It says nothing good about America how easily Elon Musk convinced the press and public he was a supergenius engineer who could cobble together complicated rocket machinery wearing coveralls in his backyard shed.
Hindsight continues to illustrate how Elon Musk’s real skill sets are opportunism, taking singular credit for the innovations of real engineers, the manipulation of a very broken media, and taking legal, regulatory, environmental, labor, and consumer protection “shortcuts” wherever possible.
Enter the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is investigating Musk’s automated-taxi Cybercab deployments in Austin for violating public safety guidelines.
The Trump NHTSA is updating existing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) to help companies speed toward automated cars and taxis. But until then our previous (already fairly lax) standards still apply. This being America, companies self-certify whether they’re adhering to the rules in order to get a two-year exemption (Amazon’s Zoox got approval last month).
“Ann Carlson, a former acting NHTSA administrator who is now a professor of environmental law at UCLA, says the investigation is likely “an indication that NHTSA is super frustrated with Tesla.” The agency made clear through the Zoox case that it expects driverless vehicle developers to go through the exemption process. “For Tesla to slap them in the face and ignore that—that is gobsmacking,” she says.”
It’s not really all that gobsmacking for a company run by a man who has been extremely proud about his clumsy role in fatally dismantling U.S. federal government functionality — particularly when it pertains to corporate oversight and public safety. This is always who he was. He has a twelve-year old libertarian boy’s understanding of what government does and why it’s necessary.
Of course, this isn’t the first time NHTSA has promised accountability and then delivered the policy equivalent of a wet farting sound. The agency announced it opened an inquiry last year into Musk robotaxis clearly failing to adhere to traffic laws and making constant navigation mistakes.
This story was originally published by the Texas Tribune and the Texas Newsroom and co-published with ProPublica. Republished under the Texas Tribune’s republish feature.
Months after fighting to keep secret the emails exchanged between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s companies, state officials released nearly 1,400 pages to The Texas Newsroom.
The records, however, reveal little about the two men’s relationship or Musk’s influence over state government. In fact, all but about 200 of the pages are entirely blacked out.
Of those that were readable, many were either already public or provided minimal information. They included old incorporation records for Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, a couple of agendas for the governor’s committee on aerospace and aviation, emails regarding a state grant awarded to SpaceX and an application from a then-Musk employee to sit on a state commission.
One is an invitation to happy hour. Another is a reminder of the next SpaceX launch.
The documents were provided in response to a public records request by The Texas Newsroom, which asked Abbott’s office for communications with Musk and the businessman’s employees dating back to last fall. Abbott’s and Musk’s lawyers fought their release, arguing they would reveal trade secrets, potentially “intimate and embarrassing” exchanges or confidential legal and policymaking discussions.
Abbott’s spokesperson, Andrew Mahaleris, said the governor’s office “rigorously complies with the Texas Public Information Act and releases any responsive information that is determined to not be confidential or excepted from disclosure.”
Open government experts say the limited disclosure is emblematic of a larger transparency problem in Texas. They pointed to a 2015 state Supreme Court decision that allowed companies to oppose the release of records by arguing that they contain “competitively sensitive” information. The ruling, experts said, made it harder to obtain records documenting interactions between governments and private companies.
Tom Leatherbury, who directs the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, said companies took advantage of the ruling. Among the most prominent examples of the ruling’s effect on transparency was McAllen’s refusal to disclose how much money was spent to lure pop star Enrique Iglesias to the city for a concert. The city argued that such disclosures would hurt its ability to negotiate with artists for future performances. Eventually, it was revealed that Iglesias was paid nearly half a million dollars.
The problem has been exacerbated, Leatherbury added, by the fact that the Office of the Attorney General, which referees public records disputes, does not have the power to investigate whether the records that companies want to withhold actually contain trade secrets.
“Corporations are willing to assert that information is confidential, commercial information, and more governmental bodies are willing not to second-guess the company’s assertion,” Leatherbury said. (Leatherbury has performed pro bono legal work for The Texas Newsroom.)
Musk and his companies’ representatives did not respond to questions about the records.
As part of an effort to track Musk’s clout in the state Capitol, The Texas Newsroom on April 20 asked Abbott’s office for communications with employees from four of the businessman’s companies: SpaceX, car manufacturer Tesla, the social media site X and Neuralink, which specializes in brain nanotechnology.
The governor’s office said it would cost $244.64 to review the documents, which The Texas Newsroom paid. After the check was cashed, lawyers representing Abbott’s office and SpaceX each sought to keep the records secret.
SpaceX’s lawyer sent a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton dated June 26, saying that publicly releasing the emails would hurt its competitive advantage.
Abbott’s public information coordinator, Matthew Taylor, also asked Paxton’s office for permission to withhold the documents, arguing they included private exchanges with lawyers, details about policymaking decisions and information that would reveal how the state entices companies to invest here. Taylor said some of the records were protected under an exception to public records laws known as “common-law privacy” because they consisted of “information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public.”
Releasing the Musk emails, he said, would have a “chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process.”
Ultimately, Paxton’s office mostly sided with Abbott and Musk. In a Aug. 11 opinion, Assistant Attorney General Erin Groff wrote that many of the documents could be withheld. Groff, however, ordered the release of some records determined to be “either not highly intimate or embarrassing” or of “legitimate public interest.”
A month later, the governor’s office released 1,374 pages of records, the vast majority of which were completely redacted.
Some records included a note that appeared to explain why. A note on page 401, for example, cited the exemption for competitive bidding records for 974 redacted pages. Names and emails of Musk’s employees were also removed.
“The fact that a governmental body can redact more than 1,000 pages of documents that are directly related to a major business’s activities in Texas is certainly problematic,” said Reid Pillifant, an attorney specializing in public records and media law. (Pillifant has represented a coalition of media outlets, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, in lawsuits seeking the release of public information related to the May 2022 mass shooting at an Uvalde elementary school.)
He and other experts said such hurdles are becoming more common as legislation and court decisions have weakened the state’s public records laws.
Four years after the 2015 Supreme Court decision, legislators passed a new law that was meant to ensure the release of basic information about government deals with private businesses. But open government experts said the law did not go far enough to restore transparency, adding that some local governments are still objecting to the release of contract information.
Moreover, lawmakers continue to add carve-outs to what qualifies as public information every legislative session. Just this year, for example, legislators added the following exceptions to public records and open meetings laws: information relating to how government entities detect and deter fraud and discussions during public government meetings about certain military and aerospace issues.
Even with the increasing challenges of accessing public records, Leatherbury and Pillifant were stumped by the governor’s decision to release thousands of pages only to black them out fully. Leatherbury said that the governor’s office may have wanted to show the volume of records responsive to the request.
“They wanted you to see what little you could get in the context of the entire document, even though that’s kind of meaningless,” he said.
The Texas Newsroom has asked the Office of the Attorney General to reconsider its decision and order the release of the Musk emails. There is little other recourse to challenge the outcome.
If a member of the public believes a government agency is violating the law, they can try to sue. But the experts noted that a recent Texas Supreme Court decision made it more difficult to enforce the public records law against the governor and other executive officers. Now, Leatherbury said, it’s not clear how challenging such a records decision would work.
“Every Texas citizen should care about access to these kinds of records because they shed light on how our public officials are making big decisions that affect the land where people live and how their taxpayer dollars are being spent,” Pillifant said.
Lauren McGaughy is a journalist with The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in Texas. She is based at KUT News in Austin. Reach her at lmcgaughy@kut.org. Sign up for KUT newsletters.
Just days after a jury found Tesla partially liable in a fatal Autopilot crash and ordered the company to pay over $200 million, Elon Musk took to Twitter with a bold proclamation: “Teslas can drive themselves!”
The timing couldn’t be worse. Because thanks to a devastating article by Electrek’s Fred Lambert that digs deep into the trial transcripts, we now know just how far Tesla went to hide the truth about what happened in that crash. The company systematically withheld evidence, misled police investigators, and actively obstructed efforts to understand how its technology failed—behavior that looks suspiciously like criminal obstruction of justice, yet somehow apparently carries no criminal consequences.
This isn’t just about one lawsuit. It’s about how Tesla’s behavior threatens to undermine public trust in autonomous vehicle technology at precisely the moment when that trust is most crucial.
Let’s be clear: self-driving technology has enormous potential to save lives. Human drivers cause roughly 94% of serious traffic crashes, according to a decade-old study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Even imperfect autonomous systems could dramatically reduce that toll, and we shouldn’t hold them to an impossible standard of perfection.
But here’s the problem: overselling what these systems can actually do—and then covering up when they fail—threatens to poison public acceptance of the technology entirely. If people lose trust because companies like Tesla made promises they couldn’t keep, we could end up rejecting technology that might otherwise save thousands of lives.
The aviation industry figured this out decades ago. When planes crash, investigators swarm the scene, companies cooperate fully with authorities, and the entire industry learns from failures. That transparency has made flying extraordinarily safe. But Tesla’s approach in this Autopilot case shows the exact opposite mentality.
The Electrek story, based on trial transcripts from the recent case, reveals a pattern of deception that’s genuinely shocking. Here’s what Tesla did:
Within three minutes of the fatal crash, the Model S automatically uploaded a complete “collision snapshot”—video, sensor data, everything—to Tesla’s servers, then deleted the local copy. Tesla was the only entity with access to the critical evidence.
Within about three minutes of the crash, the Model S uploaded a “collision snapshot”—video, CAN‑bus streams, EDR data, etc.—to Tesla’s servers, the “Mothership”, and received an acknowledgement. The vehicle then deleted its local copy, resulting in Tesla being the only entity having access.
When police investigators tried to get the data, Tesla’s lawyer literally scripted their evidence request. As the homicide investigator testified:
“He said it’s not necessary. ‘Write me a letter and I’ll tell you what to put in the letter.'”
But the lawyer deliberately crafted the letter to avoid sending the actual crash data, instead providing infotainment logs and owner’s manuals.
McCarthy specifically crafted the letter to ommit sharing the colllision snapshot, which includes bundled video, EDR, CAN bus, and Autopilot data.
Instead, Tesla provided the police with infotainment data with call logs, a copy of the Owner’s Manual, but not the actual crash telemetry from the Autopilot ECU.
Tesla never said that it already had this data for more than a month by now.
When police brought the car’s computer to a Tesla service center for help extracting data, Tesla technicians falsely claimed the data was “corrupted”—even though they had the complete dataset sitting on their servers the entire time.
For years, Tesla told courts and plaintiffs that the crucial collision data “didn’t exist.” Only when forensic experts finally gained access to the car’s computer and found metadata proving Tesla had the data all along did the company finally admit what it had done.
As Electrek reports:
The automaker had to admit to have the data all along.
During the trial, Mr. Schreiber, attorney for the plaintiffs, claimed that Tesla used the data for its own internal analysis of the crash:
“They not only had the snapshot — they used it in their own analysis. It shows Autopilot was engaged. It shows the acceleration and speed. It shows McGhee’s hands off the wheel.”
Yet, it didn’t give access to the police nor the family of the victim who have been trying to understand what happened to their daughter.
Just reading through the summary Electrek wrote about the timeline is horrifying and raises obvious questions about why there’s no criminal liability here:
Tesla had the data on its servers within minutes of the crash
When the police sought the data, Tesla redirected them toward other data
When the police sought Tesla’s help in extracting it from the computer, Tesla falsely claimed it was “corrupted”
Tesla invented an “auto-delete” feature that didn’t exist to try explain why it couldn’t originally find the data in the computer
When the plaintiffs asked for the data, Tesla said that it didn’t exist
Tesla only admitted to the existence of the data once presented with forensic evidence that it was created and transfered to its servers.
When the collision data finally came to light, it painted a damning picture. Electrek’s summary of the forensic analysis is quite something:
Autopilot was active
Autosteer was controlling the vehicle
No manual braking or steering override was detected from the driver
There wasno record of a “Take Over Immediately” alert, despite approaching a T-intersection with a stationary vehicle in its path.
Moore found logs showingTesla systems were capable of issuing such warnings, butdid notin this case.
Map and vision data from the ECU revealed:
Map data from the Autopilot ECU included a flag that the area was a“restricted Autosteer zone.”
Despite this, the systemallowed Autopilot to remain engagedat full speed.
That last point is crucial. Tesla knew this wasn’t an appropriate place for Autopilot to operate, but the system didn’t disengage or warn the driver. The NTSB had specifically warned Tesla to “incorporate system safeguards that limit the use of automated vehicle control systems to those conditions for which they were designed.”
Tesla appeared to ignore that recommendation.
The jury found that the driver in this case bears primary responsibility—he admitted to being distracted and not using Autopilot properly. The jury assigned him 67% of the blame. But they also found Tesla 33% responsible, and that matters.
As Electrek notes:
However, there’s also no doubt that Autopilot was active, didn’t prevent the crash despite Tesla claiming it is safer than humans, and Tesla was warned to use better geo-fencing and driver monitoring to prevent abuse of the system like that.
This case (unlike some other stories about autonomous vehicles) isn’t about punishing innovation or holding technology to impossible standards. It’s about holding companies accountable when they oversell their capabilities and then actively obstruct efforts to learn from failures.
Tesla’s behavior in this case—the years of lies, the misdirection of police, the withholding of critical evidence—represents everything wrong with how some tech companies approach safety and accountability. It’s the opposite of what we need to build public trust in autonomous vehicles.
Self-driving technology can eventually make our roads safer. But getting there requires companies that are transparent about their systems’ limitations, cooperative with safety investigations, and committed to continuous improvement based on real-world data.
Tesla’s cover-up in this case shows a company more interested in protecting its stock price (the biggest source of Elon’s wealth) than protecting lives. And Musk’s tweet claiming “Teslas can drive themselves” just days after this devastating evidence came to light shows he’s learned nothing.
If we want autonomous vehicles to fulfill their life-saving potential, we need companies that act more like airlines after a crash investigation (full transparency, immediate cooperation, system-wide improvements) and less like Tesla in this case (cover-ups, obstruction, and doubling down on dangerous claims).
The technology itself isn’t the problem. The corporate culture that prioritizes PR over safety is.
So you may have seen that Elon Musk’s long-hyped Robotaxis have finally “launched” in Austin. And it’s going just about how you’d expect if you’re familiar with the fit and finish of Elon Musk promises.
There are about a dozen Robotaxis now operating; Model Ys with a human observer in the front seat to try and avoid calamity. And despite years of hype about this product, social media is filled with videos of Robotaxis engaging in all sorts of problematic and dangerous behavior, including routinely veering into the wrong lane, failing to accomplish basic turns, or responding poorly to unique situations.
good morning, here's a gnarly mistake from yesterday's Tesla "robotaxi" launch day: the vehicle is in a turn lane, signaling for the left, and about halfway through it bails out and decides to drive directly into an oncoming laneseems extremely chill!youtu.be/_s-h0YXtF0c?…
Elon thinks you're a crash test dummy. Watch this "robotaxi" make an absolutely bonkers mistake (and a second smaller one) as a Tesla super fan gets his first ride. Crazy. #teslatakedown #MuskMustFall
The videos have apparently gotten the attention of U.S. auto safety regulators (or what’s left of them after Trump and his courts basically lobotomized all regulatory independence). In a statement to the press, the NHTSA said they’re monitoring the situation and have asked Tesla for more information:
“NHTSA is aware of the referenced incidents and is in contact with the manufacturer to gather additional information. NHTSA will continue to enforce the law on all manufacturers of motor vehicles and equipment, in accordance with the Vehicle Safety Act and our data-driven, risk-based investigative process. Under U.S. law, NHTSA does not pre-approve new technologies or vehicle systems — rather, manufacturers certify that each vehicle meets NHTSA’s rigorous safety standards, and the agency investigates incidents involving potential safety defects. Following an assessment of those reports and other relevant information, NHTSA will take any necessary actions to protect road safety.”
But under the Trump administration, it’s all so much worse. Federal corporate oversight genuinely no longer exists. Several Supreme Court rulings have declared that U.S. regulators can no longer do basic tasks without the explicit direction of a Congress that corporations know is too corrupt to function. The rulings were the culmination of a multi-generational quest by corporate power to lobotomize corporate oversight (under the pretense they were “reining in regulators run amok” for the greater good).
Now, even if U.S. regulators do try to do their jobs, they have a very good chance of having enforcement efforts crushed by the Trump-heavy 5th or 6th circuits (see the 6th Circuit’s recent decision to vacate a long-percolating FCC effort to fine AT&T for spying on customer location data without consent). Any attempt to do anything to protect consumers, markets, or public safety will be bogged down in legal fighting for years, quite by design.
Cumulatively, it’s not hyperbole to state that federal consumer, labor, environment, and public safety protection no longer functions in this new golden age of corruption. That’s fucking dire and deadly. You simply won’t see this reality made apparent by most U.S. journalists.
If you read press coverage of the Tesla Robotaxi problems (TechCrunch, CNBC, Reuters) — or any story where regulators are involved — they all kind of act as if it’s business as usual. A reader walks away from all of those stories believing the NHTSA is truly “investigating” things, might do something about it, and there’s somebody competent managing the store. That there’s really nothing new under the sun.
Corporate media is conditioned to downplay the way that corruption has hollowed out our federal regulators because it’s a policy affluent media ownership supports. But it also feels like a lot of consumer and business journalism suffers from a sort of normalization bias. This all results in long stories about business and consumer policy that don’t mention the train has gone completely off the rails.
The Robotaxi stuff aside, that’s resulted in a lot of oblivious Americans who have no real understanding that we’re going to see widespread concussive failure of a lot of stuff they take for granted. Much of it fatal.
In Austin that means little real oversight while Tesla conducts a dangerous public beta (without Austin public input or approval) using obviously half-cooked automation. We’ll be lucky if this doesn’t ultimately end in fatalities, which, if history is any indication, once again won’t result in anything even vaguely resembling accountability for the executives or companies involved.
Tesla memestock was up ten percent the day reports emerged that the Robotaxis are dangerously undercooked. As per tradition.
A federal employee who is helping the Trump administration carry out the drastic downsizing of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau owns stock in companies that could benefit from the agency’s dismantling, a ProPublica investigation has found.
Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old Department of Government Efficiency aide, disclosed the investments earlier this year in his public financial report, which lists as much as $365,000 worth of shares in four entities that the CFPB can regulate. According to court records and government emails, he later helped oversee the layoffs of more than 1,400 employees at the bureau.
Ethics experts say this constitutes a conflict of interest and that Kliger’s actions are a potential violation of federal ethics laws.
The CFPB oversees companies that offer a variety of financial services, including mortgage lending, auto financing, credit cards and payment apps.
Two of the companies in which Kliger is invested — Apple and Tesla — are on the CFPB’s list of prohibited holdings. Two other cryptocurrency holdings — Bitcoin and Solana — aren’t on the list but are nevertheless barred under agency guidance on investing in cryptocurrency firms.
Court records show that Kliger was among a small handful of top CFPB and administration officials discussing the implementation of the layoffs in emails. Separately, a federal employee who works on the layoff team said that Kliger “managed” the firings of about 90% of the bureau’s staff earlier this month, according to a sworn declaration filed by lawyers opposing the administration.
The employee, using the pseudonym Alex Doe for fear of retaliation, said they learned of Kliger’s role from colleagues and described Kliger keeping the CFPB employees “up for 36 hours straight to ensure that the notices would go out,” the declaration states. “Gavin was screaming at people he did not believe were working fast enough” and “calling them incompetent.”
Among those fired were the bureau’s ethics team, according to an agency lawyer, who wrote in an April 25 court filing that “I am not aware of anyone remaining at the CFPB who has the requisite expertise to fulfill the CFPB’s federal ethics requirements.”
Ethics experts said that getting rid of government regulators who oversee companies and set industrywide rules could impact the share price of the businesses subject to that regulation, since doing away with oversight can free companies from compliance costs and the exposure that stems from enforcement actions.
“Destroying the CFPB is likely to have, I believe, a direct and predictable effect on his financial stock,” Kathleen Clark, an expert on government ethics at the Washington University in St. Louis, said of Kliger.
Unionized bureau employees have sued the agency’s acting director, Russell Vought, to stop the administration’s efforts to wind down its operations and reduce its staff. The subsequent months of litigation have been head-spinning.
At the end of March, a district court judge issued a sweeping stay on the administration’s actions. Then on April 11, an appeals court in Washington, D.C., partially lifted that stay. In its order, the panel wrote that bureau leaders must conduct a “particularized assessment” before firing workers.
Days later, most of the agency’s staff was notified that they were being fired.
The bureau’s chief legal officer, Mark Paoletta, and two other lawyers conducted the court-ordered review, the government said in legal papers. In a recent filing, Paoletta wrote that the administration is attempting to achieve a “streamlined and right-sized Bureau.” Instead of 248 enforcement division employees and 487 in the supervision division, he wrote, he planned to keep 50 workers in each.
But on Monday evening, amid vigorous dispute over the legality of the firings and the definition of “particularized assessment,” the appeals court backtracked, upholding the trial court’s initial stay on the mass layoffs as the case plays out. The CFPB then notified the more than 1,400 employees who’d been laid off that their firings were being rescinded. The lawsuit is ongoing, with oral arguments before the appeals court scheduled for next month.
Kliger didn’t respond to voicemails or emails seeking comment for this story. The CFPB didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, the White House said that “these allegations are another attempt to diminish DOGE’s critical mission.”
Kliger “did not even manage” the layoffs, the statement said, “making this entire narrative an outright lie.”
Asked to clarify Kliger’s role in the administration’s cuts, a spokesperson said, “You have 90 days from the start date to divest which is May 8th — it is only April 28th.” It’s unclear what rule the White House was referencing; the spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions. But ethics experts said there are two scenarios that could apply: Sometimes, high-level government officials pledge to divest their holdings by a certain date to avoid conflicts of interest. And at the CFPB in particular, regulations give employees 90 days to divest prohibited holdings.
In either case, though, the employee is required to recuse themselves from any actions that could affect their investments.
Delaney Marsco, a government ethics expert at the Campaign Legal Center, said Kliger’s holdings and his involvement in winding down the agency erode the public’s faith that government officials are serving its best interests.
“When you have these facts, it raises the question, which is just as bad as when you have the actual violation because it makes the public question,” she said.
Kliger owns between $15,000 and $50,000 of stock in Apple, which the CFPB regulates. The company agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty last October following a bureau investigation into Apple Card, a credit card in the company’s software. The bureau said that Apple did not have a proper transaction dispute system when it launched and also that it misled some customers about its financing. The company agreed to the consent order, records show, “without admitting or denying any of the findings of fact or conclusions of law.” In a statement at the time, Apple said that “while we strongly disagree with the CFPB’s characterization of Apple’s conduct, we have aligned with them on an agreement.”
Kliger also owns between $100,000 and $250,000 of Tesla stock. The company, founded by DOGE boss Elon Musk, falls under the bureau’s purview because it offers financing, a key area of scrutiny for the CFPB.
Kliger also owns cryptocurrencies: between $1,000 and $15,000 of Solana and between $15,000 and $50,000 of Bitcoin.
Any federal worker who “holds any amount of a cryptocurrency or stablecoin may not participate in a particular matter if the employee knows that particular matter could have a direct and predictable effect on the value of their cryptocurrency or stablecoins,” according to a legal memo issued in July of 2022, under then-President Joe Biden, by the independent federal agency tasked with advising executive branch employees on how to avoid conflicts of interests.
An internal notice to CFPB employees the following month instructed anyone with such a holding to “immediately recuse yourself from working on any Bureau particular matter,” report the ownership and divest within 90 days, records reviewed by ProPublica show.
Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second presidency, the administration has sought to significantly reduce the size, scope and nature of America’s consumer watchdog, which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
In a recent court filing that supplements a newly released policy memo, Paoletta wrote that, in recent years, “the Bureau has also engaged in intrusive and wasteful fishing expeditions against depository institutions and, increasingly, non-depository institutions” and that it had “pushed into new areas beyond its jurisdiction such as peer-to-peer lending, rent-to-own, and discrimination as unfair practice.”
There are a few ways to think about Elon Musk’s announcement this week that he’s stepping back from DOGE. The first is that he’s leaving a job he officially doesn’t have. The second is that he’s returning to a job (Tesla CEO) that he’s supposedly been doing this whole time. The third, and perhaps most interesting, is that none of this actually makes any sense at all.
The announcement came during Tesla’s latest earnings call (which was, to put it gently, not great). With Tesla’s sales and profits plummeting while Musk has been busy redesigning (read: destroying) the entire US government, you might think focusing more on Tesla would be logical. But that assumes any of this is actually about logic.
Like so many Musk pronouncements, this one’s mostly vaporware. Not only had this “stepping back” been reported weeks ago (though never confirmed), but if you look closely at what he actually said, he’s not really leaving DOGE at all, even as news headlines claimed otherwise. He just claimed he would spend less time on DOGE, giving a bit more time to his many other companies.
He said he’ll continue to spend a “day or two per week” on government issues “for as long as the president would like me to do so.”
But, of course, according to official filings from the US government, Elon Musk isn’t even a part of DOGE, an obvious lie that basically no one (other than the DOJ in sworn statements to a court) pretends are true.
Technically, Musk is a “special government employee” who supposedly can only advise the President, though in practice, we know that’s also not true. He’s basically running big parts of the government. And despite having no constitutionally-required appointment for such authority, he appears to be deciding what things can be cut, and shutting down entire agencies. While some have speculated the supposed “May” step down is because those SGE jobs are only supposed to last 130 days, apparently the government can issue waivers to allow those SGEs to stay on significantly longer.
And, really, Musk has violated a ton of other rules that apply to SGEs, including those around conflicts of interest, impartiality, and a ban on “partisan political activities.” Given how much Musk has done that involves a conflict of interest, and his ongoing partisan political activities, it seems that he doesn’t much care to follow the rules. So, the idea that anyone in this government cares about the supposed 130 day limit is laughable.
A closer reading of Musk’s actual words shows he’s not really going anywhere. He’s just promising not to spend all his time in DC anymore. And even that comes with a rather significant caveat:
“I’ll have tocontinue doing itfor, I think, probably the remainder of the president’s term, just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back, which will do if it has the chance,” Musk said
Let’s talk about those savings Musk is so worried about protecting. There are basically three stories here, each more puzzling than the last.
First, there’s the story of the incredible shrinking savings target. Musk started by promising to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget right before the election. Post-election, perhaps realizing people might actually try to hold him to that number, it suddenly became $1 trillion. A few weeks ago, he lowered expectations again to $150 billion.
If you’re playing at home, the difference between $2 trillion and $150 billion is… just about $2 trillion.
The second story is about what’s actually being cut. Even the $150 billion is nonsense — not only has DOGE failed to demonstrate any actual waste or fraud (certainly no one’s been charged with fraud), but the programs they’re recklessly cutting are likely to cost taxpayers way more than they save.
And the third story? That’s about how DOGE counts its supposed savings. As the NY Times detailed, those numbers look to be pretty much fictional:
One of the group’s largest claims, in fact, involvescanceling a contract that did not exist. Although the government says it had merely asked for proposals in that case, and had not settled on a vendor or a price, Mr. Musk’s group ignored that uncertainty and assigned itself a large and very specific amount of credit for canceling it.
But the errors keep coming. Their second-biggest claimed savings? A supposedly canceled IRS contract worth $1.9 billion that was actually canceled under Biden. Their third-biggest? A $1.75 billion savings from canceling a vaccine nonprofit grant that had already been paid in full.
This might all be amusing if it weren’t so stupid and causing so much damage. Even as Musk was publicly walking back expectations to $150 billion in savings, DOGE’s own website was still claiming $160 billion. And then there’s the matter of Musk’s Twitter activity, where he seems to have discovered an entirely new category of fictional math, in which he will regularly and repeatedly retweet claims that disagree with his own admission that DOGE will only save $150 billion.
The latest example? Musk enthusiastically amplifying claims about massive Social Security fraud. Here he is, just yesterday, retweeting someone claiming $12.6 billion in monthly savings from supposedly removing “7 million scammers” from the system:
There are several problems here. The first, as Wired detailed, is that not a single part of this claim is true. The Social Security Administration has long had systems to prevent payments to deceased beneficiaries, including (but certainly not limited to) their automated processes to stop anyone over 115 from receiving any payments at all. Which means, rather awkwardly for Musk’s claims, none of these supposedly fraudulent recipients were actually receiving any money to begin with, and even if they were cut from the system, the savings would be $0.
Actually, it would be worse than that, because the SSA had already considered this exact issue. A report shows they deliberately chose not to update death records for these super-elderly non-recipients, because doing so would cost far more than any theoretical fraud it might prevent. The few actual cases of payments to deceased beneficiaries are handled through other means.
More than anyone else in the world, Musk is in a position to find out what’s really happening, but he’s been repeating the false claims about Social Security for months now. And, hell, for a supposed genius, even he should be able to do the basic math and realize that if his SS savings alone were $12.6 billion a month, that alone would basically equal the claimed $150 billion in annual savings.
Even worse, right around the time that Musk was telling the world to maybe expect $150 billion in savings, he retweeted some rando’s account claiming DOGE had already saved nearly twice that:
That retweet claiming $291.6 billion in savings came… three days before Musk announced at a cabinet meeting that savings for the entire fiscal year might reach $150 billion. In a normal world, you might expect his supporters (or the media?) to notice this rather stark contradiction. But this isn’t a normal world. Both numbers are somehow treated as equally valid, equally true, equally worth celebrating.
There’s a pattern here that goes beyond just bad math. Musk leads DOGE while government lawyers swear under oath that he doesn’t. He’s supposedly running Tesla while spending his time dismantling the federal government. He claims massive savings that don’t actually exist. He retweets numbers that directly contradict the numbers he personally announced just days earlier.
The whole thing feels like it should collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. But it doesn’t, because it was never meant to make sense. It’s basically all kayfabe — that peculiar form of theatrical fakery where the audience chooses to believe despite knowing better.
The difference is that unlike wrestling, where the fakery is harmless entertainment, this performance is actively destroying what had been the most amazing democracy and economy on the planet. And that’s a lot less fun to watch.
Be the “deep state” you want to see in the world. That’s the new FBI under conspiracy theorist/Trump acolyte Kash Patel’s “leadership.” Instead of being the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it will become the Federal Bureau of Investigating People Trump Doesn’t Like. I wouldn’t be too surprised to hear journalists are getting their phone records seized again, something that happened the last time Trump was in charge of the country.
The FBI has cut staffing in an office focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations, in a shift that could undermine law enforcement’s ability to counter white supremacists and anti-government extremists, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The moves, sources said, are an indication that domestic terrorism investigations, which in recent years have largely involved violence fueled by right-wing ideologies, may be less of a priority under FBI Director Kash Patel, a prominent critic of the effort.
Well, you can strike the word “may” from that sentence and replace it with “will.” If Donald Trump thinks no one involved in the January 6, 2021 raid of the Capitol building should ever have been charged, much less jailed, it’s safe to assume he and Patel agree there’s no reason to go after terrorists who support Trump and his ideals.
Right now it’s a trickle, but it may become a flood if Trump and Patel can convince the rest of the FBI leadership that this is the way to go. (Or fire enough of the current leadership that there’s no longer any measurable objection.)
Two sources familiar with the changes said about 16 people had been reassigned from the section, which would have hundreds of employees if fully staffed. A different source said senior FBI officials have discussed disbanding it entirely, though a final decision has not yet been announced.
A department that was already likely understaffed (and definitely undermined by far too many Trump loyalists within the Bureau) is going to lose more resources. But those being reassigned have to go somewhere, so guess where they’re likely headed:
The Trump administration has separately directed the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which investigate domestic and international terrorist threats, to assist in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to a memo seen by Reuters.
I guess having the DHS, ICE, CBP, Border Patrol, US National Guard, and dozens of overly compliant local law enforcement agencies focused on border security and mass expulsions just isn’t enough. From now on, the FBI will also be helping Trump achieve his goal of converting bigotry into nice round numbers that will ensure steady salivation from the frothiest of his followers.
But Trump and Patel may have pulled the trigger on domestic terrorism cuts a bit too soon. After all, there’s a new brand of domestic terrorism Trump is particularly hot and bothered about: a nationwide wave of disdain targeting Elon Musk, Tesla owners, and Tesla dealerships. While most of the activity has been non-violent (even when it crosses the line into harassment), some of it has not. If nothing else, there are probably a few vandalism and arson cases to be pursued, but that’s not the sort of thing that usually involves the FBI.
However, Trump considers these acts to be “domestic terrorism,” and wants the full force of the law applied against people who vandalize Tesla dealerships — going so far as to suggest these specific criminals should be rerouted to El Salvadorian prisons. With this “threat” still present, it might make a bit more sense to keep the domestic terrorism group intact. I mean, unless Trump really doesn’t believe his own heated rhetoric about Tesla and terrorism, which is just as likely an explanation as anything.
Either way, the FBI will no longer be investigating the sort of terrorism that routinely involves Trump supporters. Kash Patel and Trump have deliberately created a bug and are touting it as a feature. And for all their blowharding about “politicizing the FBI” when complaining about Biden and Obama, they seem perfectly fine with weaponizing federal agencies against their political and ideological enemies when they’re holding the keys to the government Cabinet.
There’s a certain poetry to Tesla executives discovering that trade wars are, in fact, not good and easy to win. Last week, someone at Tesla sent a detailed letter to the US Trade Representative essentially begging for relief from the very policies their CEO has been championing as he destroys the traditional institutions of government. The internet has many ways to describe this kind of karmic moment — from the “Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party” to “Me Sowing/Me Reaping” to the elegantly concise “FAFO.” But perhaps the most interesting part isn’t that Tesla’s executives are learning about consequences — it’s that they’re apparently too afraid of their own boss to put their names on that learning experience.
The letter reads like a crash course in “Economics 101 for Tech Bros.” After the obligatory corporate chest-thumping about Tesla’s US manufacturing prowess, it gets to the awkward reality that seems to have escaped their CEO’s notice: Tesla very much relies on global open access to markets, both for parts that are made in other countries, and to be able to sell Teslas outside of the United States:
As a U.S. manufacturer and exporter, Tesla encourages USTR to consider the downstream impacts of certain proposed actions taken to address unfair trade practices.
Translation: “Hey, remember how global supply chains and open markets work? You know, the thing every first-year economics student learns about comparative advantage?” It’s the kind of explanation you might expect from executives desperately trying to point out that their company — which relies on international suppliers for parts and foreign markets for sales — probably shouldn’t be cheerleading for policies explicitly designed to disrupt global trade.
The crazy part isn’t just that they’re right — it’s that they had to write this letter at all. But given Musk’s documented history of firing anyone who delivers unwelcome news (just ask Tesla’s former Supercharger team), perhaps it’s not surprising they waited until the leopards were literally at the factory door before speaking up.
The letter goes on to explain, in painfully careful detail, how trade wars actually work:
While Tesla recognizes and supports the importance of fair trade, the assessment undertaken by USTR of potential actions to rectify unfair trade should also take into account exports from the United States. U.S. exporters are inherently exposed to disproportionate impacts when other countries respond to U.S. trade actions. For example, past trade actions by the United States have resulted in immediate reactions by the targeted countries, including increased tariffs on EVs imported into those countries. Past U.S. special tariff actions have thus (1) increased costs to Tesla for vehicles manufactured in the United States, and (2) increased costs for those same vehicles when exported from the United States, resulting in less competitive international marketplace for U.S. manufacturers. USTR should investigate ways to avoid these pitfalls in future actions.
I mean, it’s kinda shocking that this lesson needs to be taught, and that Tesla is delivering the lesson: You put tariffs on their stuff, they put tariffs on your stuff, everybody’s costs go up, nobody wins. It’s the kind of obvious cause-and-effect that you’d think wouldn’t need explaining to the people running the government.
Unfortunately, the most likely outcome here is that Musk will leverage his relationship with the administration to get Tesla some sort of carve-out. But other countries aren’t playing that game. Canada, for instance, is already targeting Tesla in response to US threats. And Musk, showing his characteristic inability to think more than one move ahead, responded by threatening to cut off Canadian access to Starlink. Because nothing fixes a trade dispute like escalating it into a tech infrastructure fight.
This pattern of short-term thinking followed by predictable blowback has become a hallmark of Musk’s leadership basically everywhere he’s been in charge. Whether it’s antagonizing the very regulators SpaceX needs to work with, alienating core customer bases at both Twitter and Tesla through erratic political posturing, or now running point for a president escalating trade disputes that directly threaten Tesla’s business model, there’s a consistent inability to think more than one move ahead. And his response to the Canada situation — threatening to cut off Starlink access in retaliation for policies affecting Tesla — perfectly exemplifies this consistently self-defeating approach to international relations.
Which brings us back to that unsigned letter. The Financial Times got the scoop on why nobody wanted to put their name on it, and the explanation is exactly what you’d expect from executives who’ve learned the hard way about delivering unwelcome news to Elon:
One person familiar with the process of sending the letter said: “It’s a polite way to say that the bipolar tariff regime is screwing over Tesla.”
The person added: “It is unsigned because nobody at the company wants to be fired for sending it.”
I mean, good luck with that. Musk has a history of erratically firing entire teams of people because of randomly getting upset at them. He did that just last year with Tesla’s Supercharger team. So I’m not sure not signing the letter will protect whoever did this at Tesla.
It turns out that when you spend years cheering on the “Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party,” you shouldn’t be surprised when the leopards show up at your factory door. Tesla executives are now discovering what “FAFO” means in practice — though they’re apparently too afraid of their own CEO to put their name on it.
Elon Musk’s companies aren’t having the best couple of weeks, it seems. ExTwitter suffered from several outages this week, some lengthy, while Musk claimed that it was the result of a DDoS attack and hinted that Ukraine might be to blame. The story of SpaceX thus far in 2025 has mostly been one filled with delays, malfunctions, and the occasional explosion. Last week saw the seventh straight weekly decline of stock price for Tesla.
None of these are insurmountable challenges for the world’s richest man, assuming he still is that after these past few months. Twitter can build more resiliency into its platform if it chooses. The rockets can be fixed. And Tesla’s stock will surely rise at some point. In other words, I can’t claim that all of this is the result of Musk’s purchase of a fugazi cabinet post at DOGE.
Musk’s support of Trump in the runup to last year’s presidential election and subsequent leadership in his government efficiency initiative has sparked backlash. Analysts have cited this reputational shift as a driver of trouble for the automaker’s stock, which posted its worst day since 2020 on Monday and is down 45% in 2025.
Musk acknowledged the hit to his businesses in an interview Monday, saying he was running them “with great difficulty” because of his high-profile role with this administration. He told Fox Business that as head of DOGE, “you’re giving up your other stuff.”
Then give it the fuck up, my man. If you only have the bandwidth to either run these three companies well or dismantle history’s most successful democracy, then pick one and let’s get on with it. Because the shareholders of Tesla can’t be thrilled to hear that it’s Musk’s efforts to ensure the DOGE team, sometimes referred to as “The Twitler Youth,” makes as many mistakes as possible while on its way to becoming the very thing it was supposedly going to eliminate.
But while every mishap of late for Musk’s companies can’t be pinned specifically on the ire in the public over his callous actions at DOGE, the same cannot be true for the protests occurring at Tesla dealerships, nor the vitriol visited upon owners of Musk’s grotesque Cybertruck. Insults have been hurled at owners of Tesla vehicles with such velocity that some of them want to be considered a protected federal class. And if that isn’t funny to you, then you’re the one with the problem.
While Trump and Musk would have you believe that DOGE’s actions are overwhelmingly popular with the public, the actual polling data appears to range between approval of DOGE being barely above 50% to being far below that number. Meanwhile, the anger at Musk and DOGE is absolutely fueling the protests, property damage, and public outcry at Tesla owners and dealerships.
Somehow, Donald Trump seems to think that boycotting Tesla specifically is illegal. It very much is not.
“I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American,” Trump wrote in a post published early Tuesday morning on Truth Social.
Trump said “radical left lunatics” are “illegally and collusively” boycotting Tesla, which the president described as one of the best automakers in the world. This action, Trump said, was meant as an attack on Musk and what he stands for.
It is not illegal for consumers to boycott companies. The Supreme Court in 1982 ruled the First Amendment protects Americans’ rights to protest private businesses.
And here’s where we’ll remind you once again that both Trump and Musk are self-ascribed “free speech warriors.” Which is a really funny claim to make of two men who have shown more disdain for free speech than anyone else, while co-running an administration that is the most censorial ever.
But the real danger in all of this is that, while Trump can’t currently punish the free public for protesting, it’s obvious he wants to. Which means he, at least, is no longer operating under the illusion that it’s a democracy he wants. Nor a republic.
The people have spoken. And by “people,” I mean “Elon Musk.” Trump is now buying into the batshit crazy that is the current Musk/Cybertruck discourse. This, of course, leaves the nominal VP plenty of time to get into long personal arguments with critics on Twitter. But it leaves the head DOGE free to bend Trump’s ear about the apparent unfairness of purchasers of Musk’s Pontiac Aztec 2.0 being treated like the white supremacist sympathizers a whole lot of them actually are.
Extremely recently, we covered the ridiculousness that is a Cybertruck owners’ group asking their Congressional reps to treat verbal and physical assaults (of them and/or their “trucks”) as “hate crimes” with enhanced sentences for those who dare to trifle with the Sheet Metal Squad.
It’s only been a couple of days into this news cycle and Trump has already responded with an equally stupid “solution” to the apparent “Americans hate Cybertrucks/Cybertruck owners” crisis. And it’s even better than any satirist could have expected.
First, Trump purchased himself a Tesla (but NOT a Cybertruck) and insisted on paying “full price” as a show of support for the beleaguered billionaire and his hated flagship product, which generally resembles a game asset that won’t load properly.
After posing proudly by his new red Model S (which Trump almost certainly did not pay “full price” for), Trump went to work making the government stupid and his own legacy even stupider. Why bother with “hate crimes” when you can push all the buttons on the national security dashboard at once? Here’s Jeff Mason and Abhirup Roy reporting for Reuters:
Violence against Tesla dealerships will be labeled domestic terrorism and perpetrators will “go through hell,” U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday in a show of support for the electric carmaker’s chief, his ally Elon Musk.
And there it is: extra protections for a single American business. I guess the hundreds of thousands of other American businesses can suck shit when their dealerships, office buildings, showrooms, retail outlets etc. are vandalized, torched, or otherwise damaged by people unhappy with their management, services, or products. Only attackers of this one company will be treated as domestic terrorists, even as the hundreds of literal domestic terrorists who raided the Capitol building for the sole purpose of preventing a democratic election from happening now roam free, thanks to Trump’s blanket pardon.
Trump’s transparent protectionism was, of course, praised by other administration officials.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said “ongoing and heinous acts of violence against Tesla by radical Leftist activists are nothing short of domestic terror.”
According to Reuters, Tesla share prices rose 4% on the news that the Trump administration would be treating Tesla better than any other carmaker. Of course, you’d generally expect better than a 4% jump when a company is granted “most favored nation” status, but no other company is currently run by one of the most hated people in the US, much less the US government. So, you get what you get.
Not that we should have to ask the facts to back up this assertion that Tesla is being targeted by “heinous acts of violence.” Anyone rational would know this simply isn’t true. While there have been a few instances of vandalism, most of the actions being taken against Tesla take the form of peaceful protests — peaceful protests that, by the way, result in an inordinate show of force by local law enforcement.
The party of “facts don’t care about your feelings” is still developing deep bruises from protected First Amendment activity. GOOD. Keep it up. If nothing else, we can ensure the war on stupid will be at least as bothersome as attempting to thrust and parry each daily attack from the Trump Administration’s War on Everything.
