Lobbying

The global wall of resistance to Elon Musk’s satellite business is crumbling. Even before Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help Donald Trump retake the US presidency, SpaceX’s Starlink was picking off swaths of the world country by country.

An extraordinary display of Elon Musk's social media power saw the world's richest man funnel the anger of his hundreds of millions of online followers against a bipartisan compromi

It’s been apparent for some time that Elon Musk and Donald Trump align on more than politics. Each has a, let’s say, robust sense of his own importance and an apparent need for others to recognize that importance. Both have a large fan base happy to offer that recognition.

Elon Musk is doing exactly what a lot of observers worried (or wondered, or hoped) he would do when he jumped into politics this year: governing via X.

Elon Musk is arguably the most powerful person in business, the most powerful man in media and, at least at this moment, the most powerful man in politics.

Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting state secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders. Concerns about the reporting practices—and particularly about Mr. Musk, who is SpaceX’s chief executive—have triggered at least three federal reviews. The Air Force also recently denied Mr. Musk a high-level security access, citing potential security risks associated with the billionaire.

Elon Musk’s influence over the federal government is extraordinary, and extraordinarily lucrative. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts with 17 federal agencies in 2023. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule. The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His entanglements with federal regulators are also numerous and adversarial.

On the surface, the apologetic letter Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent to congressional Republicans on Monday looks like a capitulation in the long-simmering political wars

The mayor of the city of Vineland (NJ) says residents of his city are underserved by currently available broadband services. And he’s moving forward with a plan to create a municipal broadband network. This has already sparked lobbying against the prospect by a dark money group called the Taxpayers Protection Alliance Foundation. According to the city’s initial proposal, Vineland suffers from high economic distress with some areas having unemployment rates as high as 9% and poverty rates as high as 19.2%.

Cities and towns that build their own broadband networks often say they only considered the do-it-yourself option because private Internet service providers didn't meet their communities' needs.  Hundreds of municipal broadband networks have been built around the US as a result, including dozens that have started operating since 2021. The rise of public broadband hasn't happened without a fight, though.