Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s house firm was lately handed a $5.9 billion contract backed by taxpayers, whilst his so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity continues to take a wrecking ball to key authorities businesses.
The U.S. Area Drive introduced on April 4 that Musk’s SpaceX was amongst three firms awarded authorities contracts for the Nationwide Safety Area Launch Section 3 Lane 2 program. Area X will obtain greater than $5.9 billion of the $13.7 billion in spending that was introduced.
Musk is the CEO of SpaceX and owns roughly 42% of the corporate.
Whereas SpaceX is newly flush with authorities cash, Musk’s DOGE has been shedding vital federal staff at a number of businesses. Federal judges have dominated that a few of these firings are unlawful.
On the Social Safety Administration, DOGE has lower 7,000 jobs regardless that hundreds of thousands of Individuals depend on their Social Safety funds for day-to-day residing. The Washington Put up reviews that the company’s web site, which residents use to entry data on their advantages, has had repeated outages in current weeks.
The Put up famous that “many of the network outages appear to be caused by an expanded fraud check system imposed by the DOGE team,” in keeping with present and former officers that they consulted. These sources instructed the outlet that Social Safety’s tech employees didn’t take a look at new software program put in by Musk’s group and the pc servers have been unable to deal with the visitors.
The revelations come as DOGE has repeatedly lied to the general public about how a lot the rogue company’s actions have purportedly saved taxpayers. Musk, who’s the richest particular person on this planet, has benefited enormously from public spending whereas attacking and gutting businesses that present very important companies to middle-class households.
Regardless of Musk persevering with to siphon cash from the federal government whereas attacking it by way of DOGE, President Donald Trump has made it clear that his crony and largest political benefactor won’t be topic to any guardrails or oversight for corruption.
The association has led to Musk and Trump turning into a serious goal of grassroots protests. Over the weekend, a whole bunch of 1000’s of individuals throughout the U.S. took half in “Hands Off” demonstrations, pushing for Trump and Musk to cease their dangerous actions and inspiring different lawmakers to cease them.
Musk isn’t the one high-profile billionaire within the MAGA motion getting cash from the Area Drive announcement. Blue Origin, owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, will obtain over $2.3 billion from the association.
Trump lately provided reward for Bezos, who additionally owns The Washington Put up, after the paper’s pivot in current weeks to be extra MAGA-friendly.
The inventory worth and income for Musk’s different main firm, Tesla, have been sinking as he marches in lockstep with Trump. The general public has expressed its revulsion and anger at DOGE’s actions whilst Republican leaders proceed to again the hassle.
However even whereas Trump’s closest billionaire allies are shedding cash as a consequence of his chaotic and catastrophic tariff insurance policies, they’re raking in billions from the federal government he now leads.
