NJ families in a 'state of desperation' as Trump suspends refugee admissions
She could not find her husband, who worked in security for a U.S. contractor, or her sons at home. Nearly trampled at the airport, she and her daughter boarded a U.S. flight hoping they would reunite later on.
Three and a half years later, Fahima is still waiting. The woman, who lives in Paterson with her disabled daughter and son, has worked with lawyers and filed paperwork to bring her family, who fled to Iran, to the United States.
'I've been in a state of desperation at the thought of my husband and children stuck in Iran in poor conditions,' said Fahima, adding that they are destitute and that it's too dangerous in Afghanistan, where he could be targeted because he worked for Americans.
She fears what will happen now that President Donald Trump has halted the refugee resettlement program in one of his first executive orders in office, she said.
'I've had sleepless nights since Jan. 20 and am tired of the constant worry for my family,' said Fahima, who asked that her last name be withheld to protect her family.
Trump signed the executive order, titled Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program, on his first day in office, prompting the State Department to cancel flights even for those already cleared for admission. At 90-day intervals, the president will review reports and determine whether continuing resettlement 'is in the interests of the United States.' In the only exception to the ban, the secretary of state and the secretary of homeland security can decide jointly to admit refugees on a case-by-case basis.
Advocates worry about the future of a decades-old program that has served as a lifeline for refugees displaced by war and political persecution.'It is an evolving situation, but so far we have heard about four families getting their travel canceled,' said Courtney Madsen, regional director for Church World Service, a refugee resettlement agency.
The agency's Jersey City Office has settled 66 refugees since the fiscal year began on Oct. 1, Madsen said. It was expecting to receive 134 more people this year.
'As far as impact on families,' Madsen added, 'this is devastating because the suspension is indefinite, so we have no idea when these families will be able to come to New Jersey. In most of these cases they are reuniting with people who are already here, so we are already seeing family separation in action by this administration.'
Freshta Taeb, co-lead for the New Jersey Coalition for Afghan Refugees, said she had gotten over 60 calls in two days from nervous families.
'People are panicking and there's a lot of misinformation that is going around,' she said.
Many of the refugees expected this year are from Afghanistan, including 1,600 people whose flights were canceled by the State Department. They include children waiting to be reunited with their families and men and women at risk of retribution for cooperating with the former U.S.-backed government.
'We don't want folks to think just because flights are canceled that they will never have chance to come,' Taeb said. 'Things are being paused and reassessed. Let's remain calm and steadfast and see what happens.'
Others worry about their status in the United States as recipients of humanitarian parole, a temporary admission granted for urgent humanitarian reasons. Congress failed to pass legislation that would have made Afghan parolees eligible for permanent residency, despite support from military groups and veterans. They worry their asylum cases will go unheard.
On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a memo saying Immigration and Customs Enforcement can strip parole status from migrants who have been in the United States for less than two years. The memo came after Trump suspended parole programs created during the Biden administration for people from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, arguing they were an abuse of the law. The memo did not specify countries of origin or whether it would apply to Afghans and Ukrainians brought in under separate parole programs.
Taeb advised people to talk to an attorney.
'We are advising folks to remain calm and steadfast and make sure you fact-check everything with somebody who is knowledgeable about the executive orders,' she said.
Sofia Wahdat, program manager at Global Emergency Response and Assistance, a North Jersey-based organization that aids refugees, has also heard from families who were hoping to reunite with loves ones and are 'waiting in limbo.'
'These families have fought through so much insecurity and trauma and lot of doubt on what will happen,' Wahdat said.
The United States, which has long been a destination for refugees, formalized the process for admissions in 1980. Since then, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has welcomed about 3 million refugees. The president, in consultation with Congress, sets an admissions target each year.
While it once held bipartisan support, the program became politicized when Trump entered his first term and deemed it a security threat. Admissions reached a low of 11,411 in 2021 with Trump in office, according to government data.
Refugees: Thousands of Syrians fled to the US. Ten years later, their lives tell stories of resilience
Over the next three years, admissions grew annually, reaching 100,034 last year from counties including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Syria and Venezuela.
Trump's executive order states that the United States 'lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees.' The order mentions the availability of resources for Americans, safety and security, and assimilation of refugees.
Those who work with refugees say it's misguided. They point out that refugees are the most thoroughly vetted group to enter the United States. They apply from overseas, and the UN screens and refers them to the resettlement program. U.S. agencies then carry out multiple background checks, interviews and medical exams before they can be admitted in a process that can take years.
They also fill critical labor shortages and support local businesses, they said. One federal study found that over a 15-year period, refugees contributed $123 billion more than they have cost in governmental expenditures.
The Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale, CEO of Interfaith-Rise, a nonprofit aiding refugees and asylees, has seen the impact firsthand. The Highland Park-based agency has placed clients in jobs with companies including Walmart, Europastry, Trenton Corrugated Products and Powerspec, which makes electronic parts.
Business owners and managers tell him that the addition of workers has helped them to grow and flourish, Kaper-Dale said. Refugees have also gone on to open their own businesses including Paterson's Iraqi-owned Al Mazaq Restaurant and Syrian-owned Nour Al-Sham and Reem Al Sham.
The refugee program also underscores longstanding American values of generosity and compassion and a commitment to human rights, say advocates.
'New Jersey has welcomed those seeking safety and a better life for centuries,' Madsen said, 'and this new refugee ban flies in the face of who we are and what we value.'
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Refugee resettlement frozen: NJ families worry about Trump order
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Judge Judy recreates controversial American verdicts and challenges viewers in 'Justice on Trial'
EXCLUSIVE - Judge Judith Sheindlin helps recreate some of the most controversial court cases in American history in her new show, "Justice on Trial." The show, which was over 10 years in the making and finally premiered on Prime Video last Monday, revisits eight of the most monumental court cases in American memory — allowing the viewer to decide if justice was truly served with each verdict. The main lawyers featured on the show are Larry Bakman and Daniel Mentzer. Episode seven features a re-telling of "Snyder v. Phelps," in which a grieving father, Albert Snyder, sued Fred Phelps and his followers at the Westboro Baptist Church for emotional distress after church members protested his son Matthew's military funeral. The churchgoers, as depicted in the episode, carried signs reading, "God Hates Your Son," "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," and "Thank God for 9/11," to protest the military's tolerance of homosexuality. As Snyder noted during the trial, his son was not gay. The protesters were protesting the military at-large. The court showdown highlighted the legal boundaries of protected speech when it conflicts with potential harm to others. A jury in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland agreed with Snyder and awarded him a total of $10.9 million, which the judge lowered to $5 million. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the judgment, holding that Phelps' speech was protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court upheld the Fourth Circuit's ruling. The fiery Sheindlin had an opinion on the matter. While she and others may find the protesters' signs "abhorrent," she intoned that the Constitution does protect free speech. "Totally uncaring for people who are religious people, totally uncaring about the emotional trauma that that kind of demonstration might have on the family," Sheindlin said of the Westboro protests in an interview with Fox News Digital. "And yet the Supreme Court said in its decision that they had a right to express their views, even though their views were maybe abhorrent to the vast majority of Americans. I suppose you have to be able to... I wouldn't want to tolerate seeing the American flag burned in protest in America. Just wouldn't. It would offend me. But you have the right to do it. Is there a law that proscribes it? And I'd say probably not." So how do Americans reconcile their anger at a verdict with the Court's constitutional responsibilities? Sheindlin began her answer by referencing the movie "American President." "I mean, we all would like our presidents to be like Michael Douglas, correct?" she said. "And he said something at the end, but he's making the big speech at the end. He said, 'As an American, America is not easy, and you have to be able to defend somebody burning a flag, the American flag, as a protest, if you're going to insist that freedom of speech and expression exists.' And while we are all offended, it just didn't seem right that for no apparent reason, with no knowledge of who this young man was who was killed, just because they had a cause, they didn't care what the collateral damage was emotionally to the family of this young man." Judge Judy said there was one case, in particular, that spurred her to want to create "Justice on Trial" and that may also leave some Americans feeling like justice may have taken a walk. "It was a case that happened in New York many, many years ago," she shared. "Two young thugs decided to rob an old man on the subway. Believe it or not, I remember the man's name. His name was Jerome Sandusky, and he was a man well in his 70s. And one of them was acting as a lookout. The other one went down the stairs with the pretty deserted platform and was beating up this old man in an attempt to take his watch and cash. And a transit police officer heard the screams of the old man coming from the subway, and he ran down into the subway. Pulled out his revolver and said, 'Stop, police!' And the young thug ran off and was running up the stairs. Police said, 'Stop, police!' He didn't stop, and the police officer shot him. And he shot him in the back as he was fleeing." Then things got tricky in court and the situation seemed to turn on the victim. "The young man pled guilty to the robbery, was sentenced, but hired a lawyer who sued the transit authority in the city of New York and received a judgment, a jury verdict for $4.3 million," Sheindlin continued. "And then Mr. Sandusky, who took a very long time to recover from his physical wounds, but who would, you know — if you're a crime victim emotionally, you really never get over being a victim of violent crime. And Mr. Sandusky, he said, 'Well, that's sort of outrageous. I was the victim.' And so he hired a lawyer because now this thug had $4.3 million and his lawsuit was barred by the statute of limitations. So there are many facets to that case. Whether or not, ultimately, justice was served is an issue. And if you ask 10 people, given those set of facts, you will get at least eight different opinions." All eight episodes of "Justice on Trial" are streaming now on Prime Video. Other cases covered by the series include the famous Scopes Monkey trial, Gideon v. Wainwright and People v. Turriago. In the latter case, troopers stopped Leonardo Turriago for a speeding violation on the New York State Thruway, which led police to discover a decomposing body locked in a steamer trunk. The episode explores the question of whether or not the search of the truck was legal. The series is created and executive produced by Sheindlin. Casey Barber, David Carr and Randy Douthit are also executive producers. Amy Freisleben is a co-executive producer.
Atlantic
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- Atlantic
NASA and the End of American Ambition
In the beginning, there was the name. A prophet guided Errol Musk to bestow it on his eldest son, or so he claimed. The seer was Wernher von Braun, a German engineer and an inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. Though von Braun had built missiles for Hitler and used concentration-camp prisoners for manual labor, the U.S. government recruited him, and eventually brought him to a base in Alabama and tasked him with sending men into orbit, then to the moon. Von Braun had always dreamed of venturing deeper into the galaxy. Back in 1949, before he emerged as the godfather of the American space program, he spilled his fantasies onto the page, in a novel titled Project Mars. He described how a new form of government would take hold on the red planet: a technocracy capable of the biggest and boldest things. At the helm of this Martian state would sit a supreme leader, known as the Elon. Whatever the truth of this origin story, Elon Musk has seized on von Braun's prophecy as his destiny. Since the founding of SpaceX in 2002, his business decisions and political calculations have been made with a transcendent goal in mind: the moment when he carries the human species to a new homeland, a planet millions of miles away, where colonists will be insulated from the ravages of nuclear war, climate change, malevolent AI, and all the unforeseen disasters that will inevitably crush life on Earth. Far away from the old, broken planet, a libertarian utopia will flourish, under the beneficent sway of the Elon. This sense of destiny led Musk on October 5, 2024, to a Trump rally in western Pennsylvania. Wearing a gray T-shirt bearing the slogan OCCUPY MARS, Musk told the crowd that Trump 'must win to preserve democracy in America.' Thanks to their alliance, Musk briefly achieved powers that few unelected Americans have ever possessed. As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, he demolished large swaths of the federal government and began to remake the infrastructure of the state. For a few erratic months, he assumed the role of the terrestrial Elon. Five months into Trump's second term, Musk's inflated sense of his place in history clashed with the ego of his benefactor, the relationship ruptured, and each man threatened to ruin the other. Musk vowed that his spaceships would no longer carry Americans, or the supplies that sustain them, to the International Space Station. Trump threatened SpaceX's federal contracts, reportedly worth $22 billion. Weeks later, they were still bludgeoning each other. In July, Trump mused that he might deport the South African–born Musk, who in turn impishly announced that he would bankroll a new third party. Both men are likely bluffing. Musk still needs the U.S. government to fund his grand designs. And the U.S. government very much needs Elon Musk. Last year, 95 percent of the rockets launched in the United States were launched by SpaceX. NASA was a mere passenger. Musk has crowded low Earth orbit with satellites (nearly 8,000) that are becoming indispensable to the military's capacity to communicate and the government's surveillance of hostile powers. Even if Trump had pushed to dislodge Musk, he couldn't. No rival could readily replace the services his companies provide. That Musk has superseded NASA is a very American parable. A generation ago, NASA was the crown jewel of the U.S. government. It was created in 1958 to demonstrate the superiority of the American way of life, and it succeeded brilliantly. In the course of landing humans on the lunar surface, NASA became the symbol of America's competence and swagger, of how it—alone among the nations of the Earth—inhabited the future. NASA's astronauts were 20th-century cowboys, admired in corners of the world that usually abhorred Americans. The Apollo crews traveled to the heavens on behalf of 'all mankind,' a phrase that appeared both in the act that created NASA and on the plaque left on the moon by Apollo 11. Even NASA's engineers, with their skinny ties and rolled-up sleeves, became the stuff of Hollywood legend. NASA was born at the height of liberalism's faith in government, and its demise tracks the decline of that faith. As the United States lost confidence in its ability to accomplish great things, it turned to Musk as a potential savior, and ultimately surrendered to him. This isn't an instance of crony capitalism, but a tale about well-meaning administrations, of both parties, pursuing grandiose ambitions without the vision, competence, or funding to realize them. If the highest goal of policy is efficiency, then all the money that the government has spent on SpaceX makes sense. Even the company's most vituperative detractors acknowledge its engineering genius and applaud its success in driving down launch expenses (unlike many defense contractors, SpaceX largely eats the cost of its failures). But in the course of bolstering Musk, in privatizing a public good, the government has allowed one billionaire to hold excessive sway. With the flick of a switch, he now has the power to shut down constellations of satellites, to isolate a nation, to hobble the operations of an entire army. Because of Musk's indispensability, his values have come to dominate America's aspirations in space, draining the lyricism from the old NASA mission. Space was once a realm of cooperation, beyond commercial interests and military pursuits. Now it is the site of military brinkmanship and a source of raw materials that nations hope to plunder. The humanistic pursuit of the mysteries of the universe has been replaced by an obsession with rocket power. Musk wants to use his influence to impose the improbable endeavor of Mars colonization on the nation, enriching him as it depletes its own coffers. In the vacuum left by a nation's faded ambitions, Musk's delusions of destiny have taken hold. NASA's golden age emerged from fiasco. John F. Kennedy campaigned for president promising a 'New Frontier,' but he didn't really care about satellites or astronauts. Just before he launched his campaign, he confided to one scientist over drinks in Boston that he considered rockets a waste of money. A few years later, during a conversation recorded in the White House, he flatly admitted, 'I'm not that interested in space.' But by the third month of his presidency, Kennedy was drowning in humiliation. On April 12, 1961, the Soviets hurled the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin—or Gaga, as the international press adoringly called him—into orbit for 108 minutes, the first human to journey into the beyond. The New York Times hailed it as evidence of 'Soviet superiority.' The impression of American incompetence deepened five days later, when a CIA-backed army of exiles botched an invasion of Cuba, a misadventure immortalized as the Bay of Pigs. In his desperation to redirect the narrative, Kennedy abruptly became an enthusiast for the most ambitious plan sitting on NASA's shelf. On April 21, shortly after his proxy army surrendered to the Communists, Kennedy suffered a bruising press conference. In response to a question about the relative inferiority of the American space program, he riffed, 'If we can get to the moon before the Russians, then we should.' A month later, Kennedy delivered an address to a joint session of Congress that more formally launched the Apollo program. Even then, he did so harboring private doubts about the price tag, perhaps stoked by the fact that his own father considered his promise to land an astronaut on the lunar surface by 1970 an appalling act of profligacy. Joe Kennedy fumed, 'Damn it, I taught Jack better than that.' When Kennedy voiced his ambitions, he stumbled into tautology: 'We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.' He charged the American government with executing an engineering task more difficult than any other in human history, for no higher reason than to prove that it could be done. That was the animating spirit of 'New Frontier' liberalism. From the vantage of the present—when public faith in government is threadbare—it is staggering to consider the heedless investment Americans allowed Washington to make in a project with little tangible payoff, beyond the pursuit of global prestige in its zero-sum contest with the Soviet Union. At its peak, Apollo employed a workforce of about 400,000. The lunar program cost an astonishing $28 billion, somewhere north of $300 billion in today's dollars. On Kennedy's own terms, Apollo was a world-historic triumph. The legendary NASA chief James Webb and his deputies helped create a whole new philosophy for running immense organizations: systems management. NASA simultaneously micromanaged its engineers—knowing that an unwanted speck of dust could trigger catastrophe—while giving them wide latitude to innovate. Complex flowcharts helped coordinate the work of dozens of teams across academia, corporations, and government laboratories. Despite using untested technologies, NASA achieved a near-perfect safety record, marred only by the 1967 fire that killed three astronauts in their capsule as they prepared for the first crewed Apollo mission. Even then, NASA's relentless culture kept pushing toward its goal. Unlike the Soviets, who attempted to dictate public perceptions by manically managing the images of their exploits, NASA made the risky decision to allow its project to unfurl on live television. The Apollo voyages made for the most gripping viewing in the history of the medium. By one estimate, a fifth of the planet watched Neil Armstrong's moonwalk live, an especially astonishing number given the limited global reach of television in 1969. The space program then was a projection of prowess and self-confidence. 'Space was the platform from which the social revolution of the 1960s was launched,' Lyndon B. Johnson wrote in his memoir. 'If we could send a man to the moon, we knew we should be able to send a poor boy to school and to provide decent medical care for the aged.' Apollo was a model for planned social change and technocratic governance—the prototype for tomorrow. The savviest bureaucrats are hitmakers. Years before Armstrong planted the American flag on the moon, NASA had begun prepping plans for a sequel to Apollo. Only after the enchanted moment of the lunar touchdown did the agency meet with Vice President Spiro Agnew to unveil the next phase of America's future in space. On August 4, 1969, 15 days after Armstrong's giant leap, NASA pitched the Nixon administration on its vision of sending humans to Mars. To nail the presentation, NASA brought von Braun, its most celebrated engineer, to do the talking. After all, they were selling the vision he had sketched in his novel decades earlier. By 1982, NASA said, it hoped to land on Mars in two nuclear-powered planetary vehicles, each carrying six crew members. But in NASA's moment of glory, von Braun and his colleagues couldn't restrain themselves. They added items to their wish list: a lunar base, a space station, and a shuttle that would transport humans. Pandering before the ego that NASA needed most in order to realize its request, von Braun said he wanted to send Richard Nixon into orbit as part of the nation's celebration of its bicentennial, in 1976. Agnew loved it. Nixon did not. He must have despised the thought of shoveling so much money into a program so closely associated with the blessed memory of his old nemesis John Kennedy. Besides, the moment of boundless technocracy was over, doomed by deficits and a sharp swerve in the public mood. During the unending debacle of Vietnam, the public had lost faith in grand ventures dreamed up by whiz kids. Meanwhile, civil-rights leaders railed against the diversion of major expenditures away from social programs. The sociologist Amitai Etzioni popularized a term that captured the rising sourness: moon-doggle. At a moment when Nixon was hoping to retrench, NASA proposed a program with an annual cost that would eventually rise to $10 billion, carried out over more than a decade—an expense far greater than Apollo's. Von Braun and his colleagues had badly misread the room. In the end, Nixon agreed to give NASA an annual budget of just over $3 billion, and he scythed away every component of the plan except for the space station and the space shuttle, which was a reusable system that promised to limit the costs of space travel. But a shuttle traveling where? As Apollo wrapped up its final missions—and even three of those were canceled—NASA no longer had a clear destination. Many of the leaders who carried the agency through the space race, including von Braun, began to depart for the private sector. During Apollo, government engineers had been omnipresent, stationed in the factories of its contractors; they mastered details. That changed in the shuttle era, with its constricted budgets and diminished expectations. Instead of micromanaging contractors, NASA began to defer to them, giving aerospace corporations greater sway over vessel design. In fact, it allowed them to own the underlying intellectual property for the vehicles and their component parts. Because the contractors understood the minutiae and they didn't, NASA officials grew reluctant to push for innovations, paralyzed by the fear that they might be blamed for a contractor's mistake. A bureaucratic mindset took hold, first slowly, and then more dramatically after the Challenger disaster, in 1986. Freeman Dyson, the visionary astrophysicist, drew a devastating distinction between the 'paper NASA,' largely a figment of memory and pop culture, and the 'real NASA,' the sclerotic organization that rose in its place. Those criticisms were both legitimate and somewhat unfair; in the shadow of crewed spaceflight, which garnered attention and prestige, NASA pursued advances in robotics and astrophysics, such as the Galileo mission to Jupiter. But without a human on board, those accomplishments lacked the romance of NASA's golden age. In the summer of 2001, Elon Musk sat in a Manhattan hotel room, fired up his laptop, and browsed He had just returned from a party on Long Island. On the ride home, he'd told a friend, 'I've always wanted to do something in space, but I don't think there's anything that an individual can do.' Musk was plenty rich and plenty bored. After a short stint as the CEO of the company that became PayPal, he was ousted by its board, although he remained its largest shareholder. He had bought a Czechoslovakian military jet, which he'd spent hundreds of hours flying, but that hardly held his attention. He was in search of his next thing. Musk grew up a fan of science fiction, steeped in the extraterrestrial fantasies of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. The reality of space exploration, however, wasn't a subject that he'd studied closely, until he scanned NASA's site and had a revelation. He assumed that he would read about impending missions to Mars. 'I figured it had to be soon, because we went to the moon in 1969, so we must be about to go to Mars,' he told the biographer Walter Isaacson. But no such plan existed, so he decided that it was his mission to push humanity forward. The thought made Musk something of a cliché. Space is a magnet for rich dilettantes and—more than a sports car or yacht—the ultimate expression of wealth and power. Because space travel is ingrained in our culture as the hardest human endeavor, demanding immense resources, it commands cultural respect. For Musk—who had been bullied by both his schoolmates and his father—space offered the possibility of seizing the world by the lapels and announcing his greatness. A classic revenge fantasy. Musk wasn't wrong about the diminished state of NASA. Remarking on the grim persistence of the space-shuttle program, Neil deGrasse Tyson said that NASA's flagship vessel 'boldly went where man had gone hundreds of times before'—135 times, to be precise. These missions were essential to the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station, but never ventured beyond the familiar confines of low Earth orbit. Even as Russia was losing the Cold War, it was winning the final chapters of the space race, fielding a program that was better conceived and more active. Indeed, when Musk first pondered launching rockets, he went to Russia in hope of buying used ones; this entailed sitting through vodka-drenched meals with apparatchiks hoping to bilk him. In the end, he concluded that it was cheaper to make his own. In 2002, he founded SpaceX. Musk was a salesman, determined to make Washington turn its head—and sink cash into his start-up, housed in a suburban– Los Angeles warehouse, which was just beginning to cobble together its first rockets. In 2003, he trucked a seven-story rocket to D.C. and parked it outside the Air and Space Museum on the National Mall. Soon enough, the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency gave him several million dollars to help grow SpaceX. In 2006, NASA awarded him $278 million for the first installment of a new program called Commercial Orbital Transportation Services. He received these grants even though SpaceX hadn't successfully launched a rocket. (Musk and the company did not respond to a request for comment for this story.) For years, NASA had leaned on the same old set of big contractors: Northrop Grumman, Rockwell, Boeing. These were stodgy firms, anchors in the military-industrial complex, codependent on the government, with their own bureaucracies. Their projects tended to swell in cost and underperform. NASA officials knew these organization's failings and were desperate to reverse them. The shuttle program was scheduled for imminent retirement, but what would replace it? There was still a space station floating in low Earth orbit, with astronauts awaiting resupply. At the dawn of the 21st century, disruption was the magic word, incanted by investors and fetishized in the media. It was only a matter of time before the government began chasing the same trendy idea, betting that a new group of entrepreneurs would arrive on the scene to create companies that would shatter all the old models. In 2010, Barack Obama canceled Constellation, George W. Bush's program for returning to the moon. NASA was getting out of the business of owning spaceships and rockets—instead, it would rent ones owned by private firms. When Obama visited the Kennedy Space Center to announce this change in direction, he viewed one of Musk's Falcon 9 rockets, which was sitting on a launchpad. Photographers captured the young president and the budding billionaire strolling together, a passing of the torch to Musk. Although he isn't usually generous with sharing credit for his successes, even Musk admits that the Obama administration rescued SpaceX. Burning through cash and crashing test rockets, his company was nearing collapse. But the change in policy opened a reservoir of funds for him. At SpaceX's bleakest moment, which Musk also describes as 'the worst year of my life,' NASA awarded it a $1.6 billion contract to carry cargo to the International Space Station. In his state of relief and jubilation, Musk changed his computer password to 'ilovenasa.' Of all the emerging firms in the age of commercial spaceflight, SpaceX was the most deserving of success. Musk had an eye for engineering talent, and he preached an audacious vision, which attracted young idealists. Impatient, he questioned truisms and cut costs with unrelenting intensity, even if it meant buying a tool on eBay to align a rocket. Despite its strengths, SpaceX couldn't triumph in this new age, because the idea of commercialization was inherently flawed. There wasn't a market for rocket launches, asteroid mining, or spacesuit design. For his very expensive product, there was one customer, with a limited budget: the U.S. government. That realization ultimately prodded Musk into another line of business. In 2015, he created Starlink. His rockets would launch satellites into orbit to supply Earth with internet service, a far more lucrative business. Starlink turned SpaceX into a behemoth. Because SpaceX was constantly launching rockets—and not just for NASA—it kept gaining invaluable new data and insights, which allowed it to produce cheaper, better rockets. Because nothing is more exciting to an engineer than actually launching things, the company drained talent from its competition. Musk's goal wasn't to achieve the banal status of monopolist. 'The lens of getting to Mars has motivated every SpaceX decision,' Musk told Isaacson. When he created Starlink, he did so because it would supply him with the capital to build rockets powerful enough to carry humanity to Mars. Musk, who describes himself as a 'cultural Christian,' is not an especially religious person. But his imagination is fixed on the end of days—the possibility of an 'extinction event'—because his childhood experiences push his adult anxieties in the direction of the catastrophic. In South Africa, he came of age amid the decaying of the apartheid state, which had once promised to safeguard his racial caste. His family, like his society, was fracturing. When he was 8, his parents divorced. He now recalls his father as a monstrous figure. 'Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done,' Musk once told Rolling Stone. (Errol Musk told Rolling Stone that 'he has never intentionally threatened or hurt anyone,' and later said that his son's comments were about their political differences at the time.) Given this turbulence—and the paucity of reliable authority in his early life—it's hardly surprising that Musk would fear the worst. He found refuge from the world's harsh realities in the pages of sci-fi novels. But visions of apocalypse are the genre's elemental motif, and the fiction he devoured often magnified his dread. Musk sought out works that offered both cause for despair and a vision of transcendence. Those Asimov novels featured hyperrational heroes, many of them engineers, who saved humanity by building space colonies where civilization could begin anew. Musk borrowed his self-conception from these protagonists. From an early age, the colonization of Mars became Musk's idée fixe. At various points, he has described his companies as contributing to that overarching mission. Tesla's Cybertrucks are vehicles that could be adapted to traverse the Martian terrain; its solar panels, a potential energy source for a future colony. He has even reportedly claimed that his social-media platform, X, could serve as an experiment in decentralized governance—testing how a Martian outpost might use consensus as the basis for lawmaking, because he envisions a minimalist government on the red planet. At SpaceX, Musk's employees have begun sketching the contours of life on Mars. One team is designing housing and communal spaces; Musk has already named the first Martian city Terminus, after a planetary colony in Asimov's novels. Other teams are developing spacesuits tailored to the planet's harsh environment and exploring the feasibility of human reproduction there. (When The New York Times reported on these teams, Musk denied their existence.) No engineering challenge in human history rivals the audacity of making Mars a place humans can call home. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, calls it a 'fixer-upper' planet, a hilarious understatement. Mars's atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide and laced with nitrogen, among other elements and a smattering of toxins. Temperatures can plunge to –225 degrees Fahrenheit. My colleague Ross Andersen once memorably described what would happen to a human body on Mars: 'If you were to stroll onto its surface without a spacesuit, your eyes and skin would peel away like sheets of burning paper, and your blood would turn to steam, killing you within 30 seconds.' Even with a suit, protection would be tenuous: Cosmic radiation would seep through, and Martian dust storms—filled with abrasive, electrically charged particles—could bypass seams and seals. These impossible conditions are compounded by Mars's distance from Earth. Launches are feasible only about once every 26 months, when the planets' orbits align to minimize travel time and fuel requirements. Even then, it takes roughly eight months for a spacecraft to reach Mars, making it exceedingly difficult to resupply a colony or rescue its inhabitants. When challenged about these mortal dangers, Musk is disarmingly relaxed, and has said that he himself would make the journey. 'People will probably die along the way, just as happened in the settling of the United States,' he told Isaacson. 'But it will be incredibly inspiring, and we must have inspiring things in the world.' To warm the planet, he proposes detonating nuclear bombs over Mars's poles, which he claims could induce a greenhouse effect—an idea he relishes, perhaps as a troll. SpaceX once sold T-shirts bearing the slogan Nuke Mars. According to a top scientist at the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, it would take more than 10,000 nuclear-tipped missiles to carry out Musk's plan. Even Wernher von Braun's fictional doppelgänger, Dr. Strangelove, might have winced at such breezy talk of thermonuclear explosions. President Kennedy was also willing to take absurd risks in pursuit of cosmic ambition, invoking the Cold War imperative to 'bear any burden.' But he did so to demonstrate national greatness. Musk is seeking to spend trillions—and risk human lives—to demonstrate his own. Because his reality emerges from fiction, Musk is untethered from any sense of earthly constraints. His sense of his own role in the plot emerges from his desire to leap into myth. Musk's fixation on Mars also functions as a kind of ancestor worship, echoing a family mythology of flight from decline. In 1950, his grandfather Joshua Haldeman left Canada for South Africa in search of a freer society—one he believed could withstand the collapse of Western civilization. Haldeman's doomsday rhetoric railed against Jewish bankers and 'hordes of Coloured people,' whom he claimed were being manipulated to destroy 'White Christian Civilization.' In the rise of apartheid, he saw not repression but redemption, a last stand for the values he held sacred. Read: Elon Musk's anti-Semitic, apartheid-loving grandfather Like his grandfather, Musk is obsessed with staving off civilizational collapse. He does not voice his fears in openly racist terms—instead framing them in the language of freedom and survival—but he is fixated on the notion of a gene pool with diminishing intelligence. 'If each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that's probably bad,' he told the biographer Ashlee Vance. His rhetoric is provocative, but slippery enough to avoid outright extremism. Over years of statements, social-media posts, and interviews, however, a pattern has emerged: Musk sees Mars not merely as a lifeboat but as a laboratory—an opportunity to reengineer humanity. On a new planet, far from Earth's chaos and constraint, he imagines a society remade in his own image. This belief is rooted in a kind of technological social Darwinism, the idea that evolution can be steered, or even upgraded, by engineering. It's how he describes an animating premise of Neuralink, the company he co-founded that is developing brain-computer interfaces that aim to merge human cognition with machines and effectively create a species of cyborgs. The same spirit infuses Musk's obsession with procreation, and he's doing his part. He now has at least 14 children, by The Wall Street Journal 's count, with four biological mothers. In his worldview, apocalypse and salvation converge: Either we become a race of engineered brilliance, or we vanish, and Mars is the greatest opportunity for remaking humanity. In a sense, it follows a classic pattern of migration. The bold depart in search of opportunity, while those who remain face extinction. Survival becomes a test of worth. Those who stay behind will, by their inaction, mark themselves as unfit for the future. Once settlers arrive on Mars, Musk has suggested that life forms—possibly including humans—might be bioengineered to survive the planet's harsh environment. In one interview, he noted that humanity has long shaped organisms 'by sort of selective breeding.' Humans, he intimated, could be bred like cows. He's reportedly prepared to supply his own genetic material to the effort. Sources told the Times that Musk has offered to donate his sperm to help seed a Martian colony (which Musk later denied). Using a concept borrowed from Asimov's fiction, Musk says that Martian colonists will serve as 'the light of consciousness.' They are humanity's last hope, the counterweight to a dark age that could follow Earth's destruction. But what's dark is his vision of abandoning Earth and investing the species' faith in a self-selected elite, one that mirrors Musk's own values, and perhaps even his traits. The idea is megalomaniacal, and is the antithesis of the old NASA ideal: for all mankind. In the earliest hours of a spring morning, I drove across a Florida causeway, through a nature reserve filled with alligators and wild boars, to hallowed ground: Launch Complex 39A, once a stage for NASA's majesty. More than half a century ago, Apollo 11 began its ascent to the moon here. During the space race, it was perhaps the most exciting place on the planet, poised between glory and disaster: 11 Apollo missions lifted off from here, followed by 82 space-shuttle launches. NASA framed 39A for the television era: an enormous American flag fluttering at one end of the horizon, a giant digital countdown clock at the other. Even now, a weathered CBS News sign hangs on a small cinder-block building with a perfect view of the site—the same spot where Walter Cronkite once narrated liftoffs in his authoritative baritone. By 2013, the launchpad had become an expensive, unused relic, but because of its presence on the National Register of Historic Places, it couldn't be torn down. Musk coveted the site, as did his longtime competitor, Jeff Bezos. But at the time, Bezos didn't have a rocket capable of flying from 39A. SpaceX won the rights to lease the launchpad for the next 20 years. The old theater of American dreams now belonged to Musk. I arrived at 39A to watch the launch of Falcon 9—SpaceX's workhorse rocket, the height of a 20-story building—which would help deliver cargo to the International Space Station, circling in low Earth orbit. There's no alternative to the Falcon 9, and there's no rival to SpaceX. For the time being, the company is the only domestic entity, public or private, with the capacity to deliver crew and cargo to the space station. Lyndon Johnson once said that 'control of space means control of the world.' In his day, space was a way to project national strength to a global audience through displays of technical superiority. Today, it has become a domain of warfare, alongside land, sea, and air. Modern combat operations rely on space-based systems that guide munitions, coordinate communications, and spy on adversaries. Without dominance in orbit, terrestrial forces would be deaf, blind, and largely immobile. In 2019, then, the Pentagon created the Space Force as the sixth branch of the military. If space is power, then Musk's role is badly understated. It's no longer accurate to call him merely the world's richest earthling. The United States is now dependent on him in its quest to command space. Through its Starshield division, SpaceX provides space-based communication for the U.S. armed forces; its satellites can reportedly track hypersonic and ballistic missiles and extend the government's surveillance reach to nearly every corner of the globe. In April, the Space Force awarded SpaceX a majority of its contracts for a batch of national-security missions over the coming years. Some of this work involves agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office, placing it within the penumbra of classification. The true extent of the government's reliance on SpaceX is largely obscured, rarely scrutinized, and only loosely regulated. Yet the dependency is undeniable. If Musk were to withhold support—out of principle, pique, or profit motive—the government could find itself stranded. None of SpaceX's competitors yet possesses the capability to replace it. (A Space Force spokesperson said that it relies on 'a number of industry partners,' including SpaceX, and continues to seek 'to broaden the diversity of potential vendors,' adding that the Department of Defense 'exercises rigorous oversight' of its contracts. The spokesperson also denied claims that SpaceX's satellites track missiles.) The war in Ukraine has offered a chilling glimpse of the risks posed by Musk's role as interstellar gatekeeper. In the early days of the invasion, SpaceX rushed to supply Ukraine with Starlink terminals, helping to replace communications systems debilitated by Russian cyberattacks and advancing troops. It was a noble gesture and a strategic boon. Ukrainian forces, empowered by the new technology, coordinated scrappy, asymmetrical tactics that blunted Russian advances. But Musk's commitment soon wavered. In September 2022, SpaceX denied a Ukrainian request to extend Starlink coverage to Crimea, effectively blocking a planned strike on Russian naval forces in Sevastopol. (Starting that fall, Musk began speaking with Vladimir Putin at length, according to the Journal, troubling the U.S. intelligence community.) In the months that followed, the company imposed new geographic limits on Starlink's use, restricting its application in areas where Ukraine might otherwise target Russia's vulnerabilities. Musk framed the move as an act of prudent restraint that would help avert World War III. But it also exposed an unsettling reality: Ukraine's battlefield operations were subject to the discretion of a single person. 'My Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army,' he posted on X. 'Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.' Musk's preeminence marks a profound shift in the history of American political economy. During the Cold War, the military-industrial complex was driven by corporations that operated as handmaidens to the state. They had outsize influence, but remained largely bureaucratic, gray-flannel institutions—cogs in a sprawling, profitable machine. Musk is different. Years of hagiographic media coverage and his immense social-media reach birthed legions of fanboys and nurtured a cult of personality. His achievements command awe. In the damp Florida night, I stood on a sandbank and trained my eyes on Launch Complex 39A as the countdown clock ticked toward zero. And then, without the benefit of Cronkite's narration, I watched the Falcon 9 violently part the darkness, with a payload bound for the space station. A few minutes later, a light appeared in the sky: The reusable rocket was returning home. Majestic and imperious, it cast a warm glow over the palm trees. For a moment this spring, Musk's grand ambitions seemed like they might buckle. In Washington, it had long been assumed that Musk and Trump would turn on each other. When it finally happened, the spark, fittingly, was NASA. Musk had pushed to install his friend Jared Isaacman as head of the agency—a move that stank of cronyism. In 2021, Isaacman, a tech entrepreneur, had paid SpaceX millions to chase a childhood dream of flying to space. That deal soon led to a friendship, and eventually, his company owning a stake in SpaceX itself. Read: MAGA goes to Mars When Trump soured on Musk, he struck where it hurt most. Annoyed after learning of Isaacman's past donations to Democratic campaigns, the president withdrew the nomination on May 31. Musk received the move as one in a string of betrayals and erupted online, warning that the Jeffrey Epstein files would implicate Trump and that the president's spending bill was a 'disgusting abomination.' The clash soon shifted to space. Musk threatened to decommission the spacecraft resupplying the International Space Station; Trump blustered that he would order a review of SpaceX's government contracts. Yet for all the rancor, there is no sign that SpaceX has actually suffered. Trump and Musk have dismembered the federal bureaucracy, but its old tendencies are still prevailing; the apparatus clings to the vendors that have delivered results. Even as Trump raged, Washington's dependence on Musk was growing. In June, a Space Force commander said that SpaceX will play a crucial part in the MILNET program, a new constellation of 480-plus satellites. Reportedly, the Pentagon will pay for it; the intelligence community will oversee it; Musk will run it. In its proposed 2026 budget, the Trump administration moved to bankroll Musk's deeper ambitions, albeit with a fraction of the gargantuan sum required. Trump has proposed spending $1 billion to accelerate a mission to Mars and fund the design of spacesuits, landing systems, and other technologies that would make a voyage feasible. The money spent on human space exploration will be pried from NASA's other programs, even as the agency's total budget is set to shrink by nearly 25 percent and its workforce by one-third. To fulfill Musk's cosmic destiny, the administration is gutting NASA's broader scientific mission—the thing that NASA does best. (When asked about this shift, a NASA spokesperson described 'leading the way in human exploration of our solar system' as the agency's 'core mission,' and added that it is 'contributing to a competitive market that will increase commercial innovation.') Human spaceflight has floundered for decades, haunted by its inability to replicate its greatest achievements and whipsawed by changing presidential priorities. And the importance of astronauts to the enterprise of exploration, which was always questionable, has further diminished as the quality of robots has improved. At the same time, and without attracting the same kind of fanfare, NASA continues to display extraordinary acumen in science; its research initiatives are arguably the most profound ventures in all of government. They address the greatest mysteries in the universe: How did life begin? Are we alone in the cosmos? The government—so often viewed as a soul-sapping bureaucracy—has helped supply answers to these most spiritual of questions. In the late 1980s and early '90s, the Cosmic Background Explorer provided empirical support for the Big Bang theory. In 2020, after the OSIRIS-REx probe reached the asteroid Bennu, it collected a sample from a type of primordial projectile thought to have delivered life's building blocks to early Earth. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA helped determine the age of the universe, affirmed the existence of dark energy, and extended humanity's gaze into distant galaxies and black holes. By capturing light from galaxies as they existed more than 13 billion years ago, one of NASA's telescopes has effectively peered into the universe's distant past. For all of Musk's mockery of NASA's supposed lack of ambition, the agency had already mounted a daring campaign to explore Mars—albeit with robots, not settlers. Over the decades, it sent a fleet of rovers (Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, Perseverance) to wander the plains of the red planet, drilling into rock and searching for ancient traces of water and life. NASA's lenses point inward as well as outward. Its satellites have documented the melting of the polar ice caps and the destruction of forests, alerting humanity to the planet's precarity. Unlike the technological spin-offs NASA often touts to Congress to justify its existence, these discoveries aren't fleeting breakthroughs in applied engineering. They are the path to humanity's self-knowledge—discoveries that private firms will never pursue, because their value can't be monetized. Put differently, Trump's budget is a cultural document. It reflects a shift in public values. Not so long ago, the astronomer Carl Sagan shaped how Americans thought about space. He did so through elegant books and his television series, Cosmos, which reached an estimated 500 million viewers worldwide. At its core, his project was to extol the virtues of the scientific method, which requires and promotes skepticism and humility—a way of thinking that could help society resist the lure of authoritarianism. He exuded wonder, a value he hoped to cultivate in Americans, and harkened back to the humanism of the Enlightenment, which was unfussy about the boundaries between philosophy and science. Every time I see Musk, I think of Sagan—because Musk is his opposite. He is a creature not of science but of engineering. He owes his fortune to the brute force of his rockets, and the awe they inspire. There's nothing humble about his manner. Rather than celebrate the fragile, improvised nature of human existence, Musk seeks to optimize or overwrite it—in the name of evolution, in pursuit of profit, in the vainglorious fulfillment of his adolescent fantasies. Where Sagan envisioned cooperation, Musk embodies the triumph of the individual. Where Sagan cautioned against the unintended consequences of technology, Musk charges headlong into the next disruption. That rush will eventually sweep away many of the old strictures confining him. For more than 50 years, the U.S. government has mulled missions to Mars and never mustered the political will to fund one. Elon Musk is doing just that. SpaceX is planning to launch its first uncrewed mission to Mars—neither funded nor formally sanctioned by NASA—in late 2026, timed for planetary alignment. Musk himself pegs the odds of hitting that 2026 window at 50–50. His history of theatrics and unmet deadlines suggests that those odds may be overstated. But this is more than bluster. He is building the most powerful rocket in human history, testing it at a relentless pace, and forcing it toward viability through sheer will. However speculative his timelines, they point to a plausible destination: the day when Musk escapes the gravitational pull of the U.S. government. The story of Elon Musk can be told using the genre of fiction that he reveres most. In an act of hubris, NASA gave life to a creature called SpaceX, believing it could help achieve humanity's loftiest ambitions. But, as in all great parables about technology, the creation eclipsed the creator. What was meant to be a partner became a force of domination. The master lost control. And so begins a new part of the tale: a dystopian chapter written in the language of liberation.
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Republicans, Democrats are held captive by extremes. Americans need a new party.
Does America need a viable third political party? Republicans and Democrats alike sound off – and actually agreed on something – in our latest Opinion Forum. In June – which yes, feels like a lifetime ago – billionaire and former first buddy Elon Musk began floating the idea of an "America Party" on the social media platform he's colonized. Originally a response to President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Musk viewed as an "insane spending bill," this new third party would "actually represent the 80% in the middle" and give voters back their "freedom." It's an interesting idea – and not necessarily new. America, as we're reminded every general election, does have more than two political parties, but those splintered factions rarely result in anything of consequence. Instead, our politics are an endless ping-pong match between Republicans and Democrats – which many Americans increasingly view as two sides of the same coin. So is a true multiparty system the way forward? And is Musk, as divisive as he is, the one to lead it? Those were some of the questions we asked USA TODAY readers for our latest Forum. We heard people from each political party and found some surprising consensus. Read their responses below. A third party isn't enough. America needs an entirely new system. America doesn't just need a third party – it needs a full-spectrum awakening. The system we're living in isn't just outdated ‒ it's misaligned with the reality of who we are today. Tradition has its place, but clinging to it out of habit keeps us locked into patterns that no longer serve us. The problems we face now are wildly different from those of the past, so why are we still trying to solve them with yesterday's blueprints? We need more than another political faction; we need a radical reimagining of how representation works. For too long, our politics have been stuck in black-and-white thinking: left or right, red or blue, us versus them. The idea that one person – usually male, usually from a singular political perspective – can fully represent an entire nation is outdated. Lived experience matters. And no matter how well-intentioned he may be, a man cannot truly fight for women the way a woman can. The same goes in reverse. Each brings something vital to the table, and that's why America needs more than just a third party – it needs a shared leadership model. Your Turn: President Trump, I supported you. Release the Epstein list – or resign. | Opinion Forum Imagine a presidency not defined by solo power but co-led by two individuals with contrasting yet complementary identities ‒ say, a woman and a man from different ideological spaces. Together, they could challenge groupthink, broaden empathy and offer layered approaches to complex issues. Conflict wouldn't be avoided ‒ it'd be used as a strength to build deeper solutions. Our most marginalized voices wouldn't be tokens ‒ they'd have champions on both sides. Sure, this idea may cause some readers to flip their lids. But history has shown us that progress doesn't come wrapped in comfort. It comes when someone says 'What if?' and dares to sketch it out loud. As for Elon Musk? He didn't build with a brain ‒ he built with money. He footed bills and took credit. He couldn't hold a thought together or support his own child for being themselves. That's not genius. That's cowardice. Power without empathy is a threat, not a solution. We don't need leaders who smile for the cameras while people suffer. We need firewalls, not figureheads. If you can't fight for people without cash behind them, you don't get to represent any of us. The Republican Party is consumed by extremism and fear tactics. The Democratic Party is fractured and too often indecisive. Both chase headlines while families struggle, health care costs explode and trust erodes. Neither party centers everyday people, and that's the core failure. — Kayleisha Miller, Coal Township, Pennsylvania Our political parties have been lost to oligarchs. We need a shake-up. We need a viable third party to shake up the status quo. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are being held hostage by the extreme right and left of their parties. We need a party that is not beholden to American oligarchs. It needs to govern with common sense and realize that compromise is not a four-letter word. As a nation, we used to value these traits. Now it's a take-no-hostage era. Do you want to take part in our next Forum? Join the conversation by emailing forum@ You can also follow us on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and sign up for our Opinion newsletter to stay updated on future Forum posts. Musk is one of the oligarchs of the United States. He is a businessman whose sole raison d'être is to make a profit. One cannot run a nation like one runs a company. Both parties are being held captive by the extreme right and left wings of their parties. The Democrats have lost their focus on the issues that mean the most to the people. They have forgotten who the working people are in this nation. They need to realize people don't want a cradle-to-grave nanny state. The Republicans have come under the spell of authoritarian governance. As much as they profess to care about the working people, they care more about the American oligarchs. — Paul Tonello, Sparks, Nevada If we had better people in power, two parties would be enough. But we don't. If there were representatives who would vote to represent the people who elected them on different issues, rather than always being in lockstep, a two-party system works very well. A multiparty system that requires different coalitions on different issues would work better than what is happening in Congress. I believe that fiscal responsibility, compassion for those in need, smaller government and stewardship of national assets would win the greatest coalition's vote. Musk's resources are important, but getting moderates from each party to be involved would be more important. Also, getting more people who are not currently involved in politics could make it very powerful. Neither party is doing anything to make the future better for our children and grandchildren. I wish we had good people instead of people who thrive on power and ego. — LaMar Stephenson, Spanish Fork, Utah It's a matter of when, not if, a third party will emerge in America The existing two-party system limits the people's choices. They coexist in a symbiotic relationship. Much like defense and plaintiff attorneys. They need each other to exist. Loyalty among the members is first to their respective party, not the Constitution. In my sphere of connections across all of America, I have yet to meet a person who does not believe a third party is a necessity. It is my belief that the time of a two-party system has passed. A new political system is a necessity. If we have a third option, more fiscally conservative and socially moderate, this country will be better served. When, not if, this happens, the legacy parties might wake up and realize they have lost touch with the American system. It is incumbent on the news media, which has also polarized, to begin an honest reporting of this movement. A third party should be fiscally conservative and socially moderate, protecting the future of America and not buying votes by borrowing from the future. The youth of America will wake up and align with a new model. Musk has the resources to overcome the start-up challenges of a viable third party. He has clearly shown his commitment to improving government and its misdirected leadership. But he is not the person to lead the party. We need a charismatic younger leader who comes from the heartland, has been in the actual world and served his country. Service in the military is important. It's too easy to place young Americans in harm's way when they have not also made that choice. Look at how few elected officials have served or have children in service. Service can take many forms that reflect their passion for serving the United States. The two parties exist to support each other. Loyalty by their members is to the party, not the country. Congress demands this loyalty. Leadership punishes those with loyalty to country above party. — Bob Jones, Dadeville, Alabama We need a political party that isn't beholden to the rich The present political parties are beholden to the rich. We need a party that also hears the people. A better party would focus on middle-class needs, education, helping college kids with their future, present and past college bills. It would focus on the environment and upholding and advancing the ideals of the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty the pursuit of happiness and equality for all. We need a party that has a little nuance on issues and looks for ways to solve problems with compromise. Our young people need affordable housing. Medical care should not be tied to employment. And we need to restore the sense of community that we have lost in some places ‒ a sense that there is something greater than me. Musk is not the person to lead a third party. He has done too much damage by reelecting President Donald Trump and with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. I suppose his money could be useful. The Republican Party is firmly under the control of Trump. He is corrupt, cruel and embraces chaos. The GOP should be renamed the CCCP. Most of the Democratic leaders do not know how to resist Trump. There needs to be a moral rebirth in our nation. Many are morally blind to Trump and his actions. Who are we? What does it mean to be an American? What is right and wrong? Many are under the influence of conspiracy theories and do not realize that they are being played for money. — Rick Jones, Mount Gilead, Ohio You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
