Fact Check: Fake Harris Agenda Was Created by Conservative 'Dark Money' Group Reportedly Backed by Musk
By Anna Rascouët-Paz,
3 days ago
The supposed Progress 2028 agenda resembled Project 2025, an unpopular conservative blueprint for a future Republican administration.
On mailers and its associated website, Progress 2028 included policies Harris said she would not pursue, such as a mandatory gun buyback program and a ban on fracking.
OpenSecrets, a political funding watchdog, found the fake initiative was backed by a conservative "dark money network" known as Building America's Future, a fact Snopes was able to confirm by consulting FEC filings and a fictitious name certificate issued in Virginia.
According to investigations by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Reuters, a group of donors that included Elon Musk reportedly contributed more than $100 million to Building America's Future. Because such organizations are not required to disclose their donors or provide any documentary evidence, these investigations relied on multiple unnamed sources familiar with the situation. Snopes was not able to independently verify Musk's ties to the group.
In the buildup to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a meme circulated online claiming a website posing as a Democratic agenda was in fact backed by Republican money to destabilize the bid of Vice President Kamala Harris. The meme said the group behind the page was funded by Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk.
The post had amassed more than 12,000 reactions and 13,000 shares as of this writing. The meme also appeared on Instagram , Threads and X , the social media platform owned by Musk.
Further, a Snopes reader sent us an X post by progressive media company MeidasTouch making the same claim ( archived ).
The Meidas Touch post, which had garnered more than 2.5 million views as of this writing, shared a video that showed examples of mailers seemingly sent by the Progress 2028 group. Purporting to support Harris, the mailers claimed she had a plan to give nonresident immigrants easy access to housing and driver's licenses. It also discussed a mandatory firearm buyback program Harris supposedly touted as one of her campaign promises.
In short, Progress 2028 is a fake website and initiative that contains policies Harris has said she would not pursue. It is backed by a conservative "dark money network," known as Building America's Future, to which Musk and other donors reportedly contributed more than $100 million.
Progress 2028 Policies Not Backed by Harris in 2024
The agenda items listed on the Progress 2028 website were not, in fact, part of Harris' 2024 presidential campaign proposals. Snopes examined three of these policy items and found Harris had disavowed all of them.
For example, the page claimed she would ban fracking:
Kamala Harris is ready to take even bolder steps. She's committed to banning fracking , phasing out internal combustion engines , and rolling out the most progressive Green New Deal yet. The future of our planet depends on decisive action, and Kamala is ready to deliver.
While Harris said she supported a fracking ban during her first presidential run in 2019 ( archived ), she has since changed her position. For example, on Aug. 29, 2024, the vice president told CNN she does not want to ban this method of natural-gas extraction.
"As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking," Harris said ( archived ):
As the social media posts claimed, the Progress 2028 agenda also included an item about a mandatory gun buyback program to reduce gun violence:
Kamala will prioritize a nationwide buy-back program to get guns off the streets and ensure fairness to all participants. Her passion for gun control is unwavering—she's committed to taking bold actions that reduce gun violence and save lives, making schools, homes, and public spaces safer for everyone.
However, Harris said during the Sept. 10, 2024, debate , where she went face-to-face with former President Donald Trump, that she was a gun owner — a fact she had already shared in 2019 — and that she and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had no intention of confiscating firearms.
"This business about taking everyone's guns away. Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away," she explained on Sept. 10.
Another proposal attributed to Harris in the Progress 2028 initiative was her alleged plan to end the "War on Drugs":
It's time to reimagine public safety —one where every individual, no matter their background or income, can thrive. We'll dismantle outdated policies like the War on Drugs and reduce the prison population through rehabilitation and second chances. With bold leadership, we can create a justice system that upholds fairness, opportunity, and justice for all.
However on Sept. 30, 2024 , Harris declared she would in fact double the resources available to the U.S. Department of Justice to combat drug cartels, contradicting a Trump claim that she wanted to legalize fentanyl — a powerful synthetic opioid responsible for many overdose deaths.
Progress 2028 Is a Fake Initiative and Website
An investigation by OpenSecrets — a nonpartisan organization that tracks money in politics — showed Progress 2028 was fake and designed to mirror Project 2025 , a controversial conservative blueprint for a future Republican administration, which Snopes has analyzed in detail across multiple articles . OpenSecrets used documents filed by the organizations involved to come to its conclusion, and Snopes was able to find these documents and independently verify the link between Progress 2028 and conservative political action committees.
Progress 2028 — the fake initiative and website — received the backing of a "dark money group" known as Building America's Future. This group was funded by conservative donors, reportedly including Musk , as Republicans feared the unpopular Project 2025 could scare voters from voting for Trump. Three separate investigations by The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times and Reuters , all of which cited anonymous sources familiar with the situation, made this connection.
Snopes was not able to independently verify the conclusions of those investigations, as these groups are not obligated to disclose their financial backers under U.S. federal law. Therefore, there is no documentary evidence available to confirm who the donors were.
A domain name search for progress2028.com revealed the website was created on Sept. 26, 2024 . OpenSecrets showed that three days prior, on Sept. 23, Building America's Future registered Progress 2028 as a fictitious name in Virginia. (A fictitious name is a name different from the legal name of a business.)
According to a form filed with the Federal Election Commission in April 2024, a woman named Generra Peck shared control of Building America's Future. Peck was the manager of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' 2022 gubernatorial campaign, and later of his failed presidential bid in the primary election against Trump, which Musk initially supported .
The same FEC filing showed that Building America's Future paid money to an organization called IMGE , which OpenSecrets said built the Progress 2028 website. Phil Cox, a longtime Republican political operative who joined a super PAC in support of DeSantis' run for the presidency, appeared as senior partner on the IMGE website .
On Oct. 2, 2024, two separate investigations — one from The Wall Street Journal and one from Reuters — concluded Musk had given money to Building America's Future starting in 2022. These outlets cited unnamed sources familiar with the situation, who, due to their anonymity, Snopes was not able to verify. That year, Building America's Future declared revenue of more than $53 million, as seen on its 990 form to the Internal Revenue Service . The Wall Street Journal said this was Musk's money, citing its sources.
On Oct. 15, 2024, The New York Times reported that Building America's Future was the sole backer for two super PACs, Duty to America PAC and Future Coalition PAC. Indeed, an FEC filing from Duty for America showed it had received $16 million from Building America's Future. Meanwhile Future Coalition had received $3 million from Building America's Future, also according to an FEC filing , and OpenSecrets revealed the group had spent more than $3.5 million. Both super PACs had spent money on IMGE.
These two super PACs were responsible for some of the most criticized conservative advertising tactics to get Trump reelected. Duty to America PAC sought to convince young male voters and Black voters to vote for Trump. Future Coalition PAC aired ads in Michigan underscoring Harris' support for Israel and the fact that her husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish. Exploiting the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas , the ads pulled from the antisemitic trope of the dual loyalty of Jews, targeting the battleground state's Muslim voters in an effort to lower their turnout for Harris .
Snopes reached out to the principals at IMGE and Building America's Future, Cox and Peck, as well as Future Coalition PAC, Duty to America PAC and Musk's press team at Tesla. We will update the story should they respond.
Glueck, Katie. 'Antisemitic Ads About Doug Emhoff Target Muslim Voters in Michigan'. The New York Times, 12 Sept. 2024. https://archive.is/UWPbk, NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/12/us/politics/antisemitic-ads-doug-emhoff-muslim-michigan.html.
Haberman, Maggie, and Theodore Schleifer. 'Republican Operatives Function as Hidden Hand Behind Pro-Trump Efforts'. The New York Times, 15 Oct. 2024. https://archive.is/XXYIe, NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/us/elections/trump-money-building-americas-future.html.
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