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The Pentagon Is Stealing From the Working Poor to Pay for War and Enrich Contractors
The average US taxpayer in 2025 had over $4,000 taken out of their paychecks to fund the Pentagon; in the coming years, that amount is set to rise as Congress considers a $1.5 trillion war budget for 2027.
Jul 19, 2026
In an era of high prices for fuel, food, and housing, an extra $4,000 could make a lifesaving difference for many families. But instead, that’s what the average household had to shell out for the Pentagon last year.
That’s right: The average US taxpayer in 2025 had over $4,000 taken out of their paychecks to fund the Pentagon, according to the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. In the coming years, that amount is set to rise as Congress considers a $1.5 trillion war budget for 2027.
For the growing number of working poor in the United States, that money can mean the difference between making rent or falling behind, or between being able to afford an emergency trip to the doctor or going without care.
Money directed to the Pentagon represents nothing but betrayal for many Americans. A large majority oppose our wars, especially the latest conflict in Iran. And roughly half of the Pentagon’s budget flows to for-profit contractors, fueling the billionaire (and now even trillionaire) class.
The person who lost SNAP and the farmer who lost their income alike will be asked to foot the bill for the $1.5 trillion war budget.
Take SpaceX, one of many companies built on government contracts funded by taxpayer dollars. Elon Musk’s company would not exist without US taxpayers. As early Tesla investor Ross Gerber put it, “There would not be (Tesla and SpaceX) if it weren’t for the government.”
Early investments and contracts from the US government helped propel SpaceX to success, while continued awards from the Pentagon provided the stable revenue that made the government one of Musk’s largest customers. The company is now valued at more than $1 trillion. Private investors alone did not make Musk a trillionaire—taxpayers across the United States did.
But Musk isn’t the only person who made himself rich off the backs of American workers.
Lockheed Martin receives over 70% of its revenue from US government contracts. The numbers for Raytheon and General Dynamics are similar. These military contractors simply would not exist without the taxpayers—and a new $1.5 trillion budget would send hundreds of billions of dollars more to people who already have more than most Americans could even conceptualize.
At the same time, while taxpayers are subsidizing the military-industrial complex, the jobs those industries are allegedly providing are in decline, with the war industry creating over 2 million fewer jobs than it did 40 years ago.
Worse still, under the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” Republicans passed a year ago, the money for these ever-rising Pentagon budgets comes directly from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and other programs that help Americans make ends meet.
Under those cuts, millions of Americans—including children—have lost SNAP benefits already. And that’s impacting not just families but the farmers who helped feed them.
SNAP benefits were “guaranteed money in the pockets of farmers,” said Reese Amxy, a policy organizer at the Illinois Stewardship Alliance. But 150,000 people in the state have already lost eligibility.
It’s not just Illinois. Arizona has seen the steepest decline, with 50% of recipients—nearly half a million—already losing benefits. Louisiana (21%), Florida (20%), Oklahoma (16%), Virginia (16%), Texas (14%), Wyoming (13%), and Arkansas (12%) round out the rest of the hardest hit states so far.
Yet the person who lost SNAP and the farmer who lost their income alike will be asked to foot the bill for the $1.5 trillion war budget. This is Robin Hood in reverse. Worse still, the weapons those taxes buy are often to use to kill children like ours in Gaza and Iran.
The weapons and tech CEOs that would benefit from the massive war budget, and the politicians bought off by them, seek to keep this cycle going next year at an even grander scale. Americans need to demand their lawmakers say no more Pentagon spending—and invest in the things that actually keep our communities safe instead.
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Trump's Latest Corruption: Hijacking Social Security
Like the reflecting pool, the Kennedy Center, and the White House, Social Security is a sacred American institution that Trump is abusing for his own financial and political gain.
Jul 09, 2026
The Trump administration is illegally using the Social Security email list to spew political propaganda. That email list likely includes everyone with an online Social Security account—over 100 million people, both current and future Social Security beneficiaries. The purpose of the list is for the government to share important information about Social Security benefits.
On July 2, the Trump administration sent an email from Commissioner Frank Bisignano, ostensibly to mark America’s 250th birthday. The email, like a similar one sent a year ago, is a fully political document.
Bisignano begins by bragging about President Donald Trump’s tax bill without mentioning:
- Trump’s bill cuts over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which is causing hospitals around the country to close—a disaster for seniors, especially those living in rural areas.
- Trump’s bill gives massive tax cuts to the ultra wealthy, including trillionaire Elon Musk.
- Trump’s bill does not end taxes on Social Security benefits, but does weaken Social Security’s long-term finances.
Bisignano then goes on to tout allegedly improved customer service. Widespread media reports show that customer service has massively deteriorated since Musk’s DOGE pushed out more than 8,000 of Social Security’s most experienced, knowledgeable workers. These reports include first-person stories where even highly educated people with Social Security expertise have faced months-long nightmares to resolve simple errors that cut themselves or their family members off from benefits.
Shortly after Bisignano was confirmed last year, Social Security removed longstanding customer service metrics from its website. Since then, Bisignano has cherry-picked his own metrics and used them to mislead.
Bisignano moved many of the remaining Social Security office workers to answering phones, while other essential work piles up. Then, he brags about shorter waits on the phone. What he doesn’t mention is that if you hang up in frustration, or talk to someone who can’t help you because they aren’t adequately trained, it still counts toward a short wait on the phone. The only metric that really matters is if people are getting the help they need. On that count, Bisignano is failing miserably.
The situation is particularly dire for people who need help in person. The country is dotted with Social Security “ghost offices” that aren’t officially closed (because that’s bad publicity for Trump and Bisignano) but have only a skeleton crew of workers remaining. These offices can’t meaningfully serve the community, and people are losing their hard-earned benefits as a result.
The same week that Bisignano sent out his political propaganda email, the Social Security Administration announced that the Freedom 250 logo will appear on the Social Security Cards of all babies born for the rest of 2026.
Freedom 250 is a semi-private, partisan entity. Trump and his allies are using it to turn the celebration of our nation’s 250th anniversary into profit for themselves. Freedom 250 has a history of harvesting data, and employs former DOGE operatives. Bisignano claims that the Social Security Administration isn’t paying Freedom 250 a licensing fee, or sharing data with it. But we already know that Bisignano lies as easily as he breathes.
Trump’s hijacking of Social Security is just the latest example of his corruption. Like the reflecting pool, the Kennedy Center, and the White House, Social Security is a sacred American institution that Trump is abusing for his own financial and political gain.
Social Security is a nonpartisan program, with overwhelming support from Democrats, Republicans, and independents. By using it for political purposes, Trump and Bisignano are betraying the American people.
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18 Months Later, Our Fight to Clean Up Elon's DOGE Mess Continues
Our campaign is unrelenting because Musk and Donald Trump will not stop.
Jul 07, 2026
When the current presidential administration took office on January 20, 2025, the authoritarian firestorm they ignited was, sadly, rapid but somewhat expected.
Funding cuts to childcare, housing, healthcare, and food were swift, as were escalated and targeted attacks towards immigrants nationwide. Much of these reckless cuts were led by Elon Musk. Aside from Musk’s billions in government contracts and showering Trump’s campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars, he had no actual government experience. Musk’s tech bro ethos, and firestarter mentality resemble, in retrospect, that of a young Trump. A terrifying resemblance that made him the perfect actor to wreak total havoc on our federal government.
The proximity to Trump that Musk paved for himself laid the groundwork for creating the Department of Government Efficiency, better known by its tongue-in-cheek name of DOGE. The false promise that DOGE would save US taxpayers trillions was, of course, nothing but a disastrous ploy that cost us money, destroyed vital agencies, decimated regulation, and exposed the personal data of nearly every American. And to date, neither Musk or DOGE officials have been held accountable.
Americans from across the country were quick to protest outside of Tesla showrooms to show Musk that we wouldn’t stand by as DOGE callously dismantled our government. We immediately partnered with Tesla Takedown and organized our supporters to join Tesla showroom protests. We began building a network of activists across the country, and worked alongside Communications Workers of America (CWA), who were motivated by the idea of making Musk feel the real-time impact of the consequences of his actions.
We soon organized with activists from across the country to lead Divest Public Money from Musk campaigns aimed at hurting Musk's bottom line. We pushed local governments to pass resolutions instructing government agencies to not do business with companies owned by Elon Musk and urged public pensions to divest from Tesla or pause all new investments in Tesla.
Starting with the pension board of Lehigh County, PA, whose comptroller signed on to our campaign early on, they paused Tesla investments in their actively managed funds; the city of Davis, CA passed a resolution blocking contracts with Musk and his companies. And, as Musk eyes the launch of his own interagalactic mobile network, we have targeted T-Mobile with a boycott urging them to drop their contract with Starlink which resulted in thousands ending their T-Mobile contracts.
Accountability is necessary, and our elected officials have always held the power to step in and address the Doge destruction. This daily dumpster fire catalyzed our organization, Stop The Money Pipeline, to band together with thousands of other Americans, CWA, and Tesla Takedown, to call on Members of Congress to hold DOGE accountable. We are urging them to make public commitments to hold Congressional hearings and investigations into DOGE and Elon Musk’s role in potentially illegal and unconstitutional activities.
Our DOGE Accountability Campaign has garnered the support of more than 50,000 individuals who signed the Investigate DOGE petition. The campaign has also earned the backing of 54 unions and organizations. Just last month, we hand delivered our petition to the district offices of 26 Members of Congress. The goal is to get 75 Members of Congress to subpoena Musk and DOGE officials for hearings and investigations. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) recently called for an investigation; Rep. John B. Larson (D-CT) has also vocally called Musk out; Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) released an extensive report detailing many of DOGE's failures. We are hopeful more members will commit. Others can keep calling on members to commit, join our campaign, and get involved in upcoming actions and organizing.
There is no rhyme or reason for Musk’s rampage. He targets the vulnerable, and moves fast and breaks our government simply because he can. While at the helm of DOGE, he fired federal workers who had been regulating or investigating his companies. If he gets sued he can throw money at the problem. People believe the hype because of how hard he allegedly works—but in reality it’s quite the opposite. His work ethic is power and greed, pure and simple.
Our campaign is unrelenting because Musk will not stop anytime soon. We encourage others who want to be on the right side of history to do the same.
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Astronomers Denounce Elon Musk-Led Plan to Pollute Earth's Orbit With 1.7 Million Satellites
Some of the satellites "would be the brightest ever in orbit, with damaging consequences for dark skies on Earth," said the European Southern Observatory.
Jul 01, 2026
European astronomers on Wednesday urged the US Federal Communications Commission to block a plan led by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to launch a total of 1.7 million satellites into the Earth's orbit, warning that the use of so many extremely bright satellites—partially to support artificial intelligence data centers—would have “devastating consequences for astronomy.”
SpaceX's Starlink telecommunications program has already rapidly increased the number of satellites orbiting the Earth, with the total now exceeding 14,000 since 2019.
Now the space exploration company led by Musk—a former special government employee under the Trump administration—has plans to send 1 million more satellites into space, which would "significantly alter the appearance of the sky," according to a new study by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Scientists found that 100,000 is the maximum number of satellites—ones that are faint enough to be invisible to the naked eye—that can orbit the Earth in order to allow astronomers to continue observing the sky with modern telescopes.
In addition to Musk's launches, the US startup Reflect Orbital has proposed launching a constellation of 50,000 "very large mirror-like satellites to provide sunlight at night," said ESO.
"These satellites would be the brightest ever in orbit, with damaging consequences for dark skies on Earth," said the observatory. "Seen from within a reflected beam, the satellite delivering sunlight would appear four times brighter than the full Moon. Even if no satellite points its beam directly at an observer, each would be as bright as the planet Venus, the ‘morning star.' From a light-polluted city, like Munich, Germany, these hundreds of satellites would be the only ‘stars’ visible in the night sky."
The startup E-Space and two Chinese constellations, CTC-1 and 2, would also add hundreds of thousands of satellites into orbit.
The companies' satellite project could hinder scientists' ability to observe far-away galaxies, Earth-like planets near other stars, and asteroids that could potentially endanger the planet.
"Satellites, illuminated by the sun, are much brighter than distant galaxies. When a satellite crosses what we observe, it makes a bright streak on our image, zapping whatever is behind it," said ESO astronomer Olivier Hainaut, who led the study.
Hainaut noted that the planned launches could have economic and ecological impacts on the planet and humankind as well as harming astronomy.
Extreme light pollution from the bright satellites could disrupt people's biological clocks and ecosystems across the planet, and the satellites could also directly impact air quality due to the numerous launches required to send them into space and the "atmospheric pollution caused as they burn up on reentry at the end of life."
ESO conducted the research as the FCC considers applications from SpaceX and Reflect Orbital regarding the satellite launches
“The FCC received over 1800 comments regarding Reflect Orbital and nearly 1,500 comments on the application by SpaceX,” said ESO institutional affairs officer Betty Kioko. “The ball is now in the FCC’s court, and we wait to see the determinations they make on both filings. For optical astronomy, this is an existential threat, and we hope that the regulators will share that view.”
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Journalists Set the Record Straight After Musk Claims ‘Not a Single' Child Died From DOGE’s USAID Cuts
"Come with me on a reporting trip," said New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. "You'll see the dying children themselves."
Jun 29, 2026
As Elon Musk continues to claim that "not a single" child has died as a result of his foreign aid cuts at the beginning of the second Trump administration, journalists—including ones who witnessed the consequences of the policy firsthand—are correcting the record.
Since being called out by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who cited a journal's projection that 4.5 million children under 5 could die by 2030 as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) sudden termination of most of the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) programs—including an 88% cut to children's health aid awards—last year, the newly minted trillionaire has repeatedly asserted that the claim that he is responsible for the deaths of kids is "a total lie."
"There is not even a single dead child!" Musk wrote on his social media platform X last Monday. "If there were, it would be worldwide headline news!"
Multiple journalists have been quick to respond that, in fact, the deaths of children and other people directly attributed to the termination of USAID programs by the agency he headed have been widely documented by major news outlets.
"Independent analyses estimate that your actions to dismantle USAID and drastically reduce lifesaving foreign aid have already killed 700,000 people," wrote Atul Gawande, the former USAID global health chief and longtime New Yorker writer, who cited models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols.
In a lengthy thread posted on Thursday, Gawande cited nearly two-dozen examples in which news outlets named people who died as a direct result of cuts to health programs they relied upon, including:
- Nyagoa, the 1-year-old daughter of Nyajime Duop, who died of cholera after the International Rescue Committee's mobile health team stopped coming to her village in South Sudan after its grant was terminated, according to a December report from ProPublica. Save the Children said last year that it was forced to either shutter or scale back care at its 27 child clinics in Akobo County, in South Sudan's Jonglei state. In April 2025, amid a cholera outbreak, the group reported that five children died while walking three hours to the nearest clinic after the one near them closed, which was reported by The Associated Press.
- 5-year-old Suza Kenyaba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who died on February 19 after shipment of an anti-malaria drug that had already been purchased was left stranded in a distribution warehouse after payments to contractors were frozen by the US government, according to The Washington Post. There were more than 600 malaria deaths in the DRC's Haut-Katanga province in the first six months of 2025, more than the total number in 2024. The Post found that 95% of USAID malaria medication shipments in the first six months of 2025 were either delayed or did not arrive at all.
- 11-year-old Paciencia in Mozambique died after the case worker handling her treatment for HIV was abruptly laid off along with most others, hospitals ran out of the US-funded antiretroviral drugs she relied upon, and she was given the wrong medication after the data clerks who managed patient information were laid off, according to the South African publication Spotlight. The National Association for Self-Sustained Development (ANDA), the US-funded group that handled this HIV treatment, found that at least 16 children died between January and June 2025 in the province of Manica, many more than they had seen before the cuts.
These are just a few of the numerous other examples cited by Gawande, who added that part of the reason verifying deaths has been challenging is that DOGE's cuts also "destroyed" USAID's data and auditing systems, which meant that figures and overall mortality effects would take another year to fully tally.
However, he said he and a team of reporters had already compiled individual reports of more than 1,200 people whose deaths can be directly attributed to the cuts.
Even after being presented with direct evidence to the contrary, Musk continued to insist on Sunday that critics of his cuts to USAID "cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the 'millions' they falsely claim have died. Not a single name!"
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose reporting on the impacts of the sudden aid cuts was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, responded that he could give Musk a list of "many, many names of people who have died because of your aid cuts."
He listed the names of just a few of the people whose cases he had witnessed firsthand, which are recounted in greater depth in his reports. As Kristoff wrote:- Yamah Freeman was a [21-year-old] woman who died in childbirth because you stopped paying for the diesel for ambulances in her part of Liberia. I talked to her parents and sister in their village.
- Gbessey Kiadu, age 1, died of malaria because of your cuts in Liberia. I talked to his mom in her village.
- Ibrahim Koroma, an infant, died of AIDS in Sierra Leone after you interrupted HIV supplies. I talked to health workers who cared for him.
- Achol Deng was an 8-year-old girl with HIV in South Sudan who died when you cut funding for the health care worker who provided her medicines. I talked to him.
"I could go on and on," Kristof continued, "In almost every village you go to in South Sudan, Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone or other countries I reported in, you find people dying because of aid cuts."
He issued a "challenge" to Musk: "Come with me on a reporting trip, and we'll talk to these moms and dads, and you'll see the dying children themselves. I think if you see the kids whose lives are at stake, maybe you'll change your mind."
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The World's First Trillionaire Is a Flashing Red Light for Democracy
Billionaires—and soon trillionaires as well—are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence our elections while working Americans struggle to afford food, housing, and healthcare; it’s clearer than ever that those two facts are connected.
Jun 28, 2026
The red emergency light is flashing on America’s democracy dashboard, like a damaged aircraft teetering toward a mountain. Elon Musk becoming the planet’s first trillionaire should make us tremble for the future of self-governing republics. It’s as if we’re bringing back modern pharaohs to dominate our societies.
Musk’s SpaceX company recently went public with a (probably inflated) market capitalization of $2 trillion. SpaceX’s IPO increased Musk’s net worth by an estimated $188 billion, and the stock’s first-day surge subsequently pushed his fortune to roughly $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes.
The concern here isn’t with wealth per se. It’s the tremendous power of concentrated wealth to distort markets, politics, and society. When you have Musk’s level of wealth, you’re no longer just buying another mansion or private jet (of which he already has several). You’re buying a media outlet, a senator, and maybe, in the case of Musk, elevating a president.
Musk has no inhibitions about deploying the power of his considerable wealth. He bought Twitter, one of the public squares of our time, and transformed it into X, a partisan and disinformation platform rife with hate speech and extremism.
We need to get serious about curbing this billionaire influence and supporting regular people—starting with a wealth tax.
In the 2024 election cycle, he donated $291 million to President Donald Trump and Republican candidates, according to Open Secrets. As Michael Mechanic wrote in Mother Jones, “Musk expended 0.1% of his wealth in the process and got far more in return.” Mechanic notes “The Trump administration promptly shelved dozens of investigations into Musk’s companies.”
Musk was rewarded with a rogue government agency—the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), named for a crypto meme coin Musk invested in—to advance a self-interested data grab and chainsawing away at government capacity. Public Citizen found that 70% of the agencies that were targeted by DOGE had conflicts of interest for Musk’s businesses. For example, Musk directed DOGE to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which would have overseen X’s move to become a payment processor.
More dire still, DOGE cuts to USAID and other humanitarian aid programs have contributed to an estimated 750,000 lost lives. The projected deaths from these cuts run into the millions.
Musk was further rewarded with lucrative government contracts for SpaceX, Starlink, and other Musk-companies. In early 2025, The New York Times reported on a boost in multi-billion-dollar contracts for Musk’s companies as the Trump administration took power.
That was Musk as a “mere” centi-billionaire. What other power might Musk be able to wield as the world’s first trillionaire?
But it’s not just Musk. America’s 16 centi-billionaires (including Musk) have a combined wealth of $4 trillion. And the 977 billionaires on the Forbes US wealth list now own a combined $9.24 trillion, according to analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness.
This isn’t a partisan concern. Whether it’s liberals like George Soros and Tom Steyer or right-wingers like Musk and Peter Thiel, this concentration of power and influence should trigger the flashing red light. It’s never a good thing for anyone to have the power of modern-day pharaohs. Musk was the top political donor in 2024, but five other billionaire households gave over $100 million to candidates.
Billionaires—and soon trillionaires as well—are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence our elections while working Americans struggle to afford food, housing, and healthcare. It’s clearer than ever that those two facts are connected. We need to get serious about curbing this billionaire influence and supporting regular people—starting with a wealth tax.
Oxfam observes Musk could give $100 to every person on Earth and remain one of the 10 richest people on the planet. A 10% wealth tax on Musk’s fortune alone, they estimate, could end global extreme poverty and lift 800 million people above the extreme poverty line. Imagine the revenue and investment possibilities of a global wealth tax on all billionaires.
The planet’s first trillionaire is not a sign of economic health. It’s an indicator of extreme inequality and the dangers of concentrated power.
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Undeterred by Threats, Khanna Tells Musk to 'Testify, Under Oath, About What He Did' to USAID
"Someone confident he did nothing wrong shows up and clears his name," Khanna said. "Elon Musk is doing the opposite because he genuinely believes the law does not apply to him."
Jun 23, 2026
In the face of lawsuit threats from the richest man in the world, Rep. Ro Khanna on Monday renewed his call for Elon Musk to testify before Congress and defend his dramatic cuts to foreign aid against the claim that they are killing millions of children.
Earlier this week, Musk threatened to sue Khanna (D-Calif.) for defamation and said he “should be in prison” after the congressman said that the trillionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had “possibly sentenced” 4.5 million children “to death” through its dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) last year at the start of the second Trump administration.
Khanna's assertion was based on the findings of a July 2025 Lancet study, which found that DOGE's cancellation of roughly 83% of the programs run by USAID—including 88% cuts to child health aid, 87% cuts to epidemic and disease surveillance, and 94% cuts to family planning assistance—could result in the deaths of 14 million people by 2030, including 4.5 million children under five.
"That number is not mine," Khanna explained in a Substack post on Monday. "It comes straight from the first comprehensive analysis of its kind into what American foreign aid actually does. Over the past two decades, The Lancet found USAID-funded programs helped prevent more than 91 million deaths, 30 million of them children."
While at the time Musk boasted that he was "feeding USAID into the wood chipper," he claimed on Tuesday that all DOGE actually did was "require... contact information of the recipients to confirm that funding was not fraudulent. No validated medical funding was stopped."
He added that "anything that appeared to be legitimate lifesaving funding continued and is now administered by the State Department."
This is broadly not true. While some funds were restored, according to an April 2025 analysis by KFF, about 80% of USAID identifiable global health awards—including ones for polio vaccination, HIV treatment, malaria, and tuberculosis prevention—were still listed as terminated after the review.
In another video posted Tuesday, Musk claimed that when organizations requested that their lifesaving aid be restored, he rebuffed them because they refused to let him personally speak with the children whom they serve. This, he claimed, was evidence of an "enormous amount of fraud and graft."
Khanna said on Monday that if Musk's actions were truly harmless as he claims, he "should sit before the House Oversight Committee," of which the congressman is a member, and "testify, under oath, about what he did."
He said Musk's belligerent response to being called to testify was damning.
"He could have shown up and made his case. He could have argued the study was wrong. Instead, he called me 'an evil liar.'" Khanna said. "When that did not work, he reached for something uglier. He announced he would sue me. He called for my arrest. He said I belong in prison."
"The richest man in human history answered a request to testify by trying to put the person who asked behind bars. Someone confident he did nothing wrong shows up and clears his name," Khanna continued. "Elon Musk is doing the opposite because he genuinely believes the law does not apply to him."
The congressman accused Musk of attempting to use his wealth, and the threat of "years of litigation, paid for by the deepest pockets on the planet," to scare him "into silence."
"It won’t," Khanna said.
"Here is my answer to Elon Musk. I have already challenged him to a televised debate on the rule of law," he said. "Come testify before the Oversight Committee and answer under oath, the way every other person who has held this kind of power has had to."
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‘Time to Sue This Liar’: Trillionaire Elon Musk Threatens Ro Khanna for Warning of 4.5 Million Child Deaths From DOGE Cuts
"The Dems should have a leader who Elon Musk is threatening to sue and wants imprisoned," said one political observer. "That's the right guy."
Jun 22, 2026
The recently crowned world's first trillionaire Elon Musk threatened Rep. Ro Khanna with legal action on Monday after the California Democrat pointed out the life-ending potential of foreign aid cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency.
During an appearance on the "I've Had It" podcast on Saturday, Khanna (D-Calif.) said that there must be consequences for Musk, who in February 2025 used DOGE to curtail programs and cut funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
"There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk," Khanna emphasized. "You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires, but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.”
A peer-reviewed study published by The Lancet in July 2025 estimated that proposed cuts to USAID could lead to as many as 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 worldwide, including the deaths of 4.5 million children under the ages of five years old.
Musk, who earlier this month became the world's first trillionaire, wrote in response to Khanna's interview that it was "time to sue this liar."
It's not clear how Khanna's statement could be defamatory given that it was based on research published by a prestigious medical journal.
Musk, in a separate reaction to Khanna's remarks about USAID, later added that the US lawmaker "should be in prison."
On Monday afternoon, Khanna posted a video in which he challenged Musk to debate him on the impact the DOGE cuts have had on people throughout the Global South who had previously benefited from USAID.
"The world's richest person has spent all day... going after me," Khanna said. "Why? Because I cited an academic study that his DOGE cuts may lead to the deaths of millions of children overseas. You know, Elon, I thought you were a free speech guy. Why not debate me on these issues instead of threatening lawfare?"
"You're not going to be able to intimidate me," Khanna added.
.@elonmusk let's debate. You game?
I am for free speech, not lawfare. pic.twitter.com/gThLggxiOW
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) June 22, 2026
Mehdi Hasan, editor-in-chief of Zeteo News, said that Khanna’s willingness to directly take on Musk exhibited qualities that Democrats could use more of in leadership positions.
"He is picking/making the right enemies on the right, and really pissing them off," Hasan wrote of Khanna. "The Dems should have a leader who Elon Musk is threatening to sue and wants imprisoned. That's the right guy."
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Pentagon Official Admits Musk AI Tool Grok Was Used to Help Fire '2,000 Munitions' at Iran
The Defense Department's chief AI officer said the US military used a Grok model to help "deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets" in Iran "within 96 hours."
Jun 17, 2026
A Pentagon official revealed in a court filing earlier this week that the US military used a version of trillionaire Elon Musk's artificial intelligence tool, Grok, to help carry out attacks on Iran.
Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon's chief digital and AI officer, wrote in a sworn statement to a federal court in Mississippi that the US military "relies on derivatives of [Musk-run xAI's] commercial offerings known as the Grok Gov Model." The model, which is used within the Pentagon's Maven Smart System, "enabled US forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury," the Trump administration's name for the illegal war the president launched against Iran in late February.
Stanley's statement came as part of a lawsuit that the NAACP brought against xAI earlier year, accusing Musk's company of illegally operating dozens of polluting gas turbines for its Colossus 2 data center, which powers Grok.
Defending xAI, Stanley claimed in his statement that if Grok "cannot be deployed, refined, and upgraded" across the Pentagon "due to either limitations in energy supply or limited reserve compute capability, such as those requested by plaintiffs in this matter, the many tools deployed by military and civilian personnel alike which rely on Grok Gov Models would be severely impacted."
The Defense Department acknowledged shortly after launching its assault on Iran that the US military was "leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools" to help "sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react."
In a March 12 letter to Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth, a group of more than 120 House Democrats demanded details on "the role of artificial intelligence... in selecting targets, assessing intelligence, and making legal determinations during Operation Epic Fury."
The lawmakers specifically asked whether AI tools were used to identify an Iranian elementary school as a target. On the first day of the Iran war, the US military bombed a girls' school in southern Iran, killing more than 150 people—mostly young children.
Stanley's statement did not identify any of the "2,000 distinct targets" he said were attacked with the help of the Grok Gov Model.
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‘Elon Musk Should Have to Pay For This’: Trump Admin Says It Needs $1 Billion to Combat Screwworm
"Trump and Musk’s DOGE 'saved' $15 million by cutting a program dedicated to preventing the spread of screwworm," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "Now, there’s an outbreak infecting our beef and the administration is spending $1 billion."
Jun 16, 2026
When Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" took its chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy last year, it created bottlenecks that may have hampered the fight against the screwworm infestation currently menacing the southwest while making it much more expensive.
The annual US Department of Agriculture (USDA) spending to combat the flesh-eating insects only amounted to about $15 million per year. But along with about $382 million aimed at combating animal-borne illnesses around the globe, it was terminated in March 2025 as part of DOGE's effort to root out what it described as government "waste."
But now, with the pests bearing down on Texas and New Mexico, and at least 12 infections already identified in the US as of Tuesday, the Trump administration is spending at least $1 billion to fight the outbreak.
Brooke Rollins last November: We have screwworm under control south of the border. Beef prices will come down by spring 2026.
(The screwworm has just been detected in Texas for the first time in 60 years) pic.twitter.com/ozXdI88jXk
— FactPost (@factpostnews) June 4, 2026
Last week, during a Senate hearing, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins attempted to shift blame for the screwworm outbreak onto the Biden administration, while portraying herself and President Donald Trump as proactive in response to reports last spring that the insects were rapidly climbing through Central America.
Rollins said she asked Trump for "$1 billion to build a significant facility" in Texas that would breed hundreds of millions of sterilized male screwworm flies, a method that had been used to keep them contained in South America for decades. "Without hesitation, a couple questions, he said, ‘go.’”
That facility is expected to release around 300 million sterile flies per week. But it is not expected to be fully operational until the end of 2027.
In addition to the $15 million cut to monitoring the spread of the bugs from Panama, the Houston Chronicle reported that DOGE paused plans for a facility in Mexico that the Biden administration had authorized in 2024 as part of a $165 million emergency package to fight screwworm.
Amid mass layoffs at the USDA, it reported that funding for the facility—which was supposed to produce between 60-100 million sterile flies per week—was not announced until May 2025.
While the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) still says fly production at the facility is expected to begin "as early as summer 2026," it is still listed as "under construction."
Kevin Shea, who served as administrator of APHIS under the Obama administration and retired from the agency in January 2025, told the Chronicle that efforts to contain the screwworm were put on hold at the start of Trump's second term.
“This administration came in so skeptical of the career people, they didn’t really want to listen,” he said. “The hold up in the money going to Mexico for the sterile fly facility was most likely caught up in the whole DOGE thing. It probably looked like some sort of foreign aid.”
Journalist Christopher Collins wrote in the Texas Observer on Tuesday that, additionally, “deep staffing cuts" to APHIS, which lost nearly 1,900 employees during Trump's first year back in office, eliminated "the first line of defense against incoming parasites," who are responsible for "inspecting the cattle awaiting import from Mexico to ensure no screwworms are hitching a ride."
Not joking but @elonmusk should have to pay for this right?
You broke it, why do we all have to pay for it? https://t.co/7SSgyuP0yr
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) June 16, 2026
As the spread of screwworm across cattle country threatens to further drive up beef prices that have already increased by over 20% since Trump returned to office, critics of the administration are seizing on it to highlight the failure of the president's so-called "efficiency" initiative, which—despite the grandeur of Musk's cost-cutting claims—ended up costing taxpayers an estimated $165 billion, according to an April 2026 report from the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called the screwworm saga a prime example of DOGE's "peak incompetence."
"Trump and Musk’s DOGE 'saved' $15 million by cutting a program dedicated to preventing the spread of screwworm," she said. "Now, there’s an outbreak infecting our beef and the administration is spending $1 billion."
Reacting to the news that the government was spending at least $1 billion to confront the screwworm crisis, Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim wrote on social media, "Not joking but Elon Musk should have to pay for this right?"
"You broke it," he said, tagging the man who recently became the world's first trillionaire. "Why do we all have to pay for it?"
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