top AfD official said about migrants, 'We can always shoot them later...or gas them.' Another described Judaism as the 'inner enemy' in Germany," wrote Murphy.
Speaking with CNN anchor Dana Bash, Murphy railed that Musk's behavior is "not normal."
"AfD is essentially a neo-Nazi party in Germany," he said. "They exist to essentially rehabilitate the image of the Nazi Party," he said.
ALSO READ:New Trump foreign affairs pick has history of forging ties with right-wing authoritarians
The party has "all sorts of very dangerous ideas about ridding Germany of anyone that is not naturally born in that country," Murphy added. "They are an extremist group and it is just extraordinary that maybe the most important adviser to the United States, somebody that has been parading around the halls of Congress as a key adviser to the president is endorsing a neo-Nazi party inside of Germany."
Murphy warned the consequences could be "catastrophic" if the United States takes the official position in favor of neo-Nazis.
The criticism didn't sit well with Musk, who ripped Murphy on X.
"What a huge liar. The AfD policies are identical to those of the US Democratic Party when Obama took office! I don’t think there is a single difference."
While the AfD doesn't explicitly exhibit characteristics of white nationalism, the party's ideology and rhetoric closely align with far-right and right-wing populist ideologies, including elements of white nationalism.
The party's 2016 manifesto explicitly said, "Islam does not belong to Germany" and it has campaigned on slogans including "Burkas? We’re more into bikinis" and "Our country first!"
Furthermore, party co-chairman Alexander Gauland has talked of fighting an "invasion of foreigners."
Watch Murphy's clip at this link.
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hotair blog --> redstate pj etc townhall 12 24
EARTH2 ON MUSK GOVT SHUTDOWN
Larry the Cable Guy tore into Democrat Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT) following her unhinged rant about House Republicans supposedly being "scared" of Elon Musk.
Let me repeat that. The guy who plays Mater — you know, like "tuh-mater," but without the "tuh" — is trying to break down simple concepts regarding congressional spending to a sitting congresswoman.
Now, don't get me wrong. Larry is a bright guy who created a brilliant character in the world of comedy. But DeLauro, as a Representative of the people, is supposed to be one of our best and brightest.
Instead, we get this.
I'm sure Ms. DeLauro, who represents the fine state of Connecticut, is just doing what any good Democrat foot soldier has been doing the past few days. They got the memo to try and taunt President-elect Trump by declaring Musk as the real leader, and they're going at it full bore.
She claimed GOP representatives "agreed on a bill," but "You know what? They got scared because President Musk told them, President Musk said don’t do it."
To recap, what you’re looking at above is a sitting congresswoman with purple hair ranting like some sort of coked-up violet-backed starling, suggesting her colleagues are too scared to pass a bill that there is a 0% chance she read.
Connecticut — specifically the 3rd District — thisis the best you have to offer?
Larry the Cable Guy, real name Daniel Whitney, often shies away from politics due to the toxicity level of the unhinged on social media but has been openly suggesting on X that both political parties need to break the resolution down into standalone bills.
He furthered that argument by addressing DeLauro's "lunatic behavior."
"These are our best and brightest. Sheeesh. Why doesn’t Grandma purple hair and all the D’s and R’s draft stand alone bills?" Mr. Cable Guy wondered. "Hmm.. then they get pissed at Musk for providing a platform where taxpayers get to see the shenanigans in real time."
"I have a feeling punk rock retiree here is more upset they no longer have control of what Americans get to see."
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2 trending on biden senile
https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2024/12/20/elon-musks-latest-political-move-has-everyone-on-the-left-reaching-for-their-smelling-salts-n2183468
The Five Words Tweeted by Elon Musk That Have the Global Elite Reaching for Their Smelling Salts
By Teri Christoph | 4:25 PM on December 20, 2024The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Elon Musk has done it again.
Fresh off of tweeting the original Continuing Resolution (CR) into oblivion, Musk has now set his sights on Europe, and what he tweeted about Germany has the international community of leftists retreating to their fainting couches and calling Jeeves to bring the smelling salts.
I’ve Got a Question for All Those Democrats Who Are Gnashing Their Teeth Over Elon Musk
Elon Musk Issues Ominous Threat to Any Member Who Votes for the 'Cramnibus'; Vivek Also Weighs In
In response to a video posted to X by Naomi Seibt—a young German YouTuber who is known as the "anti-Greta Thunberg"—in which Seibt calls out Germany's presumptive chancellor Friedrich Merz for not wanting to work with the "Germany First" AfD party, Musk tweeted out five words:
Well, you would have thought he had called for Christmas and Kwanzaa to be canceled and all the gifts to be given to Jewish children based on the tantrums thrown by globalists everywhere. Here's a taste of some worldwide headlines:
"Outrage as Elon Musk claims ‘only AfD can save Germany’" (The Guardian)
"Backlash builds as Elon Musk endorses Germany’s far right" (Politico EU)
"Anger after Musk backs German far right" (France 24)
Musk Pauses Torment of GOP to Praise German Extremists (New York Magazine)
They are big, big mad.
The propagandists at NBC had this to say about the endorsement:
Elon Musk waded into Germany’s election Friday, expressing his support for a far-right anti-immigrant and anti-Islam party that's being monitored by the country’s domestic intelligence agency.
Sounds like Germany has its very own Deep State, doesn't it?
Let's take a closer look at what Musk is actually endorsing here. Is AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) the second coming of Adolph Hitler (not that the modern-day left would have a problem with that based on their unabashed support of Hamas)?
Here's how AfD describes itself on its official website, under the headline, "COURAGE FOR GERMANY. FREE CITIZENS, NOT SUBJECTS":
We are liberals and conservatives. We are free citizens of our country. We are convinced democrats.
And what does AfD stand for?
As free citizens, we stand up for direct democracy, the separation of powers and the rule of law, the social market economy, subsidiarity, federalism, the family and the living tradition of German culture. Because democracy and freedom are based on shared cultural values and historical memories. In the tradition of the two revolutions of 1848 and 1989, with our civil protest we articulate the will to complete national unity in freedom and to create a Europe of sovereign democratic states that are bound together in peace, self-determination and good neighborliness.
We are committed to fundamentally renewing our country in the spirit of freedom and democracy and to restoring these principles. We are open to the world, but we want to be and remain German. We want to permanently preserve human dignity, the family with children, our Western Christian culture, our language and tradition in a peaceful, democratic and sovereign nation state of the German people.
AfD is basically as close to a Germanic MAGA movement as you're going to get. They are Europeans, though, so not as MAGA as they could be, but still, the most promising party to save the country with the largest economy in Europe. You'll notice that the attacks against AfD are the same exact attacks that they've been leveling against Donald Trump for years, and look where that's gotten them.
The worldwide left is running scared at Donald Trump's looming second term, Elon Musk's growing political influence, and the rise of hardline conservative politicians like Giorgia Meloni and Marine LePen. European governments are collapsing at a regular rate, yet the left keeps pushing the same propaganda that saw them soundly defeated in the U.S. on November 5th.
Germany is expected to vote on February 23 to replace the leftist government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz that collapsed earlier this week.
Teri Christoph
Teri Christoph is the author of the Smart Girl Politics meme-letter. Follow her on Twitter or check out her carefully curated meme-posting over on Facebook.
Feel free to hit her up with memes, complaints and the like at teri.christoph@gmail.com.
an 12 24
Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was a major donor to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, and the president-elect has offered him a position in his second administration.
Trump has proposed a new agency that would be called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and he would like Musk to lead it along with MAGA businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), according to Washington Post reporter Michael Scherer, voiced her concerns about Musk, possible conflicts of interest and the incoming second Trump Administration in a letter sent to the president-elect on Monday, December 17 — and staffer Karoline Leavitt "responded by calling her 'Pocahontas.'"
READ MORE:['How long it’ll be until he sues an economist': Experts blast Trump's lawsuit against pollster
"Pocahontas" is an insult that Trump came up with for Warren in response to her claim to have some Native American ancestry. Trump repeatedly called her "Pocahontas" when she was running for in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
In her letter, Warren wrote, "Putting Mr. Musk in a position to influence billions of dollars of government contracts and regulatory enforcement without a stringent conflict of interest agreement in place is an invitation for corruption on a scale not seen in our lifetimes. As your Transition Team Ethics Plan makes clear, the role of government is not to line the pockets of the wealthiest Americans; a strong, enforceable ethics plan for the world’s richest man is a necessary first step for delivering on that promise."
Leavitt, according to Scherer, "did not address Musk’s ethics commitments in her response to the letter."
Leavitt, who Trump has chosen for White House press secretary, responded, "President Trump has assembled the most impressive and qualified team of innovators, entrepreneurs, and geniuses to advise and staff our government. 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."
READ MORE:['Damning information mounts': Trump's 'worst' nominees could be in for a rude awakening
In her letter, Warren wanted to know if Musk plans to "recuse himself from matters affecting Tesla, Space X, X, or any other company he owns or in which he has a substantial investment."
The senator wrote, "Currently, the American public has no way of knowing whether the advice that he is whispering to you in secret is good for the country — or merely good for his own bottom line."
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maddow 40 of 45 kia tesla oct rept, trump trans says excessive data 86
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an 12 24 no lnx
Here's what happens when the world's richest man buys the presidency
:
Sabrina Haake, Raw StoryDecember 15, 2024
:
In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security, an insurance contract between Americans and the federal government that pays out on certain life events. As a financial safety net, social security protects Americans from what Roosevelt called the “hazards and vicissitudes of life.”
Roosevelt’s plan has been vital to the American people, and has delivered payments on time, for generations. Today, 180 million employees are paying in, and 87 million people are receiving retirement and disability benefits under the program.
Due to fluctuating demographics and other factors, payouts under Social Security now exceed pay-ins, and most analysts agree adjustments are needed to keep the program afloat. With the help of Elon Musk, Republican lawmakers, who will soon hold majorities in the House and Senate, will try to cut guaranteed benefits instead of increasing the program’s revenue.
When billionaires slash programs to fund their own tax cuts
GOP legislators are toying with reducing payouts under the system, including raising the retirement age and other benefit cuts. As one GOP representative recently toldFox Business Network, “we're going to have to have some hard decisions” on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.
Trump’s GOP will be making “hard” choices, meaning they will be cutting benefits, in order to fund tax cuts for wealthy donors.
Trump has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, another billionaire, to slash government programs and regulations through a not-yet-existent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk and Ramaswamy went to Capitol Hill last week to talk up their plans under DOGE, after which Republican lawmakers publicly confirmed that “everything,” including Social Security and Medicare, is now “on the table.” What’s not on the GOP’s table is fairly taxing billionaires like Musk and Ramaswamy, including requiring them to pay their fair share of social security taxes.
During America’s “golden” years, the wealthy paid their fair share in taxes
:{Many voters do not understand that oligarchs, CEOs, heirs, and the uber-rich pay far lower taxes today than they used to. From the 1930s until the mid- 1980s, America’s top earners paid over 60% of their income in taxes, and the percent fluctuated according to federal need. In order to finance U.S. participation in WWI, for example, Congress increased the highest tax rate to 77 percent in 1918, and yet, somehow, the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Fords still lived extraordinarily luxe lives. The highest tax fell to 25 percent from 1925 through 1931, triggering the Great Depression, then Congress raised it again in 1932, to 63 percent for top earners. In 1944, to fund WWII, the top rate peaked at 94 percent on taxable income over $200,000, the equivalent of $2.5 million in income in today’s dollars.:
It wasn’t until Ronald Reagan and the 1980s that taxes on the wealthy started nosediving to today’s top effective tax rate of 27% for the nation’s top 10% of earners, thanks largely to the GOP’s need to reward its C-suite donor class. When Trump bemoans the passage of a “great” America from yesteryear, he never acknowledges that the “greatness” was built on the backs of labor and from the wallets of wealthy taxpayers.
On social security alone, if the uber-wealthy paid into social security at the same rate as the lower and middle classes, the fund would remain solvent and be able to expand benefits instead of slashing them. At present, social security taxes are capped for the wealthy, meaning, they stop paying social security taxes at a certain level which is far below their actual earnings. In 2024, the Social Security tax cap is set at $168,600, meaning income over that amount is not subject to any social security tax whatsoever.
bradfordtaxinstitute.com
For billionaires like Musk and Ramaswamy, only $168,000 out of their millions/ billions in annual income is subject to social security taxes, and the rest is social security tax free. Although tax-adverse conservatives would beg to differ, subjecting full, high wealth income to SS taxes would stabilize the fund.
Musk bought the presidency to write his own rules
Elon Musk, with a reported annual income of $141,475,524,215, spent over $250 million to get Trump elected through dubious means including a fraudulent “lottery” of $1 million a day. Musk pays an effective tax rate of 3.27%.
Musk also paid $44 billion to purchase Twitter, which he then used to amplify far right messaging and weaponize election disinformation. Musk now manipulates algorithms on X to boost his own opinion, and had special code written to force his posts into more people’s feeds whether they want them or not. Musk’s own AI program identified him as the chief disinformation superspreader of the 2024 campaign. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Musk’s false pro-Trump election claims resulted in over 1.2 billion views on X.
To Musk, spending billions to spread election disinformation and funding Trump PACs was just the cost of doing business. Over the past ten years, Musk has received at least $15.4 billion in federal government contracts. The snag is that lucrative federal contracts come with not-so-lucrative regulatory oversight, as Musk’s SpaceX, Neuralink and Tesla have discovered. When Space X discharged polluted/toxic water into nearby bodies of water in Texas, for example, Musk found out that even in MAGA-crazed Greg Abbott’s state, where they’re itching to build concentration camps for immigrants, some people still prefer clean water.
For Musk, spending $250m to choose his own low-information boss, re-write pesky regulations, and set his own tax rate was an obvious bargain.
For the rest of us, now that the oligarchy is firmly in charge, Americans should brace for program cuts and policies enriching the super-wealthy at everyone else’s expense. I’d say the silver lining is that economic disaster will make the 2026 election a cakewalk for Democrats, but that assumes an exhausted population will still be paying attention.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.
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an 12 24
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) came into existence when President Barack Obama signed into law the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. One of the most aggressive proponents of the agency was now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), an Obama adviser who argued that aggressive regulation of Wall Street was badly needed in light of the financial crash of September 2008.
In 2010, the United States was still in a deep recession. The Great Recession was the country's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with the national unemployment rate averaging 9.6 percent that year (according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).
During its 14-year history, the CFPB has had both defenders and detractors. Some conservatives and libertarians claim that the regulatory agency hobbles the markets; Warren, however, has maintained that the CFPB is a safeguard against devastating financial events like the crashes of 1929 and 2008.
READ MORE:**What will Trump and GOP congress do to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?**
In late 2024, the CFPB has a major foe in billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter). President-elect Donald Trump has picked Musk, along with MAGA businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, to head a proposed government agency that would be called the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
On November 27, Musk tweeted, "Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies."
Forbes' Derek Saul reports, "Musk's post was in response to a recent podcast clip from Marc Andreessen, billionaire venture capitalist and fellow multimillion-dollar Trump donor, who said the CFPB's primary purpose is to 'terrorize financial institutions.' Yahoo Finance reporter Jordan Weissmann notes the CFPB shut down a portfolio company of Andreessen’s firm a16z in 2021."
The CFPB has also been a target of far-right Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's highly controversial 920-page blueprint for a second Trump Administration. Project 2025 has called for Congress to abolish the agency.
READ MORE:[Robert Reich: The last tariff increase 'ended up worsening the Great Depression'
But Warren remains an outspoken defender of the CFPB, recently telling the Washington Post, "The CFPB is here to stay…. There's big talk, but the laws supporting the CFPB are strong."
READ MORE:[''Rocketships to nowhere:' Not everyone on Team Trump is happy with 'co-president' Elon Musk
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an 12 24
'Everything is on the table': There's a new development in the Trump-Musk plot to kill Social Security
Trump may cancel NASA’s powerful SLS Moon rocket – here’s what that would mean for Elon Musk and the future of space travel an 12 24
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aha plays the rebel SV libtard but poison polluter, fucks over workers psychopath, CTR-ELITE
BIG PICTURE
'Quickly rot from within': Expert reveals 3 traits the US shares with declining empires
https://www.alternet.org/us-empire-decline/)
an 12 24
The United States is currently displaying several characteristics that have historically been seen by empires in decline, according to one social scientist.
Peter Turchin is one of the pioneers of "cliodynamics," which is the field of study concerning statistical analysis of historical dynamics of societies around the world. In a recent essay for the Guardian, Turchin wrote that he and his fellow researchers have noticed the U.S. having three key traits in common with past global hegemons just before a period of decline. Those three factors are "popular immiseration, elite overproduction and state breakdown."
Turchin explained that "popular immiseration" describes a breakdown of the social contract between workers, the private sector and the public sector, which he said began after the Republican assault in the New Deal that happened around the time former President Ronald Reagan took power. He noted that as "the power of unions was undermined," taxes on the richest Americans were "cut back," which was followed by stagnating wages and a decline in life expectancy.
READ MORE:['Not good enough anymore': Union leader explains why Dems lost economic argument to Trump
"With the incomes of workers effectively stuck, the fruits of economic growth were reaped by the elites instead. A perverse 'wealth pump' came into being, siphoning money from the poor and channelling it to the rich," he wrote. "In many ways, the last four decades call to mind what happened in the United States between 1870 and 1900 – the time of railroad fortunes and robber barons. If the postwar period was a golden age of broad-based prosperity, after 1980 we could be said to have entered a Second Gilded Age."
The second trait, which Turchin called "elite overproduction," involves a growing population of the "uber-rich," (which he defined as "those with fortunes greater than $10 million") and their influence in the public sphere. He noted that when adjusting for inflation, this population grew by tenfold over the last four decades. This has led to rich elites either running for office, like President-elect Donald Trump, or funding candidates for office, like many billionaires have done in recent cycles. He also pointed out that "counter-elites" will emerge who oppose the existing political establishment.
"The more members of this elite class there are, the more aspirants for political power a society contains," he wrote. "By the 2010s the social pyramid in the US had grown exceptionally top-heavy: there were too many wannabe leaders and moguls competing for a fixed number of positions in the upper echelons of politics and business."
"As battles between the ruling elites and counter-elites heat up, the norms governing public discourse unravel and trust in institutions declines," he continued. "The result is a loss of civic cohesiveness and sense of national cooperation – without which states quickly rot from within."
READ MORE:[Watch: JD Vance booed by room full of firefighters as he calls himself 'pro-worker'
Finally, Turchin opined that "state breakdown" will inevitably follow popular immiseration and elite overproduction. He argued that Democrats' loss in the November election "represents one battle in an ongoing revolutionary war," but that the goal of the new order is "far from assured" given that "opponents are pretty well entrenched in the bureaucracy and can effectively resist change."
"Popular discontent in the US has been building up for more than four decades. Many years of real prosperity would be needed to persuade the public that the country is back on the right track," he wrote. "So, for now, we can expect a lasting age of discord. Let’s hope that it won’t spill over into a hot civil war."
Click here to read Turchin's full essay in the Guardian.
READ MORE:['A corporate CEO's dream': Labor unions blast Trump-Vance ticket
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REF
The deep historical forces that explain Trump’s win | US politics | The Guardian
In the days since the sweeping Republican victory in the US election, which gave the party control of the presidency, the Senate and the House, commentators have analysed and dissected the relative merits of the main protagonists – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – in minute detail. Much has been said about their personalities and the words they have spoken; little about the impersonal social forces that push complex human societies to the brink of collapse – and sometimes beyond. That’s a mistake: in order to understand the roots of our current crisis, and possible ways out of it, it’s precisely these tectonic forces we need to focus on.
The research team I lead studies cycles of political integration and disintegration over the past 5,000 years. We have found that societies, organised as states, can experience significant periods of peace and stability lasting, roughly, a century or so. Inevitably, though, they then enter periods of social unrest and political breakdown. Think of the end of the Roman empire, the English civil war or the Russian Revolution. To date, we have amassed data on hundreds of historical states as they slid into crisis, and then emerged from it.
So we’re in a good position to identify just those impersonal social forces that foment unrest and fragmentation, and we’ve found three common factors: popular immiseration, elite overproduction and state breakdown.
To get a better understanding of these concepts and how they are influencing American politics in 2024, we need to travel back in time to the 1930s, when an unwritten social contract came into being in the form of Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal. This contract balanced the interests of workers, businesses and the state in a way similar to the more formal agreements we see in Nordic countries. For two generations, this implicit pact delivered an unprecedented growth in wellbeing across a broad swath of the country. At the same time, a “Great Compression” of incomes and wealth dramatically reduced economic inequality. For roughly 50 years the interests of workers and the interests of owners were kept in balance, and overall income inequality remained remarkably low.
That social contract began to break down in the late 1970s. The power of unions was undermined, and taxes on the wealthy cut back. Typical workers’ wages, which had previously increased in tandem with overall economic growth, started to lag behind. Inflation-adjusted wages stagnated and at times decreased. The result was a decline in many aspects of quality of life for the majority of Americans. One shocking way this became evident was in changes to the average life expectancy, which stalled and even went into reverse (and this started well before the Covid pandemic). That’s what we term “popular immiseration”.
With the incomes of workers effectively stuck, the fruits of economic growth were reaped by the elites instead. A perverse “wealth pump” came into being, siphoning money from the poor and channelling it to the rich. The Great Compression reversed itself. In many ways, the last four decades call to mind what happened in the United States between 1870 and 1900 – the time of railroad fortunes and robber barons. If the postwar period was a golden age of broad-based prosperity, after 1980 we could be said to have entered a Second Gilded Age.
The uber-wealthy increased tenfold between 1980 and 2020
Welcome as the extra wealth might seem for its recipients, it ends up causing problems for them as a class. The uber-wealthy (those with fortunes greater than $10m) increased tenfold between 1980 and 2020, adjusted for inflation. A certain proportion of these people have political ambitions: some run for political office themselves (like Trump), others fund political candidates (like Peter Thiel). The more members of this elite class there are, the more aspirants for political power a society contains.
By the 2010s the social pyramid in the US had grown exceptionally top-heavy: there were too many wannabe leaders and moguls competing for a fixed number of positions in the upper echelons of politics and business. In our model, this state of affairs has a name: elite overproduction.
:{Elite overproduction can be likened to a game of musical chairs – except the number of chairs stays constant, while the number of players is allowed to increase. As the game progresses, it creates more and more angry losers. Some of those turn into “counter-elites”: those willing to challenge the established order; rebels and revolutionaries such as Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads in the English civil war, or Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia.
In the contemporary US we might think of media disruptors such as Tucker Carlson, or maverick entrepreneurs seeking political influence such as Elon Musk alongside countless less-prominent examples at lower levels in the system. As battles between the ruling elites and counter-elites heat up, the norms governing public discourse unravel and trust in institutions declines. The result is a loss of civic cohesiveness and sense of national cooperation – without which states quickly rot from within.}:
One result of all this political dysfunction is an inability to agree on how the federal budget should be balanced. Together with the loss of trust and legitimacy, that accelerates the breakdown of state capacity. It’s notable that a collapse in state finances is often the triggering event for a revolution: this is what happened in France before 1789 and in the runup to the English civil war.
How does this landscape translate to party politics? The American ruling class, as it has evolved since the end of the civil war in 1865, is basically a coalition of the top wealth holders (the proverbial 1%) and a highly educated or “credentialed” class of professionals and graduates (whom we might call the 10%). A decade ago, the Republicans were the party of the 1%, while the Democrats were the party of the 10%. Since then, they have both changed out of all recognition.
The recasting of the Republican party began with the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in 2016. He was typical of political entrepreneurs in history who have channelled popular discontent to propel themselves to power (one example is Tiberius Gracchus, who founded the populist party in late Republican Rome). Not all of his initiatives went against the interests of the ruling class – for example, he succeeded in making the tax code more regressive. But many did, including his policies on immigration (economic elites tend to favour open immigration as it suppresses wages); a rejection of traditional Republican free-market orthodoxy in favour of industrial policy; a scepticism of Nato and a professed unwillingness to start new conflicts abroad.
It seemed to some as though the revolution had been squashed when a quintessentially establishment figure, Joe Biden, defeated Trump in 2020. By 2024 the Democrats had essentially become the party of the ruling class – of the 10% and of the 1%, having tamed its own populist wing (led by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders). This realignment was signalled by Kamala Harris massively outspending Trump this election cycle, as well as mainstream Republicans, such as Liz and Dick Cheney, or neocons such as Bill Kristol, supporting the Harris ticket.
The GOP, in the meantime, has transformed itself into a truly revolutionary party: one that represents working people (according to its leaders) or a radical rightwing agenda (according to its detractors). In the process, it has largely purged itself of traditional Republicans.
The defeat on 5 November represents one battle in an ongoing revolutionary war
Trump was clearly the chief agent of this change. But while the mainstream media and politicians obsess over him, it is important to recognise that he is now merely the tip of the iceberg: a diverse group of counter-elites has coalesced around the Trump ticket. Some of them, such as JD Vance, had meteoric rises through the Republican ranks. Some, such as Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard, defected from the Democrats. Others include tycoons such as Musk, or media figures, such as Joe Rogan, perhaps the most influential American podcaster. The latter was once a supporter of the populist wing of the Democratic party (and Bernie Sanders in particular).
The main point here is that in 2024, the Democrats, having morphed into the party of the ruling class, had to contend not only with the tide of popular discontent but also a revolt of the counter-elites. As such, it finds itself in a predicament that has recurred thousands of times in human history, and there are two ways things play out from here.
One is with the overthrow of established elites, as happened in the French and Russian Revolutions. The other is with the ruling elites backing a rebalancing of the social system – most importantly, shutting down the wealth pump and reversing popular immiseration and elite overproduction. It happened about a century ago with the New Deal. There’s also a parallel in the Chartist period (1838–1857), when Great Britain was the only European great power to avoid the wave of revolutions that swept Europe in 1848, via major reform. But the US has so far failed to learn the historical lessons.
Trump victory not a mandate for radical change, top election forecaster says
Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/28/trump-victory-election-forecast)
What comes next? The electoral defeat on 5 November represents one battle in an ongoing revolutionary war. The triumphant counter-elites want to replace their counterparts – what they sometimes call the “deep state” – entirely. But history shows that success in achieving such goals is far from assured. Their opponents are pretty well entrenched in the bureaucracy and can effectively resist change. Ideological and personal tensions in the winning coalition may result in it breaking apart (as they say, revolutions devour their children).
Most importantly, the challenges facing the new Trump administration are of the particularly intractable kind. What is their plan for tackling the exploding federal budget deficit? How are they going to shut down the wealth pump? And what will the Democrats’ response be? Will their platform for 2028 include a new New Deal, a commitment to major social reform?}:
One thing is clear: whatever the choices and actions of the contending parties, they will not lead to an immediate resolution. Popular discontent in the US has been building up for more than four decades. Many years of real prosperity would be needed to persuade the public that the country is back on the right track. So, for now, we can expect a lasting age of discord. Let’s hope that it won’t spill over into a hot civil war.
Peter Turchin is project leader at the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, and the author of End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration (Allen Lane).
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lnx
Space wars, lawsuits, the woke mind virus – what’s driving Elon Musk to go ‘Dark Maga’
Big ReadWhen the Tesla boss switched from backing Democrats to Donald Trump he made his biggest - most cynical - gamble yet. Will it pay off?
BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA - OCTOBER 05: Elon Musk dons a black "Make America Great Again" ball cap during a campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump at the Butler Farm Show grounds on October 05, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. This is the first time that Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump has returned to Butler since he was injured during an attempted assassination on July 13. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Elon Musk has said: ‘I am not just Maga, I am Dark Maga’ (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty)
By Mark Honigsbaum
November 3, 2024 10:00 am
To his legions of fanboys, Elon Musk is an engineering genius and tech visionary – a Marvel superhero come to life.
To his critics, he’s a free speech absolutist and control freak who uses his social media platform X, which he renamed from Twitter, as a bully pulpit to harass opponents and rage against government regulation of his businesses.
But two years ago, few would have predicted that, come the 2024 US presidential election, Musk, who previously supported Democratic candidates, would be a major Republican Party donor and surrogate for Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again (Maga) movement.
Joining the former president and convicted criminal at a rally two weeks ago at Butler Farm, Pennsylvania, where Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July, Musk, who was dressed all in black, declared; “I am not just Maga, I am Dark Maga”.
What Musk meant by that phrase precisely is unclear but one implication is that, should Trump win on 5 November, Musk will be the power behind the throne – Darth Vader to Trump’s Emperor Palpatine.
He has poured roughly $120m (£93m) into Trump’s re-election campaign via his America PAC, an organisation which raises money for candidates and handed out several cheques worth $1m to swing state voters who sign a petition in favour of free speech and the right to bear arms, both central planks of Trump’s campaign. Musk will certainly be expecting a return on his investment.
“A second Trump term could very well shift the administrative and regulatory state in ways that would benefit Musk’s companies,” says Angela Aneiros, an assistant professor of law at Gonzaga University, in Washington state, and an expert on the dangers of “superstar CEOs”.
Geoff Mulgan, a public policy professor at University College London and a former Downing Street policy adviser to Tony Blair, agrees.
“It’s hard to assess Musk’s exact motivations but, I suspect, like many other media owners he is using his media power to advance other business interests, in this case via regulation, government contracts, etc.”
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., left, and former US President Donald Trump, prior to a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania, US, on Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024. Republican nominee??Donald Trump??rallied supporters at the site of a July assassination attempt, returning to the Pennsylvania venue where a gunman's bullet bloodied his ear and upended the presidential campaign. Photographer: Justin Merriman/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Musk has given $120m (£93m) to Trump’s re-election campaign (Photo: Justin Merriman/Bloomberg/Getty)
These benefits could include everything from a hands-off approach from a Trump administration to the moderation of hate speech and disinformation on X, to government support for Musk’s SpaceX rocket company and Starlink satellite businesses.
SpaceX already receives $11.8bn (£9.1bn) from Nasa and the Pentagon is relying on Starlink to provide satellite buses for its new global spy network. This would make Musk a major player in US Space Force, the American military’s space service launched by Trump at the end of his first term.
Trump could also order federal officials investigating the safety of Tesla’s autonomous driving technology and allegations of unfair employment practices at SpaceX to back off. That would free Musk from regulations that he says are acting as a drag on his ability to innovate, and enable him to realise his ambition of landing a manned spacecraft on Mars by 2028 – a prospect that clearly pleases Trump.
“He is going to reach Mars by the end of our term… before China, before anybody,” Trump told supporters at the recent rally in Pennsylvania. Pointing at Musk, he added: “My money’s on that guy right there.”
But perhaps the biggest prize for Musk is the chance to head a “government efficiency commission” in charge of cutting bureaucratic waste. That would not only guarantee Musk a seat in Trump’s cabinet but put him in pole position to see off space exploration rivals, such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and influence antitrust legislation aimed at curbing the power of big tech companies. It could also boost Musk’s ambitions to be a global leader in artificial intelligence.
“Musk sees the steady advance of tech power in the new AI world and is already, perhaps, looking ahead to the complicated regulatory war with government that the tech bros will need to wage in order to come out on top,” says Michael Wolff, the author of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which documents the jockeying for power during Trump’s first term.
Reid Hoffmann, the co-founder of LinkedIn who has known Musk since they worked together at PayPal, agrees. Speaking on the 20VC podcast in June, he described Musk as “arguably the entrepreneur of our generation”.
“The thing I learned from watching Elon’s rocket success was that if an industry has had decades of tech innovation that’s not reflected in the market if you can break it, it’s huge.”
However, Hoffmann says that inviting Musk into government is not without risks for Trump and the danger is that he will take “the whole concrete wall down with him when he’s going through it”.
The struggle between Superhero Musk and Dark Maga Musk can be traced back to his childhood growing up in Pretoria, South Africa.
Musk’s company SpaceX could benefit from government support under a Trump administration (Photo: Miguel J Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP)
According to Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson, he had a dysfunctional relationship with his father. Errol, an engineer by training like Musk, used to regularly belittle his son as “a loser” who would never amount to anything. Those demons, suggests Isaacson, are still with him.
“The question is whether you harness those demons or they harness you,” Isaacson told Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast, “and in Musk’s case, the answer is both”.
Musk’s shift from centre-left Democrat to Dark Maga Trump warrior, can be attributed, according to Isaacson, to his trans daughter Vivian’s decision to take puberty blockers four years ago – a decision that Musk told the psychologist and podcaster Jordan Peterson he was “tricked” in to agreeing to and which he blames on the “woke mind virus”. Vivian, who’s birth name was Xavier, denies her father’s version of events, describing Musk as “cold… uncaring and narcissistic”.
Another factor was the Covid lockdowns and Musk’s decision to reopen Tesla’s northern California car plant in defiance of local shelter-in-place orders. Soon, Musk was using his X account to promote anti-vax conspiracy theories and calls for the prosecution of Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical officer. He also used his megaphone to promote QAnon, the far-right conspiracy movement behind the 6 January storming of the US Capitol.
Despite being the world’s richest man – Musk’s stakes in Tesla, SpaceX and other companies are worth an estimated $270bn (£208bn) – he is famously impulsive and thin-skinned. As an example, Isaacson cites Musk’s decision, shortly after he took over X, to fire 75 percent of the workforce and to take one of it’s three servers off-line to force engineers to find a workaround (according to Isaacson, Musk made the decision on the spur of the moment over the Nevada desert while flying home from Texas on Christmas Eve 2022).
US media mogul, Barry Diller, makes a similar point, arguing that Musk’s shift to the right may reflect his antipathy to Biden following the President’s decision not to invite him to an electric car summit at the White House in 2021 at which he praised Tesla’s competitor General Motors.
“Elon’s accomplishments are grand enough and he deserves to bestride the earth,” Diller recently told Wolff’s Fire and Fury podcast. “Why he has gone this way is, I think, out of some strange rejection and bitterness at the current administration.”
Mulgan detects a similar sense of pique at Sir Keir Starmer, following the Prime Minister’s comments blaming the riots that followed the Southport stabbings on social media. Mulgan believes it is this that may have prompted Musk’s recent war of words with Starmer over “two-tier policing”.
“Powerful figures like Murdoch and Musk blatantly use their media power to advance their other interests,” says Mulgan, who is calling for a “Right to Truth” charter to combat misinformation and falsehoods online.
The stakes for Musk could not be higher. His companies are facing lawsuits for everything from sexual harassment and unfair hiring practices to insider trading, while US prosecutors are investigating him for possible securities fraud over claims about his electric cars’ self-driving capabilities. In addition, according to an analysis by Fortune, in the last year Musk and his companies have filed at least 23 lawsuits in federal courts. The suits are directed at business competitors, law firms, watchdog groups, federal agencies – even the pop star Grimes, who is the mother of three of his children. Musk is also facing a lawsuit brought by the Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner alleging that his recent $1m election giveaways amount to an “illegal lottery scheme to influence voters”.
Even if Trump wins, Musk’s intervention in the presidential race risks alienating Democrat voters, 45 per cent of whom say they are likely to seriously consider buying an electric car as against 13 per cent of Republicans. And should Harris emerge victorious, Musk will likely come under intense pressure from the White House to police hate speech on X – an issue that has already seen Musk clashing with Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor and Harris ally, over a state law requiring larger social media companies to issue semi-annual reports detailing their content moderation practices.
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On the other hand, Morgan Stanley estimates that, thanks to existing government contracts, SpaceX’s revenues could triple to $63bn (£48bn) by 2030, with even greater gains in store for Starlink should Trump win a second term.
However, Aneiros warns that inviting Musk in to the heart of government is not without risks for Trump. “Superstar CEOs may engage in misconduct and other inappropriate behaviour, leading to negative consequences for the company,” she says.
Perhaps that is why in an interview with CNN on Thursday, Howard Lutnik, co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team, was keen to push back against suggestions that Musk might head a Department of Government Efficiency, saying that that would require him to divest his stakes in SpaceX and Tesla. “He’s not coming into government… he’s going to be adjacent to it,” said Lutnik.
What Dark Maga will make of that is anyone’s guess.
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press suppress
an 11 24
Today I’d like to raise a less peaceful question that many of you are asking me: As we enter the darkness of the Trump regime, where can we find trusted sources of information? What and whom can we count on to give us the truth?
I will give you the sources I rely on in a moment, but first let me explain why reliable and independent sources of news are threatened by a growing alliance of oligarchs and authoritarians.
The mainstream media doesn’t use the term “oligarchy” to describe the billionaires who are using their wealth to monopolize information and turn it into propaganda — but it’s the most accurate term, because that’s exactly what’s happening: from Elon Musk’s X to Jeff Bezos’s The Washington Post to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News to Vladimir Putin’s worldwide disinformation campaign to Donald Trump’s continuing stream of lies on Truth Social and X.
Even legacy mainstream media — which mostly answer to corporate or billionaire ownership — refrained during the 2024 campaign from reporting how incoherent and bizarre Trump was becoming, normalizing and “sanewashing” his increasingly wild utterances even as it reported every minor slip by Joe Biden.
The New York Times headlined its coverage of the September 2024 presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris — in which Trump bellowed conspiracy theories about stolen elections and Haitian immigrants eating pet cats and dogs — as: “Harris and Trump bet on their own sharply contrasting views of America.”
Trump has called the free press “scum” and the “enemy within.” He has threatened to revoke the licenses of television networks and jail journalists who don’t reveal their anonymous sources. Last month, Trump sued CBS, based on conspiratorial claims that “60 Minutes” made “edits” favorable to Harris for the final cut of its interview with her.
Come January 20, Trump and his billionaire toadies — including Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent, Doug Burgum, and Linda McMahon — will control the executive branch of the United States government, and Trump’s MAGA Republicans will be in charge of both chambers of Congress.
Members of the Supreme Court (some of whom, like Clarence Thomas, have been beneficiaries of billionaire gifts) have already signaled their willingness to consolidate even more power in Trump’s hands, immunize him from criminal liability for what he does, and further open the floodgates of big money into American politics.
All of this is sending a message from the United States that liberalism’s core tenets, including the rule of law and freedom of the press, are up for grabs.
Elsewhere around the world, alliances of economic elites and authoritarians similarly threaten public access to the truth, without which democracy cannot thrive.
It’s a vicious cycle: Citizens have grown cynical about democracy because decision-making has become dominated by economic elites, and that cynicism has ushered in authoritarians who are even more solicitous of such elites.
Trump and his lapdogs lionize Viktor Orbán and Hungary’s Fidesz party, which transformed a once-vibrant democracy into a one-party state, muzzling the media and rewarding the wealthy.
Trump’s success is already encouraging Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party in France; Alternative in Germany, or AfD; Italy’s far-right Giorgia Meloni; and radical right-wing parties in the Netherlands and Austria.
Trump’s triumph will surely embolden Russia’s Vladimir Putin — the world’s most dangerous authoritarian oligarch — not only in Ukraine and potentially eastern Europe but also in his worldwide campaign of disinformation to undermine democracies.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk — the world’s richest person, self-described “First Buddy” of Trump, and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts — has been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022.
Evidence is mounting that Russia and other foreign agents used Musk’s X platform to disrupt the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign in favor of Trump. Musk did little to stop them.
During the campaign, Musk himself reposted to his 200 million followers a faked version of Harris’s first campaign video with an altered voice track sounding like the vice president and saying she “does not know the first thing about running the country” and is the “ultimate diversity hire.” Musk tagged the video “amazing.” It received hundreds of millions of views.
According to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Musk posted at least 50 false election claims on X, which garnered a total of at least 1.2 billion views. None had a “community note” from X’s supposed fact-checking system.
Murdoch, another oligarchic champion of authoritarianism, has turned his Fox News, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post into ever-louder outlets of right-wing propaganda, further amplifying Trump’s lies.
Artificial intelligence may make it even easier for oligarchs and demagogues to manipulate the public. Trump has nominated right-wing FCC commissioner and Musk bro Brendan Carr to chair the agency. Don’t expect him to do anything about weaponized disinformation. Carr ranted publicly about NBC featuring Kamala Harris on “Saturday Night Live” during the election.
Bezos barred The Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris. Evidently, he didn’t want to raise Trump’s ire because Bezos’s other businesses depend on government contracts. The mere possibility of a Trump presidency forced what had been one of the most courageous newspapers in the U.S. to censor itself. Marty Baron, former editor of the Post, called the move “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.”
The billionaire owner of theLos Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked his newspaper’s planned endorsement of Harris as well, prompting the head of the paper’s editorial board to resign. Mariel Garza said she was “not OK with us being silent,” adding: “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.”
Honest people standing up is precisely what resisting authoritarianism and protecting democracy require — monitoring those in power, acting as watchdogs against abuses of power, challenging those abuses, and sounding the alarm about wrongdoing and wrongful policies.
But how to “stand up” without reliable sources of the truth?
So, as we enter the darkness of the Trump regime, please make sure you and others you know have access to accurate information about what’s occurring.
Here are the sources I currently rely on for the truth: The Guardian, Democracy Now, Business Insider,The New Yorker,The American Prospect,Americans for Tax Fairness, The Economic Policy Institute, The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, ProPublica, Labor Notes, The Lever, Popular Information, Heather Cox Richardson, and, of course,thisSubstack.
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an thom 11 24
— Musk wants to get rid of the anti-fraud police. Why? Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has raised significant concerns that the grifter in the White House wants to empower banking and investment grifters to rip us all off. Musk has publicly called for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), stating, “Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.”
The CFPB, established in 2010 following the Bush Crash, is the main agency safeguarding consumers from predatory financial practices. Its dissolution will leave consumers vulnerable to exploitation and massive rip-offs by financial institutions. Musk’s leadership of DOGE, combined with his substantial business interests and political influence, also means he and his friends may even benefit from silencing the regulators and increase the problem of crony capitalism.
He’s already called for de-funding a government agency that helps low-income rural people get broadband, saying his company Starlink should provide that service. This move aligns with longstanding Republican efforts to curtail the CFPB’s authority in exchange for massive contributions from banks and investment firms, raising alarms about the preservation of essential consumer safeguards for average working people. Get ready to get ripped of big-time.
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an 11 24
The two right-wing billionaires President-elect Donald Trump has tasked with spearheading a new "government efficiency" commission outlined their vision Wednesday for the mass firing of federal employees, large-scale deregulation, and major spending cuts that could impact antipoverty programs, drug research and development, and more.
For the first time since Trump announced plans to create the Department on Government Efficiency (DOGE)—which, despite its name, would be an advisory commission rather than an actual federal department—Tesla CEO Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy offered a detailed look at how they plan to achieve their stated objective of taking a "chainsaw" to federal operations.
"We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America," the pair wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. "The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws."
Decrying rules crafted by "unelected bureaucrats," Musk and Ramaswamy—unelected outside advisers—wrote that they intend to present to Trump "a list of regulations" they believe should be eliminated. The culling of regulations would, they argued, provide the justification for "mass headcount reductions"—corporate-speak for sweeping firings—across federal agencies, a plan the two wrote would not be deterred by civil service protections.
Watchdogs have noted that the regulatory cuts envisioned by the commission's co-leaders would likely benefit Musk's companies, at least three of which are currently under scrutiny from nine federal agencies.
"Based on Elon Musk's comments, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is poised to make far-reaching recommendations that could have a devastating impact on Americans and enormously benefit insiders, starting with Musk himself," Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said Wednesday.
"A second Trump term will undoubtedly see a multipronged attack on any institution that seeks to constrain big business, and DOGE will lead the charge."
Musk and Ramaswamy also laid out a plan under which Trump would evade existing federal statutes such as the Impoundment Control Act to cut spending already allocated by Congress.
"DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion-plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood," they wrote.
As The Washington Post's Jacob Bogage recently observed, the federal programs "without separate spending authorization" that Musk and Ramaswamy are targeting "represent more than $516 billion" and encompass key areas including veterans' healthcare, education spending, housing assistance, childcare aid, student loan programs, Head Start, opioid addiction treatment, and NASA.
Musk, a megadonor to Trump's 2024 presidential bid, claimed on the campaign trail that he would be able to identify "at least $2 trillion" in possible cuts to federal spending.
Casey Wetherbee, an Argentina-based writer, warned Wednesday that "Musk and Ramaswamy's admiration of Argentine president Javier Milei offers us a glimpse into their ideal end state."
"Ramaswamy tweeted on November 18: 'A reasonable formula to fix the U.S. government: Milei-style cuts, on steroids,'" Wetherbee wrote for Jacobin. "When Milei assumed office last year, he declared that conditions would worsen before things would get better; Musk similarly warned that DOGE’s recommendations may cause 'temporary hardship.' Meanwhile, in Argentina, Milei's austerity measures have targeted the country's social safety net, causing the poverty rate to skyrocket while only lowering taxes for the country's wealthiest citizens, a troubling outlook for a second Trump administration if DOGE's advice is ever implemented."
"A second Trump term will undoubtedly see a multipronged attack on any institution that seeks to constrain big business, and DOGE will lead the charge," Wetherbee added. "After all, in DOGE's public call for collaborators, it seeks 'super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries'; that's how they see themselves. We can only hope that, by virtue of how evidently insufferable they are, DOGE's relationship with the Trump adm
an 11 24
Extraordinary situation': How Musk could personally reap billions from 'efficiency' panel
Horrified' Tesla owners 'feel embarrassed' as anti-Musk sticker sales boom
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BB rW 11 24
Relying on a chart from USA Today and a Reader's Digest article on weird things the government spends money on, Elon Musk's analysis can only be intended to distract.
Either corporations can pay their fair share, or we can start cutting the military budget. Analysts are pointing out that Musk's tweeted-out plan can not work; there isn't enough for the government to cut. Most of the items he's pointing at, like a Superbowl ad for the census save money elsewhere, but there is no effort to get to any sort of understanding — just a mad rush to vomit out fables his mad troll base to repeat.
DOGE, the incoming Trump administration advisory panel headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, has been posting on X, the social media platform owned by Musk, about the federal government's spending. The posts have featured a mix of facts and figures, including those drawn from a USA Facts chart and a Reader's Digest article on "11 Bizarre Things the U.S. Government Actually Spent Money On."
Get ready to see ourNational Parks sold off. When they Musk talks about getting used to living with less, maybe they mean less Medicare and food.
The remainder of the budget, wrote Kessler, is everything else: Medicaid, food aid, grants to states for various partnerships and projects, scientific research, critical agencies like the National Weather Service, and the list goes on. For DOGE to meet its promise of balancing the budget absent new tax increases — and Trump has pledged to cut taxes on top of all this — pretty much the entire rest of the federal government that isn't defense and retirement programs would have to be eliminated.
DOGE has put forward a number of examples of government spending it considers to be wasteful, Kessler continued, but aside from the cost of these programs being negligible, many of them are more useful than Musk is making them sound.
For instance, DOGE criticized a $2.5 million Super Bowl ad for the Census — but in fact, Kessler noted, "for every 1 percent increase in mail-in responses [the Census Bureau] received, it would save $85 million sending workers door-to-door to collect information. So what appears to be a waste of money was intended to reduce spending over time."
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an 11 24
Democrats on the House Budget Committee said Friday that the plan Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy outlined to eliminate spending already appropriated by the U.S. Congress would run afoul of a federal law enacted in response to former President Richard Nixon's impoundment of funds for programs he opposed.
In a Wall Street Journalop-ed published earlier this week, Musk and Ramaswamy specifically mentioned the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act (ICA) only to wave it away, arguing it would not hinder their effort to enact sweeping spending cuts as part of the "government efficiency" commission President-elect Donald Trump appointed them to lead.
But House Budget Committee Democrats said Friday that the Nixon-era law and subsequent Supreme Court rulings make clear that "the power of the purse rests solely with Congress."
"Fifty years after the ICA became law, Congress once again confronts a threat attempting to push past the long-recognized boundaries of executive budgetary power," the lawmakers wrote in a fact sheet. "During his first administration, President Trump illegally impounded crucial security assistance funding for Ukraine in an effort to benefit his reelection campaign. Now, Donald Trump and his far-right extremist allies are pushing dangerous legal theories to dismantle that system."
"They want to give the president unchecked power to slash funding for programs like food assistance, public education, healthcare, and federal law enforcement—all without congressional approval," the Democrats continued. "American families would be forced to pay more for basic necessities, investment in infrastructure and jobs would decline, and our communities would become less safe. Instead of working within the democratic process, Trump and his allies want to sidestep Congress entirely. But the Constitution is clear: only Congress, elected by the people, controls how taxpayer dollars are spent."
"House Democrats are ready to fight back against any illegal attempt to gut the programs that keep American families safe and help them make ends meet."
The fact sheet was released days after Musk and Ramaswamy, both billionaires, offered for the first time a detailed explanation of their plan to pursue large-scale cuts to federal regulations and spending, as well as mass firings of federal employees, in their role as co-heads of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The pair noted that Trump "has previously suggested" the ICA is unconstitutional and expressed the view that "the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question." The former president appointed half of the court's right-wing supermajority.
"But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion-plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood."
Other programs that would be vulnerable if Musk, Ramaswamy, Trump, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—who's set to lead a new related House subcommittee—get their way are veterans' healthcare, Head Start, housing assistance, and childcare aid, according toThe Washington Post.
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement Friday that "the legal theories being pushed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are as idiotic as they are dangerous."
"Unilaterally slashing funds that have been lawfully appropriated by the people's elected representatives in Congress would be a devastating power grab that undermines our economy and puts families and communities at risk," said Boyle. "House Democrats are ready to fight back against any illegal attempt to gut the programs that keep American families safe and help them make ends meet."
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CONFIRM, WANNABE ENFORCER?
an 11 24
A senior Trump official has issued a threat to Senate Republicans: support and confirm the Cabinet and administration nominees Donald Trump is choosing or face a primary challenge funded by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, according to a new report from ABC News.
Jonathan Karl, ABC’s Chief Washington Correspondent reports, “the Trump team will play hardball with Republicans who waiver [sic] on any of the president-elect’s nominees.”
“There’s votes coming,” the Trump advisor said, according to Karl. “And if you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.”
READ MORE: Byron Donalds ‘Not Surprised’ at Snub from Trump’s Nearly-All White Administration
“The president gets to decide his cabinet. No one else. That’s just the way it is,” that advisor added, Karl reports.
The U.S. Constitution requires the Senate to provide its “advice and consent” on a large number of presidential nominees, which is not a rubber stamp. It reads in part: the President “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate…”
Democratic strategist Matt McDermott responded to Karl’s reporting, observing: “This has never, in the history of American democracy, been ‘just the way it is.'”
Media critic Susan Bordson urged the press “to provide audiences meaningful context.”
READ MORE: ‘I’m Not Here to Fight’: First Trans Member of Congress Responds to Johnson’s Bathroom Ban
“No journalists covering executive public governance should be skittish about contextualizing these actions, she writes, calling the threats “a TRAIT of authoritarian-style governance.”
Journalist James Surowiecki warned, “Having one super-rich guy exercise massive influence over American politics is a very bad thing. I know Americans don’t really care about the nuts and bolts of democracy, but this is a true corruption of democracy.”
Jesse Lee, a former Biden White House National Economic Council senior adviser declared, “Oligarchy is here.”
ABC’s Selina Wang invoked Matt Gaetz’s name in her report, but Karl stated the threat applied to “any of the president-elect’s nominees.”
Minutes ago, Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for Attorney General.
Watch ABC News’ report from Thursday below or at this link.
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YMAIL 11 24
Trump has appointed Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficency. Despite the name, it is not a government department. In fact, it is not part of the government at all. It is a non-governmental commission that will provide advice to the Trump administration.
Musk says he will identify "at least $2 trillion" in savings from the $6.5 trillion federal budget. How will Musk do it? Details are scarce. Musk is recruiting "high-IQ revolutionaries" to work 80-hour weeks for no pay to help him with the task.
Cutting $2 trillion is impossible politically. But if Musk is serious about cutting government spending and waste there is only one place to start: the defense budget. About half of the discretionary budget — the spending that Congress approves each year — is spent on defense. For the 2024 budget, the amount allocated for the Department of Defense exceeded $840 billion.
About half of the massive defense budget goes to military contractors, with tens of billions directed to "Big 5" firms — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. These contractors, according to a 60 Minutes investigation last year, "overcharge the Pentagon on almost everything the Department of Defense buys." The misuse of taxpayer dollars became more acute "in the early 2000s when the Pentagon, in another cost-saving move, cut 130,000 employees whose jobs were to negotiate and oversee defense contracts." Another factor is the consolidation of the defense industry, resulting in less competition for contracts.
Still, Musk may have a difficult time cutting Department of Defense spending. First, Musk is the CEO of the company, SpaceX, that actively seeks billions in defense contracts. Second, if Musk is able to overcome his conflict-of-interest, defense industry lobbyists will lobby Congress to reverse any planned cuts. Finally, Trump has pledged to increase military spending during his second term.
"I will provide record funding for our military," Trump said in a video posted on his campaign website.
Popular Information is an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism since 2018. It is made possible by readers who upgrade to a paid subscription.
Trump is calling for more defense spending even though defense spending has doubled over the last 20 years. The Department of Defense struggles to accurately account how it spends this gusher of money. For the seventh year in a row, it has failed an independent audit.
Redefining failure as success
This year’s audit failure means that the Department of Defense has not passed since Congress began mandating the audits in 2018. The 2024 audit, which surveyed 28 separate agencies that operate under the Pentagon’s umbrella, found that 15 agencies failed to provide enough information for the auditors to assess how they handle their money.
Michael McCord, the Pentagon’s comptroller and chief financial officer, was unfazed by this failure, calling it “expected.” He also argued that because some agencies passed, the audit was actually a success. “So if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure,” McCord told reporters at a press conference on Friday. “We have a lot of work to do, but I think we’re making progress.”
Nine agencies passed their audit and three agency audits are still pending. In 2023, auditors failed 18 agencies.
Eight agencies also did a better job this year of balancing their spending and the amount of cash they have in government accounts. But of those eight, only two agencies actually passed their audit. The other six, while properly accounting for their cash, did not have enough information about their other assets to pass the audit.
Even with the improvements McCord touted, the scope of the Pentagon’s failure to keep track of its assets is still vast. According to the audit, the 15 agencies that could not properly account for their finances make up 44 percent of the Pentagon’s total assets and 68 percent of its budget. This year, the Pentagon held over $4.1 trillion in assets and had a budget of over $840 billion, meaning that auditors were unable to pin down $1.8 trillion in assets and $571 billion of the budget.
Despite these failures, Congress continues to appropriate more money every year to the Department of Defense. The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Department of Defense to pass its audit by 2028, but has no mechanism for penalizing failure.
McCord insisted that the Pentagon was on track for a clean audit by 2028, but that it would take the cooperation of the incoming Trump administration to reach that goal. If Trump is serious about improving government efficiency, he could push his Department of Defense to do a better job tracking its assets. But if he decides not to, the Pentagon will not face any consequences.
Popular Information is an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism since 2018.
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an rr 11 24
the two finalists to become Trump’s Treasury Secretary — the person will have a major hand in cutting taxes for the wealthy and raising tariffs so everyone pays more — are Howard Lutnick, who’s CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and Trump’s co-transition chair, and Steven Bessent, the founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital Management.
Lutnick had been in the lead but a few days ago, according to the The Wall Street Journal, he heard from Trump’s allies that he might not get the nod.
So Lutnick turned for help to Elon Musk, who now calls himself Trump’s “First Buddy.” Bessent’s supporters also reached out to Musk to endorse Bessent, which tells you alot about the palace intrigue going on now in Mar-a-Lago, and how much power Musk is now wielding.
Yesterday, Musk, posted on his X that Lutnick would be a better choice for treasury secretary than Bessent:
“My view fwiw is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change. Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another.”
I’ve spent quite some time around presidents and president-elects and even advised them about personnel decisions. The most basic rule of such advice-giving is you never make your advice public.
Doing so puts the president-elect in an impossible position: If he does what you’ve publicly urged him to do — even if he was going to do it anyway — your public advocacy makes it lookas if you pushed him into it, so he seems to be your patsy.
If the president-elect is Donald Trump, who thinks mainly in terms of dominance and submission, you’re playing with fire.
Bad enough that Musk broke this basic rule. He went even further, publicly encouraging his nearly 205 million followers on X to weigh in, in favor of Lutnick.
So Musk has very publicly cornered Trump. If Trump names Lutnick, it looks as if all Musk needs to do from now on is publicly urge Trump to do this or that, with the implicit threat of getting his 205 million followers stirred up to follow suit, and Trump will do it. Musk becomes de facto President.
I don’t know what Trump will do but I’m sure he’s seething. The most likely outcome is Trump doesn’t offer the job to either Lutnick nor Bessent, and fires Musk.
Musk’s public advocacy of Lutnick because he will “enact change” rather than “business-as-usual” also signals Musk’s and Trump’s criterion for filling high-level positions (besides unbridled fealty to Trump): The picks don’t need to know anything or share any large vision of the public good. They just have to be bomb-throwers who’ll shake things up.
The worst that can be said of any candidate is he’ll govern as usual.
Trump is well on his way to “crush the system,” as he promised — which most Americans appear to want because the “as usual” system has for decades been rewarding big-money donors, monopolists, CEOs living off government contracts (like Musk) and fat-cat denizens of Wall Street (like Lutnick and Bessent) — all of whom have been siphoning off most economic gains for themselves.
But if the new system that Trump installs (with or without Musk’s help) siphons off even more of the gains for those at the top, while destroying what’s left of our democracy, most Americans will find themselves even worse off and more resentful.
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an 11 24
Two advisers close to Donald Trump are engaged in a bitterly personal power struggle over some of the former president's Cabinet nominees, according to a new report.
Elon Musk quickly worked his way into the president-elect's inner circle after pouring about $200 million into his re-election campaign, but there are already signs of tension between the tech mogul and other Trump advisers — specifically longtime loyalist Boris Epshteyn, reported Axios.
"Their rocky relationship came to a head last Wednesday during a heated discussion at a dinner table in front of other guests at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, three people familiar with the episode told Axios," the website reported. "At one point during what the sources described as a 'massive blowup' and a 'huge explosion,' Musk accused Epshteyn of leaking details of Trump's transition — including personnel picks — to the media. Epshteyn responded by telling Musk that he didn't know what he was talking about."
Epshteyn pushed for former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) as attorney general, and Musk questioned whether the longtime adviser had too much influence over his top Justice department picks and the White House counsel pick of William McGinley, the sources said, while Epshteyn bristled at Musk's criticism.
Musk has been pushing for Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick as treasury secretary instead of Wall Street favorite Scott Bessent, a hedge fun manager who visited Mar-a-Lago last week.
"Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas [Lutnick] will actually enact change," Musk posted on his X platform. "Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt."
The tech billionaire is well-liked by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson and Trump's two eldest sons, but his near-constant presence at Mar-a-Lago has irritated some longstanding members of Trump's inner circle.
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an 11 24
“Another ethics conflict': Musk directs candidates to apply to DOGE via X
David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement
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an 11 24
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk may be careening toward an epic falling-out with President-elect Donald Trump, according to a new report.
NBC News' Dasha Burns reported Wednesday that the world's richest man is quickly ruffling feathers among the incoming president's inner circle. Musk, who was one of Trump's biggest financial backers in the 2024 campaign, is reportedly "pushing his own agenda" even above Trump's, and one unnamed Trump advisor confided to the outlet that the centabillionaire was "overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago."
"He’s behaving as if he’s a co-president and making sure everyone knows it," one source close to the president-elect told NBC of Musk. "And he’s sure taking lots of credit for the president’s victory."
READ MORE:**Elon Musk — who rails against 'illegals in America' – revealed to be an illegal immigrant**
Musk's America PAC, which spent more than $200 million to elect the GOP nominee, was powered in large part by the tech billionaire himself. He also turned his social media platform X into what NBC News called a "pro-Trump echo chamber," elevating baseless conspiracy theories about the Democratic ticket and tweaking the app's algorithm to push far-right content into users' feeds.
Burns' source said Musk was turning people off by "bragging about America PAC and X to anyone who will listen," and that he was "trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him." Now, the South African billionaire is reportedly at Mar-a-Lago "at all hours," and is joining Trump on important calls, including a recent call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Another one of NBC's sources said Musk has an "opinion on and about everything," and that he "wants to be seen as having say in everything (even if he doesn’t)." And his level of visibility in the president-elect's orbit has been criticized as "overly aggressive" and that it "may hurt his standing in the long run."
According to NBC, Musk's private jet was tracked heading to West Palm Beach, Florida last Tuesday night before heading back to Texas on Wednesday morning. The jet returned that same night, and remained there for the next four days. Musk was photographed in Florida with Trump's granddaughter, Kai, who tweeted that the Tesla CEO was "achieving uncle status."
READ MORE:**'Chief shareholder in the presidency': Musk on Trump-Zelenskyy Mar-a-Lago call fuels fears**
Should Musk have a falling out with Trump prior to Inauguration Day, it wouldn't be the first time a major Trump surrogate got sidelined between the election and Day One of the presidency. In 2016, Trump transition team co-chair and then-New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie was suddenly demoted as vice chair and replaced by then-Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Christie's fall from grace came as Democrats were considering impeaching him over his role in the 2013 "Bridgegate" scandal.
Musk's friendliness with Trump is also a relatively new phenomenon. He and Trump exchanged barbs on social media in 2022, when the former said of the latter that he should "hang up his hat & sail into the sunset." That remark was in response to Trump calling Musk a "bulls— artist." Trump clapped back in a Truth Social post, writing that Musk "came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it's electric cars that don't drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere."
"I could have said, 'drop to your knees and beg,' and he would have done it," Trump wrote.
Click here to read NBC's report in its entirety.
READ MORE:[Elon Musk donates 'sizable amount' to shadowy new pro-Trump super PAC
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11 24
alternet-no lnx
Trump didn't win — disinformation did
Sabrina Haake, Raw StoryNovember 11, 2024
America has made a terrible mistake. Despite everything we’ve seen from the right, voters have nonetheless moved toward it.
Rather than the mandate Trump/Musk/Christo-nationalists are claiming from the election, however, US voters merely reflected the same pattern emerging from around the globe, almost universally: Incumbent leaders and parties world-wide have been defeated, or their majorities reduced, in a global ‘radicalizing effect’ still lingering from the Covid economy. Across the political spectrum, voters have punished incumbent parties in Japan, South Africa, Italy, Austria, the UK, France, Sweden, Finland, New Zealand, Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands. As Matthew Yglesias wrote for the NYT, “everywhere you look in the world of affluent democracies, the exact same thing is happening: The incumbent party is losing and often losing quite badly.”
As a healing balm, this may feel thin. After all, other countries don’t have a Trump equivalent (except perhaps Netanyahu, whose war is keeping him in office, and Putin, whose elections are a joke). Americans have seemingly embraced a known monster, someone who sells political violence and hatred, who tried to overthrow the last election. But it’s more complicated than that. Trump supporters in the US consume right wing propaganda far more than the rest of the country, which means they were either not informed about Trump’s sinister plans, or Fox and Musk succeeded in scaring them with a firehose of Harris disinformation.
First Amendment law needs to catch up with an altered media landscape
While it may feel better to think of Trump supporters as misinformed rather than hateful, the downside is that an un-informed public cannot sustain a freely elected democracy. This is exactly what Musk, Murdoch, Putin, and destabilizing forces from around the world are banking on. Like a snake gorging on its own tail, domestic disrupters are weaponizing America’s First Amendment to get rid of it so that the oligarchs funding them can drill, shoot, pollute, and defraud American consumers with impunity.
I’ve been a trial lawyer for decades, and I’ve had the misfortune of litigating arcane aspects of First Amendment law. Fox and Musk have gotten away with spreading disinformation because of a self-serving misapprehension of the political speech doctrine: The First Amendment protects ‘core political speech’ above all other forms of expression. But Musk purchasing the world’s town square only to weaponize it to support his own agenda, and Fox admittedly lying to viewers nonstop to promote Trump, isn’t political speech presumptively entitled to legal protection.
Weaponized disinformation will ultimately kill the First Amendment, which the Supreme Court recognized back in 1969 when it approved the Fairness Doctrine and required accuracy in the media. Even in politics, the foundational role of protecting free speech is the promotion of free ideas, not to protect a nefarious publisher’s monopoly.
Musk, Fox and Putin spread rampant election disinformation
Elon Musk is a disinformation superspreader who weaponized Twitter/X to amplify blatant anti-Harris lies to his 200 million followers. Fox is an admitted network of lies, one with nationwide reach close to that of Musk’s. Russia also disseminated false information to benefit Trump, spreading fake videos and election-related press releases across multiple social media platforms, including a hoax impersonating FBI officials to scare people away from the polls.
US courts need to carefully consider the political speech doctrine before it does us in, if it hasn’t already. Under the theory that only more speech can cure bad ideas, the right to speak one’s mind politically has been and must remain sacrosanct: “(T)he remedy to be applied (to expose falsehoods and fallacies) is more speech, not enforced silence.”Rampant disinformation from the 2024 election reveals the limitations of that approach: monopolized conversations ultimately become one-sided.
The bottom line is that speech is no longer the same because we don’t consume media the same way we did when the First Amendment was written.We don’t even consume media the same way we did more recently, when the Fairness Doctrine was embraced by SCOTUS.
We aren’t hateful.We’re just misinformed.
As I see it, Trump didn’t win this election. Disinformation did, demonstrating that the world’s richest men, funding disinformation, will stop at nothing to end government regulations and taxes, or to defeat democracy itself.
We aren’t a hateful nation, we’re a nation that’s been lied to. By Fox, by Russia, by Elon Musk.We have the strongest economy in the world, we recovered post-Covid better than any other advanced economy, unemployment is low, and the Biden stock market hit more records than Trump’s, yet Fox, Musk and Russia convinced half the country that we’re in economic peril. According to AP VoteCast’s sweeping survey and other network exit polls, most voters were focused on a ‘crumbling’ economy, and they broke hard for Trump.
While it’s true that Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue plan temporarily exacerbated inflation by up to 3 percentage points, it also powered the US’ stunning comeback from Covid. Economists have observed that the gap between voters’ positive perceptions of their own financial health, compared to their negative perceptions of the country’s economic health, is mainly explained by what they are being told by the media.
The richest men in the world bought the election
In the final weeks before the election, Elon Musk hosted town halls throughout battleground states and promoted a fraudulent “lottery” that wasn’t really a lottery at all, giving away $1 million a day to promote Trump. Musk, the richest man in the world, says he and his America PAC, funded with $118 million of his own money, will “keep going after this election, and prepare for the midterms and any intermediate elections.” We shall see.
His and Fox’s willingness to skirt the law show the fruits of an intimidation campaign by Republican attorneys general and legislators designed to force social media to platform falsehoods and hate speech. These same nefarious forces will oppose any efforts to impose fairness in the media’s coverage of politics, because, for now, they benefit politically from the lies.
But there will come a day when their goals run counter to Trump/Musks, and even they, educated by federal courts, will see the value in protecting truth.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the Substack, The Haake Take.
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11 24
Over the weekend, HEATED reported on one of the stranger bedfellowships of the 2024 election: Elon Musk, clean tech billionaire, and Joe Craft, coal billionaire.
ICYMI: Craft is one of the largest donors to Elon Musk’s America PAC. The coal baron made a one-time $1 million donation in June, marking his single-largest-ever campaign contribution.
That Craft would fork over $1 million to a pro-Trump effort is not surprising. What’s surprising is that the money would go to Musk, who once helped South Australia quit coal, and whose business plan for Tesla literally proposes to “eliminate fossil fuels.”
So why would Craft throw his weight behind Musk, of all people? My theory is that it has less to do with Musk’s vision for the future of energy, and more so his vision for the future of cryptocurrency.
Because Craft, like Musk, is a certified crypto bro.And if cryptocurrency soars in the near-term future, then Craft is betting that coal will, too.
The coal company mining Bitcoin
Cryptocurrency mining requires an enormous amount of electricity—so much that in 2020, a coal plant slated for retirement was revived because of Bitcoin mining. This has been great news for Craft’s coal company, Alliance Resource Partners.
In an April earnings call, Craft said that cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence is “driving significant growth in anticipated electricity demand over the next several years.” This increase in demand has “given us some more optimism that our coal operations will continue longer than when we started looking at some of this diversification,” Craft said.
And Craft isn’t just waiting for Bitcoin miners to create demand for coal. He’s creating the demand himself. Over the last four years, Alliance Resource Partners has mined a whopping $30 million worth of Bitcoin, Alliance CFO Cary Marshall said on the April earnings call. “We're not actually out there buying Bitcoin or anything of that nature,” Marshall said. “We're mining the Bitcoin associated with these miners that we have.
Craft went on to explain that Alliance has "effectively built” a data center for Bitcoin mining, and is using the excess electricity from its coal facilities to power the energy-intensive Bitcoin mining process.
In addition, Craft said Alliance is renting its excess data processing capacity to other Bitcoin miners, “to take advantage of the low energy costs we have.”
The extra income from Alliance’s Bitcoin mining operations are helping the coal company remain financially stable, Marshall added. “We're mining the Bitcoin, and we're selling generally on a monthly basis to cover our operating costs,” he said. He added that the company currently owns about 425 Bitcoin and expects to mine between 175 to 190 more this year.
Meanwhile, Forbes has called Musk “one of the biggest Bitcoin and crypto price influencers”—which could extend to the government level if Trump is re-elected. If re-elected, Trump has promised to appoint Musk the head of a new department to oversee and mitigate government spending: The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—a reference to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin. (Trump has also pledged to create a bitcoin strategic reserve if elected, as well as form a crypto advisory council).
Musk, for what it’s worth, used to be concerned about the potential negative impacts of cryptocurrency on climate change, particularly with regard to coal. In 2021, just weeks after Tesla announced it hadinvested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, Musk announced that Tesla would no longer accept car purchases via Bitcoin. "We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel," he said. "Cryptocurrency is a good idea... but this cannot come at great cost to the environment."
But like all things related to climate change, Musk seems to have abandoned that concern. Today, Tesla is the third-largest Bitcoin holder among public companies, Yahoo reported, and SpaceX “is said to be holding around 8,285 coins.”
Anyway, just thought that was interesting. What do y’all think?
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BB
Why are Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk are so happy today?
Because with Trump in office, they can realize their dream of becoming trillionaires. Here's what they xitted and threaded today:
- Musk: $285 billion: "It is morning in America again."
- Zuckerberg: $206 billion: "Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory. We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration."
- Bezos: $222 billion: "Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love."`
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AN 11 24
Tech reporter Kara Swisher on Wednesday refuted CNN conservative strategist Scott Jennings’ effusive praise of billionaire Elon Musk, arguing you “can separate” the billionaire X owner’s “heinous behavior” from his entrepreneurship — “if you have half a brain.”
Musk on Tuesday watched election returns with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago as the country overwhelmingly elected the former president to another 4 years in the White House. As theWashington Postreported Wednesday, Musk has future political ambitions, and has “repeatedly discussed with Trump the idea of joining a new commission to slash federal spending by as much as $2 trillion" when the he takes office next year.
Jennings on Wednesday implored his fellow panelists to “be nice” to Musk, arguing voters “want unconventional” — and Musk will bring just that to the Trump Administration.
READ MORE: Trump has vowed to be a ‘dictator’ on day one. What exactly will he do?
Swisher, who’s interviewed Musk over 30 times, had less praise for the billionaire.
“I'm looking at a lot of things,” Swisher said. “The instability and the decisions that he makes are sometimes haphazard and strange, often.”
The tech reporter said Musk “is allowed to blow up rockets because he can do it and take those risks and the shareholders go along with him,” but argued “it’s a different thing when it comes to the federal government.”
“People's lives depend on it,” Swisher said. “I know you think its funny and I don't think that it's funny at all.”
READ MORE:[48 percent of Gen-Z members 'lied' about their politics: survey
The reporter went on to argue that if Trump and Musk treat the federal government like a startup, “the least among us suffer — and that’s just the way it is.”
“[Musk] has a history of doing that, lack of safety at certain of his facilities, and he has a history of firing people,” Swisher said. “And a history of not paying people. And he has a history of being haphazard and firing someone who talks back against him. And for someone who is for free speech, he clamps down on speech a lot it when he doesn't like it. So if you want that too, that's great and hah, hah if you want to do it that way.”
Swisher suggested Musk could merge X with Trump’s social media company Truth Social.
“That could be interesting and incredibly corrupt and he'll use it as a propaganda organ which is precisely why he bought it,” she said. “This was a great investment by Elon Musk in Donald J. Trump.”
READ MORE:['Scared and stressed': Robert Reich details game plan for surviving Trump 2.0
Jennings argued that Musk “wasn’t elected” and merely “supports Donald Trump, and now he's going to have influence because his side won.”
“Honestly, I hear all of this carping about Elon Musk and it sounds like sour grapes from the side of the ball that shunned this guy and now they're paying for it,” he said, later arguing “you can't begrudge this man, his opportunity to participate in the political system in the way that he sees fit.”
“Nobody begrudges his ability to speak,” Swisher shot back. “What they begrudge is the flood of misinformation and all kinds of things that happen on that platform — which is uncontrolled and it's not about free speech, because he decides when and where to do it.”
Swisher noted Trump and Elon “may not be able to coexist in the same place” as they’re both “very petulant” and like attention.
READ MORE:**'Their shame is eternal': Conservative attorney rips 2020 GOP following Trump victory**
"He and Trump will clash at some point, much in the same way that he clashed with the Biden Administration,” Swisher predicted.
The tech reporter added that while Trump gets credit for his space exploration and electric cars, “what he doesn't get credit for [is] his heinous behavior and bringing people down — and that troubles me.”
“And you can separate it from the entrepreneurship if you have half a brain,” the reporter added.
* Watch the video below[or at this link.
gotv outsrc to musk?
his superpac? rAN NEG ADS PRO HAMAS and PRO ISRAEL TO DIFF GPS
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MAD SQ GARDEN NAZI RALLY GOTHIC DARK MAGA
projection It concluded with speeches from Trump, his wife, Melania, and billionaire Elon Musk arguing that Trump's the hopeful, optimistic choice.
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rww 10/31/2024
by
- Ron Filipkowski @ MeidasTouch Network: Charlie Kirk: Harris Wants Women to Lie to Their Husbands
Trump campaign surrogate and Turning Point USA Chief Charlie Kirk denounced an ad being run by the Kamala Harris campaign that suggests to women that they can secretly vote for her without telling their husbands to avoid marital strife.
- Jake Lahut @ Wired: Workers Say They Were Tricked and Threatened as Part of Elon Musk’s Get-Out-the-Vote Effort
> America PAC door knockers were flown to Michigan, driven in the back of a U-Haul, and told they’d have to pay hotel bills unless they met unrealistic quotas. One was surprised they were working to elect Donald Trump.
- Zack Beauchamp @ Vox: Inside Trump’s ominous plan to turn civil rights law against vulnerable Americans
A look at Trump’s ideas for a key Justice Department division uncovers the potentially disastrous consequences of his assault on democracy.
- Michael E. Heyes @ Religion News Service: The ‘Courage Tour’ is attempting to get Christians to vote for Trump − and focused on defeating ‘demons’
The ‘Courage Tour,’ a religio-political rally, is going around battleground states. It is focused on defeating Democrats, but also on defeating ‘demonic forces.’
- Josh Fiallo @ The Daily Beast: RNC Already Gumming Up the Works With Dozens of Spurious Election Lawsuits
The 2024 election is said to be “the most litigated in American history”—even before Election Day—but Republican efforts have largely been rebuffed.
- Isaac Schorr @ Mediaite: Conspiracy Theorist Laura Loomer and Senator Rick Scott Trade Compliments During Chummy Interview: ‘Saved Every Single Note That You Ever Sent to Me’
Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) joined bigoted conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer for a chummy interview in which Loomer expressed her support for Scott’s bid to lead the Republican Senate conference on Tuesday.
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an 11 24
Elon Musk's lawyers appeared in a Pennsylvania courtroom on Monday to defend him against claims that his $1 million voter lottery is illegal.
Elon Musk, the CEO of X, announced a $1 million daily giveaway to registered voters in swing states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments. However, legal experts warned that the scheme may violate federal laws prohibiting payment for voter registration. The DOJ subsequently warned Musk that the giveaway could be illegal.
According to CNN reporter Marshall Cohen, Musk's lawyers claimed in court that the money isn't actually a lottery and that the winners aren't being picked random, as he once said.
Instead, it's payment for people "chosen" to be spokespeople for his super PAC, they said.
"Winners are picked based on their 'suitability to serve' and their personal story, lawyer Chris Gober said," according to Cohen.
Also Read: Elon Musk: You're on notice
Musk announced the funds as a "giveaway" and told an audience that would be given "randomly to people who signed the petition."
The Philadelphia District Attorney's office called this a "complete admission of liability," said the reporter. They say that Musk is running a "lottery" that is illegal under their state laws.
They also showed the video of Musk announcing allocating the donations "randomly" and "by chance."
The district attorney said Musk is running an illegal lottery under Pennsylvania gaming laws using words like this.
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an 11 24 gotv fail
Many political strategists, over the years, have argued that as important as messaging is to a political campaign, the things that matters the most in the end is turnout.
With Election Day 2024 only a day away and countless national and battleground state polls showing a very close race, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are both trying to fire up their parties. But according to the Washington Monthly's Bill Scher, Harris will have the advantage if the race ultimately comes down to turnout.
"Every national and battleground state poll shows a statistical dead heat, with neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump holding a lead outside the margin of error," Scher explains in an article published on November 4. "Many factors could determine the outcome of a race this close. One of those factors is the relative strength of the competing campaigns' get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations…. In a contest where one or more states may be decided by less than a percentage point, the rational strategic decision is to invest money and talent in an effective turnout operation."
READ MORE:5 ways Trump is planning to thwart election results: report
Scher adds, "All available evidence indicates that Harris did that and Trump did not."
On June 20, the Washington Monthly published an article by Scher headlined, "Donald Trump's Get-Out-The-Vote Plan is Bonkers." Scher detailed the GOP's get-out-the-vote efforts, which were greatly influenced by far-right Turning Point USA and its leader Charlie Kirk.
"The plan was premised on eschewing swing voters in densely populated suburbs and cities in favor of chasing ultra-conservative 'MAGA' types who mainly live in rural areas and don't reliably vote," Scher explains. "Then-Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel gave Turning Point the cold shoulder, and some Republicans warned the plan smelled like a grift. Turning Point's Charlie Kirk fought back and publicly pressed Trump to shiv McDaniel. Trump obliged, and McDaniel quit under pressure in February 2024."
Kirk's get-out-the-vote plan, Scher emphasizes, has not served Trump well.
:{:{READ MORE:Harassing letters threatening biblical hell fire targets Democratic voters in Wisconsin}:
"Doing things the old-fashioned RNC way — with door-knocking efficiently concentrated in more densely populated areas where more swing voters live — meant behaving like a responsible adult," Scher argues. "Following Kirk's strategy of digging up stray MAGA voters in far-flung places allowed Trump to indulge in his darkest impulses."
Scher adds, "We can't say yet who will win. But, almost surely, if Trump wins, it will be despite his GOTV team, not because of it."
READ MORE: Trump spokesman launches unhinged attack on Harris campaign official
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freq talk to putin taiwan starlink XI ukraine?
dw no pix link
Fact check: Elon Musk spreads US election lies
Anwar Ashraf
11 hours ago11 hours ago
Billionaire X owner Elon Musk is amplifying false claims about the US election and shaping public opinion. DW fact-checks three of his narratives.
https://p.dw.com/p/4mUmO
X owner Elon Musk jumps next to Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump during a campaign rally
Elon Musk joined a Trump rally in early OctoberImage: Evan Vucci/picture alliance/AP
The way the world's richest man, Elon Musk, is getting involved in US politics shows how billionaires with control over social media can influence public opinion and potentially sway elections.
"Since Elon Musk took over X, the platform has devolved into a hellscape of hate and disinformation — much of which comes from Mr. Musk himself," Imran Ahmed, head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), told DW.
Unlike most tech billionaires and political donors, Musk's political involvement is highly visible and has intensified ahead of the US presidential election on November 5. A recent CCDH report found that Musk's false or misleading claims about the US election got 1.2 billion views between January and July 2024 on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), which he owns.
Musk dons a black "Make America Great Again" ball capMusk dons a black "Make America Great Again" ball cap
Musk is has openly supported Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaignImage: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Musk's role as a source of mis- and disinformation extends beyond his own posts. He frequently retweets or engages with false and misleading claims and conspiracy theories, and his engagement gives these posts an immense reach.
Here are three examples of how Musk is spreading false claims ahead of the US election.
1: False narratives about migrants voting
Claim: In July, US Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Democrats "want to turn illegal aliens into voters." Musk retweeted this claim, adding that "the goal all along has been to import as many illegal voters as possible," implying that immigrants are being brought into the country to support Democrats. The post has received more than 45 million views.
A screenshot of a post by Musk on Twitter/XA screenshot of a post by Musk on Twitter/X
Musk has made false claims about 'illegal voters'Image: X/@elonmusk
DW fact check: False
Only US citizens can vote in US federal elections. "Noncitizens, including permanent legal residents, cannot vote in federal, state and most local elections," a statement on USA.gov, an official US government website, explains. Federal law strictly prohibits noncitizens from voting in US presidential elections.
Musk has also stated it takes, "less than five minutes and zero documentation" with the help of an app to be approved as an illegal immigrant and flown to the US at American taxpayers' expense. Musk reposted a video that alleged that by using the CBP One app, an unlimited number of foreigners could enter the US. The app was developedby US Customs and Border Protection agency and is used to schedule appointments for asylum processing. However, simply registering in the app does not guarantee entry into the US.
Still, Musk's post was viewed nearly 20 million times and was shared tens of thousands of times.
Under US immigration law, eligible individuals must apply for asylum while physically present in the US, and the decision process typically takes years.
Border fence at the US-Mexico borderBorder fence at the US-Mexico border
Immigration is a major issue in this year's US electionImage: DW
2: Posting fake pictures of Kamala Harris
Claim: In early September, Musk posted an image showing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris dressed in a red Communist outfit with a hammer and sickle on her hat, with the caption: "Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?" This post quickly went viral, reaching more than 80 million views.
An AI-generated image depicting Democratic candidate Kamala Harris as a communist dictatorAn AI-generated image depicting Democratic candidate Kamala Harris as a communist dictator
Musk posted an AI-generated picture of Kamala Harris in SeptemberImage: X/@elonmusk
DW fact check: Fake.
This is not a real image of Harris. The photo was generated by artificial intelligence, as revealed by the sharpness of Harris' image against a blurred background and the unusually bright colors. An advanced AI image detector tool like truemedia.org finds "substantial evidence of manipulation."
Sander van der Linden, a professor at the University of Cambridge in the UK and author of "Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity" told DW that misinformation erodes the quality of democratic discourse, lowers trust in the electoral process and outcome "and for some people can even change the way they vote."
With a net worth over $263 billion (€242 billion) as of November, according to Forbes, Musk is the world's wealthiest person, making him a unique influencer. He has a major social media presence with more than 200 million followers. For comparison, Taylor Swift has over 500 million followers.
The xAI logo seen displayed on a smartphone with the official profile of Elon MuskThe xAI logo seen displayed on a smartphone with the official profile of Elon Musk
Musk bought Twitter in 2022, rebranding it as XImage: Jaque Silva/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/picture alliance
Since acquiring Twitter two years ago and rebranding it as X, Musk has done things like reinstate the account of former President Donald Trump, which was suspended following Trump's controversial posts after the last presidential election in 2020, which he lost. Trump has more than 92 million followers on X, and less than 8 million on his own social media platform Truth Social.
3: Questioning the electoral process
Musk has amplified claims that there is something wrong with voter rolls in Michigan, an important swing state. The original claim — that Michigan has more voters than residents eligible to vote — has been debunked by Michigan's Election Fact Center.
Claim: Musk doubled down in mid-October and accused Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of dishonesty, writing, "you only plan to remove the ineligible voters AFTER the election. That necessarily means that there are far more people registered to vote than there are eligible voters."
241101 DW Faktencheck Fact Check | Elon Musk Wahlprozess EN241101 DW Faktencheck Fact Check | Elon Musk Wahlprozess EN
Musk's misleading post about the number of voters in MichiganImage: X/@elonmusk
DW fact check: Misleading.
Under state and federal law in the US, voters are only removed from voter rolls after they have been sent a notice that their registration is subject to cancellation and two subsequent federal election cycles have passed without any response or voting activity.
"Michigan has done more in last five years to improve the accuracy of our voter rolls than in the previous two decades," the state says on its election information website. "Since 2019, election officials have cancelled more than 800,000 voter registrations and identified more than 600,000 slated for cancellation in 2025 and 2027 once the legally required two-federal election cycle period has passed."
Trump, Musk rally at site of assassination attempt
01:59
What motivates Musk?
Musk and Trump have a complex relationship. During Trump's 2016 campaign, Musk publicly questionedTrump's fitness for office. Trump then later appointedMusk to his advisory council, a role Musk eventually leftdue to policy disagreements.
Van der Linden, at the University of Cambridge, thinks Musk believes a Trump victory would be in the best interests of his business. It might include "potentially more contracts from NASA for SpaceX, more federal contracts for Starlink, and free range to run X however he wants without government oversight of social media companies," he said.
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heated pod 11 24
Elon Musk, the erstwhile “climate hero” who built his name and fortune on clean technology, has an unexpected partner in his bid to re-elect Donald Trump: Big Coal.
Joe Craft, the billionaire CEO of coal mining company Alliance Resource Partners, is one of the top donors to Elon Musk’s America PAC, according to campaign finance disclosures reviewed by HEATED. Craft made a one-time donation of $1 million to Musk’s PAC in June, marking the coal magnate’s single-largest campaign contribution to date.
Craft, who has deep ties to the Republican Party and Trump, is America PAC’s only fossil fuel funder. All other large donations have come from people with ties to Musk and the tech industry, including SpaceX board director Antonio Gracias, PayPal former executive Ken Howery, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
America PAC has made headlines this election season due to its $75 million contribution from Musk; its highly sexist advertising; and its potentially illegal million-dollar giveaways. But its previously unreported fellowship with Craft is also "hugely significant,” said Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager at the watchdog and clean energy advocate the Energy and Policy Institute (EPI).
“It’s just surprising to me that a super PAC led by Elon Musk of all people would be taking money from a coal baron who is so anti-climate science and anti-clean tech, given that Musk has built his wealth and prestige in American industry by investing in clean tech and electric vehicles,” Anderson said.
But Musk has more in common with the coal executive than one might think.
HEATED’s original climate journalism is funded entirely by readers. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Coal-powered clean tech
At first glance, Craft and Musk would appear to be on opposite ends of the energy spectrum. One has made billions by selling the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel; the other has put coal plants out of business by selling solar panels and electric vehicles. Craft funds climate deniers, while Musk has called climate change “the biggest threat that humanity faces this century.”
But both men share an ambitious vision to eliminate environmental regulations, which are cutting into their companies’ respective bottom lines. Musk currently faces at least 20 federal investigations, including a review of SpaceX’s environmental impact, according to an analysis byThe New York Times. Environmental regulations, as well as competition from cheaper gas, have likewise battered the coal industry.
The coal industry also stands to benefit from the rise of electric vehicles—so long as the energy that powers those vehicles continues to come from coal. In a recent earnings call, Craft noted that his company was doing better than expected due to heightened electricity demand fueled by EVs. “Data center growth driven by artificial intelligence and industrial load led by electric vehicles and battery manufacturing are driving significant growth in anticipated electricity demand over the next several years,” he said.
This perhaps explains Musk’s recent departure from climate advocacy. After years of professing deep concern about the climate crisis, Musk this year declared that he doesn’t think the risk of global warming is “as high as a lot of people say,” and that he doesn’t think people should “vilify the oil and gas industry.”
America PAC has subtly followed suit, with one of its Facebook ads warning voters that “crazy liberals” would take away their gas-fueled trucks and meat, a common Republican rallying cry to kill support for climate regulation. It’s a surprising choice for the clean tech mogul, who only two years ago posted on his platform X that drilling for more oil and gas “Obviously…would negatively affect Tesla.”
But Musk’s potential return for supporting Trump is far too good to pass up. If re-elected, Trump has promised that Musk will lead a new “government efficiency commission” overseeing the same regulatory agencies scrutinizing his business practices.
And Craft, a longtime Trump supporter, stands to get a great return on his investment, |
Joe Craft, CEO of Alliance Resource Partners, walks with wife Kelly Craft in 2018. Source: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
The coal billionaire running the GOP’s fundraising
During his first presidency, Trump vowed to end “the war on beautiful, clean coal” and pledged to “put miners back to work.” But he didn’t fulfill those promises. Despite weakening limits on coal plant emissions and requirements for storing toxic coal ash, coal continued its steady decline during Trump’s first term. Seventy-five coal power plants closed and 13,000 coal workers lost their jobs.
It is perhaps because of this that the coal industry has donated far less in 2024 than to previous Trump campaigns, reaching a new low of $7.9 million this election compared to $18.7 million in 2016.
But while other coal executives have stepped back from campaign financing, Joe Craft has bet nearly $3 million on Trump’s campaigns over the past decade. That investment has paid off personally and professionally—Trump appointed Craft’s wife, Kelly Craft, as ambassador to Canada in 2017, and the United Nations in 2019.
During Trump’s first administration, Craft’s deep pockets and connections also bought access to the Environmental Protection Agency and Trump himself. Internal documents obtained by the EPI show that Craft and other coal and utility executives petitioned Trump to launch a failed attempt to bail out the coal industry in 2018, along with nuclear power plants. The move was so wildly unpopular that even the American Petroleum Institute, a fossil fuel lobbying group notorious for funding climate denial, called the idea “unprecedented and misguided.”
Craft maintained a close relationship with Trump’s first EPA chief Scott Pruitt, meeting him seven times during his first 14 months, and wooing him with gifts like courtside seats at the University of Kentucky’s basketball games.
 |
Text messages from Michael Dowling, a lobbyist for utility FirstEnergy, in 2018 show that Craft was part of the effort to persuade Trump to save the coal industry. Source: Energy and Policy Institute
In addition to claiming falsely that American coal doesn’t drive climate change, Craft has made significant donations to climate denial groups. Through his personal foundation, Craft gave more $900,000 to the Texas Public Policy Institute from 2020 to 2022, according to tax records. He also gave $750,000 over the same period to Government Accountability and Oversight—a group that fights back against climate litigation and includes a lawyer who harasses climate scientists.
And while ambassador to Canada, Kelly Craft faced public backlash after saying she wasn’t sure she believed in climate change because “there are scientists on both sides that are accurate.” Her email signature included "sent from my coal powered iPad."
The Crafts have continued to be influential during Trump’s 2024 campaign. Joe and Kelly Craft were also appointed to lead the Republican National Committee’s campaign finance arm, despite the fact that Craft’s contribution is small in comparison to other fossil fuel executives. The Crafts also hosted a Trump fundraiser at their home in Kentucky in May, a dinner that cost $25,000 per couple.
Craft is hoping that coal will stage a comeback as the enormous energy demands of AI and data centers exceeds the amount of electricity currently on the grid. Already, coal power plants that were scheduled to go offline have remained online as states try to meet their energy demands.
On a recent earnings call, Craft chafed at the grid’s growing reliance on renewable power sources like wind and solar.
“This unexpected new demand is set to ramp up,” he said, “even as the nation's power portfolio continues to be hamstrung by politically motivated regulatory-driven forced premature closures of coal fired and other fossil fuel generating sources.”
The billionaire thinks Trump will be the quiet comeback coal needs. “Our coal miners love Donald Trump. They still love Donald Trump because they know Donald Trump cared about them,” Craft said on a podcast in February.
Trump has also promised to end federal support for wind power, which he’s falsely claimed are “killing all our eagles and our birds" and “driving whales crazy.” In the first presidential debate, Trump called clean energy the “green new scam.” And two of Trump’s most likely picks to lead the EPA include Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, and Mandy Gunasekara, an author of Project 2025 who claims that coal is “inherently more reliable and resilient” than renewable energy.
“They’re basically attempting to defend the energy sources that make their funders the most money from competition from renewables,” said Anderson.
Electric vehicles are part of the demand on the grid, making Musk an inadvertent ally in some ways to the coal industry. But Tesla’s business plan depends on making coal power obsolete. Last year, Musk helped accelerate Australia’s grid transition from coal power to clean power using Tesla batteries, and is working on doing the same in Hawaii. In 2023, Musk also put out a three-part Tesla “Master Plan” to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy, which started with a chapter on how to “eliminate fossil fuels”.
“It just reiterates, why is he siding politically with these people who would probably like to dismantle his entire industry given the chance?” said Anderson. “It’s not super surprising that Joe Craft is giving money to Trump again, but rather surprising that the money is arriving from America PAC.”
Further reading:
- U.S. Agencies Fund, and Fight With, Elon Musk. A Trump Presidency Could Give Him Power Over Them. The New York Times, October 2024.
Already, Mr. Musk has discussed how he would use the new position to help his own companies. He has questioned a rule that required SpaceX to obtain a permit for discharging large amounts of potentially polluted water from its launchpad in Texas. He also said that limiting this kind of oversight could help SpaceX reach Mars sooner — “so long as it is not smothered by bureaucracy,” he wrote on X, his social-media platform. “The Department of Government Efficiency is the only path to extending life beyond Earth.”
- Race for presidency has no time for old 'King Coal'. S&P Global, October 2024.
Despite fading from the national stage, the stakes remain high for the coal sector. The outcome of the election could affect the pace of federal approvals for coal mine expansions and have an impact on a proposal to stop leasing federal property in the Powder River Basin, the nation's most productive coal region.
- Elon Musk was once an environmental hero: is he still a rare green billionaire? The Guardian, November 2023.
But the climate credentials of the world’s richest person have become clouded by his embrace of rightwing politicians, some of whom dismiss global heating, as well as by his management of X, formerly known as Twitter, during which many climate scientists have fled the platform amid a proliferation of misinformation about the climate crisis.
- A Courtside View of Scott Pruitt’s Cozy Ties With a Billionaire Coal Baron. The New York Times, June 2018.
Mr. Pruitt’s attendance at the game … followed a year of regulatory victories for Mr. Craft, who maintains close ties to Mr. Pruitt even as he has lobbied the E.P.A. on issues important to his company, Alliance Resource Partners. And unlike other executives with whom Mr. Pruitt is known to have close ties — like the oilman Harold Hamm or the coal mogul Robert E. Murray — Mr. Craft has stayed relatively under the radar.
===
ggl Rolling Stone
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an 10 254 RR
Elon Musk (worth $271 billion) and Jeff Bezos (worth $262 billion) — the richest and second-richest people on the planet — are now showing America why it’s dangerous to have great wealth concentrated in so few hands.
In August 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Postfor $250 million. On Friday, just as the Postwas preparing to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Bezos stopped the paper from doing so.
Partly as a result, the Post has already lost 250,000 subscribers, or 10 percent of its subscriber base.
In October 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billon, turned it into X, and became its biggest user, with 202 million followers.
Musk has endorsed Trump — and weaponized the platform into a supporter of Trump, smeared Harris, and amplified rumors and conspiracy theories.
ALSO READ:[Experts sound alarm over Trump's promise to let RFK Jr. 'control' health agencies
Independent analysts such as Edison Research said in March that X’s usage in the United States dropped 30 percent since last year. Fidelity this month estimated that X’s value has plunged by about 80 percent since Musk’s takeover.
Why have these two oligarchs been willing to take actions that cause so many of their customers to jump ship? What’s the connection between Bezos’s preventing thePostfrom endorsing Harris and Musk’s weaponizing X for Trump?
Here’s a hint:
Just hours after Bezos stopped the Post from endorsing Harris, executives of Blue Origin, Bezos’s private rocket company, met with Trump in Austin.
Although Blue Origin is running far behind Musk’s SpaceX, Bezos is the most likely serious challenger to Musk’s dominance in space because of his personal fortune and his billions of dollars in government contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense.
For years, Bezos has focused on beating Musk for the multibillion-dollar contracts to launch payloads and rockets. “Elon’s real superpower is getting government money,” Bezos said in 2016, according to the Post. “From now on, we go after everything that SpaceX bids on.”
Musk’s company appears so far ahead in the competition that it won a contract to rescue astronauts stuck at the International Space Station.
But that could change. Boeing and Lockheed Martin have been looking to unload their own joint-venture rocket company, United Launch Alliance (ULA), which has billions of dollars in government contracts, extensive infrastructure, and an experienced team.
Bezos’s Blue Origin is reportedly the favorite to take over ULA. Even the head of the U.S. Space Force’s purchases seems to be pushing for the two rocket companies to merge, telling an industry audience that “they need to scale” in order to meet an aggressive launch schedule.
ULA is still a major force in the space industry, competing for dozens of launches over the next four years, which can bring in billions more revenue. Combining with Blue Origin would make a lot of sense. The Wall Street Journal reports that Blue Origin has already submitted a bid to buy ULA.
If that’s the goal, Bezos’s biggest obstacle would be Trump, should Trump get back in the White House.
Trump has been out to get Bezos since 2017, when Trump first started blaming Bezos for poor coverage in The Washington Post — a grievance that has hurt Blue Origin.
In April 2019, then-Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff alerted Blue Origin officials to Bezos’s poor reputation in the White House, telling them that they have a “Washington Post problem.”
Trump also said he wanted to “screw Amazon” out of a $10 billion deal to provide cloud computing to the Pentagon, according to a memoir by his Defense Secretary James Mattis. (It’s since been reported that Oracle, led by Larry Ellison — Trump donor, Musk mentor, and Oracle founder, who ranks just behind Musk and Bezos as the third-richest person in America with an estimated $211.2 billion in wealth — had sought to sabotage the deal.)
So Bezos has been courting Trump. After Trump’s ear was grazed by a bullet during an attempted assassination at a July campaign rally, prompting a Musk endorsement of the former president, Bezos called Trump to say how impressed he was that the candidate had raised his fist after coming under fire, according to a person familiar with that conversation.
Soon after Trump formally secured the Republican nomination, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy phoned Trump, introducing himself and outlining the company’s plans for the future. The call concluded with Trump suggesting that the company cut a large check for his presidential efforts, according to two people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount the private discussion. Trump told Jassy that he was going to win the election and that Amazon should help him because it would be in the company’s best interests.
In this sense, then, both Bezos’s refusal to allowThe Washington Postto endorse Harris and Musk’s weaponizing X for Trump can be seen as moves in a proxy war for dominance in government contracting of spaceflight, where the ultimate prize will be hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars — thereby distending the fortunes of either Bezos or Musk.
But the casualty in this war is American democracy, for which neither Bezos nor Musk apparently has a scintilla of concern.
America is now in its second Gilded Age, in which a handful of supremely wealthy men are determining the nation’s future. We must not let them. Bezos should never have been able to purchase The Washington Post in the first place; his conflicting business interests should have prevented it.
Nor should Musk have been able to buy Twitter. Antitrust laws should have been used to break Twitter up, or the platform should be deemed a public utility.
Both Bezos and Musk are poster boys for the importance of a wealth tax, which must be enacted to prevent the grotesque accumulations of wealth that have allowed them to wield such extraordinary power.
When the smoke clears from this rancorous presidential campaign and Kamala Harris is president, she must rescue democracy from these and other oligarchs.
As the eminent jurist Louis Brandeis is reputed to have said near the end of America’s first Gilded Age, “America has a choice. We can have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy. But we cannot have both.”
NOW READ:[Legal expert predicts the 'little secret' between Donald Trump and Mike Johnson
*Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
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Why would the world’s richest man be “f-----” if Trump loses?
Because under a Harris administration, Musk may be held accountable for his many abuses of power — for busting unions and mistreating workers, for using SpaceX and Starlink to monopolize America’s satellite and space infrastructure, and for using his social media platform to knowingly spread dangerous lies.
When I say “may be held accountable,” I don’t mean Musk would be punished for supporting Trump, as Trump has promised to punish his opponents. Instead, Musk’s many possible violations of the law, including some that are quite recent, may finally catch up with him under a Harris administration.
Musk’s daily million-dollar sweepstakes giveaways to people who have registered to vote in battleground states appear to be clear violations of campaign finance law, which makes it illegal to pay money to people to register to vote.
Campaign finance law also makes it illegal for superPACs to coordinate with candidates. As the person in charge of one of the largest superPACs supporting Trump, Musk’s frequent conversations with Trump would appear to run afoul of these provisions, as well.
In addition, Pennsylvania — the state where Musk began his million-dollar sweepstakes — prohibits illegal lotteries and deceiving consumers by not providing a complete set of contest rules including odds of winning and details on how winners are selected. The district attorney of Philadelphia filed a lawsuit Monday to halt Musk’s giveaway.
Musk may also be held accountable for conflicts of interest between his being in “regular contact” with Russian president Vladimir Putin, as reported byTheWall Street Journallast Friday, and his status as one of the most important national security contractors to the U.S. government through his SpaceX and Starlink enterprises.
The Journalreports that Musk’s regular discussions with Putin — confirmed by several current and former U.S., European, and Russian officials — have involved business and geopolitical tensions.
Musk’s SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite system, has a $1.8 billion contract with U.S. military and intelligence agencies. It’s the primary rocket launcher for NASA and the Pentagon. It launches vital national security satellites into orbit and is the company NASA relies on to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
To effectuate these contracts, Musk says he has top-secret security clearance.
How can someone who runs two of America’s most important military and intelligence agencies, and who has top-secret security clearance, be secretly meeting with Putin?
At one point, Putin reportedly asked Musk to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to two people briefed on the request.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said The Wall Street Journal’s report should prompt an investigation.
Musk's conversations with Putin would clearly violate Musk’s security clearance if he failed to properly report them to the U.S. government. If classified information was leaked, Musk could be required to give up control of SpaceX, which holds the majority of his companies’ government contracts.
Musk has also been in contact with other high-ranking Russian officials, according toTheWall Street Journal,including Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff. Last month, the U.S. Justice Department accused Kiriyenko of creating some 30 internet domains to spread Russian disinformation, including on Musk’s X, where it was meant to erode support for Ukraine and manipulate American voters ahead of the presidential election.
If Musk has been a witting conduit for Russian election disinformation, he could lose control of X. He could even go to jail.
Musk’s and Russia’s interests have increasingly overlapped. Russian forces occupying the country’s eastern and southern swaths have started using Starlink to enable secure communications and extend the range of their drones. Russian troops also began using Starlink terminals, brought in through third countries, undermining one of Ukraine’s few battlefield advantages.
Earlier this year, Musk gave airtime to Putin and his views on the U.S. and Ukraine when X carried Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with Putin inside the Kremlin. In that interview, Putin said Musk was “a smart person” and “you need to find some common ground with him, you need to search for some ways to persuade him.”
But what may get Musk really “f-----” is his leading role in the emerging anti-democracy movement.
Since Musk was born in South Africa, he’s ineligible to become president of the United States. But that doesn’t seem to be stopping him. He’s planning to become CEO of the United States of America, Inc.
The anti-democracy movement includes Musk, along with Peter Thiel (the self-styled libertarian who once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible” and who invested $15 million in JD Vance’s bid for the Senate), JD Vance, Blake Masters (in whose Senate bid Thiel invested $10 million), tech entrepreneur David Sacks, and blogger Curtis Yarvin.
Yarvin, who comes as close as anyone to being the intellectual godfather of the anti-democracy movement, has written that real political power in the United States is held by a liberal amalgam of universities and the mainstream press, whose commitment to equality and justice is eroding the social order.
Yarvin believes democratic governments should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose major “shareholders” select an executive with total power, who serves at their pleasure. Yarvin refers to the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime.
How to achieve Yarvin’s vision? The first step, as Vance offered in a 2021 podcast, is to replace “every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state … with our people.”
The second step? We can only guess, but Trump has offered Musk a position in his administration to head up “government efficiency.”
In early October, Musk registered with the Texas secretary of state’s office a new corporation called United States of America, Inc.
If Trump becomes president, will Musk’s United States of America, Inc. replace the administrative state?
===
mediaite
PAC founded by billionaire Elon Musk in support of Donald Trump dropped a new ad on Sunday labeling Vice President Kamala Harris “a C word” that America “can’t afford.”
Musk founded America PAC, a super PAC in support of Trump, in July of this year. He’s been speaking at rallies for Trump, including Sunday’s Madison Square Garden rally in New York City, and until recently was running a million-dollar-a-day contest for registered voters in swing states who signed a petition put out by the PAC. Those giveaways were suspended after a warning from the DOJ.
But the PAC has continued other activities, including campaign ads like the one shared Friday, which as of Sunday evening had just 155k views on X, formerly Twitter.
It begins with a “warning” that the ad contains “multiple instances of the ‘C word'” on a bright red warning screen, then moves to the main script, where it is “revealed” that the c-word in question is “communist.”
America really can’t afford a ‘C-Word’ in the White House right now. 🤭
VOTE TODAY >> https://t.co/5VO60Egyob << VOTE TODAY pic.twitter.com/SrYzwgmWvv
— America (@america) October 25, 2024
Warning: This ad contains multiple instances of the ‘C Word.’ Viewer discretion is advised. Kamala Harris is a ‘C word.’ You heard that right. A big ole ‘C word.’ In fact, all of the other ‘C words’ think she’s the biggest ‘C word’ of them all. That’s right. She’s a tax-hiking, regulation-loving, gun-grabbing communist. And the worst part? She’s proud of it. Kamala Harris: the ‘C word America simply can’t afford. See you nationwide Tuesday, November 5th.
The post on X repeats the message, saying “America really can’t afford a ‘C-Word’ in the White House right now.🤭”
As of the time of this article, the social media post had just 45 likes on X.
===
AN 10 24
alternet-NO LNX
Democracy dies in their wallets
Twitter employees respond to new owner Elon Musk’s annihilation of top execs — on Twitter
Thom Hartmann October 28, 2024
Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.—Yale historian Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny
I cancelled my Washington Post subscription Friday evening. Jeff Bezos, Mister “Democracy Dies In Darkness” (the Post’s slogan on their masthead), by blocking his editorial staff from endorsing Harris chose darkness over his nation’s future, and I can’t support that.
The big mistake John D. Rockefeller made back in the day — that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk appear committed to not repeating — was not buying a media outlet like a newspaper. Had John D. had that sort of a vehicle to mold public opinion, American history may be very different.
By 1880, Rockefeller’s Ohio-based company controlled over 90 percent of the nation’s oil, owned 4000 miles of pipelines, and employed over 100,000 people. As Rockefeller’s oil empire got larger and larger, eating alive hundreds of smaller operations, ruthlessly driving up prices, destroying his competitors, and throwing workers out of a job, public outrage grew.
In 1887, Ohio sued him, arguing that he was operating in ways that were detrimental to the state and its citizens and businesses; in 1892 the Ohio Supreme Court ordered his company dissolved. As I lay out in detail in Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People,” this led Rockefeller to move Standard Oil to New Jersey after that state changed its corporation laws to allow for his monopolistic behavior.
Which brought in the federal government; in 1890, Ohio Senator John Sherman introduced and saw passed into law the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which provided not just fines but jail sentences against people like Rockefeller who were committed to destroying competition and owning entire markets. The law was flawed with a few loopholes and ambiguities, so it was amended in 1914 with the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.
Nonetheless, in 1906 progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt’s administration filed an antitrust action against Rockefeller that went to the Supreme Court in 1911 during the administration of progressive Republican President William Howard Taft. The behemoth was broken up into 34 separate companies, an action that, like the breakup of AT&T by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, led to an explosion of competition in the marketplace and a dramatic increase in shareholder value.
But back to Jeff Bezos and his 2013 purchase of The Washington Post.
It was reporters and editors for the hundreds of independent newspapers during the First Gilded Age (1880-1900) era that led the crusades against Rockefeller and his fellow monopolists. Investigative journalism was all the rage then, and it fed public demand for a return to competition and the de-throning of that age’s oligarchs.
The vast majority of workers were struggling and they worked for a very small 10 percent of the population who controlled most of the nation’s wealth (a situation we’re at again).
The result was constant strife, strikes, and the murder of labor leaders; entire towns were in arms (and sometimes ablaze) with labor conflict. The “problem of labor”was the number one issue of the day. As President Grover Cleveland — the only Democrat elected during that period — proclaimed in his 1887 State of the Union address:
“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”
There was a broad consensus across American society that those “Robber Barons” were feathering their own nests at the expense of the American public, hurting both working class people and small businesses. The Supreme Court endorsed breaking up Standard Oil in 1911, and even broke up the Associated Press in 1944.
The law was so rigorously enforced — so the game of business could be played by all comers, not just the “big boys” — that in the 1960s the Supreme Court barred the merger of the Kinney and Buster Brown shoe companies because the new combined company would control a mere 5 percent of the shoe market.
Back in the ’60s every mall and downtown in America was filled with small, locally-owned businesses; there might be a Sears to anchor the shopping center or a retail part of town, but most shops, restaurants, and hotels were family-owned.
But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to stop enforcing the Sherman Act, which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation’s shoe market. It’s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels…and on and on. In virtually every industry, a handful of massive companies control 80 percent or more of the market.
The Biden administration is the first to seriously try enforcement of the nation’s anti-trust laws since Carter broke up AT&T, going after Google and blocking mergers in multiple industries. It’s led a bunch of American billionaires to demand that the Federal Trade Commission’s head, Lina Kahn, be fired.
Kahn and her FTC went after Bezos last year, suing Amazon for running a monopoly that price-gouges customers and blocks out competition. The trial is scheduled for 2026 if Kahn keeps her job; a Trump administration would fire her immediately, and pressure from major corporate donors and billionaires is building on Harris to do the same.
Bezos also must remember well when he got on the wrong side of then-President Trump because of the Post’s coverage of the orange oligarch’s lies and crimes; Trump, in a fit of pique, awarded a $10 billion Pentagon contract for cloud computing to Microsoft, shocking analysts across the industry.
Bezos is also working for his Blue Origin spaceship company to get more billions in NASA and Pentagon contracts. He and his companies also own billions in Google and AirBNB stock as well as owning outright almost a hundred other companies.
Might be a good time to own one of the two most influential newspapers in America, eh?
Similarly, billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, in addition to apparently taking orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, is fighting numerous government efforts to regulate his companies (which exist in large part because Obama bailed out Tesla in 2010 with $465 million, and NASA is now pouring hundreds of millions into SpaceX):
— Tesla is fighting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over union-related issues, with Musk taking a lawsuit to the Supreme Court alleging government protections of unions are unconstitutional.
— SpaceX is battling the NLRB over employee firings.
— The SEC is investigating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) and his “funding secured” tweets about taking Tesla private.
— The FTC is investigating X’s compliance with a $150 million privacy settlement.
— The Federal Communications Commission recently denied SpaceX’s Starlink a $886 million rural broadband award.
— The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla over alleged racial harassment.
— The FAA is in conflict with SpaceX over launch licensing and environmental reviews.
— The EPA has fined SpaceX for water-related violations.
— The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened multiple investigations into Tesla’s vehicle safety and Autopilot system.
— SpaceX faces scrutiny over its environmental impact at its Texas launch site.
To avoid the Rockefeller mistake, Musk — with the apparent help of two Russian oligarchs and the leader of Saudi Arabia — purchased Twitter, the online digital equivalent of our nation’s largest newspaper.
And he’s now using it to try to get Trump and Republicans into office, presumably so they can gut the FTC, FCC, SEC, NLRB, and any other regulator that might take him on to protect workers, the public, and the national interest.
We took on the superrich with success during the First Gilded Age, and our enforcement of antitrust laws lasted all the way to 1983, when Reagan blocked them, leading to the “merger mania” of the 1980s and bringing us today’s oligarchic business empires across multiple industries.
Now that we’re in America’s Second Gilded Age — with today’s billionaires vastly richer than Rockefeller’s wildest dreams — we confront a similar crossroads to that of previous generations.
Is it okay, for example, for billionaires to own media properties they can use to manipulate politics and government agencies to amplify their other business interests? Or that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled that our morbidly rich plutocrats can own judges and politicians? Most Americans would probably say “No” to both.
At some point, America is going to have to confront its oligarch problem. And the sooner the better, if we don’t want darkness to entirely subsume our democracy.
===
an 10 24
https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/musk-on-notice/
alternet no lnx
Elon Musk: You're on notice
Sabrina Haake, Raw Story October 26, 2024
Dear Mr. Musk,
You are hereby on notice that your recent activities in support of Donald Trump could lead to significant personal liability, both civil and criminal.
You are aiding and abetting a convicted felon with a demonstrated history of inciting violence and civil unrest. The next time someone dies after Trump summons a violent mob and tells them to fight, or succumbs after Trump encourages hate rally attendees to “beat the hell” out of them, you could face liability as a co-defendant and/or co-conspirator.
If Trump is re-elected, he will enjoy expansive legal immunities you do not have. Even if he appoints you to regulate federal agencies you resent having to answer to, actions you undertake between now and January 6, 2025, are as a private citizen, not as a federal employee. An appointed position where you get to regulate your corporate regulatorsmay not confer the tort immunities you hope for in any event.
ALSO READ: MAGA pastor who wants to end female voting rights compares women to 'pigs with gold nose rings'
You and your counsel may want to brush up on the following:
Election crimes
Federal law makes it a crime to offer money in an attempt to sway people to vote. 52 U.S.C. 10307(c) states that “Whoever knowingly or willfully … pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both…,” as the warning letter you just received from the Justice Department suggested. The DOJ Election Crimes Manual specifies that an election bribe may be anything having monetary value, including cash and lottery chances.
When you announced that America PAC will be awarding $1 million every day until the election to a registered swing state voter who signs your petition on the 1st and 2nd amendment, you were clearly targeting Republican voters. (BTW, your schtick of “free speech absolutism” is asinine; the 1st A has never protected election fraud, consumer fraud, disinformation fraud of any type, threats, speech integral to criminal conduct, verbal assault, libel, defamation, incitement to criminality, conspiracy, or incitement to violence, but I digress.)
Your X activities are partially shielded from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but there are other applicable laws, including FEC regulations on in-kind campaign contributions. You paid $47 apiece to people who found others to sign a petition, which helped Trump target voters. You have spent in excess of $75 million on the pro-Trump America PAC. According to Open Secrets, you are also behind a disinformation initiative called Progress 2028, claiming ties to Kamala Harris, which is actually run by your own dark money network. ‘Building America’s Future,’ the dark money group at the helm, reportedly received over $100 million in funding from you and other donors.
Aiding and abetting acts of violence
Your legal exposure for abetting acts of violence may be even greater. Disinformation on X since you bought it is well documented, and has helped fuel racist far-right riots and attacks. It’s only a matter of time before you’re sued for the violence and solicitation of violence you’re helping Trump promote. The law has long held that a person who aids and abets a crime is generally criminally liable to the same extent as the person who commits the crime.
Encouraging political violence before, during or after the election will also subject you to laws governing criminal incitement. Manipulating algorithms, amplifying calls on X and elsewhere that encourage militia members and extremists to intimidate voters, or spreading enthusiasm for a “civil war” like you did in the UK, will support claims against you when they lead, predictably, to violence.
Dozens of cases invoking Trump in connection with violent criminal acts have already been identified; it’s only a matter of time before someone else gets killed. Bullets fired into the Democratic Party office in Phoenix, AZ last week are only the most recent example. The building’s glass front door was shattered by bullet spray; anyone sitting behind it would have been killed. The perpetrator, an extreme MAGA supporter, had more than 120 guns, 250,000 rounds of ammunition and a grenade launcher at his home.
History of Trump-inspired violence as prologue
You may protest that grenades and partisan acts of violence are too speculative to pin on you, or, alternatively, that you had no idea Trump would make good on his serial promises of retribution. But the civil law standard for ordinary negligence is simple: if you knew, or should have known, that someone (including Trump) would carry out Trump’s call for violence, you may be found liable for amplifying that call.
Whether references to violence are genuine threats or merely rhetorical depends on context and the surrounding circumstances. Here, there can be no doubt that Trump means it, as evidenced by his encouragement for the J6 mob and his failure to call them off for more than 3 hours while he watched them. Even if you and Trump claim you didn’t “intend” for MAGA supporters to commit acts of violence, the Supreme Court recently held that recklessness in using violent rhetoric is sufficient to support liability for violence that ensues.
You also may think that manipulating algorithms, posting/liking/re-posting disinformation, or amplifying calls for violence against Democrats is not enough to sustain legal liability. But a defendant who shares in the criminal desires of the principal, and acts in some affirmative manner in aid is liable, and the level of participation may be relatively slight. It is not hard to satisfy once the defendant's knowledge of the unlawful intent is established, and if you read any news outside the Fox bubble, you cannot lack knowledge that Trump intends to orchestrate fresh political violence.
To more fully preclude your “But I couldn’t have predicted violence” defense, Trump’s own high ranking military officials have warned that Trump’s calls for violence are real. Retired General Mark Milley and his wife have faced constant death threats following Trump’s incitements.
You are also no doubt aware that Trump has made public comments calling half the American people “the enemy within;” if you weren’t aware before, you are now. Within the last two weeks, Trump has promised to prioritize the prosecution of U.S. citizens using military force if necessary. His threat to sic the military on political rivals is the stuff of murderous regimes; Trump’s recently surfaced wish for generals who were “more like Hitler’s generals” surprised exactly no-one on the left.
Dark money, dark influence
Because you have been a great technology innovator, too many young men presume you are smarter than they are about other things, which elevates your actions on X to recklessness. After you bought Twitter, you restored accounts of far-right figures including white nationalist Nick Fuentes and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. You also relaxed content moderation policies and terminated most of the company’s trust and safety and election integrity teams. If you didn’t intend to endanger people, at minimum it would appear reckless to a jury.
When you then post pro-Trump disinformation on your own account with nearly 200 million followers, and place the disinformation into users’ feeds as “recommended content” whether they want it or not, you exceed the bounds of protected “political speech.” You lured Trump back onto the platform after he was banned previously for incitement to violence following the J6 attack, so there is no way you can plead ignorance--Trump was banned for inciting violence by your own corporate predecessor.
In sum, Trump has been given a get out of jail card from the Supreme Court, but you have not, and Trump cannot pardon anyone for state crimes and judgments. Govern yourself accordingly.
Sincerely,
Sabrina Haake
NOW READ: Why Trump tariffs would be world’s biggest protection racket
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the Substack, The Haake Take.
---
10 24
musk-is-placing-a-high-bet-on-the-presidential-election
Elon Musk has become a household name, synonymous with social media, electric vehicles and space exploration. The South African-born entrepreneur has left his mark on global brands like Tesla and X, formerly Twitter — technology that billions rely on daily.
Now, he is making waves in a new arena. Musk, who currently holds the title of wealthiest person in the world, is leveraging his influential platform and brands this election season to throw his weight behind former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid and the broader Make America Great Again movement.
Musk has poured over $118 million into America PAC, a super PAC focused on Trump’s reelection and mobilizing voters in crucial swing states that Musk launched earlier this year. His political visibility has since grown, marked by recent appearances at Trump’s Pennsylvania rallies and his acquisition of the coveted @America username on X, where he amplifies right-wing rhetoric and challenges Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
Musk did not start making 2024 federal political contributions until this summer but quickly ramped up giving during the final months of the election. In less than two weeks from Oct. 4 to Oct. 15, Musk steered $43.6 million to America PAC, OpenSecrets analysis of its latest filing submitted Oct. 24 found.
Between June and September, Musk was the super PAC’s sole funder with over $74.9 million in contributions, OpenSecrets’ analysis of its quarterly FEC filing submitted on Oct. 15 found. America PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its financials.
OpenSecrets’ analysis places Musk among the most influential figures set to impact the razor-thin 2024 presidential and congressional races. While Musk previously stated he wouldn’t directly donate to either Joe Biden or Trump, he has used his brands as vehicles to express increasingly right-leaning political views. Since acquiring X in 2022, he has taken to the platform to criticize Biden’s immigration policies and shared content questioning election integrity.
Musk’s major companies, Tesla and SpaceX, are no strangers to political influence, ranking in the top 10% of organizations tracked by OpenSecrets for lobbying and political contributions from their affiliates. However, Musk’s endorsement of Trump after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania marked a pivotal shift in his political stance. Previously, Musk made smaller and more bipartisan contributions, including donations to both former Republican President George W. Bush and Democratic presidential contender John Kerry during the 2004 presidential race.
Since founding America PAC, Musk has garnered support from a rich network of investors, cryptocurrency moguls and former company executives. FEC records show several donors contributing over $1 million to the committee, including venture capitalist Douglas Leone, the former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, and former Tesla director Antonio Gracias.
America PAC’s platform mirrors many of Trump’s key campaign promises: secure borders, sensible spending, safe cities, fair justice, free speech and self-protection. As a super PAC, it can raise unlimited funds but is legally prohibited from coordinating directly with Trump’s campaign. Though rumors swirled about Musk pledging $45 million monthly to the PAC, he later denied those claims.
On Oct. 6, Musk announced America PAC’s latest initiative — offering $47 to individuals who refer registered voters in swing states to sign a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments. He wrote that the goal is to have “one million registered voters … sign in support of the Constitution” by Election Day, when the offer expires.
Two weeks later, Musk told supporters at a pro-Trump rally on Oct. 20 that he would give $1 million daily to random voters who signed the petition, raising concerns among ethicists and legal experts. The Justice Department sent a letter to America PAC this week warning that the contest could violate federal laws against paying voters.
America PAC is not the only politically-active group to benefit from Musk’s largesse this cycle. In August, Musk gave $1 million to Early Vote Action PAC
...
, quarterly campaign finance reports filed Oct. 15 show. Earlier this month, Musk gave another $825,000 to Hispanic Leadership Alliance, Hispanic voter outreach group aligned with Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas).
Musk gave another $1 million to the Sentinel Action Fund, a super PAC linked to the Heritage Action political advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation that has been spending to boost Trump in the presidential race and other Republicans in various Senate races.
Musk also reportedly “heavily funded” a dark money group called Building America’s Future, the New York Times recently reported. The dark money group has used the fictitious name Progress 2028 to push fake pro-Harris messaging highlighting divisive policy plans and has also steered millions of dollars to super PACs spending on the presidential race.
Building America’s Future has given over $20 million to Duty to America PAC with $4.6 million in October alone , FEC records filed Oct. 24 show. The super PAC has targeted young male voters and Black voters trying to persuade them to vote for Trump.
Building America’s Future is also a major funder of the Future Coalition PAC, which was recently rebranded as FC PAC. FC PAC disclosed receiving $5 million from the dark money group with $2 million of that in October, FEC records filed Oct. 24 show. The super PAC has attracted scrutiny for running contradictory advertisements in key battleground states targeting Jewish voters with messaging highlighting Harris more pro-Palestinian policies while Arab Americans are targeting with ads highlighting her pro-Israel stances and about her husband’s Jewish faith.
The entrepreneur has leveraged his X platform to be vocal about the presidential election. “Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election if Trump is NOT elected. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!” Musk wrote in a Sept. 29 X post.
Figure:Political spending habits of the employees of Musk’s companies
Despite Musk’s vocal endorsement of Trump, over 98% of the political contributions from X Inc.’s employees and owners went into the pockets of Democrats, as did over 86% of political contributions from Tesla’s PAC and employees in the 2024 cycle. SpaceX breaks this pattern with over 56% of political contributions from PACs and employees deepening the pockets of Republican candidates.
While Musk has invested significant time, money and attention into America PAC in the months leading up to Election Day, his major companies have also made headlines by advocating for policies that impact the automotive and space industries.
Two of Musk’s companies, SpaceX and Tesla, have been awarded over $15.4 billion in federal government contracts over the past decade but have also grappled with regulatory hurdles.
SpaceX in particular has faced heightened scrutiny in recent months with the Federal Aviation Administration, which Musk has threatened to sue for regulatory overreach, proposing over $633,000 in civil penalties against the company in September. Trump has floated the idea of creating a new commission led by Musk, which could potentially give the SpaceX CEO a chance to roll back federal regulations on his own company or to crack down on competition.
In 2024, the rocket and spacecraft company blazed forward with steady lobbying activity and a networth of $210 billion. Since 2010, SpaceX has increased its spending on lobbying six-fold, lobbying issues surrounding aerospace, defense, telecommunications, federal budget appropriations, the environment, technology and agriculture. In 2024, SpaceX lobbied on 21 bills, including companion bills in the House and Senate.
SpaceX has opened its war chest to support the Commercial Space Act 2023, which would “minimize regulations and limitations on the freedom of U.S. nongovernmental entities to explore and use outer space.”
Compared to SpaceX, Tesla is less politically active. Musk’s flagship electric car company has been active on the lobbying scene since 2007 but has only surpassed $1 million in annual federal lobbying spending once in 2023. Tesla’s third quarter in 2024 lags significantly behind its 2023 trajectory, suggesting it might not be on track to surpass $1 million two years in a row.
Although lobbying firms are not required to itemize their expenditures in disclosures or describe their position on specific issues, they must report the legislation they’ve targeted. In 2024, Tesla lobbied eight bills concerning clean vehicle credits, air pollution standards for new vehicles and electric vehicle battery sourcing.
In 2024, over 70% of Tesla’s lobbyists have been political “revolvers” who previously held government jobs.
Like Tesla, X Inc. has never spent more than $1.7 million on lobbying in a year. Since Musk acquired X Inc. in October 2022, X Inc.’s lobbying efforts have been the lowest since 2017.
Editorial and Investigations Manager Anna Massoglia contributed to this report.
---
[### Pro-Trump dark money network tied to Elon Musk behind ...
OpenSecrets
https://www.opensecrets.org › news › 2024/10 › pro-tr...](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/10/pro-trump-dark-money-network-tied-to-elon-musk-behind-fake-pro-harris-campaign-scheme/)
Oct 16, 2024 — An initiative called Progress 2028 that purports to be Kamala Harris' liberal counter to the conservative Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 ...
[### Tracking the dark money behind a fake Harris site
Instagram · jaketapper
550+ likes · 6 days ago](https://www.instagram.com/jaketapper/reel/DBZzrv_xWoX/)
Politics lead. Elon Musk is venturing even further into the presidential election. Here's Musk in Pennsylvania on Saturday campaigning for ...
[### Elon Musk is said to be underwriting a fake Progress 2028 ...
Inquirer.com
https://www.inquirer.com › Politics › Election](https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/musk-trump-harris-project-2025-progress-2028-20241023.html)
4 days ago — The document contains contradictions and distortions of Harris' positions on gun control, fracking, and immigration.
[### Musk is placing a high bet on the presidential election
OpenSecrets
https://www.opensecrets.org › news › 2024/10 › musk-i...](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/10/musk-is-placing-a-high-bet-on-the-presidential-election/)
2 days ago — The pro-Trump super PAC supported by Elon Musk was founded in May 2024 and has already spent over $137 million. For Republicans.
[### Elon Musk Gives Democrats a Chance to Run Against ...
The Nation
https://www.thenation.com › Article](https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/musk-trump-plutocracy-lottery-illegal/)
6 days ago — Donald Trump's richest supporter has been busy finding new ways to corrupt democracy. ... Elon Musk and Donald Trump look at one another. A ...
[### Musk's millions-and-misinformation effort to pick who signs ...
Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com › politics › 2024/10/21](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/21/musks-millions-and-misinformation-effort-pick-who-signs-federal-checks/)
6 days ago — That's not all liquid, obviously. He doesn't have a giant Scrooge-McDuck-style vault filled with $250 billion in gold bullion — partly because ...
Missing: dark | Show results with: dark
[### progress 2028 on Threads
Threads
https://www.threads.net › tag › progress-2028](https://www.threads.net/tag/progress-2028)
HEADS UP: Recently, ads have been running on social media for something called Progress 2028, which appears as though it's Kamala Harris' version of Project ...
[### OpenSecrets.org
X · OpenSecretsDC
170+ likes · 5 days ago](https://twitter.com/OpenSecretsDC/status/1848509095801766206)
OpenSecrets editorial and investigations head @annalecta joined @jaketapper to discuss the dark money network tied to Elon Musk that is ...
[### Elon Musk-Linked Dark Money Network Is Behind Fake Pro ...
Truthout
https://truthout.org › Articles › News](https://truthout.org/articles/elon-musk-linked-dark-money-network-is-behind-fake-pro-harris-campaign-scheme/)
8 days ago — An initiative called Progress 2028 that purports to be Kamala Harris' liberal counter to the conservative Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 is ...
[### Progress 2028 isn't tied to Kamala Harris. Ads saying she ...
PolitiFact
https://www.politifact.com › factchecks › oct › progress...](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/oct/21/progress-2028/progress-2028-is-not-tied-to-kamala-harris-ads-say/)
6 days ago — Did you just get catfished by a political ad? If you have been scrolling on Facebook or Instagram lately, maybe. A group.
AN 10 24
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — the world's wealthiest man — has come out harshly against undocumented immigrants since becoming one of former President Donald Trump's biggest donors and campaign surrogates. But a new report reveals that he launched his career in the United States without legal status.
The Washington Post is now reporting that Musk was illegally staying in the U.S. on a student visa despite dropping out of school. While Musk, who is from South Africa, emigrated to attend Stanford University, he called his department chair shortly after the fall 1995 semester began to inform him that he wouldn't be attending classes.
At that point, Musk was legally obligated to leave the United States, according to the Post. But instead, he illegally overstayed his visa while building his first company, Zip2 (originally called the Global Link Information Network).
READ MORE:**NASA chief worried Musk may have shared sensitive national security info in calls with Putin**
Eventually, venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures made a $3 million investment into Zip2 in 1996. Upon learning that both Musk and his brother, Kimbal, didn't have legal status to be in the United States, the funding agreement included a clause that stipulated Mohr could claw back its investment if the two didn't obtain a legal work visa within 45 days.
"Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.,” Zip2 board member Derek Proudian told the paper. “We don’t want our founder being deported."
Because U.S. immigration records aren't public, determining when Musk's immigration status changed is difficult to ascertain. However, the Post cited two different biographers who wrote that Mohr ultimately arranged for an attorney to line up visas for both Elon and Kimbal Musk in 1996. This means both he and his brother were technically illegal immigrants for the better part of a year. This is particularly noteworthy, as Elon Musk has used his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to regularly launch attacks against and spread disinformation about undocumented immigrants.
"[I]llegals in America can get bank loans, mortgages, insurance, driver's licenses, free healthcare (California & New York) and in-state college tuition," Musk tweeted in February. "What's the point of being a citizen if an illegal gets all the benefits, but doesn't pay taxes or do jury duty?"
READ MORE:**Elon Musk — who has $260 billion — will be charing Helene victims $400 for internet service**
The Post's reported that Musk's colleagues confirmed that he drove a car during the period in which he was in the United States illegally, meaning he would have needed both a driver's license and auto insurance in order to do so. The report also confirms what Kimbal Musk said in a 2013 interview, when saying that he and his brother "were illegal immigrants" when their company landed the $3 million investment from Mohr. Elon didn't use that exact phrasing, but rather said that their status "was a grey area."
Despite making a promise in March to refrain from endorsing a presidential candidate, Elon Musk has not only appeared onstage with Trump, but is now his second-biggest campaign donor. Forbes reported earlier this week that Musk has donated roughly $118 million to a pro-Trump super PAC. His largesse is outpaced only by Timothy Mellon, who had given $150 million to the former president's 2024 bid for the White House.
Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).
READ MORE:[Elon Musk donates 'sizable amount' to shadowy pro-Trump super PAC
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How US taxpayers helped Elon Musk become the richest man on Earth
comm dr 10 24 an
an 10 24
A new report details how Russian actors played a significant role in the spread of disinformation concerning the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton this fall.
On Thursday, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) — a Washington, D.C. based think tank that researches extremism, polarization and misinformation — published a detailed report into how Russia capitalized on America's partisan climate in the wake of both hurricanes. Researchers found that Russian actors aimed to "sow distrust in U.S. institutions" by "attempting to exploit existing frustrations among certain political groups."
One particular talking point Russia seized on was the false claim that U.S. support for Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion was diverting federal money from hurricane victims. Of course, this is flatly untrue: The last Ukraine aid package was appropriated by Congress months before the hurricanes hit.
READ MORE:['Totally out of luck': How Project 2025 would gut relief for Hurricane Helene victims
However, Russian disinformation artists still managed to seize on that narrative as a means of undermining American support for Ukraine. The Vladimir Putin regime was particularly fond of billionaire X owner Elon Musk's tweets making that point for them, according to ISD.
"Similarly, Russian media echoed remarks from former President Donald Trump in which he criticized the Biden administration’s supposed focus on Ukraine over domestic disaster recovery," ISD researchers wrote.
Russian actors also shared fake AI-generated images of supposed flooding at Disney World in Florida that never actually occurred. Moscow-based news outlet RIA Novosti shared the fake images on the social media app Telegram in the hopes of reaching English-speaking audiences.
"The Kremlin’s overarching goal in these disinformation campaigns is not simply to critique the Biden administration’s handling of Hurricanes Milton and Helene, but to sow distrust in US institutions," ISD wrote. "By painting the U.S. government as either incompetent or actively malicious, Russian media attempts to undermine public confidence in the U.S. disaster relief system, federal agencies including FEMA and broader political leadership.
READ MORE:[Trump — who has $4 billion — is now asking other people to donate to Helene relief
The Biden administration's response to the hurricanes was praised by governors of affected states representing both parties. Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp noted that after Helene ravaged his state, Biden called him personally and simply asked: "What do you need?" South Carolina Republican Governor Henry McMaster also praised FEMA's rapid recovery efforts in the Palmetto State. And North Carolina Democratic Governor Roy Cooper heaped praise on Biden for deploying thousands of federal employees and equipment to help rescue stranded residents and rebuild infrastructure.
"We’re grateful for the quick actions and close communications that we have had with the president and with the FEMA team,” Cooper said. “And Mr. President, we know that we have made a lot of asks of you, and we are grateful for your ear and for your actions.”
READ MORE:'All because of greed': 6 die at factory that told employees to work during Helene or be fired
*Click here to read ISD's report in full.
1 mil day lotto BS
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michigan’s top elections official defended the state’s elections after repeated attacks on X from Elon Musk, who spread false claims about inactive voters.
Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, corrected Musk multiple times in recent days and called his comments on voter list maintenance “dangerous disinformation”.
Musk first reposted a video about inactive voters who remain on Michigan’s rolls, saying: “Michigan has more registered voters than eligible citizens!?”
Musk has a penchant for sharing false, misleading or incomplete information about elections and voting processes. Elections officials have reached out to him to attempt to correct the misinformation on multiple occasions, which has not quelled his tweets on the topic. He has emerged as a major spreader of rightwing conspiracies about voting in advance of the November election, and he is spending many millions of his dollars to help elect Donald Trump.
[
Pennsylvania governor says law enforcement should investigate Elon Musk’s $1m voter ploy
Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/21/election-shapiro-musk-1-million-giveaway)
Benson responded to Musk this week, noting that there were not more voters than citizens in Michigan – the state has 7.9 million people of voting age and 7.2 million active registered voters. Musk was “pushing a misleading number that includes 1.2m inactive records slated for removal in accordance with the law”, she said.
She pointed people to a state government website with election facts, which explains how inactive voters must remain on the rolls according to state and federal law until a waiting period of two federal elections has passed, which could be up to four years. More than 600,000 voters are “slated for cancellation” in 2025 and 2027 because of inactivity, the site notes.
Musk wasn’t deterred. He pulled out her middle name, saying: “Jocelyn Michelle Benson, shame on you for blatantly lying to the public! You only plan to remove the ineligible voters AFTER this election. That necessarily means that there are far more people registered to vote than there eligible voters.”
Benson again responded to Musk, sharing the election facts website and saying: “In Michigan we tell the truth and we follow the law. I suggest you do the same.”
On CNN, Benson said Musk’s comments were “very concerning” because of the size of his platform, and that she wished people with large platforms would use them to spread accurate election information instead.
“If you have enough time to Google me and look up my middle name, which he clearly did, you should be able to find out the facts of our elections and post those as well,” she said.
The Republican National Committee has sued Michigan over its voter rolls, part of a swath of lawsuits the group has filed across the country that seek to limit voting access and set the stage for false claims of voter fraud. Some states have sought to purge their voter rolls this year, alleging that inflated rolls with inactive or otherwise ineligible voters could lead to fraud, but these purges can boot eligible voters from the rolls.
Voter list maintenance is done regularly by elections officials, who compare voter data to other sources to remove people who have died, moved or otherwise lost their ability to vote. But elections officials must carefully balance list accuracy and removing voters – mistakes can deprive eligible voters of their right to vote.
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an 10 24
Long before Donald Trump declared he would run for president, his first political adviser articulated the central idea that has come to define both candidate and campaign.
"Hate is a stronger motivator than love," said Roger Stone in 2008 -- and that corrosive outlook is obviously what still drives the Watergate-vintage dirty trickster and pardoned felon (although he now claims to be a born-again "Christian"). It is also what drives the man whose political persona Stone created.
The Trump campaign, and the MAGA movement at its core, embodies a malevolent spirit of hostility that endangers democracy, domestic tranquility and the very future of the nation. Both the candidate and his surrogates persistently spew out a noxious fog of deception and demonization, aimed at dehumanizing vulnerable populations that cannot fight back.
Sounding like a dollar-store knockoff of Hitler, Trump keeps intensifying his racist rants against migrants and minorities he describes as genetically inferior and predisposed to criminal conduct, from eating other people's pets to slitting the throats of young women. He has commenced a tour of cities supposedly overrun by these dark-skinned marauders, even as the local Republican officials have begged him to desist from his absurd lies and violent instigation.
But almost as toxic, and perhaps even more bizarre, is the Trump campaign's increasingly lurid, clamorous barrage of advertising aimed at trans people. So far, the Republicans and their allies have spent roughly $30 million on ads that aim to conflate trans people with murderers -- and persuading them that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is devoted to advancing the interests of those trans killers above all else. While it is true that Harris has supported gender-affirming health care, including for prisoners, it is also true that the federal prison system under Trump provided that same care -- as the law requires.
But what is so weird -- how else to put it? -- about the Trump anti-trans crusade is its hidden underwriter. Behind the spending on much of the MAGA hate propaganda, especially the messages dehumanizing trans people, is none other than billionaire troll Elon Musk. Hatred is a more powerful motivator than love for a twisted character like Musk too, even when the object of that revulsion is his own child.
Now Musk, a pompous proponent of "conservative family values," has often bragged about littering the world with his offspring, possibly too many to identify. But what we know for certain is that he has a trans daughter who has changed her name to Vivian Wilson and successfully petitioned the courts to dissociate herself from her father.
Rarely present for Vivian when she was growing up, Musk has gone so far as to proclaim that his erstwhile son is "dead, killed by the woke mind virus," and mock his own child publicly for being "gay and slightly autistic" from an early age. Vivian says Musk knows nothing about her and has lied about being "tricked" into approving the medical treatment she says saved her life.
It is worth noting here that this same troll, who has reportedly financed millions of dollars' worth of anti-immigrant vitriol online and on the airwaves, is himself a migrant from South Africa via Canada -- and has collected more money from government, both state and federal, than any 10 million working-class noncitizens. His reintroduction of Nazism, white supremacy and outrageous conspiracies and falsehoods on his social media platform X makes him a far greater menace to American communities than those who have crossed the southern border to escape violence and seek a better life for their kids. Before the mass deportation begins, perhaps we could have a more selective approach.
Ugliness and grievance suffuse the Trump movement. They are as visible as a pustulant sore, not only in the would-be president's threatening rhetoric but in the aggressive thrust of his backers. It protrudes in different directions, always exposing the internalized fury of those around him, from his adviser Stephen Miller's desire to destroy immigrant families, to JD Vance's undisguised anger at the unmarried women who remind him of his errant mother, to Musk's festering grudge against his daughter.
An American political campaign, especially for the presidency, would normally seek to promote a vision of the future, an inspiring call to patriotism, or even a platform of policies and proposals. What Trump and his coterie of billionaires offer instead is incitement and the prospect of bloodshed, all so they can profit and loot the Treasury at will. What they are delivering already is a hellscape of hatred -- just as Stone so gleefully warned us.
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Once upon a time, here in the United States, we taxed the rich. Significantly. Today, by contrast, we’re actively enhancing their fortunes. Including the biggest personal fortune of them all, the quarter-trillion-dollar stash that belongs to Elon Musk, the current numero uno on the Forbes'real-time list of the world’s largest fortunes.
Musk owes a hefty chunk of his own personal fortune to the taxes average Americans pay. He just happens to be, notes a just-published Politico analysis, “the single biggest beneficiary of U.S. government contracts.”
Two of Musk’s commercial operations, Tesla and SpaceX, have received billions in American taxpayer support. The federal government, Politico points out, has essentially “outsourced its space program” to SpaceX, and Tesla, a shaky electric vehicle company when Musk bought it, only “took off after receiving $465 million in subsidies from the Obama administration in 2010.”
All the tax dollars that Musk has collected from the Defense Department, NASA, and the U.S. intelligence community — coupled with the “generous government subsidies and tax credits to the electric-vehicle industry” that have so boosted Musk’s Tesla — have Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Max Boot fairly fuming.
Taxpayers like himself, Boot notes, are subsidizing the “fire hose of falsehoods” that now appear on X, the former Twitter, the social media app that Musk bought for $44 billion two years ago. Our tax dollars have essentially supersized our world’s single wealthiest individual.
Back in the middle of the 20th century, the United States took quite a different approach to the money pouring into rich people’s pockets. From the early 1940s through the mid-1960s, the incomes of America’s richest faced a tax bite that would be unimaginable today.
In 1942, then-president Franklin Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent tax rate on income over $25,000, the equivalent of about $484,000 today. Congress wouldn’t go along with that 100 percent top rate. But lawmakers did give the okay to a 94 percent top tax rate on 1944 income over $200,000.
In the 1950s, under the Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, the federal tax rate on top-bracket income never dipped below 91 percent.
Today’s top-bracket federal income tax rate? That stands, on paper, at 37 percent on income over $693,751 for a couple filing jointly. But assorted loopholes have left the tax rate the rich face on their actual annual gains enormously lower.
In 2021, a joint report from the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget and Council of Economic Advisers calculated that America’s wealthiest 400 billionaire families, between 2010 and 2018, “paid an average of just 8.2 percent of their income” — counting the gains in the value of their investments — in federal individual income taxes.
“That’s a lower rate,” the report noted, “than many ordinary Americans pay.”
Could we ever get back to anything close to Eisenhower-era tax rates on the richest among us? This past March, the Biden administration proposed a 25 percent minimum tax on the total income — including unrealized capital gains — of the nation’s top 0.01 percent, households worth at least $100 million.
About the same time, progressive lawmakers — led by U.S. senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and representatives Pramila Jayapal from Washington State and Brendan Boyle from Pennsylvania — introduced the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, legislation that would impose a wealth tax on America’s 100,000 wealthiest households, our richest 0.05 percent.
Under this proposed legislation, wealthy households worth up to $1 billion would face an annual tax of 2 percent on their wealth over $50 million. Richer households would face an additional 1 percent tax on wealth over $1 billion.
One of the Senate co-sponsors of that legislation, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, has also gone a step further and called for a 100 percent tax on wealth over $1 billion.
“I think people can make it on $999 million,” Sanders told journalist Chris Wallace last year.
Sanders and one of America’s most famous deep pockets, Bill Gates, have actually had a friendly podcast discussion over whether our tax rates should allow billion-dollar fortunes to even exist. The Sanders proposal, noted Gates, would tax away over 99 percent of his personal fortune. Gates would be willing to let the IRS take 62 percent, about $100 billion.
For a better America, that certainly might make a good place to start.
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judd pop info ymail 10 24
Musk wears a black "Make America Great Again" ball cap while attending a campaign rally with former President Donald Trump on October 05, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
This week, we learned that Elon Musk has donated tens of millions of dollars to help former President Donald Trump return to the White House. But he's not stopping there. Yesterday, Musk announced that he is holding "a series of talks throughout Pennsylvania" over the next few days.
There is just one problem: Musk's events are likely illegal.
Musk, of course, has the right to hold an event explaining why he supports Trump. But these events, hosted by America PAC, a Super PAC founded by Musk, are not open to everyone. To attend, people must sign Musk's petition supporting free speech and the right to bear arms and have already voted in Pennsylvania.
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The problem is not the petition, but the requirement to vote to attend Musk's event. Federal law prohibits making or offering to make "an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate." Violators can be fined or face up to one year in prison.
The legal problems with Musk's events were first noted by UCLA law professor Rick Hansen, a well-known expert in election law. Hansen explained that to violate the federal law that prohibits vote buying, "it is not necessary to offer that a person vote for or against a particular candidate." Any financial inducement to vote or not vote is enough. In this case, Musk is offering something valuable — an invite to hear him speak — in exchange for voting. "Just like one cannot give out free ice cream or car washes or concert tickets," Hansen writes, "one cannot give out free admission to hear a speech by a tech entrepreneur."
Earlier this month, Musk offered $47 to anyone who could recruit a registered voter in seven swing states, including Pennsylvania, to sign his petition. He said his goal was to get one million signers. The goal was to collect valuable contact information and demographic data of potential voters. While such tactics might be distasteful, they are not illegal. In that case, the $47 was not provided in exchange for voting. Rather, the payment was in exchange for recruiting a petition signer. Musk's group will likely use the data collected to convince that petition signer to vote, but a vote is not required for the payment.
In the case of his talks in Pennsylvania, however, Musk crossed the legal line, only allowing people to access his talks if they have voted. While the law is clear, whether or not anyone will enforce it is far less certain. Musk is accustomed to doing what he wants and, with plenty of resources for skilled legal representation, cleaning up the mess later.
Little else is known about the details of Musk's tour of Pennsylvania. According to the America PAC website, Musk was scheduled to hold an event in Philadelphia on Wednesday and Thursday. But, as of this writing, the times and locations of the events have not been released.
Musk has secretly been spending millions on right-wing causes since 2022
While Musk has recently emerged as one of the most powerful forces for Trump in this election cycle, he has actually been giving huge sums to conservative causes since 2022, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
In 2022, Musk funded an ad blitz attacking Democrats on the economy, immigration, and transgender healthcare. The ads were run by a group called Citizens for Sanity, which got over $50 million of Musk’s money from a dark-money group called Building America’s Future (BAF).
Before Musk donated to BAF, the group’s operations were much smaller. In 2020, when it was founded, BAF only raised $300,000. In 2021, it raised $11 million. After Musk became a donor in 2022, its contributions nearly quintupled, reaching over $53 million.
Because BAF does not have to disclose its donors, it is not clear whether Musk has continued to fund it. But the group’s operations have remained extensive. In 2024, BAF has donated at least $22.8 million to right-wing political action committees.
Two PACs, Duty to America PAC and Future Coalition PAC, have been entirely funded by BAF, getting $16 million and $3 million, respectively.
Future Coalition PAC has used the cash to finance a controversial ad strategy. It is targeting Muslim and Arab-American voters in Michigan with anti-semitic ads about Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, and Harris’s stance on Israel, portraying her as a staunch Israel supporter. Simultaneously, the PAC is also taking out ads targeting Jewish voters in Pennsylvania, attacking Harris for being anti-Israel.
Another PAC that BAF has funded this cycle is Stand for Us PAC, which received $3.8 million from BAF. Stand for Us PAC has spent exclusively on state and local races, including in Missouri and West Virginia.
Trump is set to appear at a community roundtable hosted by BAF in Oakland, Michigan on Friday.
Musk's $75 million Super PAC
Filings released Tuesday reveal that Musk has donated nearly $75 million to America PAC. Musk gave the PAC $14.95 million in July, $30 million in August, and $30 million in September. Musk was the PAC’s only disclosed donor from July to September. The donations came after Musk said in March that he would not be donating to a presidential campaign.
From July to September, the PAC spent approximately $72 million, higher than “any other pro-Trump super PAC focused on turning out voters.” The PAC focuses on canvassing voters to increase early and mail-in voting in swing states, despite the fact that Musk routinely spreads misinformation about early voting to his 200 million followers on X, including that mail-in ballots are “insane” and “too risky.” Trump has reportedly “largely outsourced his 2024 campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation” to America PAC, partially made possible by a March Federal Election Commission (FEC) advisory opinion that allows canvassing operations to coordinate their message directly with a campaign.
In August, America PAC was investigated in multiple states for improperly collecting voters' personal data. The PAC ran ads showing someone receiving a text reading, “Hey you need to vote,” with a video of the attempted assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania, CNBC reported. As Trump is seen taken off stage, the person in the ad texts back, “This is out of control! How do I start?” The person then receives a link to the America PAC website, with a text stating, “Register to vote! It’s easy!”
The PAC website advertised that it helped users register to vote, but not all users received assistance. Users in swing states, including Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin, were “directed to a highly detailed personal information form, [and] prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.” But the website did not direct them to a voter registration page. Instead, after users submitted their information, the website directed to a page saying “thank you.” (Users from traditionally noncompetitive states like California were told to enter their information and then directed to a voter registration page or back to the sign-up page.) After CNBC's report, the PAC removed language promising to assist voters with registration.
The North Carolina Board of Elections opened an investigation of the PAC. In a statement, a spokesman for the board said that “North Carolina law makes it a crime for someone to fail to submit a voter’s registration form if that person has told a voter that they would be submitting the voter’s registration form.” In letters to officials in Michigan and North Carolina, lawyers for America PAC argued that it was “deserving of a commendation, not an investigation.” A spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State told NBC News that they had “not found evidence of any violations of Michigan campaign finance law” but would “continue to monitor the situation.” A spokesperson for the North Carolina State Board of Elections said, “[T]he board’s staff conferred with America PAC on how to conduct voter registration consistent with state law.”
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Turning Point’s representatives have made two things clear in meetings with state and local Republican leaders — Donald Trump has blessed their conservative organization to help lead his get-out-the-vote effort, and local party officials ought to use the group’s new voter mobilization app.
Both prospects terrify fellow Republicans.
Soaring to prominence after Trump’s unexpected 2016 win, Turning Point earned a reputation for hosting glitzy events, cultivating hard-right influencers and raising prodigious sums of money while enriching the group’s leaders. They’ve had far less success helping Republicans win, especially in their adopted home state of Arizona.
Now the organization has leveraged its ties to Trump to expand its influence in a way that could be potentially lucrative. Turning Point has sought to lead an effort to remake the GOP’s get-out-the-vote effort based on the theory that there are thousands of Trump supporters who rarely vote but could be persuaded to in this year’s election. And they are pitching their new mobile app as vital to this effort’s success.
The Associated Press obtained an unvarnished look at how Turning Point is promoting its strategy by obtaining several recordings of presentations made by its representatives to state and local Republican officials. In those presentations, Turning Point operatives honed in on churchgoers and hunters, citing statistics that purport to show how few of each group cast ballots in 2020. Their argument, which is questioned by critics, is if groups like Turning Point target such groups, Republicans will likely sweep the swing states for Trump, the recordings show.
The decision by Trump to rely on untested groups such as Turning Point could have sweeping implications for November’s election. Turning Point says it’s operating statewide in Arizona and Wisconsin, two must win states for Trump. It’s also working in two competitive House districts, one in Michigan and another in Nevada, that could also help tip the balance in the presidential race.
The difference of just a few thousand votes in battleground states could mean victory or defeat for candidates up and down the ballot. It’s also a risky move that dismisses independent voters, a small but significant portion of the electorate.
“Their strategy is bad. They know how to talk MAGA, they know how to message the base,” said Tyler Montague, a Republican strategist from Arizona and a longtime Turning Point critic, referring to the former president’s Make America Great Again movement. “But they literally don’t know what to say to a swing voter. They alienate these people.”
A Turning Point spokesman rebuffed such criticism, saying the group is performing an important role for conservative candidates. “We did this because we knew conservatives need” a way to identify and turn out voters, said spokesman Andrew Kolvet. He added that the effort reflects lessons Turning Point has learned from defeats Republicans suffered in Arizona in 2022 and elsewhere and how Democrats have embraced similar tactics.
From influencers to organizers
Turning Point was founded in suburban Chicago over a decade ago by Charlie Kirk, then a recent high school graduate, to nurture the next generation of conservatives. But as its leaders age out of the youth movement, the group’s brand of far-right politics hasn’t been very persuasive to Arizona’s general election voters, who rejected conservative candidates for statewide office in 2022, including gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake.
Turning Point’s leaders showed a degree of introspection after those losses. Not only had they failed to mobilize GOP voters, but Kirk had also amplified Trump’s false claims that voting by mail was rife with fraud, putting Republicans at a strategic disadvantage by discouraging a convenient way to cast a ballot.
They reversed course for the 2024 election and launched a campaign to raise $108 million for a “ballot chasing” operation that would expand beyond Arizona to key presidential swing states, where they are canvasing reliably Republican areas and encouraging low-turnout voters to cast a ballot by mail. Kolvet, Turning Point’s spokesman, said they have so far raised tens of millions of dollars as part of this effort.
Turning Point’s get-out-the-vote work is part of a broader effort to elect Trump that includes 30,000 volunteers recruited by the former president’s campaign, as well as work being done by such outside groups as Elon Musk’s America PAC, which has paid at least $45 million to voter canvasing firms this year.
Musk’s PAC took over as the leader of voter mobilization efforts in Wisconsin, a position that Turning Point had previously held. Turning Point will now play a secondary role in the state, while directing much of their focus to Arizona, a development previously reported by Politico.
A straightforward, if questionable, strategy
The group’s strategy isn’t complicated: Its operatives believe there is a well of untapped conservative voters who have not backed Trump in recent elections. To get Trump back to the White House, they believe the best path is to activate those voters. The strategy appears to mostly ignore independents — or less hardened Republicans — because Turning Point’s brand of hard-right politics is less likely to appeal to them.
In the recordings obtained by the AP, Turning Point’s representatives fully embraced that strategy and believe it would have helped them win past elections and ensure victory in November.
“If we just have an ounce of ballot chasing, just in Arizona,” Republicans would have won all their races, Matthew Martinez, a Turning Point official, said at a June event in Detroit, referring to the practice of convincing people to vote early while reaching out to those who haven’t cast ballots
Martinez added that Republicans faced the same challenges in Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia. In all three states, Martinez said, “Republicans are sincerely disengaged.”
Kirk wrote this month that Turning Point had assigned a full-time staffer or volunteer to chase every low-propensity voter on their target list in Arizona.
Experts in voting patterns are doubtful Turning Point’s efforts to mobilize infrequent Trump-inclined voters will do much to affect the election. Turnout in the past two presidential elections has already drawn a record number of voters to the polls, the experts noted, meaning the pool of voters they are seeking to turn out is small and particularly unlikely to vote.
“You had the highest turnout in Michigan in those presidential election years than you’ve ever had before. It’s doubtful they’re going to get any more,” said Bernie Porn, a nonpartisan pollster who’s worked in the state for more than 30 years.
‘Just download the app’
For over a year, Turning Point has aggressively pitched its new voter mobilization app — a potentially lucrative venture that, if successful, critics believe could strengthen its grasp on key Republican Party machinery. In meetings with state and local Republican leaders, Turning Point operatives lean heavily into their close affiliation with Trump, who is a regular speaker at Turning Point conferences, according to the recordings obtained by theAP.
“We now are an official arm of the Trump campaign,” Turning Point operative Luke Malace told the members of the Monroe County Republican Party in Michigan earlier this year while urging the group to become a paying “client” of the company that made the Turning Point app.
Martinez, at the June event, told attendees concerned about helping Republicans win that the best way to help was to use the app.
“Sir, just download the app – and everybody in here, too, download the app,” said Martinez, a Turning Point official.
The app was designed by Superfeed, a company with direct ties to Turning Point’s leaders. Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point’s chief operating officer, sits on the company’s board and was formerly the company’s chairman, business filings show. Kirk’s mother-in-law also serves on Superfeed’s board.
It’s unclear how much the company has made from apps it designed for Turning Point and over a dozen other GOP and conservative groups, including state parties in Arizona, Nevada and Delaware. Recent state and federal campaign finance disclosures do not show any payments to Superfeed.
In private, a Turning Point representative did not seek to disguise the connection between the app and their group.
“It’s all in-house,” Malace told the county party in Michigan.
Malace did not respond to a request for comment. Superfeed officials also did not respond to a request for comment.
Kolvet, the Turning Point spokesman, said that Malace mischaracterized the organization’s relationship with the app maker. Turning Point does not receive any money earned by Superfeed, and the conservative group isn’t “financially involved” with the app maker, Kolvet said.
“Our relationship with Superfeed is we are a client and they are a vendor,” Kolvet said.
The app and Turning Point’s data plans draw criticism
Some Republicans told the AP that there are major issues with Turning Point’s app, which has minimal protections to secure voters’ personal information.
The platform allows anyone who uses it, including an AP reporter, to quickly gain access to detailed personal information, including voters’ full names, addresses, ages and cellphone numbers. That’s a departure from the security protocols adopted by other such platforms. Such protocols are designed to safeguard personal information and prevent rival parties from stealing data or spying on a campaign’s strategy.
But not everyone is critical of the app.
Matt Brown, chair of the Yakima County Republican Party in Washington, said he learned about the app during a talk at a Turning Point conference in December. Brown was wowed and decided to become a Superfeed client, and began using the app a few months ago. He declined to say how much the party pays Superfeed, but praised Turning Point’s new focus.
“They are doing the work that no one else wants to do and the party is not doing it,” Brown said of the group.
The app is seen by Republican strategists as the latest example of Turning Point becoming more focused on using data as a way to strengthen its Republican role in the future. And those strategists are concerned that Turning Point is not playing by established traditions of sharing data within the Republican ecosystem and is unprepared to do the kind of work needed to elect Republicans in swing states.
“We have had good ground games in the past, really good ground games. And they were run by the RNC,” said Ron Kaufman, a longtime Republican who is so closely associated with the Republican National Committee he has been referred to as “Mr. RNC” in the past. “It doesn’t make sense to turn that operation over to an outside organization that doesn’t have the institutional knowledge that the committee has.”
Turning Point, for example, is not sharing its voter data with Data Trust, a Republican information clearinghouse that allows GOP campaigns and groups to use data collected by groups throughout the party’s ecosystem. Other Republican operatives said Turning Point is not sharing data with key statewide campaigns in the battlegrounds they are prioritizing.
Such data is the “lifeblood” of modern electioneering, said Montague, the Arizona Republican who has been critical of Turning Point.
He said the group’s foray into providing other groups data is further evidence it is attempting “to take over the party at the national level.”
Turning Point’s spokesman denied the charge, saying the group was not seeking to take over the GOP and blaming their lack of sharing with the Data Trust on not having access when they started this work.
“It’s just craziness,” Kolvet said. “We don’t want the job.”
t urning Point wants to revolutionize how Republicans ...
WNCT
https://www.wnct.com › news › national › ap-turning-p...](https://www.wnct.com/news/national/ap-turning-point-wants-to-revolutionize-how-republicans-turn-out-voters-some-are-skeptical/)
8 days ago — WASHINGTON (AP) — Turning Point's representatives have made two things clear in meetings with state and local Republican leaders — Donald ...
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an 10 24
Revealed: Bundy collaborator fueled FEMA conspiracy in Hurricane Helene aftermath
Clockwise from upper right: Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Shawna Cox, Pete Santilli, Jon Ritzheimer, Ryan Payne, Joe O'Shaughnessy
Jordan GreenandRaw StoryOctober 14, 2024
Only 30 minutes after billionaire Elon Musk began publicly accusing the federal government of blocking his company from delivering the satellite internet components to the disaster zone in western North Carolina, another extraordinary claim popped up on X.
“NC State Police issue statement that they will start arresting any federal employees trying to hinder rescue operations,” an Arizona man named Joseph O’Shaughnessy wrote on X Oct. 4.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, quickly disputed the claim from Musk, who owns both SpaceX and the social media platform X and would speak at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa. the following day. But O’Shaughnessy’s claim piggy-backing off Musk's post added a new layer to manufactured intrigue: a potential clash between state and federal authorities in a region traumatized by the staggering loss.
The statement is completely false, and it comes from someone with a history of armed confrontation with the FBI and other federal agencies. O’Shaughnessy served prison time for his role in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016 and was also charged in the standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in 2014.
Prior to his involvement in the Bundy ranch standoff, O’Shaughnessy had been arrested for disorderly conduct, domestic violence and drugs, according to federal prosecutors.
“If you tie back to this guy, you’ll see that nothing reliable comes from that guy,” First Sgt. Christopher Knox, a public information officer for the N.C. State Highway Patrol, told Raw Story. “That’s not a trusted source of information. That information is not true in any way, shape or form.”
Knox pointed out that North Carolina doesn’t even have an agency called “NC State Police.” The claim is even more dubious if one considers that State Highway Patrol in North Carolina is under the command of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, an ally of Vice President Kamala Harris. From a purely partisan standpoint, it is unlikely the two agencies would end up in an adversarial position with one another.
O'Shaughnessy responded to an inquiry from Raw Story by sending an AI-generated GIF of Trump dancing through a direct message on X.
While O’Shaughnessy’s post was quickly shot down by X users who pointed out that no such agency exists in North Carolina, it landed within a matrix of false claims by Trump allies that has created a mutually reinforced narrative, belied by the facts on the ground, that the federal government is abandoning the people of western North Carolina.
O’Shaughnessy’s post was reshared 18,000 times, including Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who has a long history of promoting conspiracy theories despite a professional background that requires an ability to separate fact from fantasy astutely.
Before joining the Trump administration, Flynn held the highest military intelligence position as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, re-shared O’Shaughnessy’s post, writing: “Finally, some good news!”
Flynn, who has persistently used his X account to push apocalyptic messages about the impending breakup of the United States, has also pushed misinformation related to the disaster. During an Oct. 4 interview with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, Flynn said there were “reports” about “illegals” raping children, while describing the flood-ravaged region as a “warzone.”
Flynn also could not be reached for comment for this story.
Johnson, who interviewed Flynn on his show, was recently employed by a media company alleged by federal prosecutors to be a front for a Russian influence operation. Johnson and other conservative influencers linked to the company have said they were victims of the scheme. During his interview with Flynn on Oct. 4, Johnson echoed many of the same themes as his guest during his opening monologue for the segment, claiming that the federal government has “chosen” immigrants over Trump supporters.
“Our federal government has left you to die in whatever small, inconsequential town that you come from because you are a Trump voter, because you support MAGA, because you are America first,” he said.
Flynn wasn’t the only one who greeted O’Shaughnessy’s bogus claim about a state law enforcement agency challenging the federal government.
Gianna Miceli, who co-hosts a podcast that promotes sovereign citizen ideology, enthused: “Now we have a jurisdiction war happening! What a great time for people to learn some lessons about who is the government and who is not.”
“Exactly,” O’Shaughnessy responded.
In another reply to O’Shaughnessy’s thread, Miceli falsely claimed: “FEMA is a private for-profit corporation. It is not government.”
O’Shaughnessy’s false claim that a state agency in North Carolina is threatening to arrest federal agents in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election fits a pattern with not only his involvement in the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff and 2016 Malheur occupation, but also the effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Bundy ranch, Malheur occupation and Stop the Steal 2020
O’Shaughnessy was described in a federal indictment in response to the Bundy ranch standoff as a “mid-level leader and organizer of the conspiracy who, among other things: organized gunmen and other followers; led gunmen and other followers in the assault and extortion of federal law enforcement at the impound site; organized protection for members of the criminal enterprise; and organized armed patrols and security checkpoints.”
Similarly, federal prosecutors would later describe O’Shaughnessy as a “mid-level organizer” of the Malheur occupation. In a video interview during the occupation, according to the criminal complaint, O’Shaughnessy said: “I’m right now in the process of trying to set up a constitutional security protection force to make sure these federal agents and these law enforcement don’t just come in here like cowboys.”
O’Shaughnessy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede federal officers for his conduct during the Malheur occupation, but the government dismissed charges in the Bundy ranch case. O’Shaughnessy was sentenced to time served, and reportedly spent one year and nine months in custody for the two cases.
O’Shaughnessy has described Roger Stone, a political consultant and longtime confidant of Trump, as a “hero and a mentor.” Like Flynn, Stone was pivotal in mobilizing a pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election. Immediately following the 2020 election, Stone privately strategized with Flynn, the Washington Post reported.
O’Shaughnessy’s Instagram account shows that he was with Stone during a dinner in Florida with Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander in November 2020. Another post shows dated Dec. 11, 2020, the eve of the pro-Trump Jericho March rally in Washington, D.C. includes a photo that shows Stone drinking with InfoWars conspiracy trafficker Alex Jones.
It is unclear what, if anything, O’Shaughnessy discussed with Stone, Jones and Alexander when they met on those two occasions.
A false claim that evolved out of Elon Musk’s dustup with FEMA
In his false post about state law enforcement threatening to arrest their counterparts last week, O’Shaughnessy appears to have taken a cue from Nick Sortor, a right-wing videographer who spent the past week in the Asheville area delivering Starlink terminals while producing media assailing the federal government response to the disaster.
In an Oct. 3 X post, Sortor thanked Musk and SpaceX “for bringing us another truckload of Starlinks. A photo in the post shows an officer wearing a North Carolina State Highway Patrol uniform holding a box labeled “Starlink,” while a video shows police vehicles that appear to be providing an escort for Sortor down a winding mountain road.
The following day, Sortor replied to Musk’s post accusing FEMA of preventing his engineers from allowing him to deliver supplies. In his reply, Sortor appears to reference the State Highway Patrol, while using the same misnomer that O’Shaughnessy would later use.
“Let me know where the blockades are and we’ll have the NC State Police move them out of the way,” Sortor wrote. “Already did it once, which is one reason why we have an escort now. FEMA has zero jurisdiction.
“Trust me,” he added. “They’re not going to win this one.”
Twenty-four minutes later, O’Shaughnessy made his post claiming that the “NC State Police” were prepared to start arresting federal agents.
Challenged to substantiate his claim, O’Shaughnessy responded to one detractor by writing, “Calm down stranger danger, my boys were one of the 1st on-scene to bring aid…. I am the source.”
O’Shaughnessy didn’t identify his “boys” on the ground in North Carolina, but on Sunday he praised Sortor for delivering the Starlink terminals, writing, “And everyone, please follow @nicksortor. He’s the one who made it happen.”
Manufacturing a fake turf war between FEMA and state law enforcement doesn’t help the residents of western North Carolina, Christopher Knox, the State Highway Patrol spokesperson, told Raw Story. Instead of relying on dubious accounts on X, Knox recommended that people seek information about the recovery effort from trusted sources such as the NC Department of Public Safety.
“There’s a lot of people hurting and a lot of people looking for resources,” Knox said. “We hate that there’s stuff out there slowing the response. Getting people to the right sources is a big goal of the state of North Carolina.”
NOW READ: The Purge is real: Inside the GOP's 2024 playbook to disenfranchise voters
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an 10 24
Billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who purchased the social media platform Twitter and renamed it X, is “all in” on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, The New York Times reports. X has “reportedly worked with Donald Trump’s campaign to censor material that could be harmful to the former president’s White House chances as part of a pattern of election interference that is unprecedented in U.S. history,” according to The Daily Beast.
Musk, The Times reports, “seen over the weekend jumping for joy alongside former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Butler, Pa., is now talking to the Republican candidate multiple times a week.”
Video (below) shows Musk wore a black “Make America Great Again” cap with the words “Never Surrender” embroidered on the side and praising the ex-president’s actions during the attempted assassination.
The relationship between Musk and Trump “has proved significant in other ways. After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.”
READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree
The reporter, Ken Klippenstein, whose work often focuses on national security issues, published the document because “it’s of keen public interest in an election season.”
Klippenstein last month called his ban “political,” and wrote: “It’s been widely reported that my suspension from X (Twitter) is only temporary. Those reports are false. My ban from X, the company says, is permanent.”
The New York Times’ Aric Toler writes: “Trump’s campaign worked with Musk/Twitter to implement a blanket ban on sharing the link to the Vance dossier.” NBC News’ Kevin Collier adds, “Per NYT, X’s crackdown on Ken Klippenstein and the Iran-hacked Vance doc came after the Trump campaign reached out. Well within each party’s right, but this is the exact same thing Musk, Trump, and the right threw a yearslong fit about over Hunter Biden.”
Journalist Steve Mullis notes, “It’s crazy that this is a single paragraph in the NYT’s Elon Musk story. Given that there were congressional hearings accusing Biden and Democrats of doing this sort of thing, this should be its own huge story.”
Musk, The Times adds, “has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election,” and “relentlessly promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought for $44 billion and has used to spread conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and to insult its candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.”
The Times’ article ends with this: “Online, Mr. Musk has painted a dark picture of what would happen if Mr. Trump lost, a circumstance that could hurt Mr. Musk personally. In an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged ‘trashing Kamala nonstop’ and being all in for Mr. Trump.”
“If Mr. Trump loses, he joked, ‘how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?'”
Democratic strategist Matt McDermott writes, “Doesn’t seem to be enough appreciation for the fact that it’s entirely reasonable to assume that Elon Musk is going all in on Trump because he’s worried about a federal probe into corporate corruption + election interference and knows Trump will shut down an investigation.”
The Times notes that Musk “is personally steering the actions of a super PAC that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He has even proposed taking a campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania and knocking on doors himself, in part to see how his money is being used.”
READ MORE: ‘Dangerous’: Musk Laughing at Idea of ‘Puppet’ Kamala Harris Being Killed Sparks Fury
The Times does not include news from August related to Musk’s super PAC, America PAC.
Attorney Jay Kuo alleged on Substack, “Elon Musk’s PAC Is Harvesting Voter Data.”
“The America PAC is using fraudulent techniques to obtain highly personal information from voters in swing states,” Kuo wrote, pointing to a CNBC “explosive report on how Elon Musk’s America PAC is defrauding voters through online ads. As the report explained, Musk’s Trump-aligned PAC is running a scheme that pretends to register people to vote. But in many cases, the PAC simply collects higher personal information from users that it can later use to retarget them.”
According to The Washington Post, some of Musk’s foreign backers in his $44 billion purchase of Twitter include Billionaire investor Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud ($2 billion) and The Qatar Investment Authority ($375 million). Buzzfeed News in 2022 referred to them as “countries that have historically restricted freedom of speech.”
“What’s even more telling is that America PAC only collects this personal information from users residing in swing states, such as Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. For anyone else, it actually does assist them with registering to vote,” Kuo wrote. “It’s possible that America PAC simply ‘messed up’ badly by forgetting to actually redirect users in swing states to voter registration sites after scraping their personal information. In so doing, however, it has made it abundantly clear that it treats swing state users very differently than non-swing state ones. In exposing its own operations this way, it has raised a more troubling question: Is Musk involved in improper data harvesting and planning to improperly influence the election, just like we saw in 2016?”
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Elon Musk — who has $260 billion — will be charging Helene victims $400 for internet service
Carl Gibson an 10 24
Trump-allied Pac fires canvassing vendor in crucial states weeks before election
Elon Musk’s America Pac replaces voter turnout operations in Arizona and Nevada with fewer than 50 days till election
Hugo Lowell in Washington
Tue 17 Sep 2024
America Pac, one of the largest and the most ambitious of the groups supporting Donald Trump’s campaign, is replacing its ground game operations in the crucial battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The political action committee, backed by billionaire Elon Musk, has ended its contract with the September Group and will hire a new company to knock on doors with fewer than 50 days left until the election.
America Pac used non-performance as the stated reason to back out of the contract in the past few days, claiming the September Group was not hitting its door-knocking targets, one of people said.
The shakeup comes at a crunch moment for the Trump campaign, which has outsourced virtually its entire ground game operation to a number of political action committees in this presidential cycle. America Pac is seen as the most ambitious, with a presence in every swing state.
As a result of the shakeup, America Pac has not canvassed any neighborhoods in Arizona and Nevada on behalf of the Trump campaign for the past few days as it resets its operations in the two states.
America Pac hopes the roughly 300 canvassers employed by the September Group will be rehired by its successor but whether that occurs remains uncertain.
To some degree, it would be in America Pac’s interest to rehire the people given the talent pool for knocking on doors in the blazing Arizona and Nevada heat is dramatically reduced this late in the cycle, having already been hired by congressional and other campaigns.
The New York Times reported earlier that America Pac would replace the September Group with a new canvassing vendor. The September Group was paid just under $1.4m for its work since August, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
A Trump campaign spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
The move inside America Pac comes as Republican officials in swing states have raised concern about the Trump campaign’s own formal presence for the get-out-the-vote operation, the Guardian has reported.
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Trump has scant ground game operation in swing states, GOP worries
Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/09/trump-campaign-rnc-ground-game-pacs)
The Republican National Committee once envisioned an extensive field operation for the 2024 election, until the Trump campaign scrapped those plans when it took over the party in March, pursuing a twin voter turnout strategy of relying on Pacs and ardent Trump volunteers.
The Trump campaign took the gamble to outsource its ground game, after the Federal Election Commission gave permission for campaigns to coordinate their voter turnout efforts with the Pacs, freeing Trump to spend his war chest on rallies and television advertising.
But the Pacs, which are supposed to bridge the gap, have been slow to spool up, according to people with direct access to the data for groups such as America Pac, Turnout for America, Turning Point Action and America First Works.
They have only started to hire at a rapid clip in recent weeks, the people said, meaning they are reaching Trump supporters late in the cycle when it often takes repeated “voter contacts” to get them to return a ballot.
The situation means that not only is the size of the formal Trump operation particularly small for the 2024 election, but the door-knockers and canvassers recruited by the Pacs might be less effective compared with previous presidential cycles.