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warren gunnels
Elon Musk Targets Programs for 'Poorest Children on Earth' While Getting Billions in Federal Contracts
"Elon loves corporate welfare for himself, rugged individualism for the poor," wrote a top adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Feb 12, 2025
Critics are pointing out the hypocrisy of billionaire Elon Musk's efforts to slash federal spending and personnel when he himself is a major beneficiary of the government's largesse, to the tune of over $10 billion dollars in federal contracts for his various companies over the past five years.
Meanwhile, Musk and representatives at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency—with the blessing of U.S. President Donald Trump—have infiltrated multiple federal agencies in service of carrying out punishing cuts. One DOGE's first victims was the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the single largest provider of humanitarian assistance worldwide.
The hollowing out of USAID—which aid organizations warn will have a "catastrophic impact" on children worldwide—is currently tied up in litigation. Separately, the administration has implemented a near-total freeze on foreign aid spending.
"While Elon Musk, the wealthiest man alive, is illegally denying food for the poorest children on Earth, SpaceX received another $38 million supplemental federal contract yesterday paid for by your taxes," wrote Warren Gunnels, a top adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), on Wednesday.
"Elon loves corporate welfare for himself, rugged individualism for the poor," he added.
Gunnels post appears to reference reporting from the Lever, which wrote Tuesday that Musk's aerospace firm SpaceX secured "a new 'supplemental' contract dated February 10 [that] adds $7.5 million to SpaceX's NASA work... The overall transaction obligated $38 million to Musk's company, as part of its overall deal with NASA."
Meanwhile, during the first meeting of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency on Wednesday, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) made comments in a similar vein.
"Last year, Elon Musk was promised $3 billion from close to 100 contracts with the federal government," said Casar, who went on to say that Musk makes "$8 million a day," referencing his federal contracts, while the average person in this country who receives Social Security has to make ends meet on $65 a day.
"When Republicans talk about government efficiency in this Congress, they're not looking into billionaires who don't pay their taxes, they're not looking into billionaires who get rich off of government contracts... They're looking at cutting your public schools, they're going straight for your Social Security, they're coming straight for cancer research," he said.
Casar also lambasted a draft budget resolution unveiled by House Republicans on Wednesday that calls for $4.5 trillion in tax breaks that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy, while proposing $2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other programs.
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Progressives Say GOP's H-1B Visa Feud Distracts From Real Problem: 'Billionaire Robber Barons'
"Billionaires want you to wage a culture war while they win the class war," said one critic.
Dec 29, 2024
Progressive commentators on Saturday weighed in on a dayslong dispute between Republican President-elect Donald Trump's billionaire tech industry backers and far-right MAGA allies over the H-1B guest worker program—saying the program's right-wing supporters and detractors alike aim to distract from the real threat to workers: the billionaire CEOs who exploit both American employees and those who come from abroad.
"Billionaires want you to wage a culture war while they win the class war," said Warren Gunnels, a top adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), on Friday night.
Gunnels' comments came after Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who spent $277 million to help Trump get elected this year, vowed to go to "war" to protect the H-1B program, which grants temporary visas to highly educated foreign professionals who work in specialized fields such as technology, medicine, and engineering.
Silicon Valley heavily relies on guest workers with H-1B visas, and Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle company, obtained 724 of the visas this year. Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in South Africa, has said he also personally benefited from the program.
Musk—who has spoken out against immigration overall—said he would defend the program after far-right activist Laura Loomer criticized Sriram Krishnan, who Trump named as senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence, over his previous support for making it easier for highly educated foreign workers to come to the U.S. Loomer said the policy was "in direct opposition" to the anti-immigration agenda embraced by Trump, who has vowed to oversee a mass deportation operation.
Trump on Saturday expressed support for Musk's position, saying he is "a believer in H-1B," which he moved to limit during his first term.
"The problem is the oligarchs who became billionaires by exploiting workers, suppressing wages, and shipping jobs abroad."
"I have many H-1B visas on my properties," Trump told The New York Post. "I have used it many times. It's a great program."
Labor rights advocates have raised concerns that workers who come to the U.S. with H-1B visas are vulnerable to exploitation by their employers.
Last year, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) noted in a report that H-1B visas were not being used to "fill genuine labor shortages in skilled occupations without negatively impacting U.S. workers' wages and working conditions." The program's biggest users were companies that laid off thousands of workers in 2022 and 2023.
"The rest of the companies that dominate the program have an outsourcing business model that exploits the program by underpaying skilled migrant workers and offshoring U.S. jobs," wrote Daniel Costa, EPI's director of immigration law and policy research, and Ron Hira, a research associate and job offshoring expert who is also a professor at Howard University.
On the social media platform X on Friday, Hira wrote that "employers favor guest workers because they have fewer rights and less bargaining power."
"[The U.S. Department of Labor] has set the H-1B minimum wages far below market wages," continued Hira. "Employers can and do pay H-1B workers much less than market rates. While H-1B workers can change jobs, they have far fewer employment options and job mobility than U.S. workers. Many call their employment situation 'indentured servitude' because they are effectively bound to their employer. Employers control the visa so they can exercise extraordinary bargaining power over their H-1B workers on wages and working conditions."
In 2023, Hira and Costa called on the Biden administration to close the "outsourcing loophole" in the H-1B program by requiring companies that hire visa holders to file labor condition applications and to ensure the H-1B workers are paid a fair wage—steps that would promote fairer treatment of all workers.
Gunnels pointed out that when Sanders was first elected to the Senate nearly two decades ago, he introduced an amendment that would have "increased the fees companies pay to hire H-1B guest workers to fund scholarships for Americans pursuing degrees in science, engineering, and math"—supporting U.S.-born and foreign workers. The amendment did not become law despite passing 59-35.
The bipartisan budget deal that Musk helped to kill earlier this month included a similar provision, Gunnels said.
Musk said last week that the H-1B visa program is needed because of a "permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent" in the U.S., while Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire entrepreneur who Trump has chosen to run his proposed Department of Government Efficiency along with Musk, said U.S. culture "has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long" and advised Americans to look to a future with "more math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons."
Krystal Ball, co-host of the online news show "Breaking Points," said the feud between Trump's MAGA allies and his Big Tech supporters promoted two distinct lies.
"Trumpism pushes the lie that if you are struggling it's because of immigrants and trans people," said Ball. "Elon and Vivek are pushing the traditional GOP lie that if you are struggling it's your own fucking fault. The truth is if you are struggling it's likely because of billionaire robber barons like Trump, Elon, and Vivek, who rig the rules to screw regular people."
Former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner added that American corporations, not workers, have a "culture problem."
"This is about corporations squeezing every last penny out of anyone and anything they can," said Turner. "This framing that American workers have a 'culture problem' and aren't 'motivated' is quite telling, given where it's coming from: billionaire CEOs. What does 'motivated' mean? To them, it seems that it means the threat of being sent back overseas."
Contrary to the dueling GOP narratives on display in recent days, the problem facing American workers is "not the H-1B guest worker from India or the tomato picker from Guatemala," said Gunnels. "The problem is the oligarchs who became billionaires by exploiting workers, suppressing wages, and shipping jobs abroad."
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'Sick Joke': Progressives Roundly Reject Idea of Rahm Emanuel as DNC Chair
"No amount of rebranding can change the fact that Rahm Emanuel's political career has been an abject failure—neoliberal centrism is exactly the wrong direction for the Democratic Party," said one critic.
Nov 15, 2024
Progressives were left fuming and flummoxed over reporting Friday that Rahm Emanuel is considering running for chair of the Democratic National Committee, with many leftists wondering whether the party has learned anything from its loss of the White House, Senate, and, arguably, the country's working-class voters.
Axios first reported that Emanuel—President Joe Biden's ambassador to Japan and a former congressman, Chicago mayor, and chief of staff to former President Barack Obama—is mulling whether to seek the top DNC post. Current DNC chair Jamie Harrison, who was elected to the post in 2021, is unlikely to seek a new term, which would begin in March.
Emanuel has some powerful backers among the war-and-Wall Street wing that has dominated the Democratic party for decades.
"If they said, 'Well, what should we do? Who should lead the party?' I would take Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, and I would bring him back from Japan, and I would appoint him chairman of the Democratic National Committee," prominent political consultant David Axelrod, who ran both of Obama's successful presidential campaigns, said Wednesday on his podcast.
Axelrod followed up the next day with a post on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, in which he wrote of Emanuel, "Dude knows how to fight and win."
Reaction came fast and furious, with Jonathan Cohn, policy director at the group Progressive Massachusetts, asking on the social network Bluesky, "How is this not a sick joke?"
Center for International Policy executive vice president Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) writing on X that "if you assembled a team of top scientists and told them to come up with a plan to ensure that the Democratic Party continues to lose working-class voters, I doubt they could do better than 'Make Rahm Emanuel head of the DNC.'"
Comedian, author, and podcaster Kate Willett
said on X: "If I had to pick one individual who set the stage for what seems like it may be decades of Trumpism, it's Rahm Emanuel. Imagine if Obama had saved peoples' homes in 2008 and put the bankers in jail? Truly fixed healthcare? Rahm worked diligently to make sure that didn't happen."
Miles Kampf-Lassin, the senior editor at the progressive website
In These Times, wrote, "I've said it before and can't believe I have to say it again: No amount of rebranding can change the fact that Rahm Emanuel's political career has been an abject failure—neoliberal centrism is exactly the wrong direction for the Democratic Party."
Hafiz Rashid argued Friday in a
New Republic article that, if he wins the post, Emanuel could be "the worst possible DNC chair."
"The fact that Emanuel has been disconnected from local and state politics for years... seems unlikely to help," Rashid asserted. "Democrats are currently expected to tap someone with expertise at the grassroots level and an understanding of how Democrats are winning elections now—two things Emanuel sorely lacks."
Apparently questioning the strategic wisdom of Vice President Kamala Harris' failed Democratic presidential run, Warren Gunnels, a staff director for Sanders,
said on X, "Ruling Elite: Let's get Dick Cheney's endorsement and anoint Rahm Emanuel as DNC Chair."
"One word," he added. "No."
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