World's Richest Person Elon Musk Has Spent $446M on the US Midterms

Elon Musk, the world's richest person, has funnelled at least $445.77m into Republican-aligned political action committees and groups since last year, according to Federal Election Commission data as of 29 October cited by the Guardian. That makes him the largest single-cycle political donor in modern US history, the paper says, far ahead of megadonors such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. For scale, the Guardian calculates the sum could fund half a dozen SpaceX rocket launches or buy more than 31.9m cheeseburgers at the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles. Musk said last year he would step back from large political donations after putting nearly $300m into Donald Trump's 2024 campaign; the FEC data shows otherwise.