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**JUNE 9, 2025**
On the Prospect website
ICE: Crossing State Lines to Incite Riots
[link removed]
The only disorder the National Guard will find comes from the deporters. BY HAROLD MEYERSON
Crypto Thought They Bought Congress. They Bought a Headache. [link removed]
The industry thought it had its legislative wish list on track for passage. Then it all got mired in a fight over credit card swipe fees. BY DAVID DAYEN
The Political Machine Won't Decide New Jersey's Next Governor [link removed]
County bosses were stripped of the power to rig statewide elections. Now there's no clear favorite in a state where Republicans are rising. BY WHITNEY CURRY WIMBISH
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Nationalize
Elon Musk
Trump has threatened to revoke Musk's SpaceX contracts with NASA and the Pentagon. It would be even better if he followed Steve Bannon's advice and nationalized SpaceX.
For now, President Trump and Elon Musk have tried to back off their campaign of mutually assured destruction, but it is far from over. And Trump holds most of the cards.
Last week, strategist Steve Bannon urged Trump to use the Defense Production Act, which allows the government to seize civilian industrial capacity for national-security purposes, to take over SpaceX [link removed].
Government officials were stunned after Musk responded to Trump with a threat that SpaceX would stop flying its Dragon spacecraft, a move that would leave NASA with no way to transport its astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
Pentagon and NASA officials quickly contacted three competitors,
Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, about the status of their rockets and when they might be available for government missions, according to
**The Washington Post** [link removed].
Supporting competitors to Musk's SpaceX is a good idea, but nationalizing it is a better idea. Musk has operated SpaceX like a classic monopolist.
As our friend Matt Stoller explained [link removed], "First, SpaceX allegedly charges below cost in certain contexts to prevent competitors from getting into the market. Second, the company inserts 'right of first refusal' provisions with customers, meaning that it has the right to match competitors if they make a better offer."
The travesty here is that Musk owes his monopoly to the U.S. government. Barack Obama, no
less, awarded the then-fledgling SpaceX company massive contracts with NASA in 2010 because SpaceX, at the time, was delivering payloads at lower costs than its larger rivals. Musk, who supported Obama in 2008 and 2012, then used his dominant position to make sure that he would have no viable competitors.
And as Dan Boguslaw explained in this deeply reported
**Prospect** piece [link removed], use of the SpaceX monopoly to crush rivals is only one of several problems with the company's concentrated power as a government contractor. "Starlink gained new eligibility from Trump's Commerce Department [link removed] to wire much of the underserved parts of the country with satellite internet," Boguslaw pointed out. "There are now Starlink satellite systems serving
the White House [link removed], and Starlink contracts upgrading IT for [the] Federal Aviation Administration [link removed]," as well as Starlink involvement in a consortum pitching Trump for contracts to build his proposed "Golden Dome" defense system.
[link removed]
WHILE MUCH OF THE PRESS HAS PLAYED the Trump-Musk feud as a nearly symmetrical brawl [link removed] between the world's richest man and the world's most powerful aspiring autocrat, the fact is that Trump can do far more damage to Musk than vice versa. Even as Trump in several recent
interviews has tried to change the subject and to tone down the mud-wrestling, narcissistic dictators do not forgive or forget disloyalty, much less personal insults.
Last year, Musk's companies were awarded $3.8 billion in government contracts with 17 separate agencies. Trump could suspend them. Bannon has also called on Trump to investigate Musk's extensive drug use and even to deport him. Other immigrants have been deported for far less. Trump could also revoke Musk's security clearance.
Vladimir Putin, a role model for Trump, used his power to crush several Russian oligarchs who forgot that they owed their wealth and power to Putin personally. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was able to buy controlling interest in state oil company Yukos for $310 million [link removed], even though it was then worth an estimated $5 billion. Later, he accused Putin of corruption. He was
soon arrested on phony charges of tax evasion and sent to prison in Siberia, where he served 13 years.
Vladimir Gusinsky ran Russia's first private TV network, NTV. During Russia's brief period of free speech, NTV ran a satirical puppet show that lampooned Putin. Gusinsky was seized by masked men, and had to flee the country. NTV was taken over by Gazprom, and is now slavishly loyal to Putin.
Boris Berezovsky fled Russia to avoid legal charges, and died in the U.K. under suspicious circumstances. Mikhail Rogachev,a former vice president of Yukos who had a falling out with Putin, was found dead after supposedly falling out a window of his Moscow apartment.
Trump admires Putin for exactly this kind of unforgiving brutality.
What can Musk do to Trump? Not much.
The fact that Trump is a sexual predator, whether via Jeffrey Epstein or otherwise, is not exactly news. The idea of Musk bankrolling candidates to challenge Trump loyalists, or starting a third party, is a
fantasy. MAGA is loyal to Trump. Musk has already taken down posts connecting Trump to Epstein, and has made other conciliatory noises.
But the fatal damage to the Trump-Musk bromance has been done. One of the few Biden legacies that Trump has continued is a Federal Trade Commission and a Justice Department Antitrust Division willing to go after tech monopolies. Major antitrust actions against Musk can help, but full nationalization of SpaceX would be even better.
I await another strategy phone call from my sometime comrade in arms, Steve Bannon [link removed].
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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