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elon musk
Elon Musk's 'Absolutely Insane' $276 Million Midterm Spending Exposed in New Report
"He's not doing it to make Americans more free. He's doing it to make Americans his serfs," said one critic.
Oct 12, 2026
Far-right billionaire Elon Musk is spending an unprecedented fortune helping the Republican Party maintain its majorities in Congress, according to a Monday report in The New York Times.
The Times used filings made with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to calculate that Musk has funneled at least $276 million to GOP groups and his own super political action committee (PAC) since July alone.
In total, the Times estimated that Musk has given $366 million in campaign contributions during the 2025-26 election cycle, which is even more than the $290 million he gave during the 2023-24 election cycle to return President Donald Trump and the GOP to power.
Much of Musk's giving this cycle has been to help Republicans maintain their majority in the US Senate, as he has donated $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC charged with helping GOP candidates in Congress' upper chamber.
According to the Times, Musk's donation to the fund is "one of the largest political donations in American history, and more than the group’s Democratic rival raised from all of its donors that quarter."
Since July, Musk has also given $76 million to his America PAC, which is building what the Times described as "a sprawling canvassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters" in the coming elections.
The Times emphasized that the $366 million is only the publicly disclosed amount that Musk has given, and one source told the newspaper that the billionaire "has also made some seven-figure donations to support midterm candidates through groups that are not required to disclose their donors."
In a Monday social media post, journalist Daniel Nichanian described Musk's midterm spending as "absolutely insane," and said the billionaire is "single-handedly destroying records and swamping [Democratic] candidates."
Mark Jacob, former metro editor at the Chicago Tribune, said the massive Musk donations should deeply worry Americans who care about democracy.
"He's not doing it to make Americans more free," Jacob wrote. "He's doing it to make Americans his serfs."
Don Moynihan, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, argued that Democrats cannot allow Musk's efforts to buy congressional elections go unanswered.
"Dems should promise to minimize contracts with clearly partisan government contractors and to impose more regulatory scrutiny on Musk," Moynihan wrote. "At this point, nothing to lose."
In addition to concerns about the sheer volume of Musk's donations, election officials have been raising alarms about how the money is being used.
As reported by CNN on Saturday, America PAC has been sending text messages to Colorado voters telling them that their request for a mail-in ballot has been received, then inviting them to "confirm now where and when to return it."
Carly Koppes, the Republican election chief in Weld County, told CNN that these messages have been causing significant confusion among voters, who automatically receive mail ballots without having to file a specific request.
“People were like, ‘Wait a second. I didn’t submit that request. Is something fishy going on? Did someone submit something on my behalf?'" said Koppes.
Josh Zygielbaum, the Democratic election chief in Adams County, told CNN that he'd received dozens of calls asking about the America PAC texts, and emphasized "that volume of phone calls is usually a good indicator for us that something’s a bigger issue because people generally don’t pick up the phone these days unless there’s a bigger concern."
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Meet the 9 Former Federal Workers Running for Congress
All Americans who want to continue living in a democratic society need to know about these candidates and support their campaigns.
Oct 11, 2026
This article introduces you to nine contemporary heroes.
All nine were on the frontlines of President Donald Trump’s authoritarian attack on our democratic society.
All nine had careers serving the American people in socially essential government jobs. All nine could not tolerate seeing their career work undermined, and even outright destroyed, by DOGE and MAGA’s contempt for science, the rule of law, public safety, and the welfare of the common person.
If we want to continue living in a society guided by scientific knowledge with a government that provides for and protects the education, health, and safety of all Americans—these are the candidates we need to elect to Congress.
All nine are fighting back in the best possible way.
They are running for federal office.
They are running to preserve popular sovereignty and our constitutional democratic republic.
All nine won their primaries and, if they win on November 3, they will enter the US House of Representatives on January 3.
Their goal is to rebuild the best traditions and practices of the US government so that it once again serves all the people not just a kleptocratic elite.
The nine candidates are Sam Forstag in Montana’s 1st District, Zach Dembo in Kentucky’s 6th, Lauren Reinhold in Kansas’ 1st, Mike Masuda in California’s 5th, Alissa Ellman in New York’s 24th, Trina Swanson in Minnesota’s 8th, Dr. Kristin Hook in Texas’ 21st, Tom Perriello in Virginia’s 5th, and Chris Backenmeyer in Nebraska’s 1st.
Together, along with two non-federal candidates (Tamara Bavendam in Tennessee’s 66th House District and Chuck Borges in Maryland’s 29th Senate District), they are endorsed by an ad hoc group called Federal Workers United Congressional Slate. They are also all endorsed by Progressive Democrats of America (PDA).
All Americans who want to continue living in a democratic society need to know about these candidates and support their campaigns.
Why? Because these nine candidates know how a healthy US federal government operates; and the essential services it, and only it, can and must deliver for the people. Better than any group of people, honest, hard-working federal employees know how to rebuild our government in the wake of the self-serving destructiveness of DOGE and Trump.
If we want to continue living in a society guided by scientific knowledge with a government that provides for and protects the education, health, and safety of all Americans—these are the candidates we need to elect to Congress.
No group of non-incumbent candidates have ever been so experienced in these essential matters. These nine patriots have the experience and knowledge to guide the rest of Congress as we make our government whole again.
If you don’t believe me, read the following platform, which all nine candidates have endorsed. In my opinion, it is as eloquent an expression of faith in our democratic republic, as laid out in the constitution, as anything I have read in the 21st Century:
Federal Oversight and Accountability Platform
This policy platform was drafted by federal workers across the Executive Branch and represents a shared vision for partnership between Congress and the federal workforce. Through this partnership, federal workers will help Congress fulfill its oversight responsibilities, protect its Constitutional powers, and ensure the Executive Branch delivers for the public good as Congress intended. Federal workers will provide insight into developments at federal agencies that require Congressional attention, offer technical expertise to inform legislation, and share strategies borne from lessons learned on the ground to help preserve the legislative and budgetary rights and responsibilities established by the Constitution.
This platform is organized into three "programs of tactics" for Congressional partners, as outlined below.
Program 1: Information and technical expertise. Position federal workers as a steady source of information and technical expertise to help Congress deliver oversight and effective legislation.
Program 2: Checks and balances. Strengthen the ability of federal workers to uphold their responsibility to ensure that laws, regulations, and legal policies are followed, to report wrongdoing when they see it, and to impede actions that undermine Constitutional checks and balances.
Program 3: Institutional capacity and workforce protections for the public good. Provide broad labor protections and unemployment supports for federal workers to address the loss of institutional knowledge and ensure the long-term strength of the civil service for the benefit of the public.
These programs contain a mix of legislative statutory components, non-legislative statutory components, and non-statutory components. The legislative statutory components can be implemented when majority support in Congress has been attained or when bi-partisan negotiations provide an earlier opportunity. Non-statutory components allow Congress to act without majority support.
Please support Sam, Zach, Lauren, Alissa, Trina, Kristin, Mike, Tom, and Chris.
Sam Forstag was a fire jumper with the Forest Service; Zach Dembo, an assistant US attorney; Lauren Reinhold, an attorney adviser with the Social Security Administration; Alissa Ellman, a program support assistant in the Department of Veterans Affairs; Trina Swanson was a director of international operations in the Refugee and International Operations District, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in the Department of Homeland Security; Dr. Kristin Hook is a biological scientist, who was in the US Government Accountability Office and, previously, was a science and technology policy fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US Senate; Mike Masuda is an engineer and was a Foreign Affairs officer in the US Department of State, and American Association for the Advancement of Science Science & Technology Policy fellow; Chris Backenmeyer, a deputy assistant secretary for Assistance Coordination-Regional and Multilateral Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, US Department of State; Tom Perriello, a US special envoy for Sudan, Bureau of African Affairs, US Department of State; (Tamara Bavendam, a senior adviser, NIH; and Chuck Borges, a chief data officer, Social Security Administration, and retired US Navy commander).
The amount of scientific knowledge and technical expertise represented by just these 11 people is staggering. Now multiply that by the thousands for all the excellent, upstanding federal workers—people of integrity who were excellent at their jobs serving the American people—who lost their jobs in DOGE purges.
These 11 are not only representing the more than 300,000 federal workers who were abruptly fired, or were forced out of their jobs, in the most unjust and life-destabilizing purge in recent US labor history; they are representing millions-upon-millions of Americans they served directly—and truly all of us, since everyone of us benefited from their work.
Every federal worker takes an oath of office similar to the president’s. Unlike the current president, these 11, like federal workers all across the country, take that oath seriously.
The nine congressional candidates were impacted by Trump, Elon Musk, and all their corruption. They found themselves on the other side of their federal careers. Instead of licking their wounds and turning their back on a system that betrayed them, they are standing up to preserve, protect, and defend their country, which is our country, and its Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic.
That’s why they’re running for Congress.
Let’s lift them to victory; for the benefit of all Americans!
For more information on all nine congressional candidates go to the Federal Workers United Congressional Slate website.
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Big Payback: Corporations That Enjoyed Enforcement Rollback Plowed $200 Million Into Pro-Trump Super PAC
"Allowing corporations to make political payments in order to make enforcement go away is hardly a model for governing that supposedly prioritizes 'law and order,'" said one researcher.
Oct 08, 2026
The Trump administration's canceled enforcement actions against at least 205 corporations accused of wrongdoing have been cases of powerful companies "getting what they paid for," according to a new report by government watchdog Public Citizen.
Building on an analysis it released earlier this week regarding hundreds of canceled investigations and dismissed lawsuits against companies, many of which have ties to the administration, the group on Thursday published a follow-up report detailing just how much some of the corporations paid to have their legal troubles wiped away.
Companies that have benefited from the cancellation of enforcement have given $210.5 million in contributions and pledges to MAGA, Inc. and other super political action committees (PACs) that worked to elect President Donald Trump and other Republicans in 2024 and are continuing to back right-wing candidates in the midterms.
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has benefited from at least eight canceled actions, with lawsuits filed against the former company by the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the National Labor Relations Board dismissed and an investigation into data center pollution presumably closed. Tesla has avoided three investigations that the National Highway Traffic Safety had begun and one that the Department of Labor has opened into contract compliance.
The cancellations didn't come for free, Public Citizen said. Musk—who also served in the administration last year and is now helping with a Pentagon project—donated $5 million to MAGA, Inc. and has pledged to spend $100 million to help elect Republicans this year.
“Corporations and ultrawealthy executives with enormous financial interests before the federal government are pouring extraordinary sums into the president’s political operation,” said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman. “Once the check is cashed, the administration is pulling back enforcement actions meant to punish corporate misconduct. It’s a great deal for the corporate wrongdoers—at the expense of their victims and the American people.”
Crypto.org is another top beneficiary of Trump's favorable treatment of the cryptocurrency industry, Wall Street, Big Tech, and large corporations that have pledged to help push his far-right agenda in the elections.
The Securities and Exchange Commission had been investigating allegations that the crypto platform was trading unregistered securities. The probe was abruptly closed in March 2025, after the company gave $35 million to MAGA, Inc. and $2 million to Keep America Great, another super PAC aligned with the president.
“Once the check is cashed, the administration is pulling back enforcement actions meant to punish corporate misconduct."
Gemini, co-founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, had been facing a similar investigation, but it was also closed after the company gave $20 million to MAGA, Inc.—on top of $10 million each that the two founders personally donated.
"Allowing corporations to make political payments in order to make enforcement go away is hardly a model for governing that supposedly prioritizes 'law and order,'" wrote Rick Claypool, research director for Public Citizen, in the report. "On the contrary, it is indicative of a profoundly unjust and arbitrary mode of enforcement organized around the principles of rewarding insiders, punishing outsiders, and concentrating power in the hands of an increasingly authoritarian president."
He noted that while the Trump administration has demonstrated little interest in addressing corporate wrongdoing, "enforcement personnel and resources are being channeled toward punishing immigrants, activists, and perceived political opponents."
"Restoring the rule of law will be a challenge for the future," wrote Claypool, "and the path forward will require a rebalance of priorities that ensures that corporations and the powerful cannot pay to protect themselves from federal enforcement that holds them accountable when they break the law."
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'Best Minds'? Hegseth Taps Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich to Lead 'Future of Warfare' Project
"A board loaded with defense contractors and one draft-dodging war hawk will decide the future of the US military," said one observer. "What could possibly go wrong?"
Sep 30, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that three men—none of whom have served in the military and two who make billions of dollars from it—will help lead a new Pentagon project on the “future of warfare," even as he moves to eliminate hundreds of senior armed service leadership position, including many generals and admirals.
Hegseth unveiled Project Meridian during his “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. The 120-day initiative will examine emerging technologies that the Department of Defense believes will be critical in future warfare.
"America's best minds" will be brought together to “reimagine what warfare will look like in the future,” Hegseth said.
To that end, the defense secretary said that "Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation's best minds, Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich."
Musk, the world's wealthiest human, is already deeply involved in US national security infrastructure through SpaceX—the recipient of billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts—and other businesses. He was previously part of the administration as the de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Luckey, who like Musk is a major Trump donor, is the co-founder of defense technology company Anduril Industries. Last year, he said that Anduril planned to produce “large numbers" of cruise missiles, fighter jets, and other artificial intelligence-powered weapons systems.
“If we have to fight Iran, and China, and Russia all at the same time, we are screwed,” Luckey said in pushing for more arms production.
Gingrich is a former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives who had been pushing for war with Iran since at least 2005. Like President Donald Trump, he has been accused of dodging the draft during the Vietnam War by receiving numerous deferments; in Trump's case for bone spurs, and for Gingrich because he was a student and a father.
"Those three great Americans are going to be joined by a team of senior leaders, hand-picked private sector leaders, and subject matter experts from across our nation's unmatched innovation, academic, and policy ecosystems," said Hegseth—whose Senate confirmation last year was so contentious due to concerns about him being unfit for office that it required a tie-breaking vote by Vice President JD Vance.
The defense secretary also announced the creation of an Autonomous Warfare Command—or Autowarcom—"a new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force."
The appointments come as Hegseth simultaneously pursues a major reduction in the military’s senior leadership. He announced Wednesday that the Pentagon would eliminate 20% of its roughly 800 general and admiral positions by January—doubling a previously announced 10% reduction. Hegseth described the cuts as necessary to eliminate “redundant force structure” and “unnecessary bureaucratic layers.”
The reductions follow the removal or early departure of more than two dozen senior military and civilian defense officials since Hegseth became defense secretary.
The contrast has drawn criticism from lawmakers and military observers, who expressed alarm at the prospect of removing experienced officers while handing an influential role in planning future war to warfare technology executives and a hawkish former lawmaker who is no longer accountable to the public.
"Interesting. A board loaded with defense contractors and one draft-dodging war hawk will decide the future of the US military," NewBlue USA executive Marty Taylor said on social media. "What could possibly go wrong?"
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If the AI Executives Are Driving Drunk, We Should Nail Them for It
Remember, these industry leaders are doing what they do for money—and lots of it. They are choosing to endanger the property and lives of others for personal profit. If they mess up, they should be forced to pay a very high price.
Sep 28, 2026
Amidst all the talk of the need for government regulation of AI, there has been too little discussion of the simplest route: criminal liability. The basic story is that the AI companies are being irresponsible in dealing with a product they know to be dangerous. The companies and the people who run them need to know that they face serious monetary risk from letting their little models run wild, and possibly criminal prosecution and jail time.
To be clear, sensible regulation of AI would be desirable. But let’s be serious. We have Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffy, and RFK Jr. all running major government departments. Do we really think having someone like this overseeing AI development would be an improvement?
We do already have laws to deal with harms caused by AI; we just need to be prepared to use them. Again, no one would expect President Trump’s personal lawyer and Attorney General Todd Blanche to take criminal or civil actions against AI in the public interest. If there was a major incident, he would most likely look to initiate a prosecution in pursuit of a payoff for dropping the case. But the law does not begin and end with Donald Trump’s Justice Department.
This isn’t a question of vindictiveness. We all know, the AI boys more than anyone, that AI is potentially very dangerous. If they opt to push full speed ahead, without necessary safeguards, they have to be prepared to face the consequences.
If we can forget about the extinction events that keep our pundits busy, and focus instead on the millions of far more likely disasters that AI could cause, there will almost certainly be plenty of room for state-level prosecutions, as well as civil suits.
To take some hypothetical cases, suppose an AI system manages to hack into a city’s traffic control system, and the resulting chaos leads to a number of car crashes, causing serious injuries and death, in addition to property damage. To take another case, suppose AI falsifies clinical trial data, leading a drug to be approved even though the trials show it to be ineffective or dangerous. Or suppose AI gets inside a bank’s computers and makes a total mess of its records in a way that they cannot be reconstructed. (I know banks almost certainly have backups, but our super-intelligent AI can surely get into the backup records as well.)
I know that each of these disasters is extremely unlikely, but all of them are millions or even billions of times more likely than the extinction events we hear about in the media. And given that there are probably millions of disasters like these that AI could possibly cause, there is a pretty good chance that we will see some serious disaster in the not-too-distant future.
As I noted in an earlier piece, a mistaken report from AI led the Navy to put helicopters in the air to board a Chinese cargo ship that they wrongly believed was carrying parts for Iran’s nuclear program. Fortunately, the information was checked, and the helicopters were called back before there was an actual confrontation, but this was luck. Sooner or later we will see a mistake that is not caught.
It would, of course, be best if an AI disaster never happens, but one practice that will substantially reduce the risk is that Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and the rest of the boys understand that their companies will be fully liable for any harm caused and they personally may face criminal liability. In other words, they may not just lose all their money; they may have to spend much of the rest of their lives in prison.
This isn’t a question of vindictiveness. We all know, the AI boys more than anyone, that AI is potentially very dangerous. If they opt to push full speed ahead, without necessary safeguards, they have to be prepared to face the consequences.
Drunk driving is really an appropriate analogy. Everyone should understand that if they get behind the wheel when they are intoxicated, they hugely increase the probability of an accident. That is why we throw people in jail for it. The same standard should apply to OpenAI, Anthropic, and the rest. If they push ahead with testing without appropriate safeguards, they should be prepared to pay the price, including potential criminal penalties.
Remember, they are doing this for money, lots of it. They are choosing to endanger the property and lives of others for personal profit. If they mess up, they should be forced to pay a very high price. Incentives matter.
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$2.2 Trillion: The Collective Net Worth of 'Big Tech Oligarchs' Invited to Trump-Xi Dinner
US Sen. Bernie Sanders noted that the expected dinner attendees "have nearly doubled their wealth since Trump's election."
Sep 24, 2026
The combined net worth of the tech executives expected to attend US President Donald Trump's private dinner Thursday night with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is around $2 trillion, underscoring the staggering wealth and political influence of the small group of moguls poised to profit immensely from rapid developments in artificial intelligence—which researchers and industry insiders say is a threat to humanity.
The dinner attendee list is expected to include Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the world's richest man; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang; Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg; Google CEO Sundar Pichai; and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. A Forbes analysis released earlier this week estimated that the tech executives are worth a combined $2.2 trillion.
The Trump White House has published the dinner menu for the event but has not released any details on what will be discussed on Thursday night. Given the expected guest list—and intensifying competition between the US and China on AI development—artificial intelligence is expected to be a major topic of discussion.
Earlier this week, during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Trump dismissed efforts to regulate AI and said he plans to "encourage" the technology, "not rein it in."
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who introduced legislation earlier this week that would ban AI superintelligence and pause advanced AI development, wrote in a social media post on Thursday that "the function of AI must be to improve life for all humanity, not just make a handful of billionaires even richer."
Sanders pointed to the guest list for the Trump-Xi dinner and noted that the expected attendees "have nearly doubled their wealth since Trump's election."
Trump invited 10 Big Tech Oligarchs to his private dinner with President Xi of China.
They have nearly doubled their wealth since Trump's election & are now worth almost $2 trillion. Here's how much richer each of them got since Trump was elected:
Elon Musk: ⬆️ $658 billion…
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 24, 2026
Bloomberg reporter Jonathan Tamari argued that the Trump-Xi dinner shows how the US president has "treated Silicon Valley execs almost like an extension of his administration."
Other executives expected to attend the dinner are Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Apple's Tim Cook.
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'Take the Open Shot': Democrats Rebuked for Refusing to Target Elon Musk Over $100 Million Midterm Spending Spree
"Standing up to Elon Musk should be an easy layup for any Democrat."
Sep 22, 2026
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reportedly plans to spend at least $100 million to help Republicans in the 2026 midterms, and some critics are questioning why Democrats aren't doing more to highlight the efforts of the far-right billionaire—so central to President Donald Trump's destructive second term—to buy elections and further corrupt the nation's political process.
A Monday report from NBC News highlighted how Musk has taken a quieter approach to campaigning for the GOP than he did in 2024, when he personally appeared at campaign rallies and promised $1 million checks to voters.
Republican operatives who spoke with NBC said they worried that Musk getting more publicly involved in the campaign could backfire, with one consultant saying it could be a "mistake" if the South African-born billionaire became "the story" in the closing weeks of the election.
While Republicans might want to keep Musk's campaign contributions quiet, critics pointed out that Democratic candidates are under no obligation to do the same.
In a Tuesday social media post, Princeton historian Kevin Kruse expressed bewilderment that Musk was not a central issue for many Democratic campaigns, despite the fact that he's spending tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat them.
"Many Democrats just refuse to take the open shot at Musk," wrote Kruse. "He's a ripe, rich target, and an obvious way to dramatize key issues and mobilize key voters, but some of them are still sitting on their hands. Not sure if they're cowards who don't want to take him on or if they're complicit in taking money from him and people like him, but it's staggering."
"Standing up to Elon Musk," Kruse emphasized, "should be an easy layup for any Democrat."
Journalist Julian Sanchez endorsed Kruse's analysis, describing Democrats' reluctance to go all in against Musk as "a weird unforced error," while pointing to polling showing that the SpaceX CEO is "almost as unpopular" as Trump.
Sanchez also offered up a mock response for any Democratic candidate targeted by Musk's money cannon.
"You’ve probably seen some ads lying about my position on trans issues," Sanchez wrote, imagining a Democratic ad. "Maybe you’re wondering why the campaign is about a tiny fraction of the population when a failed illegal war is skyrocketing gas prices. It’s because a weird billionaire hates his trans daughter and can't shut up about it."
As reported by journalist Judd Legum on Tuesday, Musk's super political action committee has been obsessively attacking transgender rights by "blanketing the internet with digital ads falsely accusing Democratic Senate candidates of supporting 'taxpayer-funded sex changes for kids.'"
Daily Kos reporter Oliver Willis argued that Democrats' reluctance to put Musk front and center raises red flags about how they'll govern should they re-take Congress
"The refusal to go after Musk is a serious validator of the notion democrats have no real interest in winning," Willis wrote. "No serious party would let someone like him emerge as a major funder of the opposition and just… not say anything about it."
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Will Universal Studios, Owned by Comcast, Decide to Withhold Elon Musk Documentary?
"Have I mentioned lately that oligarch-owned media consolidation is bad?" said one critic.
Sep 17, 2026
Filmmaker Alex Gibney's scathing four-hour documentary about SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has received rave reviews since its debut at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, but it could soon be without an international distributor.
According to a Wednesday report from The Hollywood Reporter, Comcast-owned Universal Pictures, which holds distribution rights to the film outside the North American market, is getting "cold feet" about releasing it.
"The company has not dated the movie," explained The Hollywood Reporter, "has not communicated with the filmmaking team about its plans, and generally appears to be rethinking the release of a project that it once showed high enthusiasm for but is now politically sensitive for parts of the Trump administration."
Two sources told the publication that they wouldn't be surprised if Universal decided to not release the movie and returned its distribution rights to the filmmakers, even though doing so would require the studio to pay a kill fee.
The Hollywood Reporter noted, however, that it's unlikely that the film would be without an international distributor for long because "distributors in individual countries have been salivating over the film ever since the four-hour project began gaining buzz in recent weeks."
Slate culture writer Sam Adams pointed out in a social media post that independent distributor Bleecker Street "is holding steady on releasing Musk in the US, and actually moved up the opening to October 9."
Emmy Award-winning sports broadcaster Brian Webber noted that there is past precedent for Hollywood studios coming under pressure to not release a movie that is critical of a wealthy oligarch.
"William Randolph Hearst famously tried to... suppress Citizen Kane from being released," Webber explained in a social media post. "Hollywood had more guts in the 1940s—probably because there was real competition among the studios and not today's oligopoly problem."
Tech journalist Karl Bode reacted with dismay to news that Universal might spike its release of the documentary.
"Have I mentioned lately that oligarch-owned media consolidation is bad?" he asked rhetorically.
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A Tiny 3% Tax on Global Billionaires Could Save 30 Million Lives by 2030: Lancet Study
"With donor countries facing growing indebtedness and increasingly reallocating resources towards military spending, funding humanitarian assistance via the taxation of large fortunes was one of the most viable strategies."
Sep 15, 2026
With international aid programs facing an unprecedented cash crunch thanks in large part to foreign aid cuts ordered by US President Donald Trump, a recent study published The Lancet suggests that taxing the ultrarich would be the simplest way to plug funding gaps faced by crucial life-saving programs.
Specifically, the peer-reviewed study found that a hitting the world's billionaires with a 3% wealth tax would raise enough money to save up to 29.5 million lives in the world's most vulnerable populations over the next four years leading into 2030.
Lucio Exposito, senior economist of the study and researcher at the ICESI School of Economics and University of East Anglia School of Global Development, told Euronews that a global wealth tax was the most plausible way to undo the damage done by international aid cuts, many of which were caused by billionaire SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2025 under the direct orders of Trump.
"With donor countries facing growing indebtedness and increasingly reallocating resources towards military spending," Exposito explained, "funding humanitarian assistance via the taxation of large fortunes was one of the most viable strategies."
The study's introduction notes that wealth inequality has reached unprecedented heights in recent years, growing especially acute in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Today, the top 10% of the global population owns approximately 75% of global wealth, while the bottom 50% holds only 2%, with absolute income inequality steadily increasing over the past three decades," the study explains. "Moreover, the wealthiest 0.002% of the global population... controls an estimated $37.1 trillion in global wealth, surpassing the gross domestic product of the world's largest economy—the USA."
Even as the world's richest people have seen their wealth grow by bounds, official development assistance (ODA) to the Global South has been slashed significantly.
According to a study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released earlier this year, ODA spending in 2025 fell by 23% compared to 2024, with the US responsible for 75% of the global decline.
A 2025 study published by The Lancet estimated that the elimination of USAID would lead to 14 million additional deaths worldwide by 2030.
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Trump: An Instrument of the Age
He is the personification of a time when the evolution of capitalism institutionalizes class divisions, universally degrades morality, and threatens global extinction.
Sep 14, 2026
Donald Trump is an instrument of this age, a force propelling capitalism and the global economy into a critical stage of their historical development. Since the beginning of village life some 10,000 years ago, commerce among villages and rural economies intensified as cities emerged and over centuries forged trade networks across regions into a global system of commerce. At the same time, from the beginning of markets, traders, merchants, industries, and governments engaged in the struggle for control of local, regional, and inter-regional markets.
Today this struggle continues, but now with devastating consequences: the concentration of wealth on a global scale; the vast productive power and technological innovation; the multiplying flow of market-related information, and the explosive potential of artificial intelligence. Each of these factors is channeling private and public resources to elites, and spurring worldwide trade wars, technological dependency, and military confrontations that threaten humanity's survival.
No longer is it an intra-regional conflict between Greeks and Trojans over control of the grains produced in the basin of the Black Sea. Now it is a global conflict over control of international markets and supply chains, driven by the competition between transnational corporations and national governments over geopolitical objectives, a competition that is apocalyptically violent. And, at the head of the largest economic and military power is a pathological, impulsive, and phenomenally wealthy businessperson.
The emergence of Donald Trump is not wholly surprising in a global economy teetering on the edge of military annihilation and worldwide environmental collapse. He is the personification of a time when the evolution of capitalism institutionalizes class divisions, universally degrades morality, and threatens global extinction.
If citizens fail to contain the juggernaut of corporate-authoritarian forces unleashed in recent decades, our children will likely live in a wholly dystopian world.
Clearly, the global economy has reached a critical stage in the accumulation of wealth and its social impacts. Today transnational corporations have achieved historic levels of economic power and political influence throughout the world. But governments, with their enormous borrowing capacities and acquisition of capital through taxation, are a chief target for privatization of public wealth. They are the last bastion of enormous resources that concentrated private commercial interests need to overcome, to disarticulate the state in order to access the vast capital reserves that governments represent. Thus the virtually ineluctable privatization of government services from social programs to space exploration and military production proceeds unabated by social controls. Of course corporations and an elite class must retain tax revenues collected by governments while private corporations siphon off these resources through government contracts. As part of this privatization project, regulation of private entities and activities must be undermined. From the Department of Government Efficiency led by the world's richest individual to the edicts expunging from records the words and documents indicating that the direction of national priorities is misdirected and dangerous, the Trump administration is aggressively, relentlessly attacking any obstacle to privatization of public resources.
On one level none of this is new. The British East India Company in the 18th century controlled 80% of the trade from Asia to Europe and governed India with its private court system and army of 250,000. It used a portion of its wealth to buy parliamentarians responsible for its regulation. Today, however, the aggregate wealth and power of tech giants dwarfs that of the East India Company. According to Oxfam America, Elon Musk has more wealth than 46% (3.8 billion) of the world's population. He spent nearly $300 million to help Trump win the 2024 presidential election. Musk and other Big Tech companies—key tech, social media, and AI entities—spent $41.8 million in the second quarter of 2026 lobbying the government. Big Tech receives in excess of $45 billion in government contracts. The combined capitalization of the top five US tech companies is greater than the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 193 countries, trailing only the economic output of the United States and China.
The impact of such outrageous distortions in the global economy is wide-ranging. The convergence of private business interests and money with public policy and governance breeds corruption. Trump reported $2 billion in income in the first year of his second term, tripling the income he reported in the previous year. Much of Trump's new wealth comes from cryptocurrency, a business field in which Trump's family is deeply invested, taking in $1.4 billion through its cryptocurrency ventures in just one year. At the same time, Trump is engaged in the wholesale deregulation of digital assets like cryptocurrency. He disbanded the Biden-era National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, directing the Justice Department to end its enforcement of regulatory violations and to close all ongoing investigations. He directed Attorney General Todd Blanche to refrain from charging violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and to end charging violations of the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Commodity Exchange Act.
According to the American Bar Association, the lack of corporate regulation subverts democracy: “These transactions—ranging from donor-driven federal appointments to dropped investigations, lucrative business deals, and foreign gifts—have enriched Trump and his allies while undermining long-standing ethical norms and public trust in democratic institutions.” Another instance of a proposed initiative that is blatantly unethical, anti-democratic, and politically corrupt is the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to reward Trump's political allies including the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2020.
The development of corporate capitalism has always been anti-democratic to one degree or another. Private boards of elite shareholders decide corporate policy and virtually all decisions are aimed at increasing profits. Corporate elite have historically fought against workers' organized power. The corruption and assumption of executive power at the center of the current American government reflect the intrusion of rank corporate values and ethos central to modern markets. Donald Trump runs the presidential office as a mafia organization with a pay-for-play ethos, the raw corruption expected when corporate elite are untethered from social supervision and management. As corporate policies and investments become existential threats, they cannot afford a citizenry awakened to the catastrophic direction of the American and global economy.
Desperate to continue profiting from a degraded natural and social environment, those with the most resources work to keep the truth about looming disasters from influencing public discourse. Trump is the harbinger of a totalitarian state that is the likely outcome of unregulated corporate investment and planning, one in which the flow of information must be managed. So, he attacks the media and censors reports and even words and phrases that are based in research and backed by skeins of evidence. To ensure authority over information flow, Trump values loyalty as the fundamental qualification of his appointees. Attorney General Todd Blanche exemplifies just how corrupted executive appointments throughout the administrative agencies and cabinet-level departments actually have become. As with other presidential nominees and appointments, Blanche was obviously selected for his fealty to Donald Trump. Just how much he identifies with supporting the president was revealed in a hearing for his confirmation in the Senate. While being questioned by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) about his relationship to Trump, Blanche stated, "I'm his lawyer—was his lawyer," before correcting himself, saying that he was now the deputy attorney general.
The ongoing general attack on American democracy stems directly from the presidential office and his friends in business. The impunity with which Trump aggrandizes himself through specious, if not illegal, projects is clearly a wide-ranging assault on citizens' rights to democratic decision-making theoretically safeguarded by the US Constitution. The decision to destroy the East Wing of the White House and construct a ballroom is one example. Numerous other projects dismissive of congressional approval also exist. To list just a few: planning an 'Arc of Trump'; adding his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with only the approval of his hand-picked board; negotiating no-bid contracts such as the one repainting the Reflecting Pool; receiving a luxuriously outfitted plane from a foreign government. These are examples of his many mundane acts of corruption. More far-reaching and pernicious anti-democratic actions also abound: expending American lives and resources in wars with Iran and supporting Israeli genocide in Gaza; instituting universally costly tariffs; restricting and censoring public reports on various issues affecting the health and livelihood of Americans everywhere; abducting—even killing—immigrants to achieve quotas of deportation without legal recourse; and on and on.
One of the most egregious assaults on democracy is the proposed proliferation of data centers. It reveals how insidious the march toward corporate elite dominance actually is. Polls indicate that 80% of Americans oppose the construction of data centers yet Trump supports Big Tech's drive to establish data centers across the country. Data centers are environmental and human health disasters. Not only do they tax the electrical grid and use unsustainable amounts of water, through massive data collection and deep analysis they also have the very real potential to construct a totalitarian state through government contracts in which algorithms of artificial intelligence are applied in projects ranging from facial recognition to autonomous military and police personnel. Without democratic control of industry and governance, the power of Big Tech to control our lives into the future presents a rapidly escalating existential threat.
At this stage in the historical evolution of capitalism it is the people who must resist being alienated from their own governance, from the power to construct a sustainable economy and to restore their responsibility to each other and the environment. If citizens fail to contain the juggernaut of corporate-authoritarian forces unleashed in recent decades, our children will likely live in a wholly dystopian world. But it doesn't have to be that way. Organized and sustained political protests, progressive reform movements, and mass mobilizations have saved the nation and other nations from the worst excesses and transgressions of powerful elites and their destructive capitalist practices and designs.
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