SpaceX also does business with the U.S. government. Since 2008, it has benefited from nearly $19.8 billion in federal contracts. Fiscal year 2024 was the largest on record for SpaceX, aided by at least $3.8 billion in government contracts.

We explore Musk’s agenda and ideology. By Jonathan Mahler I’m a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. Over the course of the 2024 presidential campaign, Elon Musk went from dark-money donor to high-profile surrogate to unofficial chief of staff.

Elon Musk listens as US President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with House Republicans at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington, DC, on Nov. 13.

Lutnick currently serves as chair of Trump’s White House transition team. His most notable moment in recent memory was his declaration on CNN that Robert F Kennedy Jr, the vaccine conspiracist and Covid lockdown critic, would not be Trump’s pick for head of Health and Human Services. Trump nominated Kennedy to that very post last week.

Musk’s moves since the election suggest the Tesla CEO will be heavily involved in the Trump administration’s ‘revolution,’ as he calls it.

Elon Musk is backing Donald Trump’s transition co-chair Howard Lutnick to lead the Treasury Department, touting the billionaire CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald as a potential secretary who “will actually enact change” from the most powerful economic post in Trump’s cabinet.