“Of course he’s funding them. They work for him.”
TEXAS — Elon Musk is reviving the super PAC that spent more than $260 million boosting Republicans in 2024, and Texas ranks among the states where operatives expect that money to land hardest this fall. Overall, Musk has pledged to spend more than $100 million to buy himself access and power in the midterms.
Nathan Johnson, the Democratic nominee for Texas Attorney General, says the timing makes the case for the anti-corruption plan at the center of his campaign.
“Of course he’s funding them. They work for him,” Johnson said. “Musk’s satellite company received 99% of state contract awards — roughly $110 million in state broadband money — after the governor’s office told regulators to rework the rules. Meanwhile our current AG and friend-of-Elon, Ken Paxton, has taken some appropriately bold stances against Big Tech, scoring a $1.4 billion settlement from Meta and a $1.375 billion settlement from Google, and suing TikTok and Discord over child safety. But he has never brought a case against a company affiliated with Elon Musk. Not Tesla, not SpaceX, not X.”
Most egregiously, when Arizona’s Attorney General opened an investigation into xAI’s Grok, and a bipartisan group of Attorneys General from 35 states published an open letter to xAI for generating child sexual abuse imagery, Paxton – who purports to be a champion of protecting kids – did nothing.
And at the national level, after the FAA fined SpaceX $633,000 over alleged license violations at two Florida rocket launches, Musk publicly called for the agency’s administrator to resign and demanded “radical reform.” Days later, he did, before his term was even up. Then Musk cut their staff.
“This is corruption at work, in many places, on many levels. Texans don’t get to vote on whether Elon Musk funds the candidates who are beholden to him, but they do get to vote on whether the next Attorney General looks the other way,” Johnson said. “I won’t.”
Read Nathan Johnson’s full anti-corruption plan.
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