Elon Musk has begun funding GOP House and Senate campaigns for the 2026 midterms — an indication his relationship with President Trump has thawed since their messy breakup earlier this year, Axios’ Alex Isenstadt writes.

• Why it matters: Musk — who threatened to launch a third party and support challengers to Republican incumbents during his dispute with Trump — is now firmly back in the GOP’s camp.

The tech billionaire recently cut big checks to help Republicans win congressional races next year and indicated he’d give more throughout the 2026 cycle, two sources with knowledge of the situation tell Axios.

• Trump and Musk allies say they’re near-certain Musk won’t follow through on his threat — made earlier this year — to try to oust Republicans.
• Instead, they say, he’s positioning himself as a traditional Republican mega-donor funding the party’s campaign arms and super PACs.

Musk’s prejudice in favor of ‘party first’ and his ability to sway elections across the United States with massive, untracked money is antidemocratic, of course, and accelerates the nation toward an authoritarian plutocracy – Trump notwithstanding.

Mariner has been writing about ‘bottom up’ survival strategies to help the common citizen survive in undeniable disasters. He has spoken about having strongly bonded families and friends in case severe disaster occurs in politics or with the weather. Further, the network of government underwriting for health and education continues to fray; mariner has encouraged readers to be debt free.

To deal with a wayward government, the best strategies also are bottom up. They have been identified more clearly by Musk’s behavior, which brightly reflects a deep hole in government philosophy and administration. Regular readers will recognize these bottom up strategies:

  Gerrymandering.  Clearly the most abused practice in state and local elections. Election districts are drawn not to assure equal representation but just the opposite. Districts should be drawn from legitimate population statistics to assure every vote is only one equal vote. A good alternative is rank voting, which two states have adopted. [see posts Rank Voting Apr 2, 2022] The bottom up solution is to have a sense that you own your local representatives; elect candidates who support neutral selection of voting districts.

  Campaign Finance. If elections truly are to be settled by district voters, a pure funding policy would go a long way toward that goal: Candidates can receive funding only from sources within that specific voter’s district. No outside funding permitted. The bottom up solution is to have a sense that you own your local representatives; elect candidates who support candidate funding only in your district.

  Voter Identification. In every election there are complaints about the authenticity of a given vote. Agitators attack mailboxes, require constraints on mail-in ballots and early in-person voters. Even machines are accused of bias. All of these are attacks on process, not authenticity. Guaranteed authenticity can only be guaranteed by in-person voting with identification or by call-in with specifically unique identifiers. Using USPO mail boxes is subject to vandalism and will affect close races. Voting machines should pass a pre-election mathematical algorithm test to confirm accuracy. Bottom up, write to your local representatives asking for a guaranteed voter ID.

Voting is the most powerful tool a voter has to endorse their beliefs. Psychologically, it is as important a ritual as going to a church service or a professional sport event. Bottom up – care enough to visit your election polling center on election day.

  Election Management. There are two aspects to election management: one is to assure that political parties don’t dismember legislated procedures, which is occurring in Florida and Texas where Governors and party leaders have sign off rights on Federal election representatives. The other is to elect appropriately matched representatives. Right now, both houses of Congress are run by old timers. It isn’t until we start electing Generation Z candidates that life experience knows something about reality. Bottom up – vote for younger candidates, maybe no older than 55.

We live at a moment when the entire planet is shifting our core reality as a species. Mariner has no idea what society will be like in 2050. Protect yourself with as many close, secure, emotionally dependable processes as you can.

Ancient Mariner