Elon Musk fund­ed Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg super PAC defend­ing Trump on abor­tion

Named after the late Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg, the RBG PAC launched in late Octo­ber, just weeks before the 2024 elec­tions. With Trump fac­ing a bar­rage of claims from Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Harris’s cam­paign assert­ing that he want­ed a nation­al ban on abor­tion, the PAC ran ads defend­ing Trump from the alle­ga­tions in an appeal to female vot­ers and mod­er­ates. 

The RBG PAC’s paper­work was signed by May Mail­man, who worked for Trump dur­ing his first term in office. How­ev­er, the group’s finan­cial backer was unknown until Thurs­day evening, when the RBG PAC filed a cam­paign finance report with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion.

The fil­ings revealed Musk gave the group a one-time dona­tion of $20.5 mil­lion, with the major­i­ty of the funds being direct­ed toward dig­i­tal ads. 

Musk endorsed Trump in July fol­low­ing the first assas­si­na­tion attempt on the pres­i­dent. A for­mer Demo­c­rat, who was once an avid fan of for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, emerged as one of Trump’s most impor­tant allies. He held a series of town­halls and cam­paigned in the cru­cial bat­tle­ground state of Penn­syl­va­nia in the weeks lead­ing up to the elec­tion, formed Amer­i­ca PAC to sup­port Trump, and poured a stag­ger­ing $119 mil­lion of his own mon­ey into send­ing Trump back to the White House. 

The RBG ad cam­paign he financed gained atten­tion at the time for invok­ing Ginsburg’s name because the jus­tice was a Trump crit­ic and held lib­er­al views on abor­tion access that do not gen­er­al­ly align with the stan­dard Repub­li­can posi­tion. 

How­ev­er, the RBG PAC’s cam­paign sug­gest­ed there was more in com­mon between Gins­burg and Trump on abor­tion pol­i­cy than met the eye, argu­ing, “RBG believed that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shouldn’t dic­tate our abor­tion laws.” 

Sim­i­lar to Trump’s posi­tion that abor­tion pol­i­cy should be decid­ed on a state-by-state basis rather than by a blan­ket fed­er­al law, the RBG PAC point­ed to Ginsburg’s cri­tique of Roe v. Wade to back up the claim. The sweep­ing 1973 deci­sion inval­i­dat­ed many states’ laws on abor­tion and hand­ed pow­er over abor­tion pol­i­cy to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. 

When the Supreme Court over­turned Roe in 2022, Trump cel­e­brat­ed the news, say­ing it returned pow­er over abor­tion access to the vote of the peo­ple in indi­vid­ual states. 

“They all want­ed this issue to be brought back to the states where the peo­ple could vote. And that’s what hap­pened. Now, Ohio, the vote was some­what lib­er­al. Kansas, the vote was some­what lib­er­al. Much more lib­er­al than peo­ple would have thought. But each indi­vid­ual state is vot­ing. It’s the vote of the peo­ple now. It’s not tied up in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” Trump said dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial debate with Har­ris. 

Cit­ing his sup­port for allow­ing indi­vid­ual states to decide on abor­tion access, Trump has said he would not sup­port a nation­al fed­er­al ban on abor­tion. 

“On this issue, great minds think alike,” says the RBG PAC web­site, imply­ing that Trump and Gins­burg held com­mon ground on the mat­ter. 

While the RBG PAC’s days end­ed fol­low­ing the 2024 elec­tions, Musk’s influ­ence in Trump­world has not. 

The pres­i­dent-elect tapped Musk, along­side Vivek Ramaswamy, to run the new Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy. 

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DOGE is seek­ing to cut gov­ern­ment spend­ing and reduce waste. 

Musk said the depart­ment “will send shock­waves through the sys­tem, and any­one involved in Gov­ern­ment waste, which is a lot of peo­ple!”