Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who routinely reprimands the rich for &#8220;hoarding wealth,&#8221; is actually filthy rich himself and apparently trying to hide that reality from the public.
Khanna lives in a $6 million D.C. home, complete with a four-story elevator; his wife drives a $190,000 Range Rover, and his young children own three high-end private golf clubs and a significant stake in a $65 billion wealth management firm, according to a bombshell report published by Washington Free Beacon reporter Andrew Kerr.
Between Khanna, his wife, and his two children, his family&#8217;s net worth could exceed a staggering $340 million.
Khanna has inherited much of this wealth through his father-in-law, Monte Ahuja, an Indian-born auto parts magnate, investor, and philanthropist, the report notes.
Mere days ago, Khanna engaged in his typical vilification of the rich, suggesting wealthy people &#8220;hoard&#8221; their money.
&#8220;I want America to be a country where it&#8217;s easier to build wealth than it is to hoard it, and where workers don&#8217;t have to worry about medical debt and grocery costs when they should be enjoying time with their families,&#8221; he posted. &#8220;An economy that works for everyone is possible.&#8221;
&#8220;Speaking of hoarding wealth, Khanna’s two young children are the proud owners of THREE private golf courses in Ohio, where member initiation fees run upwards of $45k. Khanna’s children — still in elementary school — earned up to $2 million from their golf courses in 2024,&#8221; Kerr pointedly captioned the rep&#8217;s post.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Speaking of hoarding wealth, Khanna’s two young children are the proud owners of THREE private golf courses in Ohio, where member initiation fees run upwards of $45k
Khanna’s children — still in elementary school — earned up to $2 million from their golf courses in 2024. <a href="https://t.co/Wjq82CarXK">https://t.co/Wjq82CarXK</a>
— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) <a href="https://x.com/AndrewKerrNC/status/2072032101067620833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 30, 2026</a></blockquote>
What&#8217;s more, Khanna evidently doesn&#8217;t want the public to know how wealthy he actually is. Kerr&#8217;s report not only highlights Khanna&#8217;s massive wealth but also how the Democrat reports his finances, arguing that Khanna&#8217;s filing method makes the disclosures difficult to follow.
&#8220;The vast majority of House lawmakers file their financial disclosures in the digital format (left),&#8221; Kerr explained, captioning two examples of financial disclosures. &#8220;As you can see, this is actually legible.&#8221;
&#8220;Khanna [chooses] to file his in these ridiculous illegible analog checkbox tables (right),&#8221; he noted. &#8220;Much of what I reported today has been hiding in plain sight for years. Khanna chooses to file his disclosures in this manner.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The vast majority of House lawmakers file their financial disclosures in the digital format (left)
As you can see, this is actually legible.
Khanna choses to file his in these ridiculous illegible analog checkbox tables (right).
Much of what I reported today has been hiding… <a href="https://t.co/jTFZzZNvRC">https://t.co/jTFZzZNvRC</a> <a href="https://t.co/0oRlk3oKMr">pic.twitter.com/0oRlk3oKMr</a>
— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) <a href="https://x.com/AndrewKerrNC/status/2072126684971589911?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 1, 2026</a></blockquote>
Kerr gave an example of how Khanna reported his young children&#8217;s ownership of three private golf clubs &#8220;on page 126 of his 2024 financial disclosure,&#8221; using that analog checkbox-style. &#8220;Good luck finding this on your own,&#8221; he emphasized. &#8220;The document isn&#8217;t text-searchable and these tables are designed to be unreadable.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Ro Khanna reported his children&#8217;s ownership in three private golf clubs &amp; the income they received from them on page 126 of his 2024 financial disclosure.
Good luck finding this on your own. The document isn&#8217;t text-searchable and these tables are designed to be unreadable <a href="https://t.co/wzdysKYa63">pic.twitter.com/wzdysKYa63</a>
— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) <a href="https://x.com/AndrewKerrNC/status/2072123961853235701?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 1, 2026</a></blockquote>
Earlier this year, Khanna denounced the &#8220;lack of fairness in America,&#8221; speaking about wealth disparity. He later called wealth disparity and the concentration of billionaire wealth evidence of a &#8220;failed social contract.&#8221;
&#8220;My allegiance is with the working and middle class,&#8221; Khanna <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2026-ro-khanna-weekend-interview/">vowed</a>.
Folks online were quick to react to the report, including a target of Khanna&#8217;s, billionaire Elon Musk.
&#8220;Four-story elevator … wow,&#8221; he reacted. &#8220;Real &#8216;man of the people&#8217; he is.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Four-story elevator … wow
Real “man of the people” he is <a href="https://t.co/aDMG3ctYXo">https://t.co/aDMG3ctYXo</a>
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2072086313160040675?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 30, 2026</a></blockquote>
Others called Khanna a &#8220;fraud&#8221; and linked him to socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who notably owns three homes while he denounces the rich for not paying their &#8220;fair share.&#8221; It&#8217;s unclear if Sanders or Khanna has ever offered more money to the government than the taxes they owed.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ro-khanna-plays-an-awkward-game-of-race-based-footsie">Ro Khanna Plays An Awkward Game Of Race-Based Footsie</a>

Epstein Abuse Survivors Join Lawmakers For Roundtable On Capitol Hill

Democrat Who Condemns ‘Hoarding Wealth’ Has A Massive Family Fortune

Dem Rep. Ro Khanna Doesn’t Want You To Know He’s Filthy Rich 

Congress

Elon Musk

Politics

Ro Khanna

Washington Free Beacon

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Nine teenagers in Belgium <a href="https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2026/05/29/no-detention-for-nine-boys-found-guilty-of-triple-gang-rape-case/">committed</a> the brutal gang rape of a 14-year-old girl across three separate attacks in 2024. The juvenile court granted the ringleader only a two-year conditional release, and most other perpetrators just 30 hours of community service.
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/23/asylum-seeker-at-centre-of-essex-hotel-protests-jailed-for-12-months">In 2025</a>, an Ethiopian asylum seeker sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and another woman near a U.K. asylum hotel. He received a 12-month prison sentence, which was later followed by a mistaken early release before rearrest.
<a href="https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/outrage-as-eight-of-nine-men-convicted-of-park-gangrape-15yearold-in-germany-receive-no-prison-time/news-story/353bcbf9437ea62eea0ee3c6cc0c2cc7">In 2020</a>, nine men with migration backgrounds gang-raped a heavily intoxicated 15-year-old girl in a Hamburg park in Germany. Most received suspended youth sentences of one to two years instead of substantial prison time.
These are only a handful of the harrowing cases that have inflamed public anger across Europe. Between 2014 and 2024, recorded sexual violence offenses in the European Union rose by 94%, while rape offenses rose by 150%. That escalating crisis, and the fury surrounding it, directly inspired Uwe Boll’s latest film, &#8220;Citizen Vigilante.&#8221;
There is not much plot to speak of. Instead, “Citizen Vigilante” unfolds as a “day in the life” portrait of a sociopathic crime-fighter. Boll has largely <a href="https://variety.com/2026/film/global/armie-hammer-citizen-vigilante-banned-germany-uwe-boll-1236785839/">adapted</a> a notorious 2016 Hamburg case — in which a group of teenagers gang-raped a 14-year-old girl and left her for dead, only to walk free with suspended sentences — staging it as a Tarantino-style revenge fantasy in which the villains receive their due in lurid, macabre fashion. The film is also a return to acting for Armie Hammer, who spent the past few years in professional exile following a string of allegations that did not result in criminal charges. Hammer plays Michael Sanders, a wealthy American businessman who has inherited a sizable real estate portfolio in a European city.
Alongside his day job as a landlord, Sanders works nights as a Dexter Morgan-style serial killer, targeting violent criminals whom the police appear unwilling or unable to pursue. There is little subtlety at play. Boll writes with a sledgehammer, depicting a vigilante redolent of Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle in &#8220;Taxi Driver,&#8221; but with the icy, menacing countenance of the Coen brothers’ Anton Chigurh. Through his mannerisms and delivery, Hammer conveys palpable fear in nearly every interaction. His stillness and unflinching stare are often just as unnerving as the violence.
Despite <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2026/06/citizen-vigilante-movie-armie-hammer-uwe-boll-banned.html">some critics</a> panning the film as disturbing or morally dangerous, Sanders is not framed as a heroic Batman figure. He is a veritable psychopath, and his madness is presented as a consequence rather than a virtue. Sanders, or the broader sin he represents, is meant to convey the drastic measures that may emerge when governments and courts fail to enforce basic order.
Boll also tries to integrate social media, showing interview and commentary clips in which various online personalities unanimously laud Sanders’s DIY brand of law enforcement. “We need more guys like this in Canada,” one of them says. In reality, the online reaction would certainly be more divided, with civil libertarians and bleeding hearts insisting that due process remains an inextricable feature of developed and civilized nations. The film’s imagined discourse is far too uniformly approving and adds little beyond buttressing the notion that, after years of failed leadership, some citizens will inevitably remortgage their faith to shadowy crusaders.
One of the memorable scenes finds Sanders confronting a group of teenage delinquents on a city bus after they refuse to pay the fare. He attempts to explain basic economics to them: “If 10% doesn’t pay, the cost of everything goes up 10% to cover the loss, and that’s not fair.” The scene is faintly ridiculous, broadening Sanders’ scope to an attempted social worker — you can’t blame the man for trying.
Hammer’s performance drives the film and holds it together. The political anxiety and anger animating &#8220;Citizen Vigilante&#8221; may explain the movie’s purpose, but they do not make it work on their own.
The dialogue is occasionally clunky. At one point, Sanders says to a police captain, “These people never voted for what’s happening: a takeover of the Islamist extremists and the woke Left.” The line weakens his character because it drags him back into the tidy left-right framework he otherwise seems to transcend. Sanders is more frightening when he appears to have moved beyond ordinary political language altogether. Boll’s reactionary antihero is meant to spark a movement, and his anonymous videos to the press have the tone of revolutionary instruction: “I will do this for you until you learn to do it for yourself.”
The film is available to stream through Amazon Prime and Apple TV, and X owner Elon Musk streamed it for free on his platform for 48 hours over the weekend. (&#8220;As Armie Hammer makes his onscreen comeback, Citizen Vigilante teamed up with the perfect platform for a streaming debut… no, not The Daily Wire,&#8221; Deadline <a href="https://deadline.com/2026/06/elon-musk-armie-hammer-citizen-vigilante-stream-x-1236969093/">quipped</a>.)
&#8220;Citizen Vigilante&#8221; was effectively banned in Germany upon release (as the saying goes, old habits die hard), but its ideas are hardly unique. Charles Bronson’s 1974 &#8220;Death Wish&#8221; followed a well-meaning progressive architect in New York who becomes a ruthless vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter is assaulted by a gang. That film emerged 52 years ago, when Hollywood was still willing to confront controversial issues through populist genre filmmaking.
Today, the same industry is more likely to produce Paul Thomas Anderson <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/leos-latest-is-a-woke-fever-dream-and-a-box-office-nightmare">glorifying</a> communist terrorists who bomb immigration detention centers. Censorious and partisan environments help create films like &#8220;Citizen Vigilante&#8221; — because when respectable institutions refuse to dramatize real public fears and concerns, lesser-known filmmakers eventually will. 
The film’s most useful warning is that societies cannot allow confidence in the legal order to collapse. No civilized country can survive by outsourcing justice to unhinged men acting as judge and executioner. But such radicals are eventually drawn from the shadows when governments refuse to hold productive and honest debates about crime, integration, and the place of Muslim cultures in European society. A civilization rooted in music, alcohol, free expression, and secular law is not the obvious home for cultures that prohibit or restrict all four. If Europe wishes to thrive and endure, it will have to confront this crisis directly.
&#8220;Citizen Vigilante&#8221; is crude, lurid, and often blunt to the point of absurdity. Yet we still need more films willing to confront controversial subjects without genuflecting before cultural gatekeepers. Perhaps in the sequel, Armie Hammer can travel across Europe installing air conditioners. Germany is sure to prohibit that too.
***
Harry Khachatrian (<a href="https://x.com/harry1t6">@Harry1T6</a>) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at <a href="https://www.betweenbottles.com/">BetweenBottles.com</a>.

GettyImages-1206179897

‘Citizen Vigilante’ Turns Europe’s Fears Into A Revenge Fantasy

Germany

Movies

Upstream

This week, Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna said that Elon Musk should be <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/22/ro-khanna-challenges-elon-musk-to-televised-debate-after-doge-battle.html">held accountable</a> for “4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.” Back in February 2025, Musk bragged about putting the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) “through the wood chipper” in just one weekend with his Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) team, gleefully destroying the decades-old institution because of allegations of corruption. The effects of the cuts were immediate and profound, with thousands of programs serving millions of people disrupted overnight. While some of these programs eventually had their funding restored, others did not.
Where did the 4.5 million number come from? One study from <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext">The Lancet</a> estimated that if USAID cuts became permanent, 4.5 million children under five could die over the period from 2025 to 2030. Another frequently cited estimate comes from Boston University’s <a href="https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard">Impact Counter</a>, which estimated the number of deaths in the hundreds of thousands. Musk has rejected these estimates, claiming that <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2069477706593604018">“nobody died”</a> and that he would even be willing to call the bereaved parents of children who died due to USAID cuts.
So what is the truth here? Are Musk and his team responsible for hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of deaths to come? Or was USAID so corrupt that disemboweling it overnight caused no deaths? As is often the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
USAID was a remarkably efficient organization, spending about 1% of the federal budget to prevent millions of deaths over several decades. While there were clear instances of corruption (several of which were prosecuted under the Biden administration) and some questionable choices, particularly around arts funding, the vast majority of its work focused on providing healthcare, education, and food aid to people who needed it around the world.
Musk has <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2069108349656834236">claimed</a> that “[a]ll DOGE did was require contact with the aid recipients to confirm that funds were being used legitimately.” This is not true. There has never been any evidence that DOGE attempted to contact any aid recipient anywhere in the world. Some of those recipients live in such remote places that it would take roughly the entire weekend to travel there; others don’t have phones or email addresses. There were voluminous records summarizing how USAID funds had been spent, and DOGE could have gone anywhere to verify this in person if they wished.
Rather, the narratives of DOGE’s work suggest a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/24/musk-doge-usaid-cuts-dc/">brazen and cruel disregard</a> for the human lives it condemned to death. Musk himself bragged about destroying the agency until people pointed out that it was funding food aid, HIV care, and Ebola monitoring programs that were weaker for having been abruptly cut off, even if funding was eventually restored. Such flippancy with human life — and a denial that one’s actions had the effects that they truly had — is damnable for a man with such power.
<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/usaid-cholera-deaths-trump-humanitarian-aid-cuts-south-sudan">People died</a> over the past year as a result of USAID cuts. There are more deaths yet to come. If someone, for example, was on HIV medication and stopped taking it because the clinic closed, it will probably be a few more months before they start showing up at hospitals around the world. If Musk is serious about his concern for the bereaved parents, he should go to a refugee camp and meet some people who lost loved ones to cholera.
However, it is not fair to count the death toll in the millions, and people who are throwing around these estimates are foolish for their hyperbole. The estimates are worst-case scenarios; funding for many critical programs has already been restored, and other organizations have stepped up to help fill in the gaps. These estimates also don’t include realities like the fact that some aid recipients may sacrifice other needs like school fees in order to pay for medical treatment, and some people will still survive diseases like cholera without treatment (though they will surely suffer more for lack of treatment).
Why do accurate figures matter? If Musk only has to rebut the claim that he has the blood of millions on his hands, he can easily and truthfully deny this. If the claim instead is that he recklessly cut off lifesaving humanitarian aid based on a misunderstanding of what USAID did in a manner that left no time for careful sifting of the good programs from the bad, with immediate consequences for a few people and long-term consequences for many more, then he has no ground to stand on.
It is true that millions of people would have died had the USAID cuts remained permanent and nothing else compensated for those cuts. It is more truthful to say that hundreds died in the past year and a half, while others will slowly suffer and even die — the downstream consequences of one weekend spent dismantling an institution dedicated to helping people around the world. Elon Musk should be held accountable for his disregard for human life. He has a much better chance of being held accountable if we are truthful about his crimes.
***
Matthew Loftus grew up in a family of 15 children and completed his medical training in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 2015, he and his family have lived in East Africa, where he currently teaches and practices family medicine at a mission hospital. His first book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Resisting-Therapy-Culture-Dangers-Psychology/dp/1514012685/">Resisting Therapy Culture</a>, will be published by InterVarsity Press on August 18, 2026. You can learn more about his work and writing at <a href="http://www.matthewandmaggie.org">www.matthewandmaggie.org</a>

US-POLITICS-TRUMP

How Many People Did DOGE Really Kill?

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

DW Opinion

USAID

A woman was killed on Friday night after a Tesla crashed into her home in Katy, Texas, authorities said.
Martha Avila, a 76-year-old grandmother, was putting away groceries when the Tesla plowed into her home. Avila was airlifted to a nearby hospital where she later died, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said.
The doorbell camera captured the Tesla Model 3 driving about 70 mph through the residential neighborhood before speeding across the lawn and crashing into Avila’s brick home. 
<div style="max-width: 728px; margin: 0 auto;">
  <iframe style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; max-width: 100%; width: 100%; margin: 20px auto 5px; border: 0;" src="https://player.mux.com/3ttzYbS7yU0001SgTfCjw2rCg2jX3c8M0001?metadata-video-content-type=embed_video&amp;metadata-video-id=ed0bdda6-d7c9-4310-acba-d7da15bc9e75&amp;metadata-video-stream-type=on-demand&amp;metadata-video-title=2026-06-22%20Tesla%20Crashes%20into%20Home&amp;poster=https%3A%2F%2Fdailywireplus-v2.imgix.net%2Fimages%2Fembedded-videos%2Fa26c3c52-b147-4a3f-961d-6ceddf0aac2b.png&amp;autoplay=false&amp;accent-color=%23DB3D3B&amp;primary-color=%23ffffff&amp;secondary-color=%23000000" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Credit: Jennifer Barbour via Storyful
</div>
Michael Butler, the 44-year-old Tesla driver, said the car was in autopilot mode when it slammed into the house. Butler was also injured and taken to the hospital. He showed no signs of intoxication and cooperated during the investigation, the sheriff’s office said.
Officials are actively investigating the crash and whether the Tesla’s autopilot system was functioning properly. They have not identified what caused the Tesla to veer off the road and crash at high speeds.
The crash left severe structural damage to the house, and the family temporarily relocated to a hotel, according to neighbors. A spokesman for Zehl &amp; Associates, the law firm representing Avila’s family, said they planned on filing a lawsuit.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to a news story about the crash on X, <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2069161438812278946">writing</a>, “Yes, this makes no sense. [Full self-driving] drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!”
Automotive analyst and consumer advocate Lauren Fix <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/06/22/business/disturbing-video-shows-tesla-crash-into-texas-home-killing-grandma-76-in-latest-autopilot-controversy/">told</a> The New York Post that the Friday night crash is one of many concerns regarding Tesla’s self-driving technology.
“The mistake was calling it autopilot,” Fix said. “When someone dies in a car at that kind of speed in a neighborhood … there’s obviously either a software issue … or could be a driver issue.” 
“This remains an active and open investigation,” a Harris County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office spokesman told the Post. “Once all evidence has been gathered, it will be presented to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to determine whether charges are appropriate.”

WATCH: Insane Video Shows 70 MPH Tesla Slam Into Grandmother’s Home

Car Crash

Death

Tesla

Texas

Well, folks, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I always try to be honest with you and the truth is: something terrible has happened. Elon Musk has become a trillionaire, so now … everything is ruined.
It seems like only a week ago, when Musk was just worth $900 billion and life was great in this country. I had a beautiful wife. A couple of wonderful kids. Now … I look at my family and, sure, I still love them and all, but not like I’d love a trillion dollars. I mean, that’s a lot of money! But I don’t have it and Elon Musk does, so … everything is ruined.
It’s just like they said on the socialist website Left Voice — “A trillionaire Elon Musk is a morbid symptom of capitalism.” That’s right. Capitalism simply isn’t fair. After all, the Soviet Union had socialism for 70 years and ended up with nothing. Musk shows up in a capitalist country with $2,000 just 37 years ago, and now he’s a trillionaire so … everything is ruined.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-andrew-klavan-show-ep-1283?contentProgram=The%20Andrew%20Klavan%20Show&amp;contentType=ShowEpisode&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;location=Home%20Tab&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Home%20Featured%20Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-974735 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1024x171.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was obviously right too when she said, &#8220;You can’t earn that much money&#8221; just by creating Tesla with its new energy storage systems, and Starlink, with its worldwide network of satellite connections or Neuralink, which gives paralyzed people the ability to use computers with their minds and SpaceX with its rocket ships that go into space and then come down and land safely on a platform the size of an inner tube so they can be used again and ultimately take mankind to Mars. You can’t earn that much money just by doing those things. Musk must have cheated his employees, by forcing them to work for low wages and stock options that have now made 4,500 of those employees millionaires themselves. And, okay, that might make them happy now, but wait till they find out they only have a lousy million bucks while Musk is a trillionaire so … everything is ruined.
To give credit where credit is due, a lot of politicians tried to stop this from happening. Senator Elizabeth Warren did a tribal dance to the Great Spirit of Sun and Sky who lives on Mackinac Island. Warren asked the Great Spirit of Sun and Sky to stop the fork-tongued white man from taking all that money like the whites took the land that belonged to Elizabeth Warren’s Native American ancestors. Unfortunately, the Great Spirit of Sun and Sky just looked down from Mackinac Island and said, “Whoever told that white girl she could dance?” Then he handed out cards good for a free gin and tonic at his new Sun and Sky Casino on Mackinac Island, and before we knew it, Musk was a trillionaire and … everything was ruined.
And just think what good we could have done with all that money if Musk hadn’t taken it. There are almost 800,000 homeless people in America. If Musk just divided his wealth among them, each and every homeless person could be smoking meth through a rolled hundred thousand dollar bill and talking to Venutians using a helmet made out of genuine tinfoil.
Even if Musk just gave away enough money to help one location, that would be something. For instance, there are 70,000 homeless people in the tent cities of Los Angeles alone. If Musk just gave $1 billion to the public officials there, I bet within a month, there would be some very happy public officials driving their Ferraris past the tent cities of Los Angeles. Instead, Elon Musk is a trillionaire and … everything is ruined.
Let’s face it. A trillion dollars in the hands of one individual just gives that individual too much power. With that much money, Elon Musk could come over my house and order me to do whatever he wanted, and I would have to do it, unless I didn’t want to, then I wouldn’t have to do it. Still, it would be really annoying to have Elon Musk coming to my house shouting orders at me all the time. What the hell is his problem?
Anyway, that’s the bad news. Everything is ruined. The good news is we’re going to Mars.

Everything Was Fine Until Elon Musk Became A Trillionaire

Democrats

Money

Satire

One of the suspects accused of planning an attack on the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House hoped to target trillionaire Elon Musk, according to the group&#8217;s messages.
The alleged plotters hoped to carry out the attack by detonating explosive-carrying drones over the event last Sunday before conducting a sinister secondary strike with snipers on those evacuating.
In a Signal chat dubbed &#8220;Hunters,&#8221; a user with the moniker &#8220;Shepherd&#8221; posted his plans and gave orders to others around June 11, according to a criminal complaint. Investigators later identified &#8220;Shepherd&#8221; as 31-year-old Omaha resident Abraham Alvarez, who is reportedly not a U.S. citizen.
Law enforcement nabbed Alvarez Sunday at an old church in Western, Nebraska, <a href="https://www.1011now.com/2026/06/16/nebraska-man-arrested-connection-with-disrupted-attack-white-house-ufc-show/?fbclid=IwY2xjawSfh-1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe8S2lSqSCtcvX8oCXaOGFdfJ48w2gl8jP9KKblhHOYJXOv8hgx7tQwWoEJxI_aem_jraCzyvqlOvbwW9GCVyB_g" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to NBC&#8217;s Omaha, Nebraska, affiliate WOWT.
<div id="attachment_1117877" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1117877" class="wp-image-1117877 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Untitled-design-2026-06-17T085449.288-1024x512.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="512" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Untitled-design-2026-06-17T085449.288-1024x512.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Untitled-design-2026-06-17T085449.288-300x150.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Untitled-design-2026-06-17T085449.288-768x384.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Untitled-design-2026-06-17T085449.288.jpg 1284w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot from Alvarez&#8217;s alleged Signal messages.</div>
&#8220;i. Targets confirmed ii. 1. 2. VP 3. N 4. Musk,&#8221; the message read.
While reports last week indicated that Musk would attend the UFC event at the White House, it does not appear that he made the trip.
Alvarez also appeared to assign roles within the group, classifying them as &#8220;Sniper 1,&#8221; &#8220;Sniper 2,&#8221; &#8220;Sniper 3,&#8221; and &#8220;Drone Operator,&#8221; adding that he was &#8220;working&#8221; on drones &#8220;as we speak.&#8221;
Investigators believed that the targets identified by Alvarez included President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Musk.
Alvarez allegedly identified a &#8220;fall back location&#8221; for the group to meet at an old church in Nebraska.
&#8220;They can grow the camp, and make a training ground we have the go ahead from the owner,&#8221; he allegedly wrote in the chat, adding, &#8220;grow your numbers, I will build your teams.&#8221;
&#8220;Train them, fall back location is NE in an old church,&#8221; he wrote, according to the complaint.
<div id="attachment_1117929" style="width: 351px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1117929" class="wp-image-1117929 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Untitled-design-2026-06-17T095212.380-341x576.jpg" alt="" width="341" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Untitled-design-2026-06-17T095212.380-341x576.jpg 341w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Untitled-design-2026-06-17T095212.380-177x300.jpg 177w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Untitled-design-2026-06-17T095212.380.jpg 420w" sizes=" (max-width: 341px) 100vw, 341px" />Screenshot: Justice Department complaint</div>
Tycen Proper, 19, who was also arrested as part of the alleged plot, told authorities that he learned of &#8220;an anti-government protest in Washington, D.C.&#8221; through a TikTok posted by a user who also went by &#8220;Shepherd,&#8221; according to the complaint. It is not clear whether that was also Alvarez, who used the nickname on Signal.
Proper also identified &#8220;Shepherd&#8221; as &#8220;the primary individual involved with planning&#8221; and &#8220;directly stated that Shepherd was the leader of the group and described him as aggressive in tactical planning,&#8221; according to the complaint.
The radicalized teen allegedly wrote in one of the chats on or about May 13 that he “got a possible target Marsha Blackburn is senator for Tennessee,” saying the group should go after her for taking “money from the Israel pro Israel lobby.”
He also allegedly sent messages on May 31 saying, “These are people we’re going to focus on,” before sharing photos of Senator Jim Justice (R-WV), Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV), and Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV). The four images appeared to have been taken from the website “TrackAIPAC.com,” which shows how much money each lawmaker received “from pro-Israel PACS.”
Authorities arrested five individuals, including Alvarez and Proper, for their alleged involvement in the plot.
Some of the alleged attack planners were said to have “expressed ultra-religious and antigovernment sentiments, specifically citing grievances about government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers taking up all the water in communities, and other government actions.”

US-NEWS-TRUMP-UFC-BOUT-5-MI

UFC Attack Ringleader Hoped To Target Elon Musk

Donald Trump

UFC Freedom 250

White House

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Why eat out when you can DoorDash? In an <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/be/podcast/elon-musk-vlad-tenev-on-the-good-time-show/id1551570777?i=1000507355879">interview</a> from 2021, Elon Musk <a href="https://x.com/astro_greek/status/2053097906920714746">discusses</a> how his son, Saxon, who is &#8220;sort of autistic,&#8221; was always confused about why the family would go out to dinner once a week. Finally, Musk said, Saxon realized the reason people go out to restaurants is to meet new people. 
“You can get the same restaurant food delivered,” Musk said. “You can call your friends over, but you know what you can’t get unless you go to a restaurant is hanging out with strangers. So we actually like hanging out with strangers.” 
But not everyone likes hanging out with strangers. Ghost kitchens, which are professional, delivery-only food preparation infrastructures, are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. Removing the &#8220;inconvenient&#8221; and &#8220;inefficient&#8221; dine-in space, these kitchens are expected to make up &#8220;half of the market share in both drive-thru and takeaway foodservice sectors&#8221; by 2030, <a href="https://oysterlink.com/spotlight/ghost-kitchens-statistics-facts/">according</a> to OysterLink. There are roughly 7,600 ghost kitchens in the U.S. Even <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/restaurants/chick-fil-a-opens-ghost-kitchen-delivery">Chick-fil-A</a>, known for its southern hospitality and values, has opened its own. 
Americans are opting for quick, easy, stay-at-home meals. Millions of us <a href="https://backlinko.com/doordash-users">use</a> DoorDash every month instead of visiting local restaurants. Sixty-four percent of Gen Z get takeout or delivery weekly or more often, <a href="https://foodinstitute.com/focus/gen-z-eats-differently-what-this-means-for-restaurants/">according</a> to TouchBistro. This generation <a href="https://www.fmi.org/blog/view/fmi-blog/2023/04/25/how-gen-z-is-grocery-shopping">spends 20%</a> of their grocery budget online compared to baby boomers, who only spend 10% online. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic only further normalized this behavior. 
Whether we know it or not, our habits of ordering food and sitting in front of the TV alone contribute to isolation and disconnection. I am not innocent in this. Often, I go for take-out because it&#8217;s more &#8220;convenient&#8221; or I&#8217;m just &#8220;too busy.&#8221; But these statements are less of an uncontrollable reality and more of a priority issue.
We have all heard that America is suffering a loneliness epidemic. In an age when there are more ways to connect than ever, we have never been more disconnected. As of last year, 54% of adults felt isolated, 50% felt left out, and another 50% felt they lacked companionship often or sometimes, <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2025/11/nation-suffering-division-loneliness">according</a> to an American Psychological Association poll.
The solution might be easier than you think. You need to go outside and talk to strangers.
Micro-interactions with people we don&#8217;t know seem rarer than ever. At the grocery store, self-service machines have been on the rise as people expect to make their next visit to the supermarket swift, controlled, and without the annoyance of an exhausted employee. <a href="https://www.wevend.com/the-rise-of-self-service/">According to WeVend</a>, a payment processing platform specializing in self-service businesses, self-service kiosks are in high demand, with 66% of U.S. customers saying they prefer automated interaction over a human one. I remember seeing my first <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reels/DY4j6SWMh3L/">completely automated</a> coffee shop in an airport: Robo Cafe. The adoption of, investment in, and demand for these automated machines is <a href="https://kioskindustry.org/self-service-statistics/">increasing</a>; a lack of human interaction is in high demand. 
However, research on the indispensable nature of interactions with strangers is eye-opening. Something as simple as a quick comment, small joke, or friendly smile can reduce loneliness. <a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_loving_moments_with_strangers_carry_lasting_benefits">In one study</a>, participants reported a more positive commute to work when instructed to talk with a stranger compared to those who weren&#8217;t. Another study in Starbucks found that when asked to have a “warm, genuine interaction (compared to an &#8216;efficient&#8217; one)” with the barista, people had an elevated and positive mood partly because they felt “a greater sense of belonging.”
In fact, research typically finds that interactions with strangers are beneficial, contrary to many fears of rejection. And these fears of rejection are not really based on reality. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103122000750">Research shows</a> that a stranger rejecting or shutting you down does not occur very often. Also, the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15298868.2020.1816568#abstract">fears of screwing up</a> an interaction — awkward silence, fumbling with your words — are not the norm. 
What we need is to stop fearing social interactions and give ourselves the opportunity to meet our neighbors.
Slaughterhouse-Five author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. knew what this meant. He used to argue with his wife about buying envelopes. &#8220;You’re not a poor man,&#8221; she <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/god-bless-you-mr-vonnegut/">would say</a>. &#8220;You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?&#8221;
&#8220;And so I pretend not to hear her,&#8221; Vonnegut said. &#8220;And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.” 
Many Americans are lonely, depressed, and anxious because we lack purpose and human connection. If we continue to replace everything with AI and automation for the sake of efficiency, we will become optimized, selfish, and aimless.
Now, self-service machines and AI are not evil and are not inevitably going to destroy us. They don’t have agency. We do. We can find new ways to interact with people and strangers. We can choose to make hard decisions. The issue is that this technology makes it incredibly easy to avoid doing the hard thing.
We need to be more intentional than ever about making space for human interaction in our everyday lives. That means embracing a little friction and remembering that, like Musk, &#8220;we actually like hanging out with strangers.&#8221;

GettyImages-1889655168

Americans Are Paying A Hidden Price For Convenience

Musk

What Elon’s Trillionaire Status Reveals About The Left’s War On Success

America 250

Platner

Many Americans are about to own SpaceX even if they didn&#8217;t participate in Friday’s Initial Public Offering. 
Starting this Friday, SpaceX will be appearing in many personal and retirement investment accounts through diversified index funds that track the broader stock market. The company will be added to the CRSP U.S. Total Market Index, a benchmark tracked by numerous 401(k)s, IRAs, pension plans, and target-date retirement funds. Many employer-sponsored retirement plans offer Vanguard total-market funds that replicate the index, giving millions of Americans exposure to SpaceX.
Others will gain exposure to SpaceX 15 trading days after its IPO, when the Nasdaq-100 adds the company to the index. The Invesco QQQ ETF, which tracks the Nasdaq-100, will then add SpaceX to its holdings. QQQ is one of the most heavily traded exchange funds in the world.
While SpaceX will be just one of the 100 companies in the Nasdaq-100, Nasdaq is giving it an outsized weighting. Because most of SpaceX&#8217;s shares remain owned by insiders, only a limited number are available for public trading. To account for that small public float, Nasdaq is applying a factor of three to SpaceX&#8217;s float-adjusted value, increasing its weight in the index and requiring funds such as QQQ to buy more of the stock than they otherwise would.
The S&amp;P 500, one of the world&#8217;s most widely followed stock indexes, will not add SpaceX immediately. The S&amp;P 500 <a href="https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/indexnews/announcements/20260604-1483731/1483731_spdji-us-indices-megacaps-results-20260604.pdf">does not allow</a> eligible companies into its fund until it&#8217;s traded on an eligible exchange for at least 12 months. The S&amp;P 500 has a 12-month wait time to help mitigate potentially adding a company at an inflated valuation and avoid potentially large price swings. 
Another group that could potentially end up owning SpaceX is Tesla shareholders. Elon Musk has reportedly <a href="https://fortune.com/2026/06/12/spacex-tesla-merger-gwynne-shotwell-hints-elon-musk-ipo/">floated</a> the possibility of a merger between Tesla and SpaceX. If such a deal were pursued, SpaceX&#8217;s larger valuation could make it the acquiring company. In an all-stock or cash-and-stock transaction, Tesla shareholders could receive SpaceX shares in exchange for their Tesla stock, effectively making them SpaceX investors.
While the S&amp;P 500 did not change its rules to allow SpaceX in early, the Nasdaq and the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/spacex-set-fast-entry-into-us-global-indexes-under-new-ftse-rules-2026-05-26/">FTSE Russell</a> did make accommodations prompting a stern letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).  
“Traditionally, index providers — including your firms — have maintained rules for the inclusion of companies on their <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-05-26/index-funds-can-t-say-no-to-spacex">indexes</a>, which are meant to protect passive investors and maintain the credibility of each <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-05-26/index-funds-can-t-say-no-to-spacex">index</a>,” wrote Warren. “The changes to your index rules to accommodate these large companies, however, have the potential to destabilize markets and create significant risks for American investors, especially retirees and other individuals that rely on index funds for their savings.”
Supporters of rule changes argue that SpaceX should be allowed into major indexes because it qualifies regardless of its recent IPO and is a “Made in the USA stock that is sizable and belongs in benchmarks,” according to TD Securities Head of Index and Market Structure Research Peter Haynes. 
“What this is doing is setting a precedent that the S&amp;P 500 will not add OpenAI and Anthropic when those IPOs happen,” added Strategas Securities Chief ETF Strategist Todd Sohn.

SpaceX Listed On Nasdaq Exchange

Didn’t Buy SpaceX On Friday? You Might Already Be Invested.

Elizabeth Warren

Stock Market

Elon Musk&#8217;s SpaceX IPO will undoubtedly be the biggest IPO in history. 
What&#8217;s unusual about this particular IPO is that it is widely available to retail investors, such as the man on the street. Typically, in any IPO, a certain percentage of the company&#8217;s stock is offered to the public, and a large percentage of that stock is already pre-purchased by institutional investors.
The pre-market valuation of the IPO is likely to be in the $1.77 trillion range, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That is not a bad thing. It is an amazing thing. But you are going to hear from all the wrong people that it&#8217;s immoral, terrible, even evil. Why?
Envy. It&#8217;s a universal human emotion, and envy is bad and wrong, and God explicitly condemns it.
What could destroy the country and the global economy is what has always threatened humanity: Envy.
Jimmy Kimmel is a beautiful example of this. Jimmy Kimmel is a multimillionaire who works for billionaires, and he&#8217;s upset about a prospective trillionaire.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-ben-shapiro-show-ep-2444?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Kimmel is an obnoxious, non-funny, woke pope of late-night TV, who&#8217;s probably worth somewhere between $50 million and $100 million. He is paid by people worth tens of billions of dollars to complain about a guy who built a company that would be worth $1.77 trillion.
Kimmel mocked:
<blockquote>Elon Musk came to the United States from South Africa in 1995, the son of a humble emerald mine owner, and he is so grateful to this country that allowed him to become a trillionaire. Tesla paid almost no federal income tax over the past three years. You know, for a guy who has been openly cheering immigrants getting kicked out of the country for stealing from us, sure seems like an immigrant who&#8217;s been stealing from us, to me.</blockquote>
This is just obnoxious trash. It is not true. Elon did not, in fact, grow up wealthy. His dad was kind of a mess. And as far as the idea that Elon came to the United States wealthy, that is eminently untrue. He was living in some of the worst apartments in America when he came here. And then he didn&#8217;t get a job at Netscape despite applying. And then he ended up becoming this unbelievable success.
The notion that he is stealing from Americans by building several of the most successful companies in American history is totally crazy.
What has Jimmy Kimmel built? Ever?
But here&#8217;s what&#8217;s really going on: Jimmy Kimmel doesn&#8217;t like that Elon is really, really, really rich.
Kimmel continued:
<blockquote>Trillion dollars. It&#8217;s hard for our brains to conceptualize that. I mean, we know a trillion is a number, but it&#8217;s so large. In the same way, we can&#8217;t fathom it the same way. We know, like Elon has a lot of kids when we can&#8217;t fathom him getting laid, right? So let me try to illustrate it. If you tried to count out loud to a trillion, you would be counting until the year 33,736. $1 trillion is 10 billion $100 bills.</blockquote>
I&#8217;m just wondering: Jimmy Kimmel is worth probably $100 million. If you counted to 100 million, it would take you about 3 years, if you counted one number per second and stayed up all night.
Why the envy, why the rage?
There’s certainly something political to it. Jimmy Kimmel was much nicer to Elon Musk back in 2013 when he had him on his show to talk about SpaceX.
He said to Musk:
<blockquote>You know, I want to go over some of your many accomplishments just for the audience in case they&#8217;re not familiar with them. In 1983, at age 12, you designed a video game and sold it to a computer magazine for $500. 1995, you quit the graduate program at Stanford to found Zip2. In 1999, you sold Zip2 to Compaq for $309 million.
You co-founded PayPal in 2000. You sold PayPal to eBay for a billion and a half dollars. You founded Space-X. You co-founded Tesla Motors. You helped create SolarCity, the solar power company. Well, it&#8217;s great to meet you. If you want to watch the launch, why wouldn&#8217;t you want to watch the launch of the Space-x rocket? On March 1 go to Space X.com and take a look.</blockquote>
Barack Obama toured SpaceX with Elon in 2010. The Democratic president of the United States marveled at it.
Musk was talking about reusable rockets back in 2010. That was not achieved for over half a decade. It was an enormous risk. And Obama was marveling at it at the time.
But now we&#8217;ve gone from that inspirational view to giant inflatable Elon Musks in Times Square with no shirt on and looking ugly.
What&#8217;s really going on here?
The answer is very simple: Envy.
There is a very interesting study in the journal &#8220;Frontiers in Psychology&#8221; from 2021 that discusses what are called “the two faces of envy.” The authors <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8578062/">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>Envy is like a wildfire destroying people. We feel envy for, a classmate who gets a good grade or, a neighbor who buys an expensive car. This kind of emotion drives our different behaviors, like small stones in the heart lake, ruining our peace of mind. &#8230; [Scholars] envy as “the intense, unpleasant feeling that one feels when one realizes that another has something that one strives for, pursues, or yearns for.” Envy is a painful emotion.</blockquote>
There are two kinds of envy. One is useful, and one is quite terrible.
One is benign envy: “The envious person may try to make themselves as good as the person being envied. Therefore, envy can increase personal effort, drive behavior to achieve the desired object, and to turn attention to the means of achieving it.”
And then there&#8217;s another type: malicious envy. This is where “The envious person may try to degrade the person being envied, to vilify or denigrate the other person&#8217;s advantages. Envy can increase schadenfreude behavior that leads to hostility and resentment. It can shift attention to the person being envied.”
By the way, it also leads to violence. There&#8217;s literally a full commandment among the Ten Commandments that is directly about envy: “You shall not covet your neighbor&#8217;s house, your neighbor&#8217;s wife, his servant, his ox, his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor&#8217;s.”
God takes the time to say envy is bad.
By the way, this is the only commandment that has to do with your feelings. All the rest are behaviorally driven: Don&#8217;t steal. Don&#8217;t kill, don&#8217;t blaspheme. Respect your parents and everyone else. This one is emotional. Why did God reserve one commandment for the emotion of envy?
Because it turns out the entire history of humanity relies on whether we can actually master our envy. This is the story of Cain and Abel. The story of Cain and Abel is about envy. Cain decides to sacrifice to God, and Abel follows suit. And God, for reasons we don&#8217;t understand from the Bible, accepts Abel’s sacrifice, but not Cain&#8217;s.
And then God says, “Surely if you do right, you will be uplifted. But if you do not do right, sin crouches at your door. Its urge is toward you, but you can be its master.”
What is that sin? It&#8217;s envy. And what does Cain do? Instead of going to Abel and saying, “What did you do right and I did wrong? How can I do better?” he kills Abel.
Envy is destructive. It is terrible.
What&#8217;s interesting here is when we get envious, because it&#8217;s not a universal timing thing; it&#8217;s a universal human emotion, we feel it all the time.
But it tends to kick in for anyone who&#8217;s just above you on the wealth index. So if you make 100 grand, you may be envious of the guy who makes 200 grand.
But it&#8217;s not every person who makes more than you.
There is a particular envy for people who take risks.
That’s because in our heart of hearts, we think we could have done that too. We look at Elon, we say, “I could have founded a SpaceX company. He thought of it, but I could have thought of it. I could have taken the risk. It&#8217;s something that&#8217;s within my purview.”
It&#8217;s really, really interesting to watch New Yorkers who just voted for a Democratic socialist like Zohran Mamdani, who riffs on Citadel CEO Ken Griffin all day long and roots for the Knicks this season. The Knicks are super rich. Really, really, really rich. Karl-Anthony Towns made $53 million this year. OG Anunoby made $40 million. Jalen Brunson makes $35 million a year. That is a lot of money.
But you&#8217;re not seeing jealousy or outrage in the stadium. People aren&#8217;t showing up and yelling at them about how they need to redistribute their income and pay more taxes, and how many school teachers are out of a job, and do we need more government-sponsored grocery stores.
So why are people so envious of these guys? Because everyone recognizes that these guys have unique talents given by God. You&#8217;re not seven feet, you&#8217;re not 270 pounds, and you can&#8217;t shoot the three.
But when it’s a smart person who doesn&#8217;t have exceptional physical qualities, then we get pretty jealous. “Why didn&#8217;t we get what he has? Why don&#8217;t we all get to be Elon Musk-rich? He&#8217;s not that much better than we are.”
But here is the thing. The reason that Elon is super-rich — and I know a lot of people who are as bright as Elon, I know a lot of very high IQ people, and Elon has a very high IQ, he is much richer than any of them — is because he took risks, huge risks, unprecedented risks.
And that is good because risk is what creates innovation. If you don&#8217;t have people risking, you don&#8217;t get better stuff. If you don&#8217;t have people taking out mortgages on their homes to sponsor and subsidize them, a company won&#8217;t get built.
If you don&#8217;t have people willing to put their own money where their mouth is, their own time, their own effort, you do not get new things.
We need new things. Not only that, we need a system that allows you to keep what you make.
For every single Elon Musk in any industry, there are 10,000 dudes who thought of it, risked it, and failed.
What is the only thing that will keep people risking it and trying to do the thing that actually builds? The only thing that incentivizes that is the possibility of making a lot of money.
That’s what generates people willing to take the risks that actually make the world a better place.
Risk-taking is risky. Take, for example, Blue Origin, run by another billionaire, Jeff Bezos, a competitor to SpaceX. A couple of weeks ago, we watched a Blue Origin rocket explode on the ground. Billions of dollars were lost in one millisecond.
That’s what it looks like when you take risks, because sometimes you fail. You know how many videos there are of Elon Musk&#8217;s rockets blowing up on the launch pad?
How do you incentivize a person to keep looking failure in the face over and over and over again? You have to have an American system, a free-market system that rewards risk-taking and punishes failure and rewards success.
That is what you require. People forget that Elon Musk risked pretty much his entire early fortune on SpaceX and Tesla.
This is risk-taking, and it&#8217;s awesome, and it should be rewarded.
No matter what Jimmy Kimmel thinks.

spacex_envy

The Sin Fueling America’s War On Success

Ben Shapiro

Envy

Jeff Bezos

Jimmy Kimmel

Opinion

SpaceX

Elon Musk’s SpaceX opened at $150 on Friday after the company sold 555 million shares at $135 each in what would be the largest initial public offering in history.
The company raised approximately $75 billion in the IPO, surpassing the previous record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. Shares quickly climbed more than 10% in early trading.
“It’s certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public in the largest IPO ever,” Musk said from SpaceX headquarters in Starbase, Texas. 
“I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all,” Musk added. “In fact, I told people this. I said, ‘Look, we’re probably going to fail, but you know, we should give it a try, because if we don&#8217;t, if there&#8217;s not a new company that enters space, we will never be a truly space-bearing civilization.&#8221;
The public offering also cemented Musk&#8217;s status as the world&#8217;s wealthiest person. His net worth is now <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">valued</a> at more than $1.2 trillion, making him the first person to reach trillionaire status. Musk owns roughly 42% of SpaceX shares and is required to hold them for one year.
The IPO also created a major windfall for SpaceX employees. More than 4,000 workers became millionaires through company stock holdings, including cafeteria employees who participated in the company&#8217;s stock program.
One employee, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/technology/spacex-ipo-employee-millionaires.html">Trevor Hise</a>, started at SpaceX as an intern in 2011 and accumulated more than 100,000 shares, now valued at more than $15 million. Hise said his parents once urged him to turn down the SpaceX offer and take a job with General Electric instead.  
More than <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/12/spacex-millionaires-wealth-management.html">100</a> SpaceX employees now reportedly have combined assets valued between $1 billion and $5 billion. 
Musk and SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell marked the company&#8217;s public debut by ringing Nasdaq’s opening bell, with Musk appearing from Texas and Shotwell from New York City. 
Shotwell said the company could pursue major deals following the record-breaking IPO, while also hinting at future overlap between SpaceX and Musk&#8217;s other companies. 
“There’s no question that there are synergies between Tesla and SpaceX in our futures,” she <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/12/spacex-ipo-spcx-live-updates.html">said</a>. “There’s a convergence of what we’re all trying to accomplish in the future, but right now I’m focused on keeping the lights on here.”
Musk has also floated the possibility of eventually merging Tesla and SpaceX. SpaceX bought xAI earlier this year, giving the aerospace company ownership of xAI&#8217;s data centers, Grok AI models, and X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. 
For now, Musk said the IPO proceeds will help fuel “a significant growth phase” for SpaceX. His plans include placing more than 1 million satellites in orbit and building artificial intelligence data centers in space.

SpaceX Just Pulled Off Something Wall Street Has Never Seen

Business

Technology

Elon Musk lost the race to market, with a Shanghai-based startup launching its brain chip technology to the public ahead of Neuralink. 
China’s drug regulator, the National Medical Products Administration, recently approved Neuracle Technology’s brain implant beyond clinical trials, <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/06/07/tech/china-beats-elon-musk-to-launch-worlds-first-commercial-brain-chip/">according</a> to multiple reports. Like Musk’s Neuralink, the coin-size brain implant — called NEO — is designed to help patients who are paralyzed due to spinal cord injuries. 
One of Neuracle Technology’s patients, Dong Hui, was recently <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/01/1138133/china-world-first-brain-chip/">profiled</a> by MIT Technology Review. After 11 months of using the device, Dong is now able to write his name despite suffering a spinal cord injury in a car accident six years ago. Before receiving the implant, Dong could barely move his arms and was unable to use his fingers at all.
NEO sensors are placed on the outside membrane of Dong’s brain, where the signals are transmitted by a connected computer implant that rests on Dong’s skull. Those signals then move a robotic glove on Dong&#8217;s hand, which helps his hand relearn how to accept signals from his brain. 
“On the ninth day of my training, my right hand successfully grabbed a ball without the glove,” Dong told MIT. “That was a miraculous moment.” Dong was one of 36 subjects who had clinical trials conducted with NEO, with 32 of them occurring in the past year. 
A revolutionary technology in its own right, Neuracle Technology has also broken new ground in its rollout under China’s national health insurance system. China is doubling down on its ambition to become the global leader in brain-computer interfaces with the government identifying the technology as one of six strategic sectors critical to the country’s future alongside quantum technology, biomanufacturing, hydrogen and nuclear fusion power, artificial intelligence, and 6G mobile communications. The global brain-computer interface market is projected to reach $1.7 billion by 2035.
According to an Australian researcher, one reason Neuracle Technology may have outpaced competing brain-computer interfaces is its less invasive design. While Neuralink’s implant penetrates the brain’s protective membrane, NEO sits on top of it. Both approaches have advantages and drawbacks. Avoiding penetration of the brain reduces surgical risk, but Neuralink’s approach allows the device to interface directly with individual neurons, potentially enabling a deeper biological connection and more precise signal collection.
While NEO reached the market first, Musk has said that 2026 will be a major year for Neuralink. Currently, Neuralink procedures require opening the brain’s dura mater, the protective outer membrane surrounding the brain. Musk plans to introduce a less invasive technique that would allow electrodes to pass through the dura without removing it — similar to drilling a small hole through a wall to run a wire rather than cutting out an entire section.
He has also announced that Neuralink will significantly expand its clinical trials as the company moves toward large-scale production. 
Other brain chip companies are also attempting to race to the commercial market. Synchron, which is backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, was founded in Australia before moving to the United States. In late 2025, Synchron raised <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-06/neuralink-rival-synchron-raises-200-million-for-brain-implant">$200 million</a> to advance its implant. 
While Neuracle Technology is the most advanced brain-computer interface company in China, it is one of a new wave of startups backed by the Chinese communist government. China announced <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/22/chinas-brain-computer-interface-industry-is-racing-ahead/">$165</a> million to fund startups through research to commercialization, as well as quickly adopting the technology into its national health service.

Menu