A Texas Democrat is putting something genuinely unusual on the ballot this November: an investigation into Elon Musk. Nathan Johnson, who won the Democratic primary runoff for state attorney general in May, says that if elected he will probe how SpaceX walked away with 99% of available Texas broadband grant funds, a pile of taxpayer money totaling $110 million, and whether the process that produced that outcome was on the level.
The Numbers Do Not Exactly Scream 'Fair and Open Competition'
Here is the core of the story, and it is worth sitting with for a second. Texas ran a grant program to bring high-speed internet to rural residents. Multiple companies competed for the money. SpaceX, which runs the Starlink satellite internet service and is headquartered in Starbase, Texas, ended up with 99% of the available funds. That is not a typo. Nine companies were competing. One company got basically everything.
Johnson, a state senator, laid it out plainly in an interview with the Dallas News on Friday. 'I am not declaring that corruption was at work in this instance,' he said. 'I am saying that it sure looks like it. Public confidence in the bidding process has been undermined.' That is about as diplomatically phrased as a serious accusation can get while still being a serious accusation.
Abbott's Office Rewrote the Rules, Then Played Dumb About It
The grant process did not produce this outcome on its own. According to reporting by KUT News, Governor Greg Abbott's office revised the rules governing how bids were evaluated before the grants were awarded, specifically changing criteria in ways that favored low-Earth-orbit satellite providers like, well, Starlink.
When Johnson questioned members of the Texas Broadband Development Office at a state senate committee hearing in June, they admitted the rule changes came at Abbott's direction. Bryant Clayton, director of the BDO, told the committee that the governor's office asked them to review how their proposed structure compared to other states, and that they had been 'out of step' with nearby states. That explanation might carry more weight if the resulting structure hadn't funneled nine-tenths of available cash to one politically connected billionaire.
Eight companies offering ground-based fiber broadband complained in a letter that the revised process appeared to have cut them out entirely. Even the Republican chair of the senate committee, Charles Schwertner, seemed rattled. 'I'll just say it bluntly,' he told the hearing. 'Favoritism and transparency are real big concerns that have been brought to my office.' When a Texas Republican is saying the quiet part loud about favoritism for a Trump ally, something is genuinely wrong.
Musk Has Donated to Abbott, but Don't Worry, That's Probably Fine
The Guardian reports that records show Musk has previously made monetary donations to Governor Abbott, among many other recipients. The Guardian is careful to note there is no direct suggestion this is linked to the grant awards. Sure. We will file that under 'coincidences that happen to very powerful people.'
Abbott's office has pushed back on the corruption framing, arguing that satellite internet is simply the most practical solution for the most remote rural areas where fiber is too expensive to build. His press secretary Andrew Mahaleris told KUT News that Abbott 'supports getting high-speed internet to rural Texans as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.' SpaceX and Abbott's office did not respond to requests for comment from the Guardian or the Dallas News, which is also the kind of thing you do when you have a very good explanation ready to go.
Johnson's Pitch: The AG's Office Should Work for the Public, Not Elon Musk
NBC News reports that Johnson's pledge to investigate the SpaceX grants effectively puts a Musk inquiry on the November ballot in Texas, a framing that is both accurate and genuinely striking. Johnson is running on an anti-corruption platform and has said he will work closely with the state comptroller to audit how government contracts are awarded.
He is running against Mayes Middleton, a Republican who has declared himself a Trump loyalist, which in this context means voters are being offered a fairly stark choice. Johnson posted on X in June that 'the AG is supposed to ensure that government serves the public good over private interests, not the other way around,' a statement that sounds like a civics class lesson and reads like a direct shot at the entire structure of how Texas has been running its government under Republican control.
The current Texas AG, Ken Paxton, is himself a walking ethics disaster who has faced impeachment, corruption charges, and scandal after scandal. He was recently nominated by Texas Republicans to run for US Senate. Because of course he was.
The Dingo Take
Let's be precise about what happened here. Texas ran a competitive grant program with public money. The governor's office quietly changed the rules. One company owned by the world's richest man and a major Trump political ally received 99% of the funds. Fiber broadband competitors say they were effectively locked out. Republican committee chairs are using the word 'favoritism.' And the entities at the center of this are declining to comment.
If a city council in a small Democratic-leaning city had run a grant process that handed 99% of available funds to a company whose CEO had written checks to the mayor, Fox News would be doing a six-part investigative series. The principle does not change because the beneficiary is Musk or because the state involved is Texas. Rigging a public grant process to reward a political donor is corruption. The word fits whether or not it fits your preferred political narrative.
Johnson may win in November or he may not. Texas is still Texas. But he is doing something that a lot of Democrats have been too cautious to do: putting accountability on the ballot as a concrete promise with a specific target, not a vague slogan. Whether Texas voters reward that kind of specificity is the actual question worth watching.
