Billionaire Elon Musk forms new political party in the US.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk announced the formation of a new party to challenge the Democrats and Republicans, called the America Party.
"You want a new political party and you will get it. Today, the American Party has been formed to give you back your freedom," Elon Musk announced on social media on July 5th.
The day before, the tech billionaire cited the results of a poll he conducted on X, which asked respondents whether they wanted "independence from the two-party system" that had governed American politics for about two centuries. The poll received more than 1.2 million responses.
In the post announcing the party's formation, Musk stated that two-thirds of those surveyed supported the new party.
It remains unclear how Elon Musk's new party will impact the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election.
Musk, the world's richest man, was Donald Trump's biggest political donor in the 2024 presidential campaign. Musk previously led efforts to cut federal spending and workforce as head of the Department of Government Performance (DOGE).
Musk also disagreed with Trump on the spending plan known as the "Big Beautiful Act" and vowed to do everything he could to defeat the lawmakers who voted for it.
Musk criticized both the Democratic and Republican parties, citing the sharp increase in government budget deficits under their respective administrations. He stated his desire to build a fiscally conservative party that tightly controls spending, but offered few other details about the party's platform.
Musk cannot run for president under the U.S. Constitution because he was born in South Africa, but his formation of a new party could cause the Republican Party to lose many voters.
On July 4th, Musk outlined a viable political plan to win vulnerable seats in the House and Senate and become the "decisive vote" on key legislation. "One way to do this is to focus on two or three Senate seats and eight to ten House seats," the billionaire said.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are re-elected every two years, while about one-third of the 100 seats in the Senate, which serve six-year terms, are also re-elected every two years.
Some point to how third-party campaigns have historically split votes, such as businessman Ross Perot's independent presidential campaign in 1992, which contributed to the failure of George H.W. Bush's re-election bid, leading to the victory of Democratic candidate Bill Clinton.
"Musk is just following in Ross Perot's footsteps. I don't like this approach at all," one commenter wrote on X.
