Elon Musk Warns of a 'Permanent One-Party State.' Democrats Already Wrote the Bills to Build It

Elon Musk has one reason for voting Republican on Tuesday, and he says every other reason is "irrelevant compared to this one."

In a post on X overnight, Musk warned that if Democrats sweep the House, the Senate and the White House in 2028, they will add D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, legalize everyone living in America illegally, and expand the Supreme Court. The result, he wrote, would be "a permanent one-party state and the end of democracy in any meaningful sense of the word."

His fix is simple: "All that is needed to ensure this doesn't happen is 51 Republican senators in 2029."

Democrats will call it a scare story. The congressional record says otherwise. Statehood, legalization and a bigger Supreme Court have all been written into bills, and statehood has passed the House three times.

Two new states, four new senators

D.C. statehood first passed the House on June 26, 2020, 232-180. Democrats passed it again on April 22, 2021, 216-208, with every Democrat voting yes and every Republican voting no, according to the House clerk's roll call. The bill, H.R. 51, would turn most of the capital into a 51st state called Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, with two senators.

Puerto Rico came next. On Dec. 15, 2022, the House passed the Puerto Rico Status Act, 233-191, with 217 Democrats and 16 Republicans voting for it. The bill set up a binding vote on the island, and if statehood won, the president "shall issue a proclamation" admitting Puerto Rico as a state within a year, with two senators of its own.

Both bills died in the Senate. That is Musk's point: the Senate is the only thing that stopped them.

Legalization and a bigger court

On Feb. 18, 2021, House Democrats introduced the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, H.R. 1177. It would give legal status to illegal aliens who had been in the country since Jan. 1, 2021, the first step on the bill's road to green cards and citizenship. Among its cosponsors was then-Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, now a Democratic senator.

Two months later, on April 15, 2021, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler and Reps. Hank Johnson and Mondaire Jones filed the Judiciary Act of 2021. The bill's working part is a single sentence. It changes "eight associate justices" to "twelve," taking the Supreme Court from nine seats to 13 and handing a Democratic president four picks at once.

What's on the ballot Tuesday

Republicans hold the Senate 53-47 today: 53 Republicans against 45 Democrats and two independents who vote with them, according to the Senate's own roster. With Vice President JD Vance breaking any 50-50 tie, Democrats need a net gain of four seats on Nov. 3 to take control.

Four seats is also exactly what D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood would add. The senators elected Tuesday will still be in office in 2029, the year Musk is pointing to.

"That is why you should vote for Republican senators this election," Musk wrote.