Elon Musk Holds Town Hall With Pennsylvania Voters in Lancaster

(Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

MUSK.GOV

Elon Musk: Government support for me, but not for thee

Musk’s businesses have all benefited greatly from government loans and subsidies.

2/6/25 3:18PM

As Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s DOGE team gains access to US government agencies’ computer systems to root out suspected waste and fraud, Musk and his supporters appear to be SHOCKED to find that the government pays money to businesses for things like subscriptions to news publications.

President Trump posted on Truth Social today that finding $8 million worth of government subscriptions to the widely read Politico Pro newsletter could be “THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL.”

Musk has been updating his followers on X with examples of government spending he finds outrageous, including government support of National Public Radio.

Defund NPR. It should survive on its own.

pic.twitter.com/dtm5qbbxix
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2025

The nature of the government financial support that NPR receives is a little complicated, as federal law mandates the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to distribute funds to local public TV and radio stations, which in turn choose to pay NPR to license programming like “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”

NPR’s website says that “on average, less than 1% of NPR’s annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB and federal agencies and departments.”

Basically, a federal law passed by Congress in 1976 created public funding infrastructure to serve the public good, and a portion of those funds flow to NPR, which is largely supported by corporate sponsorships, programming fees, and listener donations.

Musk.gov

But much of Musk’s vast business empire might not exist were it not for significant taxpayer support in the form of loans and subsidies.

Tesla

In 2010, the Obama administration agreed to loan pre-IPO Tesla $465 million through the US Department of Energy to expand its business and support a domestic EV industry. Tesla paid the loan back in 2013, a year early (resulting in a penalty).
Tesla received $64 million in state and local tax incentives for its Texas Gigafactory.
Tesla has received over $41.9 million in federal contracts since 2008.
Tesla has benefited from state government incentives related to its factories, such as Nevada’s $1.3 billion incentives for its sprawling Nevada Gigafactory — including another $330 million to expand the facility.

Yet Musk is calling for an end to the $7,500 EV tax credit that his company benefits from, tweeting, “Take away the subsidies. It will only help Tesla.”

SpaceX

Musk’s SpaceX counts the US government as a key customer for launching satellites and sending astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

SpaceX has received over $18.5 billion in revenue from the Department of Defense and NASA.
SpaceX’s Starlink has government contracts for supplying space-based internet to Ukrainian troops through the DOD.
Starlink also had contracts with USAID, the current target of Musk’s cost-cutting campaign.

Musk’s business entanglements with government agencies are now under increased scrutiny as lawmakers scramble to understand what exactly Musk’s team of teenage staffers are doing with newly granted access to several government agencies.

Yesterday, in his capacity as ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Senator Richard Blumenthal sent letters to six of Musk’s companies (Tesla, SpaceX, X, xAI, The Boring Company, and Neuralink) demanding information surrounding possible conflicts of interests arising from Musk’s DOGE activities.

Blumenthal wrote:

“Mr. Musk’s dual roles — running a for-profit corporation while serving in public office — not only create glaring conflicts of interest that pose grave risks for America’s most sacred institutions, but may also violate federal law… PSI is conducting a preliminary inquiry into DOGE and the ramifications of its conduct. ”

Walt Hickey

shutdown watch

10/21/25

Traders are getting more and more pessimistic about the government shutdown ending any time soon

The market expects the shutdown to last well into November.

Jon Keegan

10/10/25

OpenAI’s internal Slack messages could cost it billions in copyright suit

Authors and publishers suing OpenAI over copyright infringement were granted access to internal OpenAI communications about the deletion of a pirated books dataset, and now want to review attorney communications.

Max Knoblauch

10/9/25

US corporate spending on private flights for executives has ballooned in recent years

The median expense spent by America’s largest companies on air travel jumped 66% from 2020 to 2024.

Claire Yubin Oh10/1/25

OK, so when was the longest shutdown in US history?

The US government officially shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday after senators failed to agree on a last-minute funding bill. Though initially shrugging off the threat of a shutdown during yesterday’s session, stocks were mildly in the red on Wednesday as investors reacted to what is now the 11th shutdown in the government’s history.

Until this latest shutdown, there had been 20 government funding gaps experienced since 1976 — though not all ended in a full shutdown, with full closure averted in half of those cases.

Indeed, prior to the 1980s, funding gaps didn’t typically have major effects on government operations, with agencies continuing to operate on the basis that the funding would come eventually. However, a more stringent interpretation of the rules led to a stricter appropriations process from the early 1980s onward, with many subsequent funding gaps resulting in a shutdown of affected agencies (unless the gaps were quickly fixed or occurred over a weekend).

Obviously, the duration of the latest shutdown is still unclear, but it will continue until Congress passes a funding bill — most likely via a “continuing resolution,” which has ended every shutdown since 1990. Data analyzed by USAFacts suggest that it might not be a one- or two-day affair, as funding gaps have lengthened in recent years.

Government shutdown patterns — Sherwood News

Indeed, the last shutdown, which began in December 2018, ended up becoming the longest in history, at a whopping 34 days. By the time the government reopened in January 2019, about $3 billion (in 2019 dollars) had been wiped from the GDP in Q4, per data from the Congressional Budget Office, with approximately $18 billion in “federal discretionary spending” delayed over the roughly five-week stretch.

Max Knoblauch9/24/25

GM climbs following upgrade, report that Trump administration seeks stake in its lithium mine partner

Shares of General Motors rose more than 2% in premarket trading Wednesday following an upgrade of the stock by UBS from “neutral” to “buy.” The firm also hiked its price target for GM by 45% to $81.

Also likely elevating GM was a Reuters report that the Trump administration is exploring taking a 10% stake in Lithium Americas, the automaker’s partner in a yet to open Thacker Pass lithium mine. Shares of Lithium Americas surged 68% in the premarket.

GM, which invested $625 million into the lithium mine last year, holds a 38% stake in the joint venture. The mine is expected to become the Western Hemisphere’s primary lithium source in 2028, when it’s slated to open, producing enough of the metal to make 800,000 electric vehicle batteries.

Prior to its plans for Lithium Americas, the Trump administration last month said it would take a 10% stake in Intel. In July, it announced a 15% stake in rare earths miner MP Materials.