Andrew Yang reaches out to Musk to collaborate on new political party
Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang said he's reached out to Elon Musk in hopes of collaborating on the creation of a new political party, according to a Saturday interview with Politico Magazine.
Yang, along with mutual friends, believes the Tesla CEO has what it takes to form a new faction that propels America's strongest leaders.
When asked if Musk has responded to his inquiry, Yang told the outlet 'Not yet, but I assume he's been very busy.'
'We have been of the opinion that America needed a new political party for a number of years, and so waiting another 24 hours is nothing,' he added.
Musk's push for a new political caucus emerged from his public feud with President Trump over the 'big, beautiful bill.' The tech giant strongly opposed the national debt increase after months of working with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut federal spending.
Yang, the founder of 'The Forward Party,' said it's political outsiders like Musk who consider non-traditional approaches to the country's problems.
'I want to work with people that recognize that America's political system has gone from dysfunctional to polarizing to even worse. And at this point, the fastest growing political movement in the United States is independents,' Yang said.
'They feel like neither party represents them, and the two-party system is not delivering what they want to see,' he continued.
Many people have recently left the Democratic party, including former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who announced she became an independent after seeing political polarization throughout the campaign trail.
'If you look at Musk's politics over the last number of years, he waited in line to meet Barack Obama, he endorsed me in a Democratic cycle, and even earlier in this cycle — 2024 — he was looking for an alternative to Trump,' Yang said.
'There are a number of things that I think Elon shares in common with a lot of other folks I talk to who want to see some kind of middle ground or balance. The problem is: In our two-party system, you get whipsawed either one direction or the other,' he continued.
Last year, Musk was a major donor for Republicans but has supported a wide array of candidates like Yang in the past. Now that he's severed ties with the GOP, political hopefuls have been looking to capitalize on the billionaire's powerful funding reserve for future campaigns.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
31 minutes ago
- CNN
ICE chief defends agents wearing masks during immigration raids
ICE chief defends agents wearing masks during immigration raids Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons is defending federal immigration agents for wearing masks during raids across the US, citing safety concerns. The tactic has sparked backlash and raised questions about transparency and accountability. 00:58 - Source: CNN See reactions to the Trump-Musk feud See some reactions to the intense public feud that erupted between President Donald Trump and his one-time ally, billionaire Elon Musk. 01:05 - Source: CNN Trump on Musk: 'The poor guy's got a problem' In a phone call with CNN's Dana Bash, President Donald Trump said he is 'not even thinking about' billionaire Elon Musk and won't be speaking to him in the near future. The comments come a day after Trump and Musk traded barbs on social media as their relationship deteriorated in spectacular public fashion. 00:43 - Source: CNN Trump and Musk escalate public feud An intense public feud erupted between President Donald Trump and his one-time ally, billionaire Elon Musk, with an argument about Trump's massive tax and domestic policy bill raging across social media and in the Oval Office. CNN's senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes reports. 03:03 - Source: CNN Kara Swisher on the 'nuclear' feud between Trump and Musk CNN's Anderson Cooper talks with Kara Swisher about the stunning public feud between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. 01:30 - Source: CNN German leader on 'terrible' impact of Trump's tariffs In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz talks about the impact President Trump's tariffs are having on the auto industry. 01:13 - Source: CNN Curtis Yarvin is inspiring a new generation of MAGA CNN's Hadas Gold interviews anti-democracy author Curtis Yarvin about his argument for an all-powerful executive in the White House. 02:24 - Source: CNN DNC Trolls Trump with Taco Truck The Democratic National Committee parked a taco truck outside the RNC headquarters in Washington DC Tuesday, as a way to troll the president over an acronym created by a Financial Times commentator about the president's frequent walk backs and pauses to his tariff's. 00:52 - Source: CNN Musk calls Trump's bill 'disgusting abomination' Elon Musk lashed out at President Donald Trump's agenda bill — which the president is pressuring GOP senators to support — calling it a 'disgusting abomination.' CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports. 00:59 - Source: CNN Dana Bash presses Trump's budget chief about cancer cuts CNN's Dana Bash presses Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought on the Trump administration's proposal to cut non-defense spending by more than 22% — including deep reductions to education, food assistance, and billions in cancer research funding. As Vought defends the cuts and criticizes the NIH, Bash challenges him on the real-world impact to life-saving medical research. 01:35 - Source: CNN Trump reacts to video of Macron's apparent shove from wife President Trump was asked by reporters about the viral video appearing to show French President Emmanuel Macron being pushed by his wife Brigitte as they disembarked from a plane in Vietnam. Macron, at the time, quickly dismissed the video. 00:34 - Source: CNN Trans high school athlete wins events amid controversy A transgender athlete, whose participation sparked a national controversy and a temporary rule change, took first place in two of her three events in the California High School Track and Field Championship. 01:09 - Source: CNN South Carolina voter says 'no' to moving center South Carolina has often bucked the electoral trend – voting for candidates who lost in Iowa or New Hampshire and thus helping pick which candidate will move on to the general election. CNN's Jeff Simon spoke to multiple voters at a Democrat dinner in Columbia, South Carolina about the party's leadership and future. 01:25 - Source: CNN Hegseth warns 'threat China poses is real' US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking to Asia's premier defense forum in Singapore, delivered a dire warning to the world: China's designs on Taiwan pose a threat to global peace and stability that requires 'our allies and partners do their part on defense.' While Hegseth made clear that Washington does not seek conflict with China, he stressed the Trump administration would not let aggression from Beijing stand. 00:50 - Source: CNN GOP senator pressed on Medicaid in heated town hall GOP Sen. Joni Ernst faced concerns from town hall attendees over potential cuts to Medicaid and SNAP programs as a result of President Donald Trump's sweeping domestic policy bill, saying at one point, 'Well, we all are going to die,' and insisting that those who are eligible for Medicaid will continue to receive payments. 01:12 - Source: CNN Fareed Zakaria breaks down Trump's tariff battle CNN's Fareed Zakaria breaks down what's going on with President Donald Trump's battle with the Supreme Court over tariffs. 00:58 - Source: CNN President Trump's timeline for things seems to almost always be 'in two weeks' President Donald Trump told reporters it will take about 'two weeks' to determine whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about ending the war in Ukraine. That two week timeline, CNN's Abby Phillip says, is a familiar one. 01:48 - Source: CNN President Trump is on a pardoning spree President Donald Trump used his pardon power to grant clemency to a wave of individuals who had been convicted of crimes that range from public corruption, guns and even maritime-related offenses, according to multiple officials. CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports. 00:53 - Source: CNN Trump responds to Wall Street term 'TACO': Trump Always Chickens Out President Donald Trump was asked about "TACO," an acronym that means "Trump Always Chickens Out," which is used by Wall Street workers for his on-and-off approach to tariffs. Calling it "the nastiest question," Trump defended his tariff policy by calling it "negotiation." 01:13 - Source: CNN Harvard students and faculty speak out against Trump Harvard students and faculty spoke to CNN ahead of commencement as Donald Trump said the university should cap foreign enrollment. The Trump administration has recently sought to cancel $100 million in contracts with the school. 02:03 - Source: CNN
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Buy FuboTV Now or Wait Until the Disney Deal Is Done?
FuboTV is being merged with Disney's Hulu streaming service. FuboTV's first-quarter results weren't as strong as they may have seemed. The company's subscriber count was weak. 10 stocks we like better than fuboTV › FuboTV (NYSE: FUBO) made headlines in early 2025 when it agreed to merge with Disney's (NYSE: DIS) Hulu streaming service. This is a very big deal for FuboTV, and the stock has risen dramatically since the agreement was announced. Should interested investors buy now before the deal is done, or does it make more sense to wait and see what happens? FuboTV says it has "a global mission to aggregate the best in TV, including premium sports, news and entertainment content, through a single app." In the U.S. market, the product it sells is "a sports-first cable TV replacement product." Basically, it is competing with the major content providers with an aggregated cable replacement for so-called cord-cutters. That's not exactly a bad plan, but it is still a fairly big project to undertake since companies like Disney, among many others, have created compelling streaming products of their own. And cable providers are increasingly offering their services through the web, as well. Notably, even if a consumer uses FuboTV, they still need a connection to the internet to make it work. Cable and phone providers are still how large numbers of consumers reach the web. Disney is a media titan with massive content franchises. Hulu was an early effort to break into the streaming world, with multiple original partners. At this point, Hulu's partners have stepped back, preferring to start their own streaming services. That includes Disney. Merging FuboTV with Hulu, with Disney ending up retaining a 70% stake in the company, seems more likely to benefit Disney than Hulu or FuboTV. That's because FuboTV could end up being a mere vassal of Disney. In that scenario, Disney could sell content to FuboTV with costs so high that FuboTV barely makes a profit. Another scenario to consider is that Disney simply sells its stake in FuboTV, leaving FuboTV with a larger business, but one that is still at a strategic disadvantage as content makers push their own streaming products. The interesting thing is that FuboTV didn't have a great first quarter in 2025. For example, the company reported GAAP earnings of $0.55 per share in the first quarter. But if you remove one-time items, the company actually lost $0.02 a share. That was an improvement from an adjusted loss of $0.14 a year earlier, but FuboTV is still a money-losing venture. Worse, FuboTV's subscriber base declined year over year in the first quarter. The first-quarter showing suggests it isn't entering into the Hulu pairing on the strongest footing. Meanwhile, it is taking on a large business that it will operate separately from its FuboTV operation. Complexity will dramatically increase for FuboTV, given that Hulu is a larger streaming business. So execution will be very important, noting that it is entirely possible that FuboTV is biting off more than it can chew. That's highlighted by the company's first-quarter subscriber issues. Could Hulu combining with FuboTV be a massive win for everyone involved? Sure, that's one possible outcome, but there are negative outcomes that could transpire as well. Disney's large ownership stake could leave FuboTV beholden to Disney, placing the desires of other shareholders in a distant second place. FuboTV's not-so-great first-quarter subscriber numbers could be a harbinger of trouble to come even as it bulks up its subscriber count with Hulu. And Disney could just be attempting to offload a business that it doesn't want before the business really starts to show signs of weakness. Tiny FuboTV taking on the much larger Hulu service does sound exciting. But for most investors, it probably makes more sense to wait and see how the new FuboTV performs following the transaction before buying. After FuboTV's big stock price jump, it seems like there's a lot of good news already priced in here. Before you buy stock in fuboTV, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and fuboTV wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $669,517!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $868,615!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 792% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 171% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 Reuben Gregg Brewer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Walt Disney and fuboTV. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Buy FuboTV Now or Wait Until the Disney Deal Is Done? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
34 minutes ago
- Forbes
Have Reporting Burdens Led To More Firms Staying Private?
The best evidence for this hypothesis comes from micro-caps. Confounding trends and offsetting benefits of being public are often ignored by advocates for reducing reporting rules. The number of US public firms has fallen in recent times. Prof. Jay Ritter, who tracks these numbers, documents that we had 3,804 US listed firms at the end of 2024 relative to the peak of around 8000 in 1996. Remarkably we had 1,384 foreign firms listed at the end of 2024. Many blame higher costs reporting and auditing for the smaller number of US listed firms. They point to the cumulative onslaught of Sarbanes Oxley 2022, the 2003 Global Settlement that alleged made it harder for analysts to cover small firms, Dodd-Frank 2010, and the supposedly relentless pace of accounting and auditing regulation pushed by Congress, the SEC and the FASB. The question I want to address is whether there is any evidence for that claim. Trend depends on benchmark period In a research note, Vanguard points out that if we go back to 1972, the decline shrinks to a third. On top of that, 1972 was the year NASDAQ was set up and 3,000 odd new companies entered the public arena. Why the fall? Doidge, Karolyi, Shen and Stulz (2025) list two potential underlying reasons: (i) it is easier to stay private because restrictions on staying private have softened and it has become easier to raise funds for private firms, perhaps due to the low interest rate environment; and (ii) antitrust enforcement over the last decade has been relatively lax and product market competition has heated up leading to a greater number of mergers. They don't seem to devote much space to reporting cost burden. Acquisitions drive most of the decline A McKinsey piece shows that 95% of the exits from our markets are driven by acquisitions. Thus, the so-called missing companies have not left the investible universe for the US investor as the investor gets indirect exposure to the target via the acquirer's stock. Espen Eckbo makes the acquisition point more rigorously. However, the rate of entry and exit into public markets is not uniform across industries. We had more IPOs, relative to exits, in pharmaceutical and biotech industries. The number of IPOs, relative to exits, are more or less the same in retail, materials, consumer apparel and durables. Exits far exceed IPOs in banking, software, technology hardware, media and telecom. Any theory that argues reporting burdens are a first order problem needs to explain why such burden has massively increased for banking, software, tech hardware, media and telecom relative to pharma. Smaller IPOs, mostly micro-caps, gone The McKinsey piece also makes the interesting point that we have far fewer smaller IPOs now relative to the past. This suggests that more of the earlier value is captured by private investors, as private equity firms seem to take longer to exit their positions now relative to before (3 years in 2007 relative to 6 years in 2015). One could argue that the costs of reporting, auditing and compliance have become too large for smaller IPOs to even think about going public. Vanguard points out that the missing IPOs are micro-caps. Is the loss of micro-caps a policy concern? Moreover, Mauboussin, Callahan, and Majd (2017) and Doidge, Karolyi, and Stulz (2017) note that half of what can be referred to as the 'listing gap' (exits more than IPOs) occurred before Sarbanes Oxley became law. Start-ups have declined too Somewhat intriguing, the number of start-ups appears to display mixed patterns since 1996. The Kaufmann index of startup activity falls from 1996 to its nadir in 2013, after which it picks up till 2017, when the index was last published but the 2017 number was still lower than the 1996 number. This suggests that there may be fewer businesses even available to go public. International exchanges I am in the UK as I write this and an institutional investor I know here suggested that the London stock exchange has suffered a similar decline in IPOs. In fact, there is some angst in the UK that they are losing listings to the US. The loss in listings applies to other advanced economies as well, as Espen Eckbo points out. The theory pushing for reporting burdens as the primary explanation will have to explain why UK reporting and reporting in other advanced economies has also become onerously burdensome. Burgeoning private equity (PE) A senior executive tells me,' the payouts achieved by management and their VCs by arranging acquisitions to PE firms, as well as PE to PE sales have been, in recent times, just as compelling as anything other than a truly dramatic IPO. Smaller companies, companies with significant internal ownership, companies without strong growth or high investment opportunities (that is to say not pharma or biotech who absolutely need risk capital), companies where management would like to stay involved but are not keen on public company visibility. These are all great reasons to be acquired by PE rather than either IPO or even getting acquired by a public company rapidly, with certainty, without much publicity. PE is incredibly well equipped at maximizing ongoing cashflows, and growth, while still maintaining: (i) particularly attractive incentives for management in the transaction, (ii) management that stays post transaction with significant incentive retentions and milestones -- all without pesky proxy announcements about executive compensation; and (iii) objectively great returns to those equity holders that are just selling.' The role of reporting for intangibles Rene Stulz (2018) has suggested that new firms heavily invest in intangibles and forced disclosure of intangibles by securities laws, all else constant, encourage firms to stay private. I am not sure of this argument as US public firms barely tell us anything about their intangible investments, especially home grown ones. Papers suggesting that SOX increased regulatory burdens Zhang (2007) finds negative returns of around -15% to -13% around the events surrounding the passage of SOX. I find these returns too large to be credible. Engel, Hayes, and Wang (2007) observed an increase in decisions to go private after SOX. But this evidence is mixed. Bartlett (2008) of the Stanford Law School re-examines this question and concludes, 'non-SOX factors were the primary impetus for the "name brand" buyouts commonly evoked as evidence that SOX has harmed the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets.' Iliev (2010) is perhaps the best cited paper in the area. Using careful research designs, Iliev documents that section 404 of the SOX, which mandates that the auditor attest the internal controls of the firm for the absence of a material weakness, led to conservative reported earnings but also imposed real costs. Iliev compares audit fees and earnings quality for firms with float of $50-75 million to those just above at $75 million-$100 million. The idea is that firms in these two partitions are mostly similar except that Section 404 applies only to firms with float greater than $75 million. He concludes, 'on net, SOX compliance reduced the market value of small firms' and increases audit fees by 167%. Atanasov and Black (2020) replicate Iliev (2010) and conclude that not controlling for firm growth led Iliev (2010) to overestimate SOX compliance costs in his analysis. However, the increase in audit fees suffered by the small firms is real, by about 80%. The dollar numbers underlying these estimates are worth reiterating. The average firm in Iliev's affected firm sample pays more than $0.7 million in greater audit fees. The mean and median earnings of sample firms is -$4.8 million and -$1.4 million respectively. Iliev uses this comparison to argue that the compliance costs of section 404 were substantial. Were they? Would these firms have survived had section 404 not been enacted? Is it obvious that investors would have wanted to invest in such firms? And, how much of the audit fee hike is temporary for a year or two. Even more noteworthy, this evidence relates to micro caps (defined as stocks with market capitalizations of between $50 million and $250 million in 2024). These numbers would be smaller if we went back in time as stock markets have gone up quite a bit in the last 20 years or so. The bigger question is how can we possibly generalize evidence reliant on a sample of microcaps to the entire corporate ecosystem? Ewens, Xiao and Xu (2024), in a new paper, move this literature forward and consider three such natural breakpoints to estimate costs of mandatory reporting: (i) firms below $25 million in float in 1992 were designated as 'small businesses' and escaped a few disclosure requirements; (ii) the $75 million float threshold that Iliev looked for section 404 of SOX; and (iii) the $700 million float threshold used in the 2012 JOBS Act. The 2012 JOBS Act is interesting because the point of that legislation was to exempt smaller firms from a few reporting requirements. So, the JOBS Act presents a bit of a counterfactual to the usual setting whereby regulation increased. Based on these events, they claim that the median firm spends 4.3% of its market capitalization on compliance costs. I find the 4.3% number somewhat big. Moreover, even with the clever econometrics used in the paper, can one really generalize estimates from SOX and JOBS Act to the universe of firms? I don't know. Interestingly, Ewens et al. themselves seem to conclude, 'heightened regulatory costs only explain a small fraction of the decline in the number of public firms over the last two decades. Our results suggest that non-regulatory factors likely played a more important role in explaining the decline in the number of U.S. public firms.' Evidence around the 2012 JOBS Act Researchers are generally good at coming up with unintended consequences of regulations that public firms are required to follow. But we don't often see studies that document the offsetting benefits of going or staying public. The 2012 JOBS Act presents a rare opportunity to consider whether relaxing reporting regulations encourages more IPOs. Dambra et al. (2015) conclude that the 2012 JOBS Act led to an increase of 21 IPOs a year, on average. Ewens et al. (2024) find a slightly higher estimate: roughly 28 additional IPOs. One must wonder whether 20 odd IPOs per year are worth the potential collateral damage to the credibility of US reporting and compliance systems, if the PCAOB were to be dismantled or SOX were to be repealed. Incidentally, many other advanced economies passed regulation, modeled on SOX, in their own countries. Did they not conduct a careful assessment of costs of such regulation on their IPO activity? Or did they recognize the need to tighten up reporting and audit rules after the tech bubble burst in 2001? IPO Tax Robert Jackson's, the ex-SEC commissioner, analysis highlights the 7% tax that middle market IPOs must pay even before they go public, to investment bankers, lawyers and the like. Surely, the IPO tax, which has little to do per se with the reporting and compliance costs of 4.3% highlighted by Ewens et al, deserves more attention. The advocates of cutting reporting burdens are somewhat silent about reducing the 7% middle market IPO tax. And I am aware of startups that are working on software that can write an S1 in minutes with AI. Shouldn't the 4.3% reporting costs, estimated by Ewens et al., fall? Benefits of staying public are often ignored Owners, VCs, and capital providers get liquidity. Public firms can potentially pay labor mostly via stock and hence attract higher quality talent. Stock can be used as a means of payment to buy another company and hence take out a rival or to buy a complementary firm. If you get acquired, the acquirer is usually expected to pay a 25% control premium over the prevailing stock price. In sum, the case for reporting burdens forcing companies to stay private is far from clear. The best evidence relates to micro-caps and generalizing from that set to other companies is not straightforward. Partisan debate about the evidence often tends to ignore the vast number of confounding factors such as low interest rates, falling number of start-ups, special time periods chosen for the analysis and large number of acquisitions of public firms and the 7% IPO tax. If anything, US reporting rules need to be strengthened, not weakened. I have pointed out, time and again, the deficiencies in our financial reporting system and how auditors could potentially do a better job. Regulators may want to proceed with caution the next time someone brings up the hypothesis that reporting burdens are a significant barrier to US firms going public.
