Despite Trump’s Relentless Attack on Renewables, Solar Surpassed Coal Energy in US for First Time in May

“Solar is cheaper, cleaner, more reliable,” said Rep. Jared Huffman. “Trump needs to end his war on clean energy and get on board with what’s best for America.”


Landowners, educators, and government employees stand under solar panels during a tour of a Solar Stampede site in Saltillo, Texas on May 28, 2026.
(Photo by Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Jun 11, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Since taking office 16 months ago, President Donald Trump has gone to extreme lengths to try to reverse the undeniable trend in the direction of solar power and away from expensive, planet-heating coal—but two new reports reveal how, despite Trump’s relentless efforts, Americans are using renewable solar energy to power their homes and businesses more than ever.

The global energy think tank Ember revealed Wednesday that in May, for the first ever, solar supplied more of the United States’ electricity than coal, at 12.8%. Coal dropped to its fourth-lowest point last month, delivering just 12.2% of electricity. Solar also became the third-largest source of electricity in May, behind gas and nuclear power.

The previous month, coal hit an all-time low, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration analyzed by Ember.

Another report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and the analytics firm Wood Mackenzie found that solar and battery storage accounted for 91% of all new energy generation capacity in the first quarter of 2026.

The news comes a week after Trump announced $700 million in new funding for the nation’s coal industry, some of which is planned for the building of two brand-new coal-fired plants, which would be the first to be built in the US in 13 years.

US Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) compared Trump’s latest effort to “lighting $700 million taxpayer dollars on fire,” but emphasized that “the proof is there.”

“Solar is cheaper, cleaner, more reliable,” he said. “Trump needs to end his war on clean energy and get on board with what’s best for America.”



Last week’s announcement is one of numerous steps Trump has taken to prop up coal, one of the fossil fuels that scientists warn are heating the planet and increasingly causing destructive extreme weather events.

In February the president ordered the Pentagon to sign taxpayer-funded contracts with coal plants that otherwise would have been retired in the coming years, to provide electricity to military installations.

The Department of Energy also pledged $625 million to “expand and reinvigorate America’s coal industry,” an effort that has run into opposition even from the industry itself. In Colorado, two utilities, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and the Platte River Power Authority, which co-own a coal-fired plant the administration has demanded stay in operation, filed a petition earlier this year asking the DOE to allow them to close the facility, saying they’ve built solar and wind farms and that being forced to buy coal and maintain the plant amounts to a violation of the US Constitution’s takings clause.

While demanding that coal production continues, Trump has taken direct aim at the booming solar industry—canceling projects and terminating $7 billion in funding for an affordable renewable energy program.

On the online news show “Breaking Points,” Ryan Grim noted that solar and wind power surged in the first quarter before Trump joined Israel in waging war on Iran, a decision that sent oil prices skyrocketing.

“I would imagine the second quarter is going to see 98%” of energy generating capacity coming from solar power, said Grim.

“Who out there is like, ‘You know, what we need to do is invest deeply in building out our fossil fuel infrastructure’ at this point?” he said.

Former Governors Call Trump SNAP Cuts a ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ as Hunger Surges

“SNAP participation is already declining at alarming rates, with over 3.5 million people leaving” the program since the passage of the GOP budget law, the Democratic senators said.


A child helps load food boxes during the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service at the OC Food Bank in Garden Grove, California on Monday, January 19, 2026.
(Photo by Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Jun 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Several US senators who formerly served as their states’ governors on Tuesday warned that the cuts to food aid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act are a “ticking time bomb” for millions of Americans.

In a joint statement, Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Angus King (I-Maine) drew on their experiences as governors to outline how the changes made to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the GOP’s 2025 budget law would soon handcuff state governments’ ability to deliver essential assistance.



Report Finds ‘Remarkable Increase in Food Insecurity’ Across US Under Trump



Over 700,000 Poor Kids Across 12 States Have Lost Food Aid Under Trump-GOP Budget Law

“Starting October 2027, most states will be required to pay 5% to 15% of SNAP benefit costs for the first time,” the senators said. “The Congressional Budget Office projects this will shift more than $35 billion from the federal government to states between 2028 and 2034, with states expected to respond by cutting another $7 billion in food assistance.”


The senators said that the GOP’s SNAP cuts mean states “will be forced to raise taxes, cut education, healthcare, or transportation, or restrict access to SNAP itself,” with some being “forced to drop the program entirely.”

They then pointed to numbers showing that “SNAP participation is already declining at alarming rates, with over 3.5 million people leaving” the program since the passage of the GOP budget law.

The senators’ warnings about the impact of the SNAP cuts came shortly after a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showing food insecurity in the US reaching its highest levels since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The New York Fed researchers said their study found “a remarkable increase in food insecurity, particularly among lower-educated and lower-income households and households with young children,” as well as “a contemporaneous increase in pessimism among the same groups, along with a sharp decline in job-finding expectations.”

Despite this, Trump-appointed US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins last month described millions of people losing their access to SNAP as a positive sign that “America is back in business.”

When confronted by Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) about this during a House Agriculture Committee hearing last week, Rollins baselessly claimed that all of the people who had been removed from SNAP had been added to the program fraudulently, including “200,000 dead people.”

Trump Official Lies That ‘No One Was Kicked Off’ SNAP as Millions Lose Food Aid—Including Kids

“Did 700,000 children simply not apply?” asked one advocate in response to USDA chief Brooke Rollins’ Senate testimony.

US Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins testifies during a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill on June 10, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Jun 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


The head of the US Department of Agriculture on Wednesday falsely told senators that “no one was kicked off” the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, claiming that the millions of people—including many children—who have lost federal nutrition assistance in recent months were no longer eligible for aid or decided not to apply for it.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins declared that “no one in Washington or in America wants to see a family go hungry,” but insisted that anyone who is no longer receiving SNAP benefits has “chosen not to reapply or they’re an able-bodied adult that can either work for 20 hours a week or volunteer.”

Rollins’ testimony conflicts with a growing number of anecdotal reports and expert analyses showing that families across the United States are losing SNAP benefits at the fastest rate in decades. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimates that at least 700,000 children have lost SNAP since President Donald Trump signed into law a Republican budget package last summer, enacting the largest-ever cuts to the federal nutrition program.




“Did 700,000 children simply not apply?” Rachel Sabella, director of the No Kid Hungry New York campaign, asked in response to Rollins’ remarks.

Katie Bergh, a CBPP policy analyst, pointed to recent reporting by NBC News, which spoke to a mother of two in Arizona who said her “benefits stopped without warning three months ago” after the state began implementing new eligibility requirements included in the Republican budget law.

“It’s been really hard,” the mother said. “We’ve been going to food banks every week... We’re eating less, we’re eating more frozen stuff.”

Rollins, a multimillionaire, has openly celebrated the massive and rapid decline in SNAP participation during Trump’s second White House term, claiming that the roughly 4 million people who have been “moved” off the program are closer to realizing “the American dream”—even as hunger grows to levels not seen since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This is a celebration of work and the dignity of work,” Rollins told senators on Wednesday.

But CBPP concluded in an analysis released in late April that the “dramatic” loss of SNAP benefits across the country “cannot be explained by a rapid improvement in people’s economic well-being or reduced need for help affording food.”

“Labor force data show that the unemployment rate was flat between July 2025 and March 2026, the most recent data available,” the think tank observed. “A more likely explanation for why people are losing access to food assistance is that states are now facing new challenges as they respond to the cuts in [the Republican budget law]—the largest in the program’s history.”

Palestine Defenders Say Western Nations’ New Sanctions on Israeli Settlers ‘Not Enough’

“These are tiny and piecemeal steps which will not prevent Israel from continuing to act with impunity in its genocide and crimes against the Palestinian people,” said one group.


Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich holds a map of an area near the illegal settlement of Maale Adumim outside Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, on August 14, 2025.
(Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jun 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

While some advocates for Palestinian rights welcomed Tuesday’s joint announcement by a group of Western nations of new sanctions targeting “extremist” Israeli settlers amid their escalating ethnic cleansing efforts in the illegally occupied West Bank, many others called the measures inadequate and urged stronger action against Israel’s government for enabling settler violence.

The foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, France, Norway, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement announcing “coordinated action to introduce sanctions and other measures to hold extremist settlers accountable for the horrific levels of settler violence against Palestinian civilians.”

France joined the other four nations and New Zealand—which is coordinating sanctions with the group—in banning Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who seeks to annex the West Bank and Gaza and lives in the illegal settlement of Kedumim, from entering their countries. Members of the coalition also slapped an entry ban on four leaders of settler organizations and 21 individual settlers.

“We are today imposing new sanctions against those responsible for intensifying colonization and violence in the West Bank,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on social media. “Smotrich actively promotes the annexation of the West Bank, which he openly claims, the creation of new settlements in the West Bank, the recolonization of Gaza, the economic collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and its deleterious consequences on the Palestinian population.”

British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper said Tuesday during a speech in Parliament that “settler expansion and violence is illegal and a fundamental threat to the viability of a two-state solution, and to long-term peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”

“I have strengthened our business risk guidance to make it clear and unambiguous: If you are a British citizen or business, you should not conduct any economic and financial activities in illegal Israeli settlements,” Cooper added.

Coalition countries previously banned Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from entry. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has reportedly requested arrest warrants for Smotrich and Ben-Gvir for the crime of apartheid related to their plans, backed by the Trump administration in the United States, to expand illegal settler colonies in the West Bank and annex the occupied territory. The ICC issued warrants in 2024 for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.

“Extremist violent settlers, with the backing of their supporters, continue to attack Palestinians and abuse their human rights,” Tuesday’s announcement states. “They use violence to displace Palestinians, destroy property, and perpetuate the illegal settlement enterprise, undermining the viability of the state of Palestine and the prospects for peaceful coexistence.”

“For too long, violent settlers have been able to act with near impunity, and settlement expansion and creation of outposts continue with the support and facilitation of the government of Israel,” the ministers said. “In some cases, settler violence takes place under the protection of Israel’s security forces. We continue to urge the government of Israel to take action to ensure meaningful accountability for violence in the West Bank.”

The statement noted that the five countries “have all taken the historic decision to recognize the state of Palestine, reflecting the rights of the Palestinian people and as part of our common efforts to protect the viability of the two-state solution.”

“Today, we are acting together again in support of the same objectives,” the ministers asserted. “We stand ready to take more action if the government of Israel does not take urgent steps to address the situation on the ground.”

Many Palestinians and their advocates said the sanctions don’t go far enough.

“While this is a step in the right direction, it is woefully inadequate,” Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot said on social media. “We are beyond words of condemnation. Israel has demonstrated, time and again, its disregard for international law.”



“Words without action are not diplomacy. It is abdicating responsibilities,” Zomlot continued. “What is needed now is clear: a ban on settlement products, comprehensive sanctions on those profiting from illegal settlements and the state sponsoring them, and guarantees that British companies, banks, and financial institutions are not contributing to Israel’s illegal occupation.”

“Justice cannot wait,” the ambassador added. “The time for meaningful action is now.”

Amnesty International UK crisis response manager Kristyan Benedict called the new sanctions “a step, but not enough.”

“If ministers are serious about sanctioning those ‘who support and sponsor violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank’, they must act on the reality that settlements and settler violence are state policy—directed and funded from the top,” Benedict argued.

“Targeting settler financing networks while the ministers who run this campaign face no consequences is not meaningful accountability—it leaves the architects untouched,” he stressed, calling on the UK government to also sanction Netanyahu, Gallant, current Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Settlement Minister Orit Strock.

“The legal obligation is clear, but the political will is still not strong enough,” Benedict added. “Successive UK governments have failed to take meaningful action to stop Israel’s crimes and those that enable them. That failure sends a dangerous message that Palestinian lives are not valued and that unlawful occupation and apartheid are acceptable. This must end now.”

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign said in a statement that “whilst any move towards additional sanctions is correct, these are tiny and piecemeal steps which will not prevent Israel from continuing to act with impunity in its genocide and crimes against the Palestinian people.”

“In addition to these limited sanctions, the government has announced that it will ‘firmly advise’ British businesses against illegal activity, sending the disgraceful message that acting according to international law is optional,” PSC added.

This week, around 140 Labour members of UK Parliament urged Cooper to take “urgent, concrete action to counter the escalation of violations against Palestinians” by “ending trade with illegal Israeli settlements.”

Adil Haque, executive editor at Just Security and distinguished professor at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, said on X: “Better something than nothing, but if the aim is the removal of *all* illegal settlements, then targeted sanctions against a few groups and individuals will not do much.”

Iranian-Canadian journalist Samira Mohyeddin replied to a social media post from Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand saying her country’s government “continues to oppose the expansion of settlements,” asking, “How?”

“How do you oppose them? Sanction ISRAEL,” Mohyeddin asserted. “Those supporting the settlers are the Israeli state. Those who are arming them are the Israeli state. And it is Canadian Zionist charities that are funding them.”





Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the country’s government “firmly rejects the disgraceful measures adopted by foreign governments against Israeli citizens, entities, and a government minister,” accusing the six nations of attempting to “impose a political stance regarding the right of Jews to settle in the Land of Israel and concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—camouflaged as measures against violence.”

The ministry also blasted what it called the countries’ “resounding failure” to “combat the antisemitism that is rampant in their own countries,” adding that “anti-Israeli policies of the kind adopted today only serve to fuel that antisemitism.”

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice—where Israel is currently facing a genocide case related to the Gaza war, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded—found the occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The ICJ also ruled that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law.

Efforts by the Israeli government, military, and settlers to expand West Bank settlement activity have accelerated dramatically since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. With the world’s attention focused on Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have ramped up the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the occupied territory.

Attacks on West Bank Palestinians, including pogroms carried out by mobs of settlers protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have killed at least 1,098 Palestinians between October 7, 2023 and May 18, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. At least 240 of the slain victims were children.

Israeli settlers frequently attack Palestinian homes, businesses, and farms, and other critical infrastructure. The attackers burn homes, destroy crops, kill or steal livestock, and sometimes forcibly expel residents. Journalists who document the assaults and international activists trying to protect locals from the rampaging assailants have also been attacked.

Israel Escalating Ethnic Cleansing in West Bank ‘Before the Eyes of the Entire World’: Amnesty

“This is not the work of rogue actors,” said the human rights group’s secretary general. “What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation.”


Palestinians attempt to extinguish a fire in an agricultural field set by Israeli settlers in the town of Huwara, near Nablus, West Bank, Palestine on June 6, 2026.
(Photo by Nedal Eshtayah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Jun 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The international community is allowing the Israeli government to carry out an explicit policy of “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians in the West Bank that is rapidly accelerating, according to a report out Wednesday from Amnesty International.

The human rights group said the world must intervene to stop what it described as a campaign of forcible displacement, rampant state-backed violence by Israeli settlers, demolitions of Palestinian homes, and tightening restrictions on Palestinian access to land and water.

Using United Nations data, Amnesty determined that at least 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding communities faced full or partial displacement between January 2023 and April 2026, with about 45 communities totally depopulated.

Nearly 6,000 people were forced from their homes during that time, roughly 17% of the Palestinian population in the Israeli-controlled Area C’s Bedouin and herding communities.




Amnesty found that Israeli authorities demolished more than 3,400 Palestinian homes and structures in Area C during that time, displacing more than 3,000 Palestinians.

The group describes this systematic displacement as explicit Israeli state policy. The government advanced plans for more than 50,000 settler housing units from 2023-25 and authorized 102 new settlements by April 2026, the largest number ever approved by an Israeli government.

This has coincided with a dramatic increase in violence by armed Israeli settlers, who have set fire to homes and farmlands, vandalized schools and agricultural equipment, cut electricity lines and dumped water tanks, and beaten and killed Palestinian residents.

The UN’s Office on the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calculated that four settler attacks have occurred per day on average in the roughly two years following October 7, 2023, and have only grown more frequent this year, particularly after Israel and the US’s joint attack on Iran, which was followed by an invasion of Lebanon that has also entailed mass destruction of homes and the forced displacement of over a million residents.

In several documented cases, armed settler attackers have been escorted or accompanied by Israeli soldiers, who have at times taken part in the destruction.

“Over the past three and a half years, Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing, and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.

“This is not the work of rogue actors or what the international community has repeatedly labeled as extremist settlers, organizations or one or two ministers,” she said. “What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world.”

The report comes just a day after a group of Western nations—including the UK, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway—announced coordinated sanctions against Israeli individuals and organizations accused of financing and enabling settler violence in the West Bank.

However, Amnesty argued that these measures were too narrow.

“These limited measures are woefully insufficient to address the state campaign of ethnic cleansing and the systemic violations that have been rapidly increasing before the eyes of the international community,” Callamard said.

She said states, “particularly those with influence over Israel,” including the US, the UK, Germany, Italy, and other European Union and Arab States, needed to “ban all trade, investment, and any form of cooperation or financial assistance that contribute to Israel’s unlawful occupation, system of apartheid, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

Callamard added that states “must impose targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against Israeli officials directly implicated in these acts.” She included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right settler politicians like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as settlers who have allegedly committed acts of murder, like Yinon Levi, who was filmed last year shooting and killing human rights activist Awda al-Hathaleen and was released from custody after a day.

Callamard said, “Without accountability, Palestinian communities across the West Bank will vanish before our eyes.”

World’s Richest Man Elon Musk Denounced for Stoking Violence After Knife Attack in Belfast

“Elon Musk is a national security threat,” said one London politician.


Anti-immigrant mobs set cars and buildings on fire on Lendrick Street in Belfast, Northern Ireland on June 9, 2026 following a stabbing by a refugee.
(Photo by PA/PA Images via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Jun 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Politicians in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom on Wednesday were denouncing mobs of masked rioters who had spent Tuesday night setting fire to properties, buses, and cars in Belfast and forcing immigrant families to flee their homes in fear, following a stabbing attack in which a Sudanese immigrant is the suspect.

But along with the groups of anti-immigration agitators in the Northern Ireland capital and elsewhere in the country, local leaders reserved particular condemnation for one man who was thousands of miles away from the violence and who, as one member of Parliament said, has likely “never been to and possibly never heard of North Belfast” before he began inciting the mobs there: tech billionaire and right-wing megadonor Elon Musk.

After a graphic video of Monday night’s attack on a Belfast man, Steven Ogilvy, circulated online Tuesday, Musk used his platform, X, to share a post by far-right, anti-immigrant activist Tommy Robinson in which Robinson had listed places where his supporters could gather to protest “yet another invader attack on our people.”

“Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!” said Musk.

He also shared a post by MP Rupert Lowe of the far-right Restore Britain Party, which appeared to include a screenshot of the video of the knife attack and was captioned, “Millions must go.”

At Novara Media, investigative journalist Paul Holden said far-right politicians and their supporters were pushing the “central lie” that “immigrants are an ‘alien culture.’”

“'We’ve imported an alien culture that venerates bloodlust.’... That’s not true,” he said. “That fundamentally isn’t true.”



After Musk, the world’s richest person, broadcast the call to his 240 million followers in X, immigrant families in Belfast had to be escorted by emergency responders out of their homes as masked mobs set fire to their neighborhoods as well as creating roadblocks by moving garbage cans and setting them ablaze.

Sudanese business owners in central Belfast were forced to close their stores and lock them with steel shutters before 4:00 pm on Tuesday out of fear of being attacked. The Belfast Islamic Center canceled evening prayers.

“We are telling our congregation to go home, don’t go out, look after your children, don’t share rumors, and do listen to the authorities,” Ameer Ibrahim, a project manager, told The Guardian.

Anna Turley, a member of Parliament and chair of the Labour Party, suggested in an interview with Times Radio that Musk was one of many “bad faith actors who are sitting often many, many miles away. It’s easy for them to stoke these things up.”

Asked if she was referring to the Tesla CEO, Turley said, “He’s not living in the kind of communities where we’re seeing this kind of activity. He’s not at risk.”

“He has a responsibility, everyone in public and civil life has a responsibility to call for calm and not to stoke grievance or hatred or division or tension that puts vulnerable people and our communities at risk,” she added.

The suspect in Monday night’s knife attack has been named as Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old man who claimed asylum when he entered Northern Ireland in 2023. Nearly 4 million people have been forced to flee Sudan since 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces, exacerbating disease outbreaks and the country’s economic and political instability.

Alodid has authorization to stay in the UK until 2028. He was charged with attempted murder and possessing a knife in a public place. Authorities say there is no indication that the attack was related to terrorism. He appeared in a magistrate court Wednesday where a judge refused Alodid bail and adjourned the case until July 8.

The victim of the attack lost his left eye and sustained injuries on his face and back, according to The Guardian.

His family released a statement through Phillip Brett, who represents Belfast North in the Legislative Assembly, saying that they were “completely devastated by the horrific attack on our loved one” and emphasizing that the violence that rocked the city overnight Tuesday was “not welcome.”

“We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including in our healthcare system and hospitality sector, and we depend on them to make our country work,” said the family. “We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility.”

John Finucane, a member of Parliament from North Belfast who represents Sinn Féin, told Sky News that Musk’s decision to urge anti-immigrant mobs to gather in response to the attack was “not fair for the victim. It’s not fair for the people of North Belfast who are trying to sew themselves back together after what they witnessed.”



“They need our support,” he said. “They do not need to be used for a wider political agenda.”

Turley told LBC Wednesday that Musk’s posts on the attack were “appalling.”

“Anyone that is seeking to drive and exploit a situation like this to drive their own political agenda is grievously wrong and doing damage,” she said. “We’ve seen children, families having to flee their homes on the streets of Belfast last night... We do not want to see this kind of disruption, damage, thuggery, violence on our streets, and anyone that is seeking to whip that up should be condemned.”

Rob Blackie, a former London mayoral candidate for the Liberal Democrats Party, called on the UK to take “government action” to hold Musk accountable, including by regulating X.

“Thugs burning out people in Belfast can’t be ignored,” said Blackie. “Elon Musk is a national security threat.”

‘A New Pinnacle of Oligarchy’: Elon Musk Poised to Become World’s First Trillionaire

“The new Gilded Age won’t end itself,” said Oxfam America. “This is a trillion-dollar alarm bell that should wake governments up to the need to take action.”



Demonstrators protest ahead of the initial public offering of Elon Musk’s SpaceX on June 5, 2026 in New York City.
(Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Jun 11, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

With Elon Musk’s SpaceX set to go public on Friday, the world’s richest man could soon become the first-ever trillionaire—an achievement that one leading humanitarian group called “a new pinnacle of oligarchy and a dark day for democracy.”

Whether Musk reaches trillionaire status in the coming days will depend on the success of SpaceX’s initial public offering (IPO), which critics warn is a potentially massive threat to market stability and Americans’ retirement savings. The company plans to sell 555,555,555 shares at a price of $135 each, aiming for a staggering $1.75 trillion valuation. Musk, who is the company’s board chair and owns 42% of its common stock along with options, will see his net worth skyrocket if SpaceX achieves its IPO targets.

‘The IPO Is Being Engineered’: 12-Minute Video Details Growing Fears Over Elon Musk Plot to Become World’s First Trillionaire

Oxfam America noted in an analysis released Thursday that a $1 trillion net worth would mean that it would take Musk 2,740 years to spend $1 trillion if he spent $1 million per day. The group estimated that a 10% tax on $1 trillion “could end global extreme poverty for a year, lifting over 800 million people above the extreme poverty line.”

Nabil Ahmed, senior director of economic justice at Oxfam America, said in a statement that “this moment of dramatically concentrated wealth was not inevitable.”

“Musk will be a government-backed trillionaire whose fortune was fueled by an era of regressive public policy choices—decisions rigged by a tiny few to fuel their fortunes, and overwhelmingly supported by political leaders,” said Ahmed. “A trillion dollars in the hands of one man is incompatible not only with an affordable economy, but also with a healthy democracy. Economic inequality begets political inequality, and ordinary people bear the brunt while billionaires continue to write the rules for their own benefit.”

“The new Gilded Age won’t end itself,” he added. “This is a trillion-dollar alarm bell that should wake governments up to the need to take action. Never has it been more urgent to curb the accumulation of extreme wealth—overhauling the economic policies that have created not just trillionaires, but billionaires and the obscene inequality we see today.”

Oxfam highlighted Musk’s brief but immensely destructive tenure in the US federal government at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which took a sledgehammer to foreign aid programs and assailed the Social Security Administration, among other actions whose consequences are expected to reverberate for years to come. Oxfam has warned that the Musk-led decimation of the US Agency for International Development means that “a child under 5 could die every 40 seconds by 2030.”

Musk was given the role at DOGE after using a tiny fraction of his wealth to boost President Donald Trump and Republican candidates in the 2024 election. Musk is spending big again to boost the GOP in the 2026 midterms.

“Musk’s ability to pour money into elections allowed him to use his wealth and power in ways that embody the corrosive effects of billionaire control,” Oxfam said Thursday.

The group’s statement came amid mounting anxiety about the impact of SpaceX’s IPO, beyond potentially pushing Musk’s wealth past the trillion-dollar mark.

In a letter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) raised “extreme concern” about the possibility that the IPO could flop. Major stock index providers, she observed, are “rewriting their rules to fast-track SpaceX’s entry into their indexes—and into the investment funds that power millions of Americans’ retirement savings.”

“The net result could be disastrous,” Warren wrote, “a scenario where retirees’ and families’ investment accounts take a hit if SpaceX’s valuation falters, with little recourse for any corporate misconduct, while the wealthiest man on earth becomes even wealthier due to a lack of oversight.”

SpaceX’s historic IPO by the numbers

AFP
June 10, 2026 

SpaceX’s Starship 39 rocket launches from Starbase during the 12th test flight as seen from South Padre Island, Texas, on May 22, 2026 – Copyright AFP/File RONALDO SCHEMIDT

The stock market debut of SpaceX (Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and company) expected Friday, could be the biggest in history. Here are the key numbers.

$75 billion

The amount SpaceX hopes to raise by selling new shares to investors. That target would be triple the all-time record, set by Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019 ($25.6 billion).

$1.765 trillion

SpaceX’s estimated worth, or “valuation” — what the market thinks the entire company is worth if you added up all its shares.

That figure includes xAI, Musk’s AI startup and the X social network (formerly Twitter), which SpaceX absorbed in February.

It would make SpaceX the eighth most valuable company on Earth, right behind the biggest names in tech.

$18.6 billion

How much money SpaceX brought in during 2025 — its total sales before expenses. That was up a third from the year before, and most of it (61%) came from Starlink, the satellite service that beams internet to homes from orbit.

$4.9 billion

The amount SpaceX lost in 2025. Even with all that revenue, it spent far more than it earned, mostly because building AI is extremely expensive — nearly $10 billion last year alone.

A loss doesn’t mean the company is failing; it often means it is investing heavily in future growth.

$791 billion

Elon Musk’s personal fortune, according to Forbes. If the IPO goes well and SpaceX’s share price climbs, Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire — the first person in history to be worth more than $1,000,000,000,000.

82 percent

The share of SpaceX voting rights Musk will hold after the IPO. Even though new shareholders will own a slice of the company, Musk will keep almost all the decision-making power — a common setup in tech, where founders often hold special “super-voting” shares.

$28.5 trillion

SpaceX’s own estimate of the total value of all the markets it operates in — rockets, satellites, internet, AI, and more. To put that in perspective, the entire US economy produced about $30.36 trillion worth of goods and services in 2025.

All in on Musk, SpaceX’s self-declared ‘dream weaver’

Elon Musk will control more than 82 percent of SpaceX voting shares and there is no designated successor 

AFP
June 10, 2026 

– Copyright US Central Command (CENTCOM)/AFP/File –


When SpaceX lists on Wall Street, expected on Friday, Elon Musk will serve simultaneously as chief executive, chief technology officer and board chairman of the rocket and AI company.

He will control more than 82 percent of its voting shares. There is no designated successor, no deputy and no key-person life insurance written into its filings.

The world’s most valuable IPO depends entirely on one man.

“He’s completely upending the conventional conduct of running a publicly traded corporation by declaring himself an irreplaceable dream weaver and master engineer of the whole undertaking,” Quinn Slobodian, co-author with Ben Tarnoff of “Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed,” told AFP in an interview.

For Slobodian, a professor of international history at Boston University who has spent years studying Musk’s empire, that brazen concentration of personal power is not a flaw in the SpaceX offering — it is its defining feature.

SpaceX is targeting a valuation of approximately $1.8 trillion and aims to raise $75 billion when trading opens Friday under the ticker SPCX, in what will be the largest public offering in history.



– Jobs and Gates –



To understand how Musk positioned himself as literally irreplaceable, Slobodian pointed to the “prophetic founder” model exemplified by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

“Jobs and Gates are kind of the template,” Slobodian said, adding that Musk’s decision to give Walter Isaacson — the biographer who immortalized Jobs — access for his own biography was itself a tell.

What gave Musk’s version of that archetype genuine credibility, Slobodian argued, was a willingness to go against the grain of early 21st-century investment orthodoxy.

At a time when “design in California, assemble in China” was the way — with the iPhone as the example — Musk poured his early fortune from PayPal into a rocket company and an electric vehicle manufacturer, both requiring him to solve brutally hard engineering problems.

His distance from his tech-billionaire peers is now measurable in purely financial terms.

Musk’s fortune, expected to hit $1 trillion with the IPO, is approaching three times the size of that of the second richest person on the planet, currently Google co-founder Larry Page.

“He’s operating at a different scale, and with a scope of ambition that just makes him singular,” Slobodian said.



– Too big to fail –



Musk is often framed as a libertarian entrepreneur who built his empire outside the reach of government.

Slobodian argues that Musk has always depended on government as primary client or subsidy giver, from his earliest startup Zip2’s reliance on publicly funded GPS data to the billions SpaceX draws in federal contracts today.

He pointed in particular to what he described as SpaceX’s Golden Dome contracts, worth $4 billion, to supply satellite infrastructure for the Trump administration’s proposed national missile defense shield.

In his view, SpaceX is structurally too critical to national security interests for any administration to let it fail.

“If Trump gave a second thought to bailing out Spirit Airlines,” Slobodian said of the bankrupt low-cost carrier, “what about SpaceX?”



– After Henry Ford –



Slobodian situated Musk’s alignment with far-right movements in the United States and sovereigntist parties in Europe as serving commercial ends, not merely personal ones.

He argued that Musk sees compliant political partners both abroad and at home as essential to obtaining the regulatory approvals SpaceX needs: spectrum allocations, satellite launch rights and permission to operate Starlink in key markets.

That worldview, Slobodian and Tarnoff contend in their book, has roots in Musk’s upbringing in the suburbs of Pretoria under apartheid-era South Africa — a regime they argue deployed IBM mainframes and advanced technology to control the population through data collection and surveillance.

As for whether the Musk model outlasts the dream weaver himself, Slobodian pointed to Palantir — which, like SpaceX, first broke into government work by suing the US military for contracts — as one potential carrier of the torch.

But a true successor, he suggested, may be hard to find, “just as there was no Henry Ford after Henry Ford,” only imitations.

A glossary to help understand what happens in an initial public offering

By

The Associated Press

Opens in new window

Published: June 10, 2026 

A board above the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange with stock symbols is shown in this image, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Anyone following SpaceX’s plans to sell shares to the public is likely to hear terms thrown around that describe steps and components of an initial public offering. Here’s a quick guide.

Initial public offering, or IPO

A company’s first offering of stock to the public. It is the first time a company’s value will be determined by a public market.

Prospectus

A formal offer to sell shares in the company. It also includes a business plan with details about the company’s finances and operations. Also known as an S-1, after the Securities and Exchange Commission form.

Listing

This describes the ticker symbol for the stock and the public exchange where it is being traded. For example, Apple is traded as “AAPL” on the Nasdaq and Macy’s is traded as “M” on the New York Stock Exchange. SpaceX plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol “SPCX.”

Underwriter

An underwriter is a bank or other financial institution that acts as the intermediary between the company and investors. They purchase the stock being issued by the company in the IPO and sell it to the public. There are often several underwriters involved to share the risk. The lead underwriters for the SpaceX IPO are Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.

 

Roadshow

The name for the presentations given by company executives and underwriters to potential investors, typically institutional investors, before the company issues its shares.

Lockup

This is the period of time when executives, insiders and early investors are legally prohibited from selling their shares. It is typically 90 or 180 days and is meant to prevent insiders from quickly cashing out or dumping their shares. Elon Musk and other SpaceX executives have agreed to a lockup period of 366 days.

Over-allotment

This is a provision that allows underwriters of an IPO to sell more shares than initially planned. It is meant to meet unexpectedly high demand or to help stabilize the stock price.

 

Price range

This is an estimated range for the price of the shares the company is offering provided before the stock is publicly traded. Investors place bids within that range before the listing price is determined. SpaceX went against convention and set a price of $135 for shares in the offering.

Price discovery

This describes the broader process undertaken by the company and underwriters to determine the listing price for the stock. It attempts to balance demand for the stock with the potential supply of shares. The process typically takes longer when an IPO has high interest from potential investors.

Associated Press, The Associated Press