A new database of Congressional and state lobbyists who work for companies owned by Elon Musk was launched today by lobbying accountability group F Minus. The database lists more than 1,100 clients at 14 Musk-affiliated Congressional lobbying firms and more than 2,800 clients at Musk-affiliated firms in 39 states. Clients at these state and national firms include hundreds of targets of DOGE funding cuts in the higher education, nonprofit, and government sectors.
Explore the Musk-affiliated lobbyist database
Among the more than 70 universities that share lobbying firms with Musk companies are prominent targets of DOGE funding cuts, including Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University, whose Massachusetts lobbying firm Tremont Strategies was recently found to be lobbying for Tesla. Stanford University and Yale University became clients of the Tesla-representing firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld after President Trump’s Jan. 2025 inauguration.
More than 170 local government agencies facing direct or indirect impacts from DOGE cuts share lobbying firms with Musk companies.
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In California, the lobbying firm Shaw Yoder Antwih Schmelzer & Lange represents Tesla in addition to 43 local government clients, among them the City of Los Angeles and San Francisco Office of the Mayor.
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In Maryland, Prince George’s County has retained the Congressional Musk-affiliated firm Invariant to lobby for funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other federal agencies whose funding is now being cut by DOGE.
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In Oregon, the firm CFM Advocates, which represents nine local governments, signed Tesla as a client a week before the 2024 election.
The new database also captures Big Tech companies newly hiring Musk lobbying firms in 2025. On February 2, a week after Bill Gates said that DOGE could be “valuable,” Microsoft signed with Akin Gump, while Google signed the day before.
“Lobbying firms who work for Musk while Musk’s DOGE initiative harms their other clients need to be held accountable,” said James Browning, Executive Director of F Minus. “This database shows a disturbing dynamic in which targets of DOGE funding cuts and targets of intimidation by the Trump Administration are sticking with their Musk-affiliated lobbying firms. Sticking with these firms sends the message that ‘Musk is fine’ and ‘DOGE is normal.’”