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elon musk
Far-Right Alternative for Germany Thanks Elon Musk After Regional Election Win
"The far-right rampage is not slowing down, but accelerating instead."
Sep 07, 2026
The far-right Alternative for Germany party thanked the world's richest man, Elon Musk, after decisively winning a key regional election on Sunday, sparking alarm across Europe and around the globe.
Ulrich Siegmund, AfD's lead candidate in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, praised Musk—who has openly advocated for the far-right, xenophobic party—for his support and "clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time—including here in Germany." Siegmund wrote that if AfD ends up leading the state government, the party "would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation," adding that "Germany would once again be a place worth investing in."
Siegmund's post on the social media platform X, which Musk owns, came after AfD won just over 44% of the vote in the Saxony-Anhalt election, trouncing the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz. CDU finished a distant second with 17.1% of the vote.
"Well done!" Musk wrote, in German, following AfD's election win. The mega-billionaire has called AfD "the only hope for Germany."
US President Donald Trump, a political ally of Musk, posted to Truth Social a screenshot of exit polls showing AfD leading the regional election on Sunday afternoon.
"Leave it to Trump to celebrate the victory of a far-right German party that shows sympathy for the Nazis, downplays the Holocaust, and flirts with Putin," Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on social media in response to the US president.
The Associated Press noted that "to win an absolute majority, AfD needed to clinch 42 of the 83 seats in the state parliament, but the party appeared on track to win 39. Depending on the ultimate make-up of parliament, it could still end up leading the state government." Siegmund would be the first far-right leader to govern a German state since 1945.
But other German parties have refused to work with AfD, raising doubts about its ability to form a government in Saxony-Anhalt, which has a population of around 2.1 million people.
David Adler, co-general coordinator of the Progressive International, wrote that the election "sent a clear message, to Germany as to all of Europe, that the far-right rampage is not slowing down, but accelerating instead."
AfD focuses heavily on immigration, vowing "deportation from minute one" and calling for abolition of "the fundamental right to asylum."
"In addition to deporting immigrants, the party has proposed cutting funding for public broadcasters, banning gay pride flags in schools, and teaching more Russian, as well as tax breaks for large families and free childcare," The New York Times reported. The newspaper noted that Siegmund declined to condemn supporters who "chanted his surname... in the style of the Nazi salute, 'Sieg Heil.'"
European officials voiced deep concern about AfD's surge in the regional election, with France's Europe minister calling the results "a serious moment."
"Nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution," said Benjamin Haddad. "We must listen with humility to the anger, the concerns, the fears, and respond to them. We cannot forget our history. That is the meaning behind the choices made by France and Germany.”
Spanish Julen Bollain wrote on social media that "the far-right is managing to turn discontent, economic insecurity, and disaffection into votes."
"AfD is doing something that should especially worry the left: transforming precarity, frustration, and disaffection into political identity and votes," Bollain added. "And if we don't manage to give a collective response to the existing social discontent, someone always shows up ready to turn it into fear, hate, and scapegoats. And there they beat us, because they move like fish in water."
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'We Don't Have to Let It Happen': Casar Says Progressives Must Fight AI Oligarchs' 'Dystopic' Vision
"We know that they are trying to get rid of a huge number of people's jobs."
Sep 06, 2026
The chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Sunday urged Americans to push back on the vision of the future being presented by the oligarchs who run the artificial intelligence industry.
In an interview with MeidasTouch, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) addressed the backlash against Big Tech, which has included a nationwide movement to oppose the construction of AI data centers.
"Everyday folks right now, they're pissed," said Casar, who last week joined with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to introduce legislation to ban AI models capable of surpassing human cognition. "They know [OpenAI CEO] Sam Altman is not actually out there to help you... We know that they are trying to get rid of a huge number of people's jobs."
Casar: And then in Silicon Valley, basically their policy proposal is that they will give out a little bit of UBI to make that high unemployment rate more tolerable. I see that as a bad idea. Going towards 10 or 20% unemployment, just so these guys could be super rich, is… pic.twitter.com/AUIezlGZK3
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 6, 2026
Casar then mocked the remedy to mass joblessness being pitched by tech titans like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has proposed a universal basic income (UBI) program.
"In Silicon Valley, basically their policy proposal... is that they will give out a little bit of UBI to make that high unemployment rate more tolerable," he said. "I see that as a bad idea. Of course, everybody getting a little bit of money could be a good thing. Yeah, people being able to work fewer hours is, of course, a good thing. But going toward 10%, 20% unemployment just so these guys can be super rich is completely dystopic."
Casar emphasized that, despite tech industry claims, there is nothing inevitable about their plans to profit by putting millions of people out of work.
"We don't have to let it happen," he said. "Just look at our history from over 100 years ago: You had the Gilded Age, you had a few of these robber barons who tried to get all the money, capture the government, buy the presidency... And then people woke up, fought back."
"We have to be headed on a path," Casar continued, "where we reclaim our power, as a democracy, as people."
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The Blessings of Wendell Berry in a World Cursed by Men Like Elon Musk
Musk indulges in the kind of fantasy that drove Berry to distraction (and to work)—all about control and domination, all done by the few to the many, utterly ignorant of context. Immodest in every way.
Sep 01, 2026
Wendell Berry, who died Monday at the age of 92, was such a great man that I hardly know where to start. He was on the very short list of the best writers of our time: His essays on rural America were the words that launched 10,000 farmers markets; his poems, the staple of many happy weddings (and I’ve peed in a dozen different bathrooms where the Manifesto of the Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front was framed above the toilet). If you’ve never read his short stories of the Port William Membership, or his finest novel, Jayber Crow, you can count yourself lucky that you’ll get to encounter them for the first time.
Berry was also, of course, politically engaged. I remember standing with him 20 years ago, at a protest against the Capitol Hill power plant that I’d asked him to attend. It was a bitterly cold day, and at one point he turned to me and smiled and said, "Do you think maybe they’ll arrest us soon?" He didn’t particularly like movements, but he understood the power of moral witness; he occupied the Kentucky governor’s office, in a protest against mountaintop removal coal mining, with a toothbrush and volume of Shakespeare in his pocket.
And, perhaps above all, his life was a work of both art and politics—his decision to give up a New York lit’ry career and to return instead to the Kentucky of his boyhood, settling along the Ohio River where he and his wife Tanya farmed and he wrote, embodying the commitment to place and community that animated his writing. (His family is asking that in lieu of flowers people might send a donation to the Berry Center that is carrying on his agrarian work).
I was very lucky that my wife handed me a copy of his essay collection Home Economics about 40 years ago, when we were still courting. If I hadn’t fallen under his spell I’m not sure I would have spent my life in rural America, red state and blue; I know that he taught me how to see my town and my county, and my country and my species, in new-old ways that have undergirded all my work. And I’m very glad that we became friends, visiting and writing back and forth. His droll good humor rarely faltered, in my experience. I did not agree with him at all times, nor he with me—though he had solar panels behind his house, for instance, he didn’t think they belonged on farmland, while I think they’re a boon to both farmer and planet. But we agreed on most things of real dimension, and I was always delighted to see in the mailbox a letter with the return address of Port Royal Kentucky. He was one of the last people with whom I had a true written, as opposed to electronic, correspondence. Sometimes he’d tap things out on a manual typewriter, but more often it would be in pencil, on lined yellow paper.
The most recent arrived in July, and after news about grandsons and granddaughters it contained his newest discovery, a 1940 volume titled Stops, A Handbook for Those Who Know Their Punctuation and Those Who Aren’t Quite Sure. He was recommending it to me on the grounds that it is the “only book of my acquaintance that makes grammar delightful,” but also because he’d noted that it was published by the press (now defunct) at Middlebury College, where I teach. So while the rest of us were figuring out how to enlist Claude to help with our composition, one of the best writers of our age was still enjoying sharpening his prose, just as he enjoyed sharpening the tools of his work in field and forest. “I’m writing this on the porch of the ‘camp house,’ still unwired, built, I think, in 1964, in the woods between the river and the road.” He died on that farm on Monday, surrounded by family.
I got the news about his passing even as I was trying to grapple with the latest from a man who will attract more notice when he dies, but less affection. Elon Musk is always advancing his own vision of the world, of course—in fact, he’s just pledged to spend $100 million helping Republicans this fall. Or maybe $200 million—neither would be a noticeable sum to a trillionaire, of course. Whatever good he did with his early advocacy for electric vehicles has now been undone 100 times over with his advocacy for the people who hate EVs and all the other things we need. (He’s, as of last week, building gas turbines to make more electricity for his right-wing Grok AI project, already polluting the air of Black neighborhoods in Memphis).
He offers the Nazi salute; we are at his behest settling thousands of refugees from white South Africa (and no others) in our country; his rancid racism has destroyed Twitter. It would be a pleasure never to think of him again, but because he’s the richest man in the world, one has to monitor what he says. And here’s Monday’s installment, from of course his own social media site:
Extremely severe extinction events happen every 100M years or so and just switching to sustainable energy will not be enough to stop them.
Space satellites to control temperature and massive geo-engineering will be needed or it will be game over.
The disingenuousness of this is remarkable. Extremely severe extinction events have indeed happened just five times in the last half-billion years, which means it would be extremely unlikely we’d spontaneously come across one any time soon: Human civilization is, after all, just 10,000 years old. And yet of course we face one, not because of anything nature has done, but because we’ve filled the air with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel, which his allies wish to continue indefinitely. “Just switching to sustainable energy” is in fact the one good, scalable weapon we have to fight that, but since he’s a part of the political movement against this idea, he is now backing an alternative: “space satellites to control temperature,” which he further explains will be accomplished by a “super-intelligent swarm” of “sentient satellites, launched into Earth-Sun Lagrange points by mass drivers on the Moon.”
This is the kind of fantasy that drove Berry to distraction (and to work)—all about control and domination, all done by the few to the many, utterly ignorant of context. Immodest in every way.
But in Musk’s case it was accompanied by another revelation that began to emerge over the weekend. It turns out that the human toll of the horrific rampaging floods on the Nepal-Tibet border may well have been exacerbated by Musk’s decision to destroy the US Agency for International Development early in the DOGE assault on our government. USAID, in collaboration with NASA, helped maintain a network of monitors high in the Himalayas and Hindu Kush. Musk, in February 2025, “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” One casualty was apparently this network. As Jeremy Konyndyk, who oversaw America’s response to the 2015 Nepal earthquake, wrote this weekend on (ironically) X:
DOGE famously used keyword searches for terms like "climate" to terminate federal grants. Among the victims: a collab between USAID and NASA for flood prediction, early warning, disaster readiness, glacier inventories, and mapping dangerous glacial lakes in Nepal.
As Konyndyk added:
Could these programs have helped foresee or mitigate this week's glacial flooding catastrophe? Hard to say with an outlier event like this. But that was their purpose.
Sadly, it's hard to anticipate or mitigate climate hazards which your ideology has decreed do not exist.
Musk’s victims already number in the millions—a Lancet study predicts 14 million by 2030 as the indirect results of shutting down America’s humanitarian work, which puts him up there in the Stalin-Mao category, and almost certainly the most deadly human of this millennium. So maybe a few thousand more people hardly matter.
But contrast what Musk did with the actions of a principal at a school along the river. When a friend upstream phoned one of his teachers a blurted warning, he immediately evacuated the entire student body, saving at least 900 lives. Given a warning, he acted (precisely what the world has not done with climate change). “I thought that even if the warning turned out to be wrong, the worst it would cost us was one day of study,” Rajendra Dawadi said. “But taking it lightly could mean the loss of hundreds of lives.”
Principal Dawadi will spend the rest of his life going to the weddings of the students whose lives he saved, and I imagine there will be no small number of babies named in his honor. Elon Musk’s name will be cursed—the richest man in human history, who used his wealth and power to kill the most vulnerable people on the planet.
Here is a recent poem of Wendell Berry’s, published in The New Yorker less than a year ago and titled "The Loved Ones":
The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting
while we are distracted among
our obligations. At last
it comes to us: They live now
in the permanent world.
We are the absent ones.
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Busting CEO Pay Curve in 2025, Musk Made Annual Salary of Average Tesla Worker Every 4.2 Seconds
The AFL-CIO report also points out that "a majority of S&P 500 CEOs made more in one day than the median US worker made in one year."
Aug 13, 2026
"Failed trillionaire" Elon Musk's $158 billion pay package at Tesla was so high that it "broke the CEO pay curve," as the nation's largest federation of labor unions underscored on Thursday in its annual report about chief executive pay.
"Including Musk, S&P 500 CEOs received $340.1 million on average in 2025, about a 1,700% increase over the previous year," explains the AFL-CIO's latest "Executive Paywatch" report. "Excluding Musk's Tesla pay package, the average CEO pay at S&P 500 companies increased 21%, from $18.9 million in 2024 to $22.8 million in 2025."
"The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio across S&P 500 Index companies was 5,387-to-1 in 2025. Musk's total compensation at Tesla was 2,522,203 times the median Tesla employee's pay in 2025," the publication continues. "Excluding Musk, the average pay ratio of S&P 500 companies increased from 285-to-1 in 2024 to 312-to-1 in 2025."
Musk became the world's first trillionaire in June, after another company for which he serves as CEO, SpaceX, went public—but as of Thursday afternoon, his net worth was estimated at around $880 billion, according to the Bloomberg and Forbes billionaire lists.
The AFL-CIO report spotlights the wealth of the world's richest man, noting that last year "Elon Musk received the median Tesla worker's pay every 4.23 seconds—less time than it takes to read this sentence," but it also stresses that he's far from alone in making exorbitant amounts of money compared with the wages of workers at the companies he leads.
"As shown in our latest Paywatch report, executive compensation has reached a new, shameful high," said AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Fred Redmond in a statement. The report points out that "a majority of S&P 500 CEOs made more in one day than the median US worker made in one year."
"Excessive CEO compensation contributes to growing economic inequality," the document says. "It creates the risk that CEOs will make short-term decisions to maximize their pay, even if it hurts the company's long-term health. And it's simply unfair to the workers whose labor generates the profit these CEOs capitalize on."
Our new Executive Paywatch report is here, and - spoiler alert - greedy CEOs are making even MORE.Top CEOs made 312x what workers make and took home an average of $22.8 MILLION per YEAR in total compensation.Read our full Paywatch report here: Aflcio.org/paywatch
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— AFL-CIO (@aflcio.org) August 13, 2026 at 12:35 PM
AFL-CIO found that the biggest ratio for executive v. worker pay was in manufacturing: Average executive compensation—which often includes not only a salary but also a bonus, stock, a retirement plan, and more—topped $696 million a year, while the typical worker made just over $93,000.
By sector, the second-highest was in arts, entertainment, and recreation, where executives were paid over $24 million while the median worker got just $24,850 annually. In educational services, average executive pay was around $50 million while workers were paid under $58,000.
The report emphasizes that like the CEOs, "2025 also was a very good year" for President Donald Trump, who returned to office in January and, according to recent federal disclosure forms, pocketed at least $2.2 billion last year—which, as the AFL-CIO found, was "a nearly 254% increase from what he received in 2024."
"Trump's 2025 receipts included $1.4 billion from the sale of $TRUMP memecoins and World Liberty Financial, his family's cryptocurrency business," the report says. "The median US worker would need to work 43,154 years to earn what Trump received in 2025."
16% of adults can’t pay all their bills in full.26% skipped medical care due to cost.23% of renters fell behind on rent in the last year.Meanwhile, CEO pay is exploding. Let’s call this what it is: greed.Learn more in our Executive Paywatch report: Aflcio.org/paywatch
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— AFL-CIO (@aflcio.org) August 13, 2026 at 2:15 PM
While gutting the federal government with help from Musk, Trump last year signed the GOP's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, cutting programs for working people to give billionaires more tax breaks—and Wednesday's release of the latest inflation figures highlighted how Americans continue to struggle with the cost of gasoline, groceries, healthcare, housing, and more.
Redmond said that "Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire. Donald Trump raked in over $2 billion since the 2024 election. Meanwhile, working Americans are struggling to feed their kids and pay their electric bills. But there's a better economy we can build for working people."
"That's why the labor movement will continue to fight for every worker to have a union contract that begins to level the playing field and ensures they take home the share of the profit they create," he added. "And it's why we are spending every day until November organizing and mobilizing 16 million union voters to elect pro-worker politicians who will work for us, not wealthy CEOs."
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Trump Admin Permanently Guts Law 'Designed to Stop Criminals from Laundering Money' After Push From Elon Musk
“Trump is making it easier for cartels, criminals, and US adversaries to abuse our financial system," said Sen. Andy Kim. "Because he’s in the pocket of billionaires like Elon Musk, who’d potentially benefit."
Aug 13, 2026
Critics are warning that the Trump administration just made financial crimes a lot easier to commit by permanently gutting a law that prevented criminals from using shell companies to obscure their activities. Elon Musk may benefit.
On Tuesday, the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a final rule permanently exempting US individuals and companies from a section of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) requiring them to identify the true owners of opaque companies.
The law, which passed in 2020, was ironically introduced and championed by then-US Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is now President Donald Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser.
At the time, Rubio called the law—which he introduced with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)—"the most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades."
But Republicans have since pushed to repeal the legislation, which Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) referred to as "big government overreach."
With Republicans in Congress unable to muster the votes to reverse it legislatively, the Trump administration has effectively killed the law by weakening Treasury Department policy. In March 2025, Treasury adopted an interim rule exempting US companies from its requirements.
Plans for a rule change were announced by Treasury less than 24 hours after the SpaceX and Tesla CEO, Musk—who was then leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—commented on his social media platform X that he would “look into” the statute in response to a right-wing comedian who'd complained about it.
According to a May report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, more than 99% of entities previously required to report under the law were now exempt. That exemption was made permanent this week.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it was "a victory for common sense and American small businesses" and called the reporting requirements "burdensome... for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security.”
Nelson Bunn, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said the exact opposite was true.
"By exempting domestic entities and owners from reporting, FinCEN has significantly hindered prosecutors’ ability to identify the bad actors from legitimate businesses when investigating US shell companies used by transnational cartels, human traffickers, and cyberscammers,” Bunn said. "Taking away this indispensable tool for law enforcement endangers American families and communities.”
The change is drawing outrage from Democrats and some Republicans. In a statement on Thursday, Whitehouse and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said the rule change "undermines the clear intent of the law."
"The act gave the federal government needed tools to address criminal activity like human trafficking, terrorist financing, drug distribution, sanctions evasion, and more without unduly burdening legitimate commercial entities," they said. "This decision is an unfortunate one that fails to use all available tools to protect Americans and crack down on illicit financial schemes.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, highlighted that the committee's previous oversight found the rollback would likely hamper efforts to stop a host of bad actors.
These included Chinese money-laundering networks that have been used to funnel proceeds to drug cartels, fraudsters using opaque ownership to rip off federal grants and benefits, and a Venezuelan national who allegedly used shell companies to hide over $1 billion in cryptocurrency transactions.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said the law was “designed to stop criminals from laundering money, and Trump and Secretary Bessent are violating the Constitution to gut it,” and in doing so, “intentionally facilitating corruption and crime.”
In a letter sent to Bessent in March 2026, Warren and other Democratic lawmakers noted that Musk himself would be a direct beneficiary of the rule change, since he "uses a network of dozens of secretive companies—potentially the type of entities that, under the CTA, are required to report ownership information to the Treasury Department."
The New York Times found that in Texas alone, there are over 90 different companies and other legal entities tied to Musk, with others in California, Delaware, and Nevada, which he has used to buy property, structure business deals, hold assets, and pay for political activity—including more than $80 million in super political action committee spending to support Trump in 2024—without putting his own name on the transactions.
"Trump is making it easier for cartels, criminals, and US adversaries to abuse our financial system and harm Americans," said Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ). "Why? Because he’s in the pocket of billionaires like Elon Musk, who’d potentially benefit from his shady and corrupt actions."
Warren said: "Secretary Bessent should reverse this decision. And he needs to testify in front of this Committee to explain why he’s putting American national security at risk.”
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Troy Jackson Slams 'Failed Trillionaire Elon Musk' as Billionaires Dump Millions Into Maine US Senate Race
"They're scared of a movement that demands Medicare for All, prescription drug coverage, and a government that everyday people can be proud of and know works for them."
Aug 13, 2026
Troy Jackson, the Maine Democrat running to unseat Republican US Sen. Susan Collins in November, took aim at Elon Musk and other billionaires Wednesday evening for supporting his GOP opponent directly or through a key super political action committee.
"Look, the billionaires in the country know whose side they're on, and it's not ours," Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, said in a brief video shared on social media, including Musk's platform X.
Jackson—chosen as the Democratic nominee via a convention process last month, after primary winner Graham Platner left the race following a rape allegation that he denied—pointed to a $42 million investment in the contest from the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), whose backers include Musk and various other right-wing megadonors.
"They're here to prop up Susan Collins because they want her to continue to be a rubber stamp and get their income tax cuts," Jackson said. "They're already out with an ad attacking me and my family, to try and make sure that they totally don't talk about the issues."
SLF's 30-second ad, which launched Wednesday, notes his son's lobbying work and smears Jackson as "another dirty politician."
According to Jackson: "They're scared of a movement that goes against the things that they want. They're scared of a movement that demands Medicare for All, prescription drug coverage, and a government that everyday people can be proud of and know works for them."
Wednesday isn't the first time Jackson—who previously ran for governor—has called out billionaires, specifically Musk. After The New York Times reported last month that through his America PAC, Musk intends to spend up to $120 million on a program to help elect Republicans in at least eight states, including Maine, Jackson released a video stressing that the billionaire "doesn't care about us. Really doesn't care about Susan. He cares about him."
"So I would say to you Elon: Maine and really the whole United States doesn't want your dirty money in our politics," Jackson continued. "You don't get to buy the government that you want. This is about all of us coming together and fighting for the government that we deserve, and you're not in it."
Musk became the world's first trillionaire in June, when his company SpaceX made its public market debut, but his current net worth is estimated at over $860 billion, according to the regularly updated Bloomberg and Forbes lists. His trillionaire status came after the early months of the second Trump administration, when Musk was the de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Reuters reported Thursday that new data from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations shows how Musk's controversial compensation plans for SpaceX and Tesla are benefiting other chief executives. Fred Redmond, the AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer, said that his pay "changes the dynamic when other CEO compensation plans come up, boards use it as a reference."
The average ratio of CEO to worker pay at S&P 500 companies rose from 285:1 in 2024 to 312:1 last year, excluding Musk's Tesla compensation. When that is included, the ratio becomes 5,387:1. Redmond told Reuters that "as we talk to our members, they're pissed off over what's happening to them, and they feel as though they should be more vocal in terms of calling attention to inequality."
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Rep. John Larson Is an Irreplaceable Social Security Advocate
Larson understands how essential it is to protect and expand Social Security’s modest benefits, and he has the road map needed to get there.
Aug 10, 2026
Democratic Connecticut Congressman John Larson is a bulldog on behalf of the over 70 million Americans who rely on Social Security’s earned benefits, and the millions more Americans who will rely on those benefits in the future. As advocates for Social Security, who represent seniors, working families, and people with disabilities, we have had the opportunity to work alongside Rep. Larson. We can testify to the depth of his commitment: When it comes to fighting for Social Security, no one has worked harder than Rep. Larson.
A determined and relentless champion of Social Security beneficiaries, Larson has consistently pounded the pavement in his outreach to members across the entire ideological reach of the Democratic Party from the progressive Squad to moderate New Democrats to Democratic leadership and virtually everyone in between. In the last Congress, Larson’s Social Security 2100 Act earned in the last Congress support from over 90% of House Democrats, representing all corners of the Democratic coalition. His legislation would keep Social Security strong for decades to come, and increase benefits for everyone.
Rep. Larson refuses to give up. When faced with a political consensus that assumed it was necessary to cut Social Security’s hard-earned benefits, Larson worked to change the entire conversation about Social Security. Thanks to his hard work, Democrats are now united around strengthening Social Security by making the wealthy pay their fair share, and even some Republicans are beginning to come on board. Larson is working closely with Democratic Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY) on plans to bring a Social Security expansion bill up for a vote once Democrats regain control of the US House.
Importantly, Larson has gone face to face with Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” and has stood up to them, fighting for every inch when it comes to protecting Social Security from vicious DOGE attacks.
Larson understands that Social Security’s future is a question of values, not affordability.
Rep. John Larson’s enviable ability to propel a positive, far-reaching vision in the public debate, while working pragmatically with his colleagues to ensure consensus, is a rare combination of attributes. Larson understands how essential it is to protect and expand Social Security’s modest benefits, and he has the road map needed to get there.
One thing is certain: Congress must act on Social Security during the next few years. Without action, Social Security faces an automatic benefit cut of roughly 20% around the year 2032. Larson has a crucial role to play in ensuring that Congress addresses this the right way—by making the wealthy pay in at the same rate as the rest of us.
He will lead the charge. When the Democrats win back the gavel in the House of Representatives, Larson will chair the Social Security Subcommittee of the all-powerful Ways and Means Committee. That comes from his seniority. Whether Social Security is expanded or cut will be decided by the leaders in Congress. His voice, together with his knowledge, his tireless work effort, and his personal connections to colleagues achieved over his years of service, will make the difference whether benefits are increased or cut.
Larson understands that Social Security’s future is a question of values, not affordability. He possesses the moral vision to fight for the type of society that treasures everyone, especially people living through their most difficult and vulnerable moments. By pairing this sense of direction and purpose with a canny ability to understand and persuade his colleagues, Larson is indispensable to make sure legislation to protect and expand Social Security goes the distance.
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'Mostly Made Up'? GAO Exposes Billions in Bullshit Elon Musk Claims About DOGE
DOGE was a "slapdash and deceptive effort" that only succeeded in "putting Americans’ sensitive data at risk and hollowing out critical agencies," said US Sen. Gary Peters.
Aug 06, 2026
A report from the Government Accountability Office released Thursday details how Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency wildly exaggerated the savings it was able to deliver for the US federal government.
The report, requested by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), finds that DOGE used a number of tricks to inflate the value of its purported savings, including taking credit for ending leases that were already in the process of being terminated and falsely claiming to have canceled contracts that were left intact.
The report also finds that DOGE "did not provide sufficient information to verify the method used to calculate 96%" of savings purportedly achieved through grant cancellations.
And in cases where DOGE actually was responsible for terminating a contract or cancelling a lease, the report notes that it "did not consistently use its stated methodology for calculating savings or disclose limitations in a sufficient manner."
Even in instances where the department followed its stated methodology, the report adds, "it did not account for many complexities and nuances of federal contracting," such as obligations or settlement costs that may have come from ending a contract.
In touting the GAO report, Peters said it exposed DOGE as a "slapdash and deceptive effort" at streamlining government spending that only succeeded in "putting Americans’ sensitive data at risk and hollowing out critical agencies."
Blumenthal accused the Trump administration of using DOGE as cover to "recklessly slash government programs, ransacking critical services and resources and proudly displaying supposed 'savings.'"
Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law at the George Washington University Law School, highlighted a number of DOGE flubs in a social media post breaking down the GAO report, including a "favorite example" of DOGE claiming $28 million in savings related to an Air Force contract that in reality only saved around $600,000.
Eric Boehm, writer for libertarian magazine Reason, said that the GAO report revealed that the savings Musk and his minions claimed from their work was "mostly just made up."
In his assessment, Blumenthal said the report only "underscores the need for increased transparency and accountability from the Trump administration so the American public can better understand DOGE’s activities as the organization guts vital government programs."
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The Rotten Stench of Elon Musk's Political Money
The mega-billionaire's promise to spend somewhere between $100 and $120 million on congressional races this year shouldn’t be viewed as a problem. It should be recognized as an opportunity.
Aug 03, 2026
Elon Musk will be spending $100 million to $120 million in at least eight states to help elect Republicans in November, according to The New York Times.
Musk’s spending is set to begin next month, targeting Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, and potentially North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. Musk will also spend in House races in states including California, Wisconsin, and Washington.
The money won’t be spent only on TV advertising. Musk’s “America PAC” is lining up firms that focus on knocking on voters’ doors. Fake grassroots.
But Musk’s money shouldn’t be viewed as a problem. It’s an opportunity.
A Republican candidate who stinks of Musk must be presumed to be against average working Americans.
Recall that Musk spent millions of dollars on a pivotal election for Wisconsin’s highest court in April 2025. It pitted Musk’s candidate — Trump-endorsed former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel — against progressive Dane County Judge Susan Crawford. The winner would determine the supermajority of the court.
Schimel lost, largely due to Musk’s support — which backfired. The public was outraged that the richest person in the world was spending some of his massive wealth on the election. They also recoiled at the wreckage Musk wrought at DOGE. And his unbridled racism.
In Crawford’s victory speech, she acknowledged the significance of Musk’s money to the outcome of the race. “As a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin,” she said. “And we won.”
She described the election as a victory over an “unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” adding “Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”
Musk’s support will backfire again this year, in race after race — if voters know about it.
So let’s make it a kind of smell test for any Republican that Musk and his “America PAC” are supporting. A Republican candidate who stinks of Musk must be presumed to be against average working Americans.
Keep your nose to the ground. If you get a whiff of Musk, alert your family, friends, neighbors, and associates. If they’re even slightly uncertain about whom to support, the Musk test should convince them.
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'You Don't Get to Buy the Government That You Want,' Troy Jackson Tells Elon Musk
Musk reportedly plans to spend at least $100 million to help Sen. Susan Collins and other vulnerable Republicans across the United States.
Aug 03, 2026
Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine, delivered a video response on Sunday to mega-billionaire Elon Musk's plan to spend at least $100 million to aid Sen. Susan Collins and other Republicans in key races across the country.
The New York Times reported that Musk, through his America PAC, intends to "spend $100 million to $120 million on a new field program in at least eight states to help elect Republicans in November." The group, according to the Times, "plans to initially target Senate races in at least five states—Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio—and is having conversations about the contests in North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas."
"Apparently Elon Musk has gotten off Twitter long enough to realize that he's got a real problem here in Maine," Jackson, the former president of Maine's Senate, said in a one-minute response to the report on America PAC's spending plans. "The problem is me and you, working to try and get a government that we should have, that we deserve."
"He wants to have people that are totally beholden to him and [President] Donald Trump making sure that we're getting tax cuts for billionaires on the back of our healthcare system, on the back of our hospitals," Jackson continued. "That's what Elon Musk wants. He doesn't care about us. Really doesn't care about Susan. He cares about him. So I would say to you Elon: Maine and really the whole United States doesn't want your dirty money in our politics. You don't get to buy the government that you want. This is about all of us coming together and fighting for the government that we deserve, and you're not in it."
The Times reported that Musk's super PAC is "closely coordinating with an ecosystem of outside groups that are preparing field campaigns, including Americans for Prosperity, which is part of the billionaire Koch brothers’ political network, and the Sentinel Action Fund, another conservative organization."
Musk became the world's first trillionaire earlier this year with the public market debut of SpaceX, whose subsequent decline in market cap pushed his net worth back down to around $690 billion—still the largest individual fortune in the world.
With his intervention in Maine, Musk joins nearly 100 other billionaires who are financially supporting Collins' bid for a sixth US Senate term. Billionaire support has helped give Collins a massive fundraising advantage over Jackson, who was nominated just last month to replace Graham Platner on the general election ballot.
In the two days following his nomination, Jackson raised $2 million from 58,000 donors, including 30,000 new contributors—a major show of small-dollar support.
"We’re all getting crushed out here. Healthcare, housing, heat," Jackson says in his first general election campaign ad, which is set to begin airing this week. “We’ve gotta fight back. We’re all hungry for it. Maine is ready for a change."
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