Elon Musk is expected to become the world’s first trillionaire. Democrats are taking aim. - NBC News

Progressive politicians are sharpening their attacks against tech tycoon Elon Musk, zeroing in on his soon-to-be-trillionaire status days before his company SpaceX’s record-setting initial public offering.

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, is expected to become its first trillionaire shortly after his rocket company begins selling shares to the public — as soon as next Friday, June 12.

While Musk has already faced intense criticism from Democrats after his chain saw-wielding tenure in the Trump administration, his rise to trillionaire status is making him an even bigger target among politicians who want to highlight the nation’s wealth gap ahead of the midterm elections.

“Income inequality is a huge problem in America and having our first trillionaire vividly illustrates the problem,” Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who researches the subject, said in an email. “This will be an issue in 2026 and 2028.”

A trillionaire is someone who has $1,000,000,000,000 or more — or 1,000 times the threshold for a billionaire. Scientific research says it’s a figure so large and surreal that it’s difficult for humans to put into context.

For anyone concerned about rising inequality, it’s no longer just about “millionaires and billionaires” — a catchphrase for progressives for many years. And the latest entry into the political lexicon is spreading quickly online and on the campaign trail.

“Nobody should be a trillionaire. Tax the damn rich,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said recently on X.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said at a rally in Maine last month that Musk is “going to get even richer, I think, in the next couple of weeks” and that it was “insanity” for him to have so much wealth.

Mallory McMorrow, a state lawmaker in Michigan who’s running in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, called out Musk at a candidate forum this year, saying: “The rich are getting richer. We have Elon Musk, who wants to be a trillionaire.”

In a phone interview Tuesday, McMorrow said she has continued to raise the subject of Musk’s net worth with audiences. She said it’s an effective jumping-off point for other subjects, including gas prices, cuts to healthcare spending and the government contracts that have helped make SpaceX successful.

“Elon Musk is somebody who would not be as successful as he is without billions of dollars of government contracts and subsidies,” she said.

“One trillion dollars is enough money to run the entire state of Michigan, a state of 10 million people, and all of the healthcare and all of the infrastructure and all of the schools and everything that goes into a state budget for more than 12 years,” she said. (The state budget is $81 billion.)

Musk’s net worth depends on several factors, including the share price of Tesla and the share price of SpaceX once it goes public. SpaceX said in a securities filing Wednesday that it was planning to offer shares initially at $135 each, which would put Musk’s net worth at $988 billion if the price holds up in the public market, according to Bloomberg. A small uptick could then push him past the threshold.

Online outrage about Musk’s projected trillionaire designation has been building for months. Last year, after he got a massive new compensation deal from Tesla that could one day be worth $1 trillion, a Europe-based abortion-rights group got 354,000 likes on Instagram with a post declaring (wrongly) that Musk had already become a trillionaire and suggesting humanitarian uses for the money. The post was shared by others, including singer-songwriter Billie Eilish, who called Musk a “coward,” among other insults. Musk responded that Eilish was “not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

Now, Musk’s pursuit of a $1 trillion net worth is becoming a reliable way to evoke a response at campaign stops and progressive events. People booed the idea of Musk as a trillionaire at a labor rally in New York in April and at a “No Kings” rally in Washington, D.C., last year when Sanders brought it up.

Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, didn’t respond to a request for comment. He has defended his wealth, saying he plans to use his personal net worth for a human settlement on Mars rather than for himself. The idea is built into the SpaceX investor prospectus, with Musk not getting his stock bonus until the company has a city on Mars with 1 million people.