Musk’s WashingtonA close look at how Elon Musk is trying to transform the government.Good evening. Jess here. Tonight, you’ll be hearing from my colleague Theodore Schleifer, who writes about billionaires and their political activity. In this newsletter, he zeros in on a big hint about what could be Elon Musk’s next venture. But first, the headlines.
Could this be Elon Musk’s next business venture?Elon Musk is leaving his full-time Washington assignment next month to try to save Tesla (which has seen its stock battered), to keep up with SpaceX (which is positioned to do big business with the Trump administration) and to chart a new course for xAI, which he just combined with X itself. He’s a busy guy. So what’s another company — or three? Two months ago, even as Musk appeared consumed by his work at yet another job, at the Department of Government Efficiency, his top adviser, Jared Birchall, quietly created an intriguing-sounding set of limited-liability companies in Texas, whose existence has not been previously reported. Their names: Red Planet I, II and III. For the world’s richest man, who is pursuing an elaborate, decades-long plan to colonize Mars, this seemed no idle corporate filing. When Musk bought Twitter, after all, he formed three holding companies (X Holdings I, II and III) to execute the transaction. So, is he planning to buy Mars? Birchall hasn’t returned my requests for comment since I learned of the LLCs a few weeks ago. But he doesn’t typically take actions like this without his boss’s direction. He registered them on Feb. 25, listing himself as the manager of each and using an Austin address that other Musk entities have used. Still, it is surprising to see Musk take this step now, when he has so much on his plate and is already facing pressure to do less, not more. On a Tesla earnings call last week, he said he would substantially reduce the amount of time he spent on DOGE to spend more time on the car company, whose quarterly revenue is way down from a year ago. And yet here he goes again, sprawling out even more. Birchall runs Musk’s family office, called Excession. To hold that job is to do anything and everything for your demanding client. A Brigham Young University graduate from Modesto, Calif., Birchall has been Musk’s all-purpose fixer for a decade now. His remit is as wild as Musk’s life: He addresses issues with Musk’s romantic partners. He helped Musk master the extraordinarily complicated finances of his acquisition of Twitter. He once even hired a private investigator on Musk’s behalf, though he did so under a pseudonym. (“I work in finance. I have a family. This isn’t what I do,” he later testified.) And when Musk’s pursuits took him to Mar-a-Lago, there was Birchall by his side. My colleagues and I reported in December that Birchall, who had no experience in foreign affairs, was interviewing candidates for jobs at the State Department along with advising the Trump transition team on other matters. The companies that Birchall has set up for Musk include a philanthropy, an early-childhood school and a now-defunct entity called Pravda Corp., which Musk said would rate the accuracy of individual journalists. It later became clear that this was a joke. At least to a degree. But is Red Planet a joke? Some corporate entities, and their names, can be insignificant. A company might be created for a specific real-estate purchase or to be responsible for a specific business operation, and to ensure that any problems there don’t bleed into other endeavors owned by the same person or business. But the words “Red Planet” don’t have the ring of insignificance — not for Musk, who wants SpaceX to send humans to the red planet, who declared last month that an unmanned crew would go to Mars by the end of 2026, who suggested that “human landings” could occur as soon as 2029 and who on Friday reposted (not for the first time) a clip featuring President Trump urging him to “get those rocket ships going because we want to reach Mars before the end of my term.” Musk has also occasionally referred to Mars by that nickname. “Technology must advance faster or there will be no city on the red planet in our lifetime,” he wrote in 2020. A fun twist to this mystery is that there is already a company called Red Planet Ventures, and its founder, John Spencer, says he knows Musk. Spencer founded Red Planet Ventures in California in 2001, around the time that Musk moved to Los Angeles. Spencer said he got to know Musk “really well.” In fact, Spencer said he was part of the group of people who introduced Musk to Gwynne Shotwell, now the C.E.O. of SpaceX. Spencer said he last talked to Musk in 2014, when Musk spoke at a conference he helped chair. Spencer said that he, Musk and the astronaut Buzz Aldrin all spoke in the event’s green room for about half an hour. Told of Musk’s new LLCs, Spencer, whose Red Planet Ventures involves “space tourism,” gently suggested that “there might be issues with name stuff down the line.” “I don’t know what they’re planning with their Red Planet,” Spencer said, adding, “But I’d like to know.” So would I. Email me if you do: theodore.schleifer@nytimes.com.
MEANWHILE ON X Cheerleading the administration’s case against judgesMy colleague Tiffany Hsu, who covers technology and political speech, looks at how Musk has been busy using X to attack judges and fuel the idea of an unconstitutional third Trump term. On Friday, Musk shared a post from Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I., that praised agents in Milwaukee for arresting Hannah Dugan, a sitting state court judge in Wisconsin, on charges of obstructing immigration agents trying to apprehend an undocumented immigrant in her courtroom. “More judicial corruption,” Musk captioned one of several posts about the arrest, which constituted a major escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to force his agenda on local authorities. Musk seconded Kari Lake, a Trump loyalist, who reacted to a court order blocking the Defense Department from halting medical care for transgender troops by posting that “these judges are out of control.” He reposted a comment calling for cuts to “the federal judiciary’s budget and power.” And, after Vice President JD Vance used the word “lawless” on X to describe district court judges who rejected Trump’s wishes, Musk added the post to his own feed. Musk also added his voice to Trump’s increasing talk of seeking another four years in office, which the Constitution explicitly prohibits. Musk amplified one post suggesting that “the real problem” isn’t who spends multiple terms in the White House but rather members of Congress who serve for decades on Capitol Hill. And he wrote, “Think ahead!” above a reposted image of a red hat emblazoned with “Trump 2032.” Other notable posts:
— Tiffany Hsu
YOU SHOULDN’T MISS New details on the Musk-Trump relationshipPlease indulge me as I plug a story I had a hand in. Several of my colleagues and I reported this week several behind-the-scenes details about the forces that led Musk to promise to reduce his time in Washington, including that he told friends he was frustrated by his interactions with Trump’s trade advisers; that Trump has sometimes told associates that he wanted to see Musk return to his companies; and that Trump had not been aware of a plan to brief Musk at the Pentagon on sensitive national security matters. How will Musk’s cost-cutting initiative fare after Musk leaves? One of his closest friends, Shaun Maguire, likened DOGE to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, whose initial thrust of energy is enough to achieve escape velocity — overcoming gravity even after it has separated from its engines. “At this point, a rocket is only a couple hundred kilometers from Earth, but it has escaped its gravity well and can travel far into the solar system,” Maguire told me in an interview. “DOGE has escaped D.C.’s gravity well.” Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
|
