Hell-bent

September 8, 2026 On Sunday, Germany's far-right alternative for Germany, or AFD, party, won 43.8% of the vote in a legislative election in the small state of Saxony-Onholt, formerly part of Soviet-dominated East Germany. The AFD is anti-immigrant and pro-Russia, and has won the support of both Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk. When Musk posted "well done" in German to the co-founder of AFD, at least vital, another AFD leader responded with "thanks" posting, "If we take on responsibility here, I would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation. Germany would then, once again, be a place worth investing in, best regards from Saxony-Onholt." John Henley of the Guardian noted that right-wing leaders across Europe celebrated the outcome, including ousted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who called the election results "a huge night for Germany and Europe," adding "buckle up, this is just the beginning." Musk was the largest donor to any political committee in the 2024 U.S. elections, putting around $290 million into the 2024 election to help elect President Donald J. Trump and Republicans. On August 28, Andrew Howard, Aaron Dority and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported that Musk was planning to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, as he considered investing at least $100 million to elect Republicans in the midterm elections. Since that meeting, Musk has plowed money into the Texas Senate race to support Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, against Democratic nominee James Tallerico. According to theatre Schliefer of the New York Times, Musk's investments, many through political action committees, target Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, as well as House races in at least California, Wisconsin, and Washington. Musk's open attempt to buy elections for the Republicans should be bigger news, not only because of the political power his money has given to one man, but also because of what his behavior says about the MAGA administration's ideology and its goals. After supporting Trump in 2024, Musk appeared to become the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, the administration was coy about who actually held that title, where he worked to slash government spending. On February 3, he posted on social media, "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper, could gone to some great parties, did that instead." Musk called USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, a criminal organization, and a vipers nest of radical left Marxists who hate America. In July 2026, Erie Daniel, David Augustine, Kazim O'Walley-Nazero, and Lamek Nyogudi of NPR, reported on a study by Boston University Infectious Disease Model or Brook Nichols, that estimated more than 700,000 people had died from the sudden stop in USAID funding, including more than half a million children in developing countries. And yet, for all his talk about slashing government expenditures, Musk's Department of Government Efficiency did not appear to save much. Emilio Perez-Ibarguin of Politico reported in August, when the Department of Government Efficiency officially ended, that a report by the government accountability office found that the savings it claimed were in large part exaggerated or couldn't be corroborated. Meanwhile, government contracts continued to flow to Musk's businesses. His Desmond Butler, Trisha Thadani, Emmanuel Martinez, Aaron Gregg, Luis Melgar, Jonathan O'Connell, and Dan Keating reported in the Washington Post in February 2025, Musk himself has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer dollars in history, taking in at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits over the course of more than 20 years. As he was in power in Trump 2.0, government investigations into those businesses ended. The very public nature of Musk's antics has helped to wake the public up to the fact that our current system is skewed toward billionaires. In July, economist Paul Krugman noted a growing backlash against those billionaires. A poll by UMass Amherst found that 58% of Americans think billionaires are a threat to democracy, and 45% of them say the U.S. is an oligarchy, a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. As Krugman noted, only 28% of those polls disagreed. Krugman pointed out that wealth has been concentrating at the top of the U.S. economy for decades, so the growing wave against that concentration of wealth appears to be driven by those like Musk and Trump himself, who has flaunted his use of taxpayer money for his own interests while dismissing the pain of regular Americans. This flow of taxpayer dollars to favored businesses rather than to programs that serve the needs of the people seems to be a feature rather than a bug in the Trump administration, and reflects its rejection of democracy in favor of the right-wing axis of authoritarianism. Last night, Torini Party Josh Dawsey, Michelle Hackman and Summer Saeed of the Wall Street Journal published a deep investigation of the machinations of Corey Lewandowski when his colleague Christy Nome was Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. They report that Lewandowski, who was Trump's campaign manager for part of 2016, appeared to offer aid to foreign countries navigating U.S. bureaucracy in the department for a fee, selling government services for his own gain. The journalists also report that Lewandowski may have been involved in awarding government contracts improperly, an accusation covered in a November 14, 2025 article by Justin Elliott Joshua Kaplan and Alex Margeski of ProPublica. The Wall Street Journal reporters note that Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security an additional $75 billion to spend during Trump's term on deportations, detention facilities, and technology, providing deep pockets for corruption. While the administration appears to have sidelined Nome and Lewandowski since Nome resigned under pressure in March, the journalists say Lewandowski has told people close to him he expects the president would pardon him in the event of a criminal case. Lewandowski responded on social media that the story was just another example of the kind of anonymous source politically driven reporting that Americans have seen time and time again. We've lived through the Russia collusion hoax, the fake birthday card, and countless other sensational allegations that ultimately failed to withstand scrutiny. I'm tremendously proud of my work as a volunteer in advancing this administration's agenda and remain confident that the facts and not anonymous accusations will ultimately speak for themselves. And of course, every official investigation into the 2016 election, including the one conducted by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee and unanimously adopted, agreed that Russia did work to get Trump elected in 2016. And while Trump claims he did not create the birthday card to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, apparently bearing Trump's signature on a drawing of a nude girl that was produced by the Epstein estate. The story was convincing enough that it helped to push Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the first case he brought against the Wall Street Journal for publishing the story was dismissed. A second case is pending. There is, in fact, increasing pushback against the world, musk and Trump are trying to put into place instead of liberal democracy. In the US, the growing opposition to data centers, which seems to represent anger at the very wealthy tech bros who want to call the shots, is perhaps a sign of the direction the wind in the US is blowing. Whether that popular pressure can withstand the extraordinary amounts of money, musk and other right-wing billionaires are pouring into the midterms is unclear. Judd Legham of Popular Information reported today that musk is funding an advertising campaign encouraging people in swing states to check their voting registration status at a different website. than the one run by the Election Assistance Commission, which is an independent agency of the US government. Instead, Musk's campaign urges people to go to votesafe.org, which collects their full name, home address, date of birth, email address, cell phone number, IP address and location, which identifies city and zip code. Every link clicked, every page looked at and voter registration status among other information. Legum reports that the privacy policy of the website allows Musk's Super PAC America PAC to share or sell personal information with our business partners, including whether you are registered to vote and how you submit your vote where permitted by law. America PAC can also sell inferences it makes about a user, including psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitude. A new documentary about Musk by filmmaker Alex Gibney argues as Stephen Zeichick of the Hollywood reporter put it, that Musk is a dangerous hawkster who is stealthily aggregating power to exploit us, primarily by centralizing and controlling massive amounts of data. The documentary, called Musk, notes that under Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency had access to federal IT systems, and as Zeichick recalls, a whistleblower warned that members of the Department of Government Efficiency accessed and shared sensitive data from the Social Security Administration. Zeichick reports on the on-screen comments of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Jeffrey Hinton, known as the Godfather of AI, who said, "It's fairly clear to me that Trump is hell-bent on corrupting the midterm elections," he says on-screen. "If you wanted to corrupt those midterm elections and you wanted to use AI, all you needed to do was get detailed information on U.S. citizens, and what the Department of Government Efficiency did looked like just what you would do." In Europe, in the wake of the rise of the AFD, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said today that Germany will send missiles to Ukraine to help it fight off a winter incursion from Russia. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at SoundScape Productions, Data Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss. [BLANK_AUDIO]