Elon Musk, the Republican megadonor who spent President Donald Trump’s first few months in office clumsily disassembling whatever federal agencies he deemed too woke, poured a lot of money into the 2026 midterms—at least $474 million, according to The New York Times. Voters, however, were less enthusiastic about maintaining the status quo: Democrats are currently projected to win 259 House seats and at least 54 seats in the Senate. As an investor, even if you are capable of comfortably dropping half a billion dollars on an election, this is not the return for which you hope.

Among many other things, Tuesday’s results mean that for the first time, Musk could soon face meaningful consequences for some of his actions. And although there are plenty of viable grounds for investigating Musk, there’s no better place for Democrats to start than with the wreckage left behind by the “Department of Government Efficiency,” the Musk-led initiative that slashed hundreds of thousands of federal jobs, wasted billions of dollars in public resources, and by one estimate led to the preventable deaths of half a million children. 

Musk officially left the administration in May 2025. But for the next two years, Democratic lawmakers must use their newfound power to hold him accountable for the things he did—not just to people, but to the very concept of representative democracy. DOGE took power that the Constitution delegates to the legislature and placed it in the hands of lumbering, semi-employable tech bros who cut off funding for vital programs, gutted administrative agencies that threatened Musk’s bottom line, and demonstrated a startling indifference to security and privacy along the way.

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