The Elon Assist
Plus: The decline of children's books, Fed interrogation, and more...
Republicans are in trouble and Elon Musk is trying to bail them out. Since July, the world's richest man has infused $276 million into the midterm elections, trying to help Republicans win. About $158 million of that went to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC which does pretty much what you'd imagine. He donated $76 million to America PAC, a super PAC he started in 2024, which has a "sprawling canvassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters" per The New York Times. He also donated $20 million to the super PAC that aims to elect Republicans to the House; $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, which is supporting Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas against James Talarico (who has been polling rather well for a Democrat); $10 million to the Republican Governors Association; and $2 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association.
A Fox News poll conducted in late September had Talarico getting 51 percent of likely voters to Paxton's 49, and a YouGov poll had Talarico up six, 50 to 44. The larger map isn't much better for the GOP. Republicans are hoping to defy projections that they'll lose the House, and the Senate is considered a toss-up. Musk's infusion of cash is much-needed.
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"In terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future," he had said in May 2025. "I think I've done enough." ("If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it," he said. "But I don't currently see a reason.") Did he just panic? Is he worried about what type of favorable breaks he could secure for his companies in the future, if Democrats get a congressional majority? Is he thinking about the regulatory future (for artificial intelligence, space travel, infrastructure permitting)? Or is he just impulsive?
The case for self-interest is strong: Musk's companies are rather politically exposed, arguably more than ever before. SpaceX went public in June in the biggest IPO in history, and his artificial intelligence company xAI and X were folded into it earlier this year. That means rockets, satellites, a social network, and a chatbot (which has drawn numerous lawsuits) all sit under one roof. Musk depends on government contracts, licenses, and regulatory goodwill. The pattern of America PAC's spending supports this reading. Reuters notes that the PAC has backed such senators as Maine's Susan Collins and Ohio's Jon Husted, who sit on the Appropriations Committee, which funds some of SpaceX's biggest government contracts. It also supports House members on the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Homeland Security committees.
It also spent over $90,000 against the New Hampshire Democrat Chris Pappas, a vocal critic of Musk's DOGE work. It probably goes without saying, but a Democratic majority would give a bigger platform to people like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), who advocate a wealth tax.
Musk is also heavily invested in the Texas races: He maintains a residence in Austin, and he basically took over a town in south Texas, calling it Starbase and making it a company town to support SpaceX launches and operations. America PAC's first disclosed spending this cycle was concentrated in Texas, and the biggest chunk, nearly $248,000, went to supporting Paxton and opposing Talarico.
It'll be interesting to see how well Musk's strategy works, how much influence he actually has over Republicans if they do win, and whether he'll repeat this in 2028.
Scenes from New York: There is another defendant named in the lawsuit Jane Doe brought against Cornell University after her alleged rape in October 2024: her sorority, Delta Delta Delta.
"The sorority had put on a public face promising safety for the women who joined, the lawsuit said, vowing to monitor and protect the sisters of Tri Delta who lived in the stately brick sorority house on Triphammer Road," reports The New York Times. "Yet on that night in October 2024, an underage Jane Doe drank alcohol with her sorority sisters at their house, downing what she later estimated to be about six shots of vodka. The 'house mom,' an employee of the sorority who supervised the women living in the house, escorted an intoxicated Jane Doe in an Uber from the sorority house to a bar in downtown Ithaca, the lawsuit said. At that bar, where Tri Delta hosted a 'date party' for women and their guests, Jane Doe was able to drink even more alcohol, ordering a cocktail from a bartender without interference, the lawsuit said. These events, the lawsuit said, led directly to the sexual assault of Jane Doe later that night at the Chi Phi house."
Technically speaking, sororities like this one have strict no-alcohol policies for their chapter houses—which strikes me as ill-advised, because then drinking is pushed into co-ed and less controlled environments. But also, a sorority acting as sororities do strikes me as a strange scapegoat. Doe seems to be portraying herself as someone with no agency, no ability to decide her limits for herself, whether in terms of amount of alcohol consumed or in terms of sexual situations engaged in.
QUICK HITS
- "Walk into any library or children's bookstore and you can feel it: The New Release vibes are off," writes Jacob Savage for The Free Press. "Every page seems to tell the child how to feel and what to think; every emotion is named, every mystery explained. Some blame wokeness for selling 'books as medicine'; others blame celebrities for making it seem like writing a children's book is something anyone can do. Both have a point, so far as it goes. But while identitarian and political books don't invite identification or imagination from a child, neither do others. The problem runs deeper: Adults have lost confidence in children's capacity to make meaning on their own."
- "President Trump has formed a committee to evaluate the mortgage-fraud allegations against Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and has scheduled an in-person hearing at the White House for Nov. 5," reports The Wall Street Journal. "Trump said Cook would 'be examined' by the committee, which would then recommend whether to remove her from the Fed, according to a memo posted on the White House's website. The announcement marks a dramatic escalation in the president's long-running attempt to wield more control over the Fed and could deliver the unusual spectacle of a central-bank official arriving at the White House for a disciplinary meeting."
- "Workers at three major publishing houses tell Wired that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech." Full article here. Kind of wild how much Wired has changed: This is a very anti-AI article, acting as though people's conniptions over the technology are entirely justified. (As with most disruption, it's a mixed bag.)
