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I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 14 minutes.

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Elon Musks floats an idea for a new political party. Plus, what does Tangle's editorial team think AI will do to the job market?

What I’ve been wrong about.

Something that’s always irked me about political coverage is the way pundits are drawn into making hot takes to get attention, but then never take ownership of them when they’re wrong. I set out to make sure Tangle was never like that. So, every once in a while, I like to take stock of what I’ve gotten right and wrong. In tomorrow’s members-only edition, I’ll be taking personal stock and answering the question, “What have I gotten wrong about Trump’s second term so far?” I came up with five good examples of some things I’ve gotten wrong, so I’m going to be sharing them tomorrow.

Quick hits.

1. President Donald Trump announced a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports beginning August 1 while also criticizing Brazil’s legal action against its former President Jair Bolsonaro. (The tariff)
2. President Trump named Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as interim administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In June, the president withdrew his nomination of tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman to lead NASA and has not named a new appointee. (The move)
3. Russia launched a large-scale aerial attack on Ukraine on Wednesday, launching 728 drones at targets across the country. (The attack)
4. Linda Yaccarino stepped down as CEO of X but did not disclose the reason for her resignation. (The resignation)
5. The Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against the California Department of Education over its policy allowing transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports. (The suit)

Today’s topic.

The America Party. On Saturday, Elon Musk announced his intention to create a new political party, called the “America Party.” The announcement follows Musk’s public fallout with President Donald Trump over Musk’s exit from the administration and spending provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill enacted on Friday. While the America Party is not yet an official political entity, Musk says that he hopes to “crack the uniparty system” and represent “the 80% in the middle” in the United States.

Before it can raise and spend money at the federal level, any new political party must first be approved by the Federal Election Committee (FEC). However, due to leadership vacancies, the commission has been unable to approve Musk’s party. The FEC lacks the four-member minimum to conduct essential business, such as issuing advisory opinions to approve new parties, and President Trump has yet to nominate members to fill the open seats.

Furthermore, Musk will need to navigate the complex process of getting candidates on ballots as a third party, which varies from state to state. However, several political leaders have reportedly reached out to Musk to offer assistance with creating the America Party, including the Forward Party (led by Andrew Yang), the Libertarian Party, and prominent political consultants.

Musk has not established the party’s formal platform, but on X, he has endorsed calls to focus on reducing the federal debt, using artificial intelligence to modernize the military, decreasing regulations on energy, and other policies. He also signaled that he may direct the party’s efforts toward “2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts” in the hopes of electing candidates who would serve as swing votes on contentious legislation.

President Trump criticized Musk’s proposal, writing on Truth Social, “I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks. He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States - The System seems not designed for them.”

Separately, Musk’s investors and business associates have expressed concern about his third-party plans. On Saturday, James Fishback — a businessman and strong supporter of both Musk and Trump — posted a letter he sent to the chair of of Tesla's Board of Directors, calling on the board to “meet immediately and ask Elon to clarify his political ambitions and evaluate whether they are compatible with his full-time obligations to Tesla as CEO.” Tesla shares fell roughly 7% on Monday, and the stock is down 6.2% over the past five days as of Thursday morning.

Today, we’ll explore reactions from the right and left to Musk’s plan for the America Party. Then, my take.

What the right is saying.

• The right is opposed to the America Party, with many expecting the effort to fail.
• Some say Musk’s political ambitions exceed his capabilities.
• Others contend the party’s central tenets are not as popular as Musk thinks.

The New York Post editorial board said “log off, Elon.”

“Elon Musk’s brain is grinding gears at high rev, doing no one any favors. Since stepping away from his DOGE work, he’s been in and out of public hysteria, even devolving into a full-on meltdown. His latest eruption centers on launching a third party — an idea that last worked in 1858 and only because an existing second party was in total collapse,” the board wrote. “Elon, like countless businessmen dabbling in politics before him, wants a quick, drastic fix when any political reform under our system of government usually takes decades of sustained effort — and, at the least, careful work.

“This basic misunderstanding is a big reason DOGE’s results were rather underwhelming: It’s not a question of new management upending failed practices. Governments just don’t run like private companies (even though poorly run companies can come to behave like governments),” the board said. “Log off of politics, Elon, get some sleep and take a long, cool think off before you ever try again. For now, you’re far better off focusing on what you do best: Pushing American innovation forward through companies like SpaceX.”

In American Greatness, Cynical Publius argued “the America Party seems to think” business and politics are the same.

“Musk has transformed reality and stood conventional wisdom on its head in so many areas: electric vehicles, Internet access, space travel, social media, and, soon, neurological disorders. But like Icarus flying too close to the sun, even great men have their failures,” Publius wrote. “Musk’s foray into politics (beyond the America-saving help he gave Donald Trump in 2024) is destined for similar ignominy, both because of the historic failure of American third parties and because of the blind spot so many otherwise successful tech entrepreneurs have about how politics and human emotion work.”

Musk “seeks the immediate, perfect answer: spending cuts in the current year that will eradicate the debt and the deficit. Mathematically this seems possible, and such mathematics appeal to the engineer in him, but he fails to understand that politically such an instant solution is utterly impossible and will accomplish nothing other than to turn America over to Democrats,” Publius said. “If you are one of those opponents of the ‘uniparty’ who see Musk’s third-party efforts as supporting your longing for fundamental change, consider that his central issue of minimizing the debt will serve only to draw away GOP voters. Democrat voters care almost exclusively about entitlement spending, and a reduction in the national debt is anathema to this ideal.”

In National Review, John R. Puri explored “the conflict at the heart of Elon Musk’s ‘America Party.’”

“The very name of the party suggests that Musk believes his views reflect those of the nation… There is just one problem: The two pillars of Musk’s party, fiscal responsibility and elevating the ‘will of the people,’ are discordant,” Puri wrote. “What drives the nation’s gargantuan deficits is a structural mismatch between tax revenue and spending, which is primarily the result of popular demand. The American people are overwhelmingly unwilling to pay enough in taxes to cover all the government spending they enjoy. In fact, if ‘the people’ had their way in politics more fully, the national debt would be far larger than it already is, not smaller.”

“Herein lies the dilemma that Musk fails to recognize. Our looming fiscal crisis will not be caused by government’s insufficient responsiveness to the ‘will of the people.’ Rather, the problem is that government is too responsive to the people,” Puri said. “Politicians who vote for lower taxes and higher spending are not defying their voters; they are honoring their wishes. And if the 80 percent of citizens whom Musk purports to represent got even more of what they wanted from government, our inevitable fiscal calamity would be much nearer, if not already upon us.”

What the left is saying.

• The left mostly dismisses Musk’s proposal, saying his plan has all the flaws of past third-party attempts.
• Some suggest the America Party is just GOP lite.
• Others say Musk could succeed by strategically targeting a select number of congressional seats.

In The Washington Post, Philip Bump said “there’s a reason that the third-party dream has never been made real.”

“You create a political party to build institutional power, to create a receptacle that pools money and energy on behalf of candidates. And that’s the real question for Musk: Who’s going to help construct that institution? Former Trump adviser Hogan Gidley wasn’t wrong when he said Musk has no natural political base,” Bump wrote. “Who’s going to donate to a political party created by the richest man in the world? Who’s going to volunteer? Trump managed to get people to donate to a billionaire, but he did so in large part by taking over an established institution with tens of millions of existing members.”

“The most obvious answer to the question of who Musk’s America Party is meant to serve is Elon Musk. Maybe he can convince other people to sign on, get candidates to run and maybe even get them elected. As [Ross] Perot learned, that’s actually the easy part. Building a powerful party takes more than that, and for both ideological and structural reasons has proven very difficult to do,” Bump said. “Just ask millionaire Andrew Yang, who founded the Forward Party after his unsuccessful presidential bid in 2020. He is now reportedly offering his advice to Musk, for whatever good that will do either of them.”

In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore called the America Party “the GOP by another name.”

Musk “wants massive reductions in the size and cost of the federal government, along with the attendant public debt. That’s not only a slender reed for a disruptive third party but it’s at least rhetorically identified with the GOP despite that party’s own spotty fiscal record,” Kilgore wrote. “From a practical point of view, why would some aspiring deficit hawk in any given state or congressional district want to take a flier on a candidacy under the America Party banner when they could just as easily run as a Rand Paul–Thomas Massie fiscal hard-liner in a Republican primary? The only answer I can think of is that it may be a way to gain access to Musk’s money. And it’s unclear at this point how much of his fortune Musk is willing to devote to this effort.”

“More likely, Musk is just the latest in a long list of political amateurs who look at unhappiness with the two-party system and make two major mistakes: (1) they don’t grasp that most self-identified independents are what [Nate] Silver calls IINOs, independents in name only, who routinely vote for the same major party even when given alternatives; and (2) they assume all these people share the same grievances with the current party system,” Kilgore said. “At this point, Musk isn’t offering anything voters can’t find in the right wing of the Republican Party or, barring that, in the Libertarian Party.”

In The New York Times, Nate Cohn wrote about “why a third-party bid is unlikely but not impossible.”

“With third parties unlikely to obtain power, people often see a vote for a third party as a wasted vote that might be better spent ensuring their preferred major party prevails… The ‘wasted vote’ problem is clearly a very significant issue for third parties, and probably a prohibitive one. But there are paths to overcoming it,” Cohn said. “The simplest path is if a third party polls so well that it seems viable against the major parties. This is not without precedent. In presidential politics, Ross Perot briefly led polls in 1992. Similarly, independent or third-party candidates have led polls for governor, Senate and House and ultimately won, like Angus King (governor and senator) in Maine and Jesse Ventura (governor) in Minnesota.

“A more clever path: Exploit America’s predictable and polarized political geography. In the 80 percent of states and districts that aren’t competitive between the major parties, a third party could flip the script and argue that the usually doomed minority party is the possible spoiler, not the new third party. The usual minority party may as well drop out and give the third party a shot,” Cohn wrote. “With only a handful of seats, a third party could represent the balance of power in Congress, as Mr. Musk mentioned this weekend, whether for determining control or electing a president in the House if no candidate amasses 270 electoral votes.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Musk has identified a smart way to reform the system with a new party.
• However, fixing the debt has a lot of practical problems preventing it from being a unifying party stance.
• I love real political disruption, but I doubt Elon Musk will be the one to provide it.

Let me put it this way: If I were Elon Musk, and I had all the money and influence he has, I couldn’t think of a better way to parlay it into an impactful third party than his current proposal.

Musk is suggesting a campaign of maximum influence targeting a few vulnerable Senate and House seats. If you’re after short-term political gains over building a decades-long movement (like Musk is), then that’s the smart way to play it. It’s less ambitious than throwing a presidential candidate into the mix, which is what No Labels mused about (and ultimately failed to do) in 2024. Instead, it’s pretty similar to Andrew Yang’s Forward Party, which Yang hoped could get its start by advancing a few candidates in competitive districts (Yang’s description of his plans in our 2021 interview is nearly identical to Musk’s).

Imagine a group of current and former swing-vote senators — think Joe Manchin (I-WV), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Mitt Romney (R-UT) — all flying under the “America Party” banner. Their position at the fulcrum of the political machine would give their bloc a tremendous amount of leverage. This is even more true in the House, where a dearth of competitive districts and a very tight partisan divide gives outsized power to a few very competitive seats.

Musk is also identifying a legitimate opportunity. The country agrees on more than we realize.  Self-identified political independents are at their highest numbers ever. Approval for Congress is near an all-time low. And as President Trump has proven throughout his political career, the Overton Window can be shifted by a political movement if it is compelling enough. And Musk’s timing is good: By 2028, the Republican and Democratic parties will both be embroiled in open battles for their new leaders.

Now, I personally think our political duopoly is ripe for a recharge, but questioning whether the system will benefit from Musk’s new party is fair. Our broken electoral system, which produces consistently non-competitive elections and increasingly partisan candidates, needs substantial reform, and I believe in the potential of solutions — like open primaries, ranked-choice voting, and genuinely competitive third and fourth parties. The first two reforms are happening now, but slowly, while a competitive third party requires a grassroots movement or, in this case, an absurdly wealthy and politically influential backer. I’m not a fan of how influential money is in our politics, but if it’s a means to a productive end then I wouldn’t mind seeing Elon take up the cause — it’s no sweat off my back if he lights (another) $40 billion on fire.

Which, I’ll concede, is the most likely outcome here. Musk is right that our national debt is a brewing disaster; but I think he’s wrong that a coalition of voters will care enough about that to rally around a party running on it as their core issue. Yes, polling consistently shows that voters share many of Musk’s concerns about the debt and deficit — indeed, fiscal responsibility is one of those 80–20 issues politicians typically chase. However, it’s also a low-salience issue; how many voters would cast a ballot for a party that aligns with their view on the debt, but not immigration? Or abortion? Or guns? Or healthcare? Not many.

Creating practical policies is Musk’s biggest problem. If “America Party” politicians are going to die on the hill of fiscal responsibility, they’d have to vote down any piece of legislation that increases the debt or deficit — meaning opposing popular spending (risky!) and supporting more taxes (impossible!). There’s a reason politicians like Thomas Massie (R-KY) are so rare, and it’s not because nobody has ever tried to sell the public on loyalty to deficit reduction. As John Puri put it (under “What the right is saying”), “What drives the nation’s gargantuan deficits is a structural mismatch between tax revenue and spending, which is primarily the result of popular demand. The American people are overwhelmingly unwilling to pay enough in taxes to cover all the government spending they enjoy.”

When push comes to shove, people aren’t going to back Social Security reforms or military cuts en masse — which is why Democrats and Republicans never do it. It’s certainly why they never make them core wedge issues. So what, exactly, will rally people to the America Party banner? That part is unclear, and it’s probably why it will fail.

Even if Musk were to somehow conquer all of the above and rally a few good politicians to the cause, he’d run into perhaps his most important problem: Musk himself is now toxic. I’m not the only American who has soured on him over the last year, and nothing that has happened in the last few weeks (aside from this idea) has changed my opinion. DOGE was a completely disorganized mess that caused extreme disruptions in the federal workforce, destroyed foreign aid, misrepresented its own savings regularly, and ended up being meaningless in the face of a bill that added trillions of dollars to our debt. The effort itself was only popular among Trump’s base, who Musk now seems keen on going to war with. How do we think that would go?

Meanwhile, Musk is continuing to step on PR landmines. His attempt to “fix” Grok turned it into the first AI to dub itself “MechaHitler,” which users prompted to fantasize about raping journalists and sexually harassing the CEO of X (who, interestingly, resigned the next day). His own companies seem hamstrung by just how politically repellent and seemingly scatterbrained his interests are, and in his last independent political foray in Wisconsin, where he tried to swing a state Supreme Court seat and failed epically.

None of this inspires my confidence that this is the man who can unstick what is probably the most entrenched political duopoly in the Western world.

No Labels failed because they couldn’t find the right candidate to represent their cause, and everything about their brand seemed stale and disorganized. The Forward Party faded to nonexistence because they could never rally a movement — it had no ideological core, didn’t grow a grassroots movement, and often refused to take positions on controversial issues. Their core proposal, which was Universal Basic Income, didn’t have enough broad support to break into the zeitgeist, and nothing they ran on clarified what they’d do if they ever actually won seats.

Musk can learn from these examples, but he’ll face a lot of the same issues. His brand isn’t uninteresting, but it is toxic. He doesn’t have any grassroots movement; he’s trying to generate it top down. His core issue, reducing the debt and deficit, is probably less potent than Universal Basic Income. His ideological core is often hard to discern, aside from being trollish on the internet, but it might be indistinguishable from Trump’s. And he’s already running into election-law challenges.

Still, on the main points: Musk is right that a competitive third party would be good for America, he’s right to imagine a way to focus on pressure points in swing districts, and he’s absolutely got the money and name recognition to stand a chance.

Do I think he’ll succeed? Almost certainly not.

Will I gleefully encourage him to spend a bunch of money and time trying? You bet.

Take the survey: What do you think of Elon Musk’s “America Party?” Let us know!

Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.

Your questions, answered.

Q: Do you believe that the increased productivity from AI will result in primarily (1) a shorter workweek or (2) job reductions?

— David from Stamford, CT

Tangle: We love this question, David, so much so that we’re opening up a rapid-fire response to our editorial team to give you a sampling of our opinions.

Ari Weitzman, Managing Editor: In the short term, I think it’s going to be option three — same hours, more productivity, and different jobs. I doubt our output-centric society will encourage a reduction in hours, so instead existing professionals will get increasingly more efficient. However, in the long term, I think AI adoption will cost jobs. The skills the technology replicates are the ones new professionals need to learn, so hiring recent graduates will decrease — how that affects the future job market is unclear, but it doesn’t initially look great.

Will Kaback, Senior Editor: I think job reductions are more likely than a shorter workweek. If AI-driven efficiencies reduce workloads to a point where workers in a given industry don't have enough work for a five-day week, I think companies would be more inclined to reduce headcount and redistribute the work to a smaller pool of employees, saving money without a drop off in production (in theory).

Audrey Moorehead, Associate Editor: I think AI will result in job reductions, especially for white-collar positions. Corporations will be more likely to refuse new hires than experiment by restructuring the workweek, and I think we can already see that trend happening: The college grad unemployment rate is the highest it’s been in a decade as companies have fewer entry-level openings. The next logical step is reducing the existing workforce, and CEOs are already hinting that they plan to do so if AI becomes a viable competitor.

Lindsey Knuth, Associate Editor: Of those two options, I think it’s job reductions by a landslide. AI tools might make us all more productive, but heightened productivity has long been an argument for a four-day workweek and we still have no widespread adoption to show for it. As for AI-caused layoffs, we’re already seeing them across blue - and white -collar industries; CEOs are no longer dancing around the cuts they have and will make; and labor-automation startups abound, with goals ranging from making AI really good at one task to enabling “the full automation of the economy” — that is, taking everyone’s jobs.

Isaac Saul, Executive Editor: It’s hard to imagine a world where a shorter work week comes before job reductions. I’ve long been skeptical of the imminent impact AI is going to have on our society (and I still think it can be vastly overstated), but of the two options, job reductions will almost certainly come first (or are already here?) and will have a much broader impact — although maybe all you lucky software engineers start getting short work weeks!

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

On Tuesday, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) announced it would launch the National Academy for AI Instruction in the fall, which will offer free virtual instruction to the union’s 1.8 million members. The initiative, funded by generative artificial intelligence companies Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI, will work with educators to develop strategies for implementing AI in their classrooms. While many educators have expressed concern about their roles being replaced by AI, the AFT and AI companies say the academy aims to ensure that teachers remain at the head of the classroom as AI adoption scales. CBS News has the story.

Numbers.

• 35% and 56%.The percentage of Americans with a favorable and unfavorable view of Elon Musk, respectively, as of July 9, according to Silver Bulletin’s aggregate favorability rating.
• 55.The number of distinct ballot-qualified political parties in the United States as of January 2025, according to Ballotpedia.
• 238. The number of state-level parties as of January 2025.
• 3. The number of minor parties (not Republican or Democrat) recognized in more than 10 states as of January 2025.
• 11. The number of candidates on the ballot in the 2024 presidential election in Louisiana, the most of any state.
• 58% and 37%. The percentage of Americans who think a third major party is needed and that the Republican and Democratic parties do an adequate job of representing the American people, respectively, according to a September 2024 Gallup poll.
• 53%, 69%, and 48%. The percentage of Democrats, independents and Republicans, respectively, who think a third major party is needed.

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about the Republican Party platform.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was Isaac’s past writing about conspiracy theories.
• Nothing to do with politics: $42,232: The sale price of the world’s most expensive cheese.
• Yesterday’s survey: 2,760 readers responded to our survey on Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list” with 52% saying they think the government has such a list. “Of course there's a ‘list.’ But I don't think it's the bomb people think it is. People like him who are widely networked keep contact lists, phone books, etc. This is probably in the file, and of course includes Trump, and also likely people who had nothing to do with his illegal activities, but who just knew him,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Zion is one of the most visited National Parks in the United States, but it wasn’t always so popular — or pristine. The park suffered from crowded traffic, parking congestion, and smog that disrupted wildlife and frustrated visitors. “I personally saw fistfights over parking spaces because it was just so congested,” Lisa White, Zion’s transportation manager, said. That started to change in 2000, when the park launched its first shuttle system. Now that the park attracts five million guests a year, Zion has transitioned to an all-electric fleet of 30 buses in 2024, further reducing noise and pollution. “The smog is gone,” White said. Reasons to Be Cheerful has the story.

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