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As Elon Musk Becomes a Trillionaire, Report Highlights 'Darker Realities' of His Texas SpaceX Fiefdom
"Mr. Musk’s bid for planetary reach is about to be turbocharged with billions of dollars of rocket fuel. Who will suffer the fallout if it all blows up?"
Jun 12, 2026
Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire on Friday, as his private space exploration firm SpaceX became a publicly traded company with a market cap of $2 trillion despite reporting negative net income for two of the last three years.
To mark this occasion, The New York Times published an essay by journalist Amy Gamerman, who has spent the last several months documenting life in Starbase, Texas, a city built by Musk to house SpaceX employees.
Gamerman wrote that it's best to think of Starbase as a corporate fiefdom that has been granted extraordinary treatment by Texas' state government.
"One new Texas law makes interfering with Starbase’s operations potentially punishable with jail time," the journalist explained. "Another allows the company to shut down the highway into town and to the beach at the mayor’s discretion. Another shields SpaceX, and by extension Starbase, from lawsuits by neighbors over nuisance caused by its rockets."
While the community of nearly 600 people appears idyllic, Gamerman found there are several "darker realities" lying beneath the surface, with one resident who wished to remain anonymous saying that Starbase is "like living in a dictatorship" where people fear raising concerns will lead to retaliation by the company.
Another disturbing aspect outlined in Gamerman's essay is the way that Starbase seemingly operates outside the laws and norms of the rest of society.
For example, the city has now erected electronic gates on every single road leading to Starbase Village, the main center of the city where SpaceX employees live and that is cut off from other parts of the community.
"Those who live outside the gates of Starbase Village... often feel shut out," wrote Gamerman. "Amber Pompa said her father, Homer Pompa, a disabled veteran who lives near Starbase Village, has no access to the restaurants or any other buildings there. And as Starbase expands, new gates have gone up in other parts of town."
Gamerman also highlighted the story of Jose Luis Bautista Jr., a 25-year-old construction worker who died in an accident in Starbase last month. When the nearby city of Brownsville dispatched an ambulance to take Bautista to a hospital, Starbase officials denied it access and said their own emergency medical services were handling the situation.
The incident, noted Gamerman, is being investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Taking a look at the broader picture, Gamerman expressed concern that Musk becoming a trillionaire could allow him to expand his vision of billionaire-owned cities across the US.
"Mr. Musk’s bid for planetary reach is about to be turbocharged with billions of dollars of rocket fuel," the journalist concluded. "Who will suffer the fallout if it all blows up?"
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Under Healthcare 'Dystopia' Envisioned by Trump, Cash-Strapped Patients Would Take Out Loans From Insurers
"This could ruin people's finances, while creating a financial incentive for insurers to deny coverage," said one Democratic congresswoman.
Jun 12, 2026
After the Republican Party's decision to terminate subsidies that had significantly reduced healthcare costs under the Affordable Care Act for 22 million people, the White House is considering a new way to—officials claim—"help" Americans who face massive medical bills, either due to high-deductible plans that don't cover routine costs or because of emergency expenses.
The proposal, though, could just shift "who [the patients] owe the debt to," as one doctor and researcher told The New York Times, which reported Thursday on the Trump administration's proposal to allow people to take out loans directly from their health insurance companies when they can't afford to pay a hospital or doctor's office out of pocket—and then pay the insurance company back, likely with interest.
"Hard to top this level of dystopia," said one writer in response to the Times report. "Have health insurance through the ACA? The Trump administration is going to turn your health insurer into a loan shark you borrow money from if you can't afford to pay your portion of medical procedures."
As the newspaper was reported, the provision is buried in a 1,121-page final rule issued last month regarding how the ACA will be regulated next year.
The Trump administration is planning to significantly expand the number of Americans who are eligible for high-deductible "catastrophic" health insurance plans that provide no coverage for day-to-day medical expenses.
"We note that multiyear and 1-year catastrophic plans may be able to offer relief from the high deductible and maximum annual limitation on cost sharing through other mechanisms," reads the final rule. "For example, issuers of catastrophic plans could consider financing the deductible by providing enrollees a loan."
Currently, the average annual deductible for people insured under the ACA is nearly $4,000, and about 40% of enrollees this year have "Bronze" plans, which have an out-of-pocket maximum that's over $10,000 for an individual, likely leaving many people having to pay thousands of dollars in medical expenses despite having coverage.
By 2028, as Common Dreams reported earlier this year, catastrophic plans with lower premiums could have deductibles as high as $31,000 for families.
The plan to shift more people onto expensive plans that provide less coverage for day-to-day medical care—and to push patients to take out loans from their insurers—comes as about one-third of Americans, even those with insurance, report skipping meals or cutting back on other expenses to afford their medical bills.
The Times reported that at least one major health insurer—UnitedHealthcare, the nation's largest—is already equipped to start lending patients money to cover unexpected medical bills. The company operates a bank that administers loans to doctors and offers health savings accounts.
Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) said the latest proposal from the White House shows that President Donald Trump "is destroying healthcare from all sides."
The advocacy group Protect Our Care said the "suggestion" buried in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' final rule "is not only out of touch, it is cruel—accruing medical debt only adds to families’ financial burdens."
“While working families drown in the high cost of living, the Trump administration’s answer to the healthcare affordability crisis they created is to throw people an anchor made of medical debt and call it relief," said Leslie Dach, chair of Protect Our Care. "Trump and Republicans had a simple, popular fix sitting right in front of their faces—extending the ACA tax credits—but they killed it anyway, triggering premiums to double, triple, or even quadruple for millions of working families, all to make billionaires and big corporations even richer."
"Americans are being bankrupted by crushing medical debt, and this administration isn’t lifting a finger to help—it’s busy shoveling more people into that hole," said Dach. "Voters will remember this foolishness at the ballot box in November, just you wait.”
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, which advocates for a universal, single-payer healthcare system for New York state, suggested the proposal makes the latest case for a federal, government-funded healthcare program similar to those in other wealthy countries, which would end the healthcare profit motive by expanding the existing Medicare system to the entire US population.
"Letting Americans take out loans to afford healthcare forces Americans deeper into debt and drives up profits for the health insurance industry," said D'Arrigo. "Abolish the health insurance industry. Demand Medicare for All."
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'Trillionaires Shouldn't Exist': Obscene Musk Milestone Spurs Calls for Aggressive Wealth Tax
"The level of wealth that Mr. Musk has reached requires human exploitation, wage theft, wage suppression, anti-competitive markets, monopolistic control, price collusion, inadequate tax systems, and corruption."
Jun 12, 2026
Elon Musk's net worth surged past $1 trillion on Friday as SpaceX—the rocket company he founded and controls—made its debut on the public market, prompting global revulsion and calls for an aggressive wealth tax to rein in out-of-control inequality.
“Musk became the world's first trillionaire because our tax system shields the wealth of the ultra-wealthy from taxation while requiring working to people pay taxes on every paycheck," said Igor Volsky, director of the Tax the Greedy Billionaires Campaign. "Today’s milestone should serve as a wake-up call to us all."
"Unless we plan to cede control and agency over our future to a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals, lawmakers must pursue bold tax policies that actually meet this moment—not just slowing the accumulation of extreme wealth, but reversing it," Volsky added. "That means passing taxes on billionaire wealth ambitious enough to make the ultra-wealthy less wealthy, reduce the stranglehold they have over our economy and democracy, and restore the ideal that no one in America gets to buy their way to unchecked power.”
Reuters reported Friday that "most of Musk's wealth now rests with SpaceX, where he holds a stake worth roughly $866 billion."
"Along with Tesla and the rest of his properties, his net worth will exceed $1.1 trillion when the stock begins trading Friday," Reuters noted. "The tally includes stock components that would vest over time."
While Musk's on-paper fortune could drop below the trillion-dollar mark if SpaceX's stock price drops below $135 per share—which is highly possible, as experts argue the company's valuation is absurd—campaigners said Friday that the milestone is an appalling product of a society that has allowed the mega-rich to dictate policy, funneling immense wealth to the very top while millions worldwide face hunger, violent displacement, and preventable disease. Oxfam has estimated that just a 10% tax on Musk's fortune could lift 800 million people above the extreme poverty line.
“Eighty-six of Americans are worried about the price of food. Elon Musk is a trillionaire. These two things are deeply, inherently connected," said Erica Payne, founder and president of the advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires. "The level of wealth that Mr. Musk has reached requires human exploitation, wage theft, wage suppression, anti-competitive markets, monopolistic control, price collusion, inadequate tax systems, and corruption. Mostly inadequate tax systems and corruption."
Musk's companies, including SpaceX, have relied heavily on and benefited massively from government contracts, subsidies, and research, while paying minimal taxes.
The New York Times reported last year that SpaceX "has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002 and has privately told investors that it may never have to pay any, according to internal company documents." As for Tesla, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found earlier this year that the company "avoided almost all federal income tax on over $12 billion of US income over the past three years."
Musk, whose immense wealth is largely stock appreciation that is not taxed in the US unless shares are sold, paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2018, according to ProPublica. "Between 2014 and 2018, he had a true tax rate of 3.27%," the investigative outlet noted.
Writer Elizabeth Spiers argued Friday that "trillionaires shouldn't exist," noting in a column for The Nation that "as Musk's wealth multiplies, he continues to prosper on the public dime."
"Musk’s cosmic-scale wealth-hoarding is particularly abhorrent when you place it against the backdrop of how much damage he’s done," wrote Spiers. "It’s hard to quantify the scale of destruction and deprivation that he will never personally be held accountable for. How do you value the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who have died since Musk, in his words, gleefully 'fed [USAID] into the woodchipper'? How do you value the lives of people who will die because DOGE cut major biomedical research funding?"
"Musk has enriched himself via a rigged investment economy ensuring that those with the most contribute the least—or in many cases, nothing at all," Spiers added.
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Despite Court Protection Orders, Trump Admin Deports Refugees to War-Torn Central African Republic, Putting ‘Lives at Risk’
“It’s hard to fathom how deeply evil this is,” said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Jun 12, 2026
The US government advises Americans not to travel to the Central African Republic "for any reason." But it just deported nearly two dozen people to the war-torn country, including several refugees who fled persecution in other nations.
On Friday morning, Human Rights First's deportation flight tracker reported that a plane used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had landed in Accra, Ghana, after departing from Louisiana the previous day and was believed to be en route to the CAR's capital, Bangui.
Per The New York Times on Thursday, the administration was preparing to deport "at least two Iranian women who had sought refuge in the United States" as well as "migrants from Afghanistan and Syria."
According to their lawyers, several of the migrants had received court orders from judges prohibiting their deportation to their home countries, citing the risk of persecution there.
A lawyer for one of the Iranian women told the Times that neither of them has a criminal record and that they both have been granted court protection due to fear of threats to their freedom or lives if they returned to Iran. One is a Christian convert, and the other is a pro-democracy activist.
According to Reuters, just the activist ended up on the flight from Louisiana. But the Christian woman is still at risk, along with another Iranian national.
Human Rights First's @ICEFlightM is monitoring this egregious situation, and we urge our policy makers to decry this life-threatening flight and other deals that send people seeking safety back to the very harms from which they fled.
https://t.co/ABZZMTQNuS
— Human Rights First (@humanrights1st) June 11, 2026
The burden of proof to receive what is known as a “withholding of removal” status from an immigration judge is even higher than that needed for migrants to qualify for asylum.
Those seeking their deportations to be halted must demonstrate that it’s more likely than not that their life or freedom would be threatened if they returned to a specific country due to their race, religion, nationality, or political or social affiliation.
In order to get around orders protecting these migrants from deportation to their home countries, the administration is instead dumping them in what have been described as "third countries."
The flight departed on Thursday is the first US deportation flight to the CAR, which is one of the poorest countries in the world and is reeling from a civil war that's displaced more than a million people both inside and outside the country.
The country is under the State Department's highest travel advisory, warning US citizens not to go there "due to risk of unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, health, and terrorism."
This is the @StateDept travel advisory for the Central African Republic.
The United States—a self-proclaimed nation of refuge—is about to send refugees here. https://t.co/uxfexS5S73 pic.twitter.com/pvYyxIQHdN
— Sarah Pierce (@SarahPierceEsq) June 11, 2026
"People on this flight proved to a judge that they were likely to be persecuted in their home countries," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. "This is profoundly unjust."
Human rights law experts Anjli Parrin and Savi Arvey wrote on Wednesday for Just Security that the administration was putting "lives at risk" by sending these migrants to a dangerous country where they know nobody and where basic healthcare infrastructure hardly exists.
They said the administration's deportation of these migrants "is the latest example of its dangerous and potentially life-threatening strategy: using secretive deals with countries to expel asylum seekers and migrants with no legal or personal connection to the places where they are being sent."
"Since early last year, the US government has signed a growing number of third-country forced transfer agreements with over 30 countries worldwide to expel and deport people to places where they have no legal or personal ties," they said.
"These deportations are often carried out in secrecy and without any semblance of due process," they added. "Individuals are often not given any advance warning or the opportunity to challenge their deportation to a third country—with many only discovering they are being sent to a country they may have never heard of while airborne."
Emily Trostle, a lawyer for the Iranian activist, told Reuters that the migrants facing deportation to the CAR "have absolutely no connection to this place."
“These individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection, and no support network,” she said. “We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled.”
According to Human Rights First's Third Country Deportation Watch, governments around the world have been given $44 million from US taxpayers to receive these migrants. More than 19,000 people, it found, have been deported across 24 countries.
Most of them have been sent to Mexico, but the US has also shipped migrants to some of the poorest, most unstable nations in sub-Saharan Africa, including Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Many have faced arbitrary detention and torture or been returned to the country where they fled persecution.
In order to avoid having to allow over 1,000 Afghans who fought alongside US soldiers to settle as refugees in the US as planned, the Trump administration is reportedly trying to ink a deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo to take them instead, but the plan was stalled amid public backlash, and the administration is seeking other options.
It's hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war. https://t.co/JaN8z2LFI2
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 11, 2026
The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund said on Thursday that the deportation of Iranian nationals was a “potentially fatal action,” as they could face danger in the CAR or be sent back to Iran.
Another person scheduled to be deported to the CAR was an elderly man from Syria, whose immigration attorney, Margaret Stock, told the Times that he had scars all over his body due to torture in his home country.
He is a Sufi Muslim and feared persecution if he returned there, and is in danger of lacking access to care for his diabetes if sent to the CAR. According to Stock, he received an emergency temporary order halting his deportation.
Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee in charge of funding for the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration agencies, responded to the Times report on the deportations with outrage.
"It's hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war," he said.
Reichlin-Melnick agreed: "Evil is the right word for... taking people who are safe in the United States, who have proven to a judge they would be persecuted in their home country, and dumping them in a random country in the middle of a civil war."
"No previous administration would have done this, despite it likely being legal," he added.
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