The new US political party that Elon Musk has boasted about possibly bankrolling could initially focus on a handful of attainable House and Senate seats while striving to be the decisive vote on major issues amid the thin margins in Congress.
Tesla and SpaceX’s multibillionaire CEO mused about that approach on Friday in a post on X, the social media platform which he owns, as he continued feuding with Donald Trump over the spending bill that the president has signed into law.
“One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,” wrote Musk, who is the world’s richest person and oversaw brutal cuts to the federal government after Trump’s second presidency began in January. “Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring they serve the true will of the people.”
Musk did not specify any seats which he may be eyeing.
In another post on Friday, when the US celebrated the 249th anniversary of its declaration of independence from the UK, Musk published a poll asking his X followers whether he should advance on his previously stated idea of creating the so-called America party to challenge both Republicans and Democrats. More than 65% of about 1.25m responses indicated “yes” as of Saturday morning.
“Independence Day is the perfect time to ask if you want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system!” Musk also wrote in text accompanying the poll, which he promoted several times throughout Friday.
Musk’s posts on Friday came after he spent $277m of his fortune supporting Trump’s victorious 2024 presidential campaign. The Republican president rewarded Musk by appointing him to lead the so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, which abruptly and chaotically slashed various government jobs and programs while claiming it saved $190bn.
But Doge’s actions may also have cost taxpayers $135bn, according to an analysis by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan non-profit dedicated to studying the federal workforce.
Musk left Doge at the end of May and more recently became incensed at Trump’s support for a budget bill that would increase the US debt by $3.3tn. He threatened to financially support primary challenges against every member of Congress who supported Trump’s spending bill – along with promising to “form the America Party” if it passed.
The House voted 218 to 214 in favor of the spending bill, with just two Republicans joining every Democrat in the chamber in unsuccessfully opposing it. In the Senate, the vice-president, JD Vance, broke a 50-50 deadlock in favor of the bill, which Trump signed on Friday hours after Musk posted his America party-related poll.
The Trump spending bill’s voting breakdown illustrated how narrowly the winning side in Congress carries some of the most controversial matters.
Trump has warned Musk – a native of South Africa and naturalized US citizen since 2002 – that directly opposing his agenda would be personally costly. The president, who has pursued mass deportations of immigrants recently, publicly discussed deporting Musk from the US as well as cutting government contracts for some of his companies.
“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head to South Africa,” Trump posted on his own Truth Social platform.
The president also told a group of reporters in Florida: “We might have to put Doge on Elon. Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible.”