Loading…

Elon Musk spends $442 million on the midterms after leading DOGE | The Receipts - media kit | The Receipts - Dataspheres AI

Elon Musk runs Tesla and SpaceX, and he is putting hundreds of millions of dollars into the midterms. Watch Elon Musk spends $442 million on the midterms a...

Elon Musk runs Tesla and SpaceX, and he is putting hundreds of millions of dollars into the midterms. Watch Elon Musk spends $442 million on the midterms after leading DOGE (7 min), with captions The stories The post: Sanders on Musk This week, Senator Bernie Sanders posted a list of receipts on Elon Musk. Since the 2024 election, Sanders wrote, Musk got $680 billion richer, became the first trillionaire, won $10 billion in federal contracts, and his companies paid $0 in federal income tax. And now, he wrote, Musk is spending $442 million to keep Republicans in control of Congress. Gee, I wonder why? We checked the receipts, and then followed the money. Who is Elon Musk Elon Musk runs Tesla and SpaceX, and he is the richest person on record. In 2024, Musk spent more than $250 million backing the Republican ticket, the party that now controls the agencies over his companies. Claim: $680 billion richer First receipt: $680 billion richer. On October 12, Sanders put it at $696 billion. Forbes had the fortune at $839 billion in March, before the biggest jump. That receipt checks out. Claim: the first trillionaire Second receipt: the first trillionaire. On June 12, SpaceX went public, raising $75 billion, the largest IPO on record. At the $135 offering price, Elon Musk's stake was worth about $860 billion. With his Tesla shares, Bloomberg put him past $1 trillion. That receipt checks out. Claim: $10 billion in federal contracts Third receipt: $10 billion in federal contracts. In April 2025, the Space Force picked SpaceX for about 28 national security launches, worth $5.92 billion. SpaceX had $11.8 billion left on 52 active federal contracts as of March. The range holds, but no single source totals $10 billion, and SpaceX won those launches in open competition. Claim: $0 in federal income tax Fourth receipt: zero federal income tax. Tesla reported $0 in current federal income tax on about $5.7 billion of U.S. income in 2025. Over three years, $48 million on $12.58 billion, all legal, through past losses and the 2025 tax law's write-offs. SpaceX was private until June, so that receipt is unproven. Claim: $442 million on the midterms Fifth receipt: $442 million on the midterms. Campaign finance filings back it up. $76.8 million came in the last month alone. $158 million went through the Senate Leadership Fund into the Texas Senate race. That money keeps his party in control of the agencies over his companies. Inside the government: DOGE Sanders asks why. Here is the part of the record his post leaves out. From January to May 2025, Elon Musk led DOGE, inside the government. At the time, Democratic staff on a Senate investigations subcommittee counted 65 actions by 11 federal agencies pending against his companies, worth up to $2.37 billion. So the agencies DOGE was cutting included the ones with cases against his companies. Here is what happened to those cases. The SpaceX workers' case: dropped The labor board, the NLRB, was pursuing SpaceX for firing 8 engineers who criticized their CEO in a letter. On January 27, 2025, a board member was fired. In February 2026, the NLRB dropped the SpaceX case, saying it has no authority over the company. The case for the fired engineers was dropped. Tesla's cases: mediation and closed probes At the EEOC, which was suing Tesla over racial harassment of Black workers, two commissioners were fired the same day. In January 2026, the Tesla suit went to private mediation. At NHTSA, the car safety agency, DOGE cut 3 of about 7 staff in the self-driving office. In 2026, two Tesla probes closed with no recall. The self-driving probes are still open. So Tesla's cases went to mediation or were closed. SpaceX's FAA fine: no sign it was resolved At the FAA, regulators proposed a $633,009 fine on SpaceX in 2024. Its owner told the FAA chief to resign. The FAA chief, the official over that SpaceX fine, stepped down on January 20, 2025. We found no report the fine was ever resolved. 17 watchdogs fired in one night And on January 24, 2025, 17 inspectors general, the watchdogs, were fired. At least 2 oversaw offices with active matters involving his companies, so those watchdogs over his companies were removed. A federal judge later ruled the firings broke the law, but did not reinstate them. Who pays Who pays? The engineers fired over a letter lost their federal case. Black workers at Tesla wait in mediation. And drivers rely on a self-driving safety office that lost 3 of its 7 staff. Workers and drivers lose protection. The other side The other side. The White House says Elon Musk did not use his role for personal or financial gain. Most of those firings were signed by the president, and swept many agencies at once. Musk says his fortune comes from companies building useful products. The overlap is on the record. The motive is not. So the overlap is on the record: officials over open cases against his companies were removed while he was inside the government. The motive is not on the record. It