As billionaire Elon Musk feuds with President Trump over his signature tax and domestic policy legislation, Musk has reupped his calls to launch a new political party — a daunting task even for the wealthiest person on Earth.
Musk first floated launching a third party, dubbed the “America Party,” earlier this month, part of a nasty back-and-forth between the president and the Tesla CEO that marked the likely end of their political alliance. Musk raised the idea again this week as lawmakers raced to send the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to Mr. Trump’s desk — and this time, Musk put a time limit on the plan.
“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” Musk wrote in a post on X Monday evening, hours before the bill passed the Senate on Tuesday and headed back to the House. “Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.”
It remains unclear if Musk will follow through on his pledge, but the idea could be easier said than done. If Musk decides to launch a new political party, he’ll need to contend with a thicket of complicated state laws, time-consuming ballot access rules and intense litigation.
“Only the richest person in the world could make a serious effort at creating a new American political party,” Brett Kappel, a veteran election lawyer, told CBS News.
Navigating 50 different state laws — and federal rules
“Political parties are creatures of the states,” Kappel said.
Each state has different legal rules for recognizing which political parties can appear on the ballot, and those hurdles “range from high to extraordinarily difficult to overcome,” he noted. In some cases, a nascent state party may need to get candidates onto the ballot by submitting large numbers of signatures, and then win a certain percentage of the vote across election cycles.
For example, to qualify in California, a new political party needs to either sign up 0.33% of the state’s voters — or about 75,000 people — as registered members, or submit signatures from 1.1 million voters. After that, in order to remain qualified, parties have to either maintain that 0.33% registration threshold or win at least 2% of the vote in a statewide race.
And to gain recognition at the national level, each state-level political party would need to seek an advisory opinion from the Federal Election Commission.
These efforts would almost certainly face intense pushback from the Democratic and Republican parties, including legal challenges over signatures in each state, requiring Musk — or any other aspiring third-party founder — to spend scores of money on litigation.
“The state laws in all of the states are biased towards the two major political parties, and make it as difficult as possible for the emergence of a third political party,” Kappel told CBS News.
The process of creating a political party with national ambitions would be time-consuming, too. Kappel says it might be doable — albeit difficult — for Musk to get a few favored candidates onto the ballot in certain states, but building an entirely new national party would likely take years, and would not be possible by the 2026 midterm elections.
For evidence of how challenging the process is, look no further than the struggles that existing third parties have faced. The Green Party and Libertarian Party were each founded decades ago, and still engage in state-by-state pushes for ballot access and party recognition.
“The hurdles for creating a new party and getting it on the ballot are extremely high. It can be done if you have endless amounts of money, but it’s a multi-year project and will cost hundreds of millions of dollars,” Kappel said.
Musk’s campaign cash
The high cost of launching a political party may not be a big stumbling block for Musk, whose net worth exceeds $350 billion according to Forbes and Bloomberg’s valuations.
The Tesla and SpaceX leader spent a staggering $277 million to aid Mr. Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election cycle. The bulk of that spending, roughly $239 million, was routed through America PAC, a political action committee founded by Musk that underwrote a sprawling get-out-the-vote effort across the swing states.
Since then, Musk has hinted that he plans to dial back his involvement in politics. His tenure leading the Trump administration’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency ended in May, a month after telling Tesla shareholders his work with the federal government will “drop significantly.” He also said at the Qatar Economic Forum in May that he will “do a lot less” political spending moving forward, noting he doesn’t “currently see a reason” to keep opening his wallet.
If Musk follows through on his proposal to launch a competitor to the two mainstream parties, it would mark an expensive return to the fray — and the laws around how to finance it are complex.
Before new political parties are formally recognized, they are typically organized as not-for-profit groups, and their financial backers do not face any dollar limits to their donations, Kappel says. But once a party gains national recognition, donors like Musk would be subject to the FEC’s caps on political contributions. Currently, individuals can only give $10,000 a year to a state political party, or $44,300 a year to a national party committee, the FEC says.
The rules governing when organizations are subject to those limits are byzantine. Almost two decades ago, the FEC said a group called Unity08 — which aimed to create a bipartisan presidential ticket — must register as a political committee if it spends over $1,000 trying to get ballot access. After a lengthy legal battle, an appeals court reversed that decision.
Another way for Musk to keep wielding political influence would be through America PAC. The group is organized as a super PAC, which allows Musk to donate unlimited sums of money, but requires the group to remain officially independent from candidates or political parties.
Even as he mused about launching a third party, Musk implied this week he could remain engaged in Republican politics. The billionaire suggested he will back primary challenges against GOP lawmakers who voted for the Trump-endorsed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. He also vowed to lend support to Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who voted against the bill and is facing a Trump-backed primary contest.
The president, for his part, has said in recent days that Musk appears to be “upset” that his signature tax and domestic policy bill would phase out electric vehicle tax credits — which could cost Tesla billions. Some of Musk’s criticisms of the bill have focused on its steep cuts to green energy incentives, though he has also argued the bill is too expensive.
“I think Elon is a wonderful guy, and I know he’s going to do well always,” Mr. Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo in an interview that aired Sunday. “But he got a little bit upset, and that wasn’t appropriate.”