Trail Notes
Big payday for Elon / Trump super PAC rakes it in / Palantir hits the mother lode / Columbia and Brown cave / Kennedy kills vaccine funding / Trump flunks math
A $29 billion payday for Elon Musk
It seems eons ago that Elon Musk held court in the Oval Office with his 4-year-old son on his head. Those days are long gone. But at least someone is looking out for the man. Tesla sent a letter to company shareholders Monday notifying them that given Musk has “not received meaningful compensation for eight years” he will be awarded 96 million shares of the company. That comes to about $29 billion. Musk owns about 13 percent of Tesla, making him its largest individual shareholder.
Tesla owners are no longer so loyal
But Musk’s foray as a Washington power broker didn’t work out so well for his car company. Recently released research by S&P Global Mobility found that customer loyalty at Tesla, which had more repeat customers than any other car brand, started to nosedive after Musk endorsed Donald Trump in July 2024. It had just peaked the previous month, when 73 percent of Tesla owners bought another Tesla. By March of this year, Telsa’s “loyalty rate” bottomed out at around 50 percent, and so far this year the company’s shares have dropped 25 percent.
For MAGA Inc., the money keeps pouring in
In Washington, there’s nothing new about the concept of “pay to play”—donating money to campaigns to gain access and influence office holders. But Donald Trump, via MAGA Inc., his super political action committee, is taking it to a new level, particularly for someone who, by law, can’t run for president again. According to MAGA Inc.’s financial filing released recently, it has raised a stunning $177 million through the first six months of this year. That’s almost twice what the Republican National Committee raised.
Some of MAGA Inc.’s money came through million-dollar donations in exchange for invitations to private dinners or events with the president. More came through more conventional contributions. Cryptocurrency companies, riding the wave of the Trump family’s financial interest in the industry, have been particularly generous contributors, donating some $45 million to MAGA Inc. this year so far. Another big donor is the Energy Transfer pipeline company and its executive chairman, Kelcy Warren, who has benefitted from the administration’s full-throated support for oil and gas. Warren and his company combined to kick in $25 million. Then there’s billionaire Jeffrey Yass, who owns 15 percent of ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. He tossed in $16 million.
Donating to MAGA Inc. also paid off for a number of other very rich folks. For example, Trump:
nominated Anjani Sinha, an orthopedic surgeon, to be U.S. ambassador to Singapore after he donated $1 million;
appointed Cody Campbell, an energy investor who contributed $500,000, to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition;
named financial industry executive Josh Lobel, who gave MAGA Inc. $250,000 in January, to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in February; and
pardoned convicted tax cheat Paul Walczak, son of Elizabeth Fago, after she contributed $1 million. The White House claimed that Trump granted Walczak a pardon in response to his mother’s plea for mercy, not because of the donation. Not only was Walczak able to avoid prison, but he also didn’t have to pay $4.4 million in restitution.
Palantir hits the mother lode
Speaking of Trump administration winners, none can compare with the insane recent growth of Palantir Technologies, the Denver-based software and data analytics firm. It’s been a federal government contractor for years, but its fortunes have soared since Trump returned to the White House. Palantir’s sales jumped 48 percent in the second quarter, and its share price has shot up 600 percent in the past year. It’s now worth more than the Walt Disney Company and American Express combined.
Earlier this month, Palantir hit the mother lode when the U.S. Army signed a contract committing $10 billion to the company over the next 10 years. That’s in addition to the $300 million in new and expanded government business it has already landed during Trump’s second term, including a Palantir-designed AI system for State Department diplomatic cables, a Department of Homeland Security system to track immigration enforcement, and a program to modernize Internal Revenue Service data. The IRS deal has come under scrutiny by Democrats in Congress following revelations that Palantir—cofounded by Peter Thiel, one of Trump’s more generous Silicon Valley supporters—is working with the IRS to create a searchable database of taxpayer records.
Columbia and Brown cave, turn over admissions data
The White House war on American universities keeps getting uglier. As part of their recent settlements with the Trump administration, which was withholding millions in federal grants, Columbia and Brown both agreed to share with the federal government their applicants’ standardized test scores, grade point averages, and race. Conservative groups have been seeking that data for years, particularly since a 2023 Supreme Court decision banned colleges from considering race in their admissions. Trump celebrated the agreement with Brown with a post on Truth Social proclaiming: “Woke is officially DEAD at Brown.”
Harvard is still a Trump punching bag
Meanwhile, administrators at Harvard, which sued the federal government for withholding more than $2 billion in grant money, were outraged when they learned that Brown would have to pay only $50 million while they were expected to fork over 10 times that much. Before the Brown agreement was announced, Harvard was reportedly considering settling its lawsuit, although it had proposed donating the $500 million to vocational or work force training programs instead of directly to the federal government or to Trump’s presidential library.
Kennedy pulls money from vaccines research
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is ratcheting up his crusade against vaccines. He announced Tuesday that his agency is cancelling nearly $500 million in contracts for developing mRNA vaccines, which researchers say played a critical role in protecting people during the COVID pandemic. But Kennedy says he knows better, contending that mRNA vaccines aren’t effective, which runs counter to what the vast majority of studies have shown. Experts say they now fear the United States could be dangerously unprepared in the event of another pandemic. One said Kennedy’s ill-considered decision will result in “self-inflicted vulnerability.”
ICE backs off bonuses for rounding up immigrants
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is so desperate to raise its deportation numbers that, according to an internal email sent Tuesday, it was going to offer cash bonuses to agents who could get immigrants out of the country quickly. At least until The New York Times inquired about the program. That prompted a follow-up “PLEASE DISREGARD” email and a statement from a Homeland Security spokesperson that “no such policy is in effect.” A reminder: Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill Act” boosted ICE’s budget from $8 billion to $28 billion, making it now the federal government’s most heavily funded law enforcement agency.
We’d like to see Trump’s SAT math score
Earlier this week, Donald Trump trumpeted: “You know, we’ve cut drug prices by 1,200, 1,300, 1,400, 1,500 percent. I don’t mean 50 percent, I mean 14 to 1,500 percent.” Which, of course, means pharmaceutical companies are now paying Americans a lot of money to take their drugs. Your check is in the mail.
Randy Rieland is a former columnist at Smithsonian magazine, website director at the Discovery Channel, and senior writer at Washingtonian magazine.
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