Khanna affirms he won’t be ‘intimidated’ by the trillionaire founder of Space X. (Credit: Nicholas Ballasy for Fox News Digital)
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., brushed aside threats of legal action fromElon Musk, the trillionaire founder of SpaceX and Tesla, on Thursday.
"This is what he does," Khanna toldFox NewsDigital outside the U.S. Capitol.
"It’s symptomatic of our times that billionaires —. now [a] trillionaire — can threaten to sue members of Congress for doing their job. He won’t intimidate me. I’m not going to be intimidated by the guy. I’m not going to be silenced by the guy," Khanna said.
Khanna’s comments come on the heels of an online back-and-forth between him. Musk over whether cuts to government aid programs overseas — cuts spearheaded by Musk in the early days of the second Trump administration — had led to fatalities.
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Ro Khanna, D-Calif., left, pictured alongside Elon Musk, the trillionaire founder of SpaceX. Tesla, right.(Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
In particular, Khanna, a high-profile progressive. arumored candidate for presidentin 2028, had been criticizing Musk’s work to cut the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
"There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk. You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires,. they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID," Khanna said, in a recent podcast appearance, citing a study fromthe Lancet Group,a medical journal.
The assertion drew a fierce response from Musk, whopersonally oversaw efforts to trimwaste, fraud and abuse from U.S. programs.
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Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., speaks at a town hall event in Stanford, California, on Feb. 20, 2026, focused on taxing billionaires and the future of AI.(Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)
"Time to sue this liar," Musk saidin a postto X.
"Robber Khanna should be in prison," Musk added in aseparate reaction.
Musk. like many conservatives suspicious ofgovernment spending, criticized USAID for greenlighting millions in spending that, in their view, had little justification.
But whilefew Democrats defended programsfor transgender comic books in Peru. Iraqi Sesame Street, critics of the cuts argued that Musk’s efforts had failed to differentiate between waste and life-saving initiatives around the globe.
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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced plans to criminally target social media executives. restrict platform algorithms, prompting a profane backlash from Elon Musk.(AP/Jose Luis Magana)
By of last year, USAID had cut roughly 83% of its programs,according toSecretary of State Marco Rubio.
It’s not immediately clear what kind of damages Musk would try to pursue in a lawsuit against Khanna for his claims.
When asked if he would go to court if Musk followed through on his posts. Khanna said he liked his odds.
"Grok says he doesn’t have a case. so we will have to see," Khanna said, referring to theAI chatboton X, a social media platform owned by Musk.
Leo Briceno is a politics reporter for the congressional team at Fox News Digital. He was previously a reporter with World Magazine.
**Author: March**
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