Elon Musk quietly funded a $20.5 million super PAC that ran ads positioning Trump’s abortion stance through an unexpected lens: Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Elon Musk emerged as the only financier of a super PAC that was established shortly before the election and focused on running ads that aimed to persuade voters that Donald Trump’s position on abortion was similar to that of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The super PAC known as RBG PAC was established in mid-October and received a single donation of $20.5 million from an entity identified as the “Elon Musk Revocable Trust” a week later, as outlined in federal campaign finance records submitted this week. Due to the tight timeline between the donation and the reporting deadline on Thursday, Musk’s connection to the group, which he had not publicly discussed, was only disclosed when the filings were made public.
In the final weeks leading up to the November 5 election, the RBG PAC showcased a television advertisement highlighting Trump’s statements that he would not, if elected president, endorse a national abortion ban, along with a narrator emphasizing that he “does support reasonable exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.”
Ginsburg believed that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to an abortion, though she suggested in 2012 that the landmark Roe v. Wade decision “moved too far too fast,” potentially changing how the debate over abortion rights played out over the ensuing decades.
Trump nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in 2022. That allowed many conservative-led states to ban or restrict access to abortion.
According to a report filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission, the Musk entity spent nearly all of its money on digital ads, mailers and text messages.
That group’s funding represents a small fraction of the more than $200 million Musk spent in the 2024 election cycle, most of it through his super PAC intended to elect Trump, a signal of the influence wealthy people are angling to wield in U.S. politics and Trump’s incoming administration.
The world’s richest man, Musk poured millions into a get-out-the-vote effort to help the former president return to the White House. He is known politically for having transformed Twitter into X, a platform embraced by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” enthusiasts.
Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, ran ads that warned if people sat out the election, “Kamala and the crazies will win.” The PAC launched a $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes that landed the group in court before a judge said it was allowed to continue.
Thursday’s filing came as Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy were on Capitol Hill for closed-door meetings with lawmakers to discuss Trump’s DOGE initiative to dismantle parts of the federal government.
Trump tapped the two business titans to head his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a nongovernmental task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations — as part of his “Save America” agenda for a second term in the White House.
