Key Congressional Democrats Query DOT, NASA About Musk Conflicts of Interest

Key Democrats on the House and Senate authorizing committees that oversee space activities are questioning the Department of Transportation and NASA about the roles Elon Musk is playing at those agencies and whether they present potential conflicts of interest.

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the Ranking Member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, wrote to new Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy today after Duffy posted on X yesterday that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team will “plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.”

Big News – Talked to the DOGE team. They are going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.

— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) February 5, 2025

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is part of the Department of  Transportation and its Office of Commercial Space Transportation regulates, promotes and facilitates commercial space launches and reentries. Musk and SpaceX often chafe at FAA’s regulations and sharply criticized the FAA for delaying the launch of Starship’s fifth Integrated Flight Test last year, as well as fines the FAA imposed for failing to follow license requirements in 2023.

The Senate Commerce Committee oversees DOT, including the FAA.

In her letter, Cantwell expressed concern that because rockets launched by Musk’s SpaceX share the airspace with commercial airplanes, a conflict of interest might arise: “We have ethics and recusal laws for a reason–to prevent corporate interference in protecting the public interest.”  She called on Duffy to “make sure that all conflicts of interest between the FAA and Elon Musk are removed.”

Separately, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, and Valerie Foushee, Ranking Member of the space subcommittee, wrote to NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro concerned about the “vast conflicts-of-interest” Musk has with NASA. SpaceX is “NASA’s second-largest contractor” with more than $2 billion in contracts and “An executive from SpaceX, Michael Altenhofen, recently joined NASA as a ‘senior advisor to the NASA Administrator.'”

Lofgren and Foushee assert they “will closely monitor the broad potential for conflicts-of-interest,” but their primary concern right now is “ensuring the integrity of NASA’s secure systems, including any classified data managed or accessed by the agency” as well as proprietary data related to contractors that are SpaceX competitors. They ask NASA to respond to a series of questions by February 13, 2025.