In the face of dismal polling and Donald Trump’s plunging approval ratings, the world’s richest man is pumping tens of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns in the hopes of keeping control of Congress in midterm elections this fall.

Over the last several months, Elon Musk has pumped more than $276 million into Republican-connected fundraising groups and his own GOP-backing super PAC, according to figures provided to The New York Times ahead of this week’s federal filing deadlines.

Musk poured millions of dollars into critical state-level elections last year after spending roughly $300 million to help Trump win in 2024.

His latest round of spending to boost midterm campaigns is easily expected to make him the biggest GOP donor, or any political donor, in 2026, despite claiming last year that he was planning to “do a lot less” political spending.

From July through September, Musk gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the primary super PAC supporting GOP senators, and pumped another $76 million into his American PAC, which he created in 2024, according to The Times.

He also donated $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, which supports House Republicans, as well as $10 million to a super PAC supporting Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas.

Musk also sent $10 million to the Republican Governors Association and $2 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association, according to his representatives.

“If Democrats take control of Washington and win key gubernatorial and attorney general races this November, then America risks becoming a socialist, woke and borderless country,” America PAC spokesperson Andrew Romeo told The Times. “These robust investments have allowed the GOP apparatus to get its message out so Republicans can have a fighting chance to defy history.”

Musk — who routinely rages against political donations from billionaire philanthropist George Soros — spent roughly $291 million to boost Trump’s campaign in 2024, then landed himself a role as a presidentially appointed “adviser” who carried out Trump’s mission to gut government spending while collecting lucrative contracts for his own companies.

Ahead of last year’s state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, Musk wore cheesehead hats at rallies and made legally dubious pledges to “personally” hand voters $1 million checks and give out $50 to anyone who takes a picture of themselves outside a voting booth. He frequently described the race in apocalyptic terms, warning that the “destiny of humanity” and future of “the world” were at stake.

But his $20 million efforts to support a conservative candidate evaporated after liberal justice Susan Crawford handily defeated Musk’s choice.

On the campaign trail in 2024, Musk predicted “hardship” for Americans under Trump’s economic agenda. But in the White House, the trillionaire steered the so-called Department of Government Efficiency as a “special government employee,” gutting foreign aid, consumer protections and funding for libraries and public health research, among other programs, while his fleet of tech workers embedded themselves across the federal government and collected taxpayer data and other sensitive information.

He left the administration in May 2025, and the Trump-Musk alliance appeared to publicly implode weeks later over his objections to the president’s massive domestic spending package.

The world’s two most powerful men brawled over threats of impeachment, calls to launch primary challengers against Trump’s Republican allies in Congress, and Musk’s accusation that the president is implicated in a sexual abuse scandal.

But they appear to have mended their relationship. Musk has appeared at the White House several times in recent days, and the president awarded him a National Medal of Science last week.

Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has also continued to leverage his influence on X, formerly Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion and turned into a megaphone for himself and right-wing causes.

That’s where he appears to be trying to make his biggest dent in the electorate. He does not have any apparent plans to hit the campaign trail for GOP candidates, let alone hand out oversized checks he cut to “random” GOP voters.

Instead, Musk appears comfortable speaking directly to his more than 241 million X followers.

Without Trump on the ballot this year, Musk’s political operation appears to be trying to mobilize voters by leaning into volatile “culture war” issues that fester on his platform, like right-wing panic over transgender Americans, which the trillionaire routinely denigrates.

In Texas, a 30-second ad produced by a Musk-backed campaign, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico claimed he “believes there are six genders” and “voted to let men play women’s sports and for taxpayer-funded sex changes on kids.”

On Sunday, Musk was among right-wing influencers boosting a false story that Talarico was absent from the campaign trail because he was receiving inpatient care at a mental health facility in Ohio.

He claimed, “The Talarico campaign is hiding something big that voters ought to know about.”

But Musk has only written seven posts this year about candidates in competitive midterm races, according to a review by The Times. Five of those posts are about Talarico, the newspaper found.