Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a businessman, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who served as a special government employee attached to the Department of Government Efficiency during 2025 and no longer holds federal office. Entries naming him span both that role and the intersection of his companies' commercial interests with federal action, which is why they sit in self-dealing and executive-overreach categories rather than in a policy area.
2025 Events (5)
State Department pressed tariff-threatened nations to approve Musk's Starlink, cables showed
Internal U.S. embassy and State Department cables obtained by The Washington Post and reported on May 7, 2025, showed officials repeatedly pressing foreign governments facing Trump administration tariff threats to approve regulatory access for Starlink, the satellite company owned by White House adviser Elon Musk. Lesotho received a 10-year Starlink license two weeks after Trump announced 50% tariffs, and India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo saw similar fast-tracked approvals. Eleven U.S. senators subsequently requested a federal ethics investigation into the arrangement.
Elon Musk gave two Wisconsin voters $1 million checks two days before the 2025 state Supreme Court election
Two days before Wisconsin's April 1, 2025 state Supreme Court election, Elon Musk personally handed $1 million checks to two voters, Nicholas Jacobs and Ekaterina Diestler, at a Green Bay rally, after his political action committee America PAC designated them "spokesmen" for a petition opposing "activist judges." Musk and groups he funded spent more than $20 million backing conservative candidate Brad Schimel, who lost to Susan Crawford in the country's most expensive judicial election; Wisconsin's Attorney General had sued unsuccessfully to block the payments beforehand.
Trump bought and publicly endorsed a Tesla from the White House lawn amid Musk's DOGE-tied stock boycott
On March 11, 2025, President Trump held a White House South Lawn event where he inspected and announced the purchase of a red Tesla Model S alongside Tesla CEO and DOGE lead Elon Musk, amid a Tesla stock decline tied to consumer boycotts over Musk's government role. Former White House chief ethics lawyer Richard Painter said Trump's on-camera endorsement of a specific consumer product from federal grounds appeared to violate rules against using public office for private gain.
OPM demanded weekly work reports from 2 million federal employees under DOGE direction; Musk threatened mass resignation for non-response
On February 22, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management sent a government-wide email to approximately 2 million federal employees directing them to submit five bullets summarizing their weekly work accomplishments and copy their managers, with a deadline of the following Monday at 11:59 PM ET. The email was sent at the direction of Elon Musk, a White House special government employee leading DOGE, who simultaneously posted on X that failure to respond would be taken as a resignation. OPM's own February 5 privacy impact assessment, published in response to ongoing litigation, had explicitly stated seven times that responses to government-wide emails are voluntary.
Trump signed EO 14210 ordering mass federal workforce reductions and granting DOGE political veto over career hiring
On February 11, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14210, directing all federal agencies to begin large-scale reductions in force and imposing a 1:4 hiring cap allowing no more than one new hire per four departures. The order required DOGE-designated team leads to approve all new career civil service appointments, inserting a political veto into the merit-based hiring system the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 was designed to protect from partisan control. Agency DEI offices and units performing non-statutory functions were identified as priority targets for elimination.
2024 Events (1)
Elon Musk's America PAC paid Pennsylvania swing-state voters $47 apiece to sign and refer a political petition ahead of the 2024 election
Ahead of the November 2024 election, Elon Musk's America PAC began offering registered swing-state voters $47 — later raised to $100 — to sign, and to refer others to sign, a petition backing "free speech and the right to bear arms," with Musk promoting the payments as "easy money" on X. The petition targeted voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Two federal class-action lawsuits later filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania allege canvassers and voters were never paid as promised.