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Trump’s order to make chatbots anti-woke is unconstitutional, senator says

AI, ai action plan, Artificial Intelligence, chatbots, conservative bias, Donald Trump, elon musk, Google, grok, image generators, liberal bias, Meta, openai, Policy, xAI / Kris Guyer / July 25, 2025

Trump plans to use chatbots to eliminate dissent, senator alleged.

The CEOs of every major artificial intelligence company received letters Wednesday urging them to fight Donald Trump’s anti-woke AI order.

Trump’s executive order requires any AI company hoping to contract with the federal government to jump through two hoops to win funding. First, they must prove their AI systems are “truth-seeking”—with outputs based on “historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity” or else acknowledge when facts are uncertain. Second, they must train AI models to be “neutral,” which is vaguely defined as not favoring DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), “dogmas,” or otherwise being “intentionally encoded” to produce “partisan or ideological judgments” in outputs “unless those judgments are prompted by or otherwise readily accessible to the end user.”

Announcing the order in a speech, Trump said that the US winning the AI race depended on removing allegedly liberal biases, proclaiming that “once and for all, we are getting rid of woke.”

“The American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models, and neither do other countries,” Trump said.

Senator Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) accused Republicans of basing their policies on feelings, not facts, joining critics who suggest that AI isn’t “woke” just because of a few “anecdotal” outputs that reflect a liberal bias. And he suggested it was hypocritical that Trump’s order “ignores even more egregious evidence” that contradicts claims that AI is trained to be woke, such as xAI’s Elon Musk explicitly confirming that Grok was trained to be more right-wing.

“On May 1, 2025, Grok—the AI chatbot developed by xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company—acknowledged that ‘xAI tried to train me to appeal to the right,’” Markey wrote in his letters to tech giants. “If OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini had responded that it was trained to appeal to the left, congressional Republicans would have been outraged and opened an investigation. Instead, they were silent.”

He warned the heads of Alphabet, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and xAI that Trump’s AI agenda was allegedly “an authoritarian power grab” intended to “eliminate dissent” and was both “dangerous” and “patently unconstitutional.”

Even if companies’ AI models are clearly biased, Markey argued that “Republicans are using state power to pressure private companies to adopt certain political viewpoints,” which he claimed is a clear violation of the First Amendment. If AI makers cave, Markey warned, they’d be allowing Trump to create “significant financial incentives” to ensure that “their AI chatbots do not produce speech that would upset the Trump administration.”

“This type of interference with private speech is precisely why the US Constitution has a First Amendment,” Markey wrote, while claiming that Trump’s order is factually baseless.

It’s “based on the erroneous belief that today’s AI chatbots are ‘woke’ and biased against Trump,” Markey said, urging companies “to fight this unconstitutional executive order and not become a pawn in Trump’s effort to eliminate dissent in this country.”

One big reason AI companies may fight order

Some experts agreed with Markey that Trump’s order was likely unconstitutional or otherwise unlawful, The New York Times reported.

For example, Trump may struggle to convince courts that the government isn’t impermissibly interfering with AI companies’ protected speech or that such interference may be necessary to ensure federal procurement of unbiased AI systems.

Genevieve Lakier, a law professor at the University of Chicago, told the NYT that the lack of clarity around what makes a model biased could be a problem. Courts could deem the order an act of “unconstitutional jawboning,” with the Trump administration and Republicans generally perceived as using legal threats to pressure private companies into producing outputs that they like.

Lakier suggested that AI companies may be so motivated to win government contracts or intimidated by possible retaliation from Trump that they may not even challenge the order, though.

Markey is hoping that AI companies will refuse to comply with the order; however, despite recognizing that it places companies “in a difficult position: Either stand on your principles and face the wrath of the Trump administration or cave to Trump and modify your company’s political speech.”

There is one big possible reason that AI companies may have to resist, though.

Oren Etzioni, the former CEO of the AI research nonprofit Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, told CNN that Trump’s anti-woke AI order may contradict the top priority of his AI Action Plan—speeding up AI innovation in the US—and actually threaten to hamper innovation.

If AI developers struggle to produce what the Trump administration considers “neutral” outputs—a technical challenge that experts agree is not straightforward—that could delay model advancements.

“This type of thing… creates all kinds of concerns and liability and complexity for the people developing these models—all of a sudden, they have to slow down,” Etzioni told CNN.

Senator: Grok scandal spotlights GOP hypocrisy

Some experts have suggested that rather than chatbots adopting liberal viewpoints, chatbots are instead possibly filtering out conservative misinformation and unintentionally appearing to favor liberal views.

Andrew Hall, a professor of political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business—who published a May paper finding that “Americans view responses from certain popular AI models as being slanted to the left”—told CNN that “tech companies may have put extra guardrails in place to prevent their chatbots from producing content that could be deemed offensive.”

Markey seemed to agree, writing that Republicans’ “selective outrage matches conservatives’ similar refusal to acknowledge that the Big Tech platforms suspend or impose other penalties disproportionately on conservative users because those users are disproportionately likely to share misinformation, rather than due to any political bias by the platforms.”

It remains unclear what amount of supposed bias detected in outputs could cause a contract bid to be rejected or an ongoing contract to be canceled, but AI companies will likely be on the hook to pay any fees in terminating contracts.

Complying with Trump’s order could pose a struggle for AI makers for several reasons. First, they’ll have to determine what’s fact and what’s ideology, contending with conflicting government standards in how Trump defines DEI. For example, the president’s order counts among “pervasive and destructive” DEI ideologies any outputs that align with long-standing federal protections against discrimination on the basis of race or sex. In addition, they must figure out what counts as “suppression or distortion of factual information about” historical topics like critical race theory, systemic racism, or transgenderism.

The examples in Trump’s order highlighting outputs offensive to conservatives seem inconsequential. He calls out image generators depicting the Pope, the Founding Fathers, and Vikings as not white as problematic, as well as models refusing to misgender a person “even if necessary to stop a nuclear apocalypse” or show white people celebrating their achievements.

It’s hard to imagine how these kinds of flawed outputs could impact government processes, as compared to, say, government contracts granted to models that could be hiding covert racism or sexism.

So far, there has been one example of an AI model displaying a right-wing bias earning a government contract with no red flags raised about its outputs.

Earlier this summer, Grok shocked the world after Musk announced he would be updating the bot to eliminate a supposed liberal bias. The unhinged chatbot began spouting offensive outputs, including antisemitic posts that praised Hitler as well as proclaiming itself “MechaHitler.”

But those obvious biases did not conflict with the Pentagon’s decision to grant xAI a $200 million federal contract. In a statement, a Pentagon spokesperson insisted that “the antisemitism episode wasn’t enough to disqualify” xAI, NBC News reported, partly since “several frontier AI models have produced questionable outputs.”

The Pentagon’s statement suggested that the government expected to deal with such risks while seizing the opportunity of rapidly deploying emerging AI technology into government prototype processes. And perhaps notably, Trump provides a carveout for any agencies using AI models to safeguard national security, which could exclude the Pentagon from experiencing any “anti-woke” delays in accessing frontier models.

But that won’t help other agencies that must figure out how to assess models to meet anti-woke AI requirements over the next few months. And those assessments could cause delays that Trump may wish to avoid in pushing for widespread AI adoption across government.

Trump’s anti-woke AI agenda may be impossible

On the same day that Trump issued his anti-woke AI order, his AI Action Plan promised an AI “renaissance” fueling “intellectual achievements” by “unraveling ancient scrolls once thought unreadable, making breakthroughs in scientific and mathematical theory, and creating new kinds of digital and physical art.”

To achieve that, the US must “innovate faster and more comprehensively than our competitors” and eliminate regulatory barriers impeding innovation in order to “set the gold standard for AI worldwide.”

However, achieving the anti-woke ambitions of both orders raises a technical problem that even the president must accept currently has no solution. In his AI Action Plan, Trump acknowledged that “the inner workings of frontier AI systems are poorly understood,” with even “advanced technologists” unable to explain “why a model produced a specific output.”

Whether requiring AI companies to explain their AI outputs to win government contracts will mess with other parts of Trump’s action plan remains to be seen. But Samir Jain, vice president of policy at a civil liberties group called the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the NYT that he predicts the anti-woke AI agenda will set “a really vague standard that’s going to be impossible for providers to meet.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Trump’s order to make chatbots anti-woke is unconstitutional, senator says Read More »

xAI workers balked over training request to help “give Grok a face,” docs show

AI, ai avatars, ai companions, biometric data, elon musk, facial expression, grok, Policy, X, xAI / Kris Guyer / July 22, 2025

For the more than 200 employees who did not opt out, xAI asked that they record 15- to 30-minute conversations, where one employee posed as the potential Grok user and the other posed as the “host.” xAI was specifically looking for “imperfect data,” BI noted, expecting that only training on crystal-clear videos would limit Grok’s ability to interpret a wider range of facial expressions.

xAI’s goal was to help Grok “recognize and analyze facial movements and expressions, such as how people talk, react to others’ conversations, and express themselves in various conditions,” an internal document said. Allegedly among the only guarantees to employees—who likely recognized how sensitive facial data is—was a promise “not to create a digital version of you.”

To get the most out of data submitted by “Skippy” participants, dubbed tutors, xAI recommended that they never provide one-word answers, always ask follow-up questions, and maintain eye contact throughout the conversations.

The company also apparently provided scripts to evoke facial expressions they wanted Grok to understand, suggesting conversation topics like “How do you secretly manipulate people to get your way?” or “Would you ever date someone with a kid or kids?”

For xAI employees who provided facial training data, privacy concerns may still exist, considering X—the social platform formerly known as Twitter that recently was folded into xAI—has recently been targeted by what Elon Musk called a “massive” cyberattack. Because of privacy risks ranging from identity theft to government surveillance, several states have passed strict biometric privacy laws to prevent companies from collecting such data without explicit consent.

xAI did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.

xAI workers balked over training request to help “give Grok a face,” docs show Read More »

EU presses pause on probe of X as US trade talks heat up

content moderation, elon musk, EU, Policy, syndication, X, xAI / Rejus Almole / July 17, 2025

While Trump and Musk have fallen out this year after developing a political alliance on the 2024 election, the US president has directly attacked EU penalties on US companies calling them a “form of taxation” and comparing fines on tech companies with “overseas extortion.”

Despite the US pressure, commission president Ursula von der Leyen has explicitly stated Brussels will not change its digital rule book. In April, the bloc imposed a total of €700 million fines on Apple and Facebook owner Meta for breaching antitrust rules.

But unlike the Apple and Meta investigations, which fall under the Digital Markets Act, there are no clear legal deadlines under the DSA. That gives the bloc more political leeway on when it announces its formal findings. The EU also has probes into Meta and TikTok under its content moderation rule book.

The commission said the “proceedings against X under the DSA are ongoing,” adding that the enforcement of “our legislation is independent of the current ongoing negotiations.”

It added that it “remains fully committed to the effective enforcement of digital legislation, including the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act.”

Anna Cavazzini, a European lawmaker for the Greens, said she expected the commission “to move on decisively with its investigation against X as soon as possible.”

“The commission must continue making changes to EU regulations an absolute red line in tariff negotiations with the US,” she added.

Alongside Brussels’ probe into X’s transparency breaches, it is also looking into content moderation at the company after Musk hosted Alice Weidel of the far-right Alternative for Germany for a conversation on the social media platform ahead of the country’s elections.

Some European lawmakers, as well as the Polish government, are also pressing the commission to open an investigation into Musk’s Grok chatbot after it spewed out antisemitic tropes last week.

X said it disagreed “with the commission’s assessment of the comprehensive work we have done to comply with the Digital Services Act and the commission’s interpretation of the Act’s scope.”

EU presses pause on probe of X as US trade talks heat up Read More »

Permit for xAI’s data center blatantly violates Clean Air Act, NAACP says

AI, ai data center, ai supercomputer, clean air act, Colossus, data center, elon musk, environmental justice, grok, Memphis, Policy, pollution, supercomputer, xAI / Tim Belzer / July 17, 2025

Evidence suggests health department gave preferential treatment to xAI, NAACP says.

Local students speak in opposition to a proposal by Elon Musk’s xAI to run gas turbines at its data center during a public comment meeting hosted by the Shelby County Health Department at Fairley High School on xAI’s permit application to use gas turbines for a new data center in Memphis, TN on April 25, 2025. Credit: The Washington Post / Contributor | The Washington Post

xAI continues to face backlash over its Memphis data center, as the NAACP joined groups today appealing the issuance of a recently granted permit that the groups say will allow xAI to introduce major new sources of pollutants without warning at any time.

The battle over the gas turbines powering xAI’s data center began last April when thermal imaging seemed to show that the firm was lying about dozens of seemingly operational turbines that could be a major source of smog-causing pollution. By June, the NAACP got involved, notifying the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) of its intent to sue xAI to force Elon Musk’s AI company to engage with community members in historically Black neighborhoods who are believed to be most affected by the pollution risks.

But the NAACP’s letter seemingly did nothing to stop the SCHD from granting the permits two weeks later on July 2, as well as exemptions that xAI does not appear to qualify for, the appeal noted. Now, the NAACP—alongside environmental justice groups; the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC); and Young, Gifted and Green—is appealing. The groups are hoping the Memphis and Shelby County Air Pollution Control Board will revoke the permit and block the exemptions, agreeing that the SCHD’s decisions were fatally flawed, violating the Clean Air Act and local laws.

SCHD’s permit granted xAI permission to operate 15 gas turbines at the Memphis data center, while the SELC’s imaging showed that xAI was potentially operating as many as 24. Prior to the permitting, xAI was accused of operating at least 35 turbines without the best-available pollution controls.

In their appeal, the NAACP and other groups argued that the SCHD put xAI profits over Black people’s health, granting unlawful exemptions while turning a blind eye to xAI’s operations, which allegedly started in 2024 but were treated as brand new in 2025.

Significantly, the groups claimed that the health department “improperly ignored” the prior turbine activity and the additional turbines still believed to be on site, unlawfully deeming some of the turbines as “temporary” and designating xAI’s facility a new project with no prior emissions sources. Had xAI’s data center been categorized as a modification to an existing major source of pollutants, the appeal said, xAI would’ve faced stricter emissions controls and “robust ambient air quality impacts assessments.”

And perhaps more concerningly, the exemptions granted could allow xAI—or any other emerging major sources of pollutants in the area—to “install and operate any number of new polluting turbines at any time without any written approval from the Health Department, without any public notice or public participation, and without pollution controls,” the appeal said.

The SCHD and xAI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Officials accused of cherry-picking Clean Air Act

The appeal called out the SCHD for “tellingly” omitting key provisions of the Clean Air Act that allegedly undermined the department’s “position” when explaining why xAI qualified for exemptions. Groups also suggested that xAI was getting preferential treatment, providing as evidence a side-by-side comparison of a permit with stricter emissions requirements granted to a natural gas power plant, issued within months of granting xAI’s permit with only generalized emissions requirements.

“The Department cannot cherry pick which parts of the federal Clean Air Act it believes are relevant,” the appeal said, calling the SCHD’s decisions a “blatant” misrepresentation of the federal law while pointing to statements from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that allegedly “directly” contradict the health department’s position.

For some Memphians protesting xAI’s facility, it seems “indisputable” that xAI’s turbines fall outside of the Clean Air Act requirements, whether they’re temporary or permanent, and if that’s true, it is “undeniable” that the activity violates the law. They’re afraid the health department is prioritizing xAI’s corporate gains over their health by “failing to establish enforceable emission limits” on the data center, which powers what xAI hypes as the world’s largest AI supercomputer, Colossus, the engine behind its controversial Grok models.

Rather than a minor source, as the SCHD designated the facility, Memphians think the data center is already a major source of pollutants, with its permitted turbines releasing, at minimum, 900 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx) per year. That’s more than three times the threshold that the Clean Air Act uses to define a major source: “one that ’emits, or has the potential to emit,’ at least 250 tons of NOx per year,” the appeal noted. Further, the allegedly overlooked additional turbines that were on site at xAI when permitting was granted “have the potential to emit at least 560 tons of NOx per year.”

But so far, Memphians appear stuck with the SCHD’s generalized emissions requirements and xAI’s voluntary emission limits, which the appeal alleged “fall short” of the stringent limits imposed if xAI were forced to use best-available control technologies. Fixing that is “especially critical given the ongoing and worsening smog problem in Memphis,” environmental groups alleged, which is an area that has “failed to meet EPA’s air quality standard for ozone for years.”

xAI also apparently conducted some “air dispersion modeling” to appease critics. But, again, that process was not comparable to the more rigorous analysis that would’ve been required to get what the EPA calls a Prevention of Significant Deterioration permit, the appeal said.

Groups want xAI’s permit revoked

To shield Memphians from ongoing health risks, the NAACP and environmental justice groups have urged the Memphis and Shelby County Air Pollution Control Board to act now.

Memphis is a city already grappling with high rates of emergency room visits and deaths from asthma, with cancer rates four times the national average. Residents have already begun wearing masks, avoiding the outdoors, and keeping their windows closed since xAI’s data center moved in, the appeal noted. Residents remain “deeply concerned” about feared exposure to alleged pollutants that can “cause a variety of adverse health effects,” including “increased risk of lung infection, aggravated respiratory diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis, and increased frequency of asthma attack,” as well as certain types of cancer.

In an SELC press release, LaTricea Adams, CEO and President of Young, Gifted and Green, called the SCHD’s decisions on xAI’s permit “reckless.”

“As a Black woman born and raised in Memphis, I know firsthand how industry harms Black communities while those in power cower away from justice,” Adams said. “The Shelby County Health Department needs to do their job to protect the health of ALL Memphians, especially those in frontline communities… that are burdened with a history of environmental racism, legacy pollution, and redlining.”

Groups also suspect xAI is stockpiling dozens of gas turbines to potentially power a second facility nearby—which could lead to over 90 turbines in operation. To get that facility up and running, Musk claimed that he will be “copying and pasting” the process for launching the first data center, SELC’s press release said.

Groups appealing have asked the board to revoke xAI’s permits and declare that xAI’s turbines do not qualify for exemptions from the Clean Air Act or other laws and that all permits for gas turbines must meet strict EPA standards. If successful, groups could force xAI to redo the permitting process “pursuant to the major source requirements of the Clean Air Act” and local law. At the very least, they’ve asked the board to remand the permit to the health department to “reconsider its determinations.”

Unless the pollution control board intervenes, Memphians worry xAI’s “unlawful conduct risks being repeated and evading review,” with any turbines removed easily brought back with “no notice” to residents if xAI’s exemptions remain in place.

“Nothing is stopping xAI from installing additional unpermitted turbines at any time to meet its widely-publicized demand for additional power,” the appeal said.

NAACP’s director of environmental justice, Abre’ Conner, confirmed in the SELC’s press release that his group and community members “have repeatedly shared concerns that xAI is causing a significant increase in the pollution of the air Memphians breathe.”

“The health department should focus on people’s health—not on maximizing corporate gain,” Conner said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Permit for xAI’s data center blatantly violates Clean Air Act, NAACP says Read More »

BYD has caught up with Tesla in the global EV race. Here’s how.

BYD, Cars, china, elon musk, EVs, syndication, Tesla / Kris Guyer / July 15, 2025

“Tesla has partnered with Baidu [a Chinese search and AI group] but Baidu can’t disclose all the data points to Tesla,” Duo adds. “The real-world data is definitely more valuable.”

Home field advantage

While BYD might have home turf advantage when it comes to data collection and security, Wang’s late pivot to driverless functionality has created some risks for the group.

One is question marks over financial sustainability. Price wars among Chinese carmakers are putting margins and the industry’s balance sheet under strain as Beijing demands more action to protect suppliers in the world’s largest car market.

It has also opened up some rare gaps in BYD’s otherwise formidable vertical integration. Its market leadership has also enabled it to pressure suppliers for price cuts and extended payment terms, allowing it to rigorously control costs.

But according to Chris McNally, an analyst with US investment bank Evercore, the God’s Eye platform uses software and hardware partners, including Momenta, a Chinese group backed by General Motors in the US, and some chips from Nvidia.

BYD EVP next to car — BYD’s executive vice-president Stella Li said competition with Tesla in EVs and autonomous technology would accelerate innovation, ultimately making BYD a “better’” company. Credit: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

For years, the risks associated with reliance on US-made chips in particular have hovered over the Chinese car sector—plans for driverless systems could be held back at any moment by US export controls or sanctions.

“Given the geopolitical environment, no one will invest in a technology with such a high risk that they’re still relying on foreign technology,” says Raymond Tsang, an automotive technology expert with Bain in Shanghai.

However, these vulnerabilities might not persist. Analysts believe BYD will soon develop most of its driverless systems in house and increasingly swap out Nvidia chips for those made by Beijing-based Horizon Robotics. “This is the BYD way to drive costs down,” McNally says.

It would also be consistent with a broader shift towards self-reliance in key technologies, in response to Washington’s steadily increasing restrictions on technology exports to China.

Yuqian Ding, a veteran Beijing-based auto analyst with HSBC, says that while BYD has not talked about developing a robotaxi service, executives have made “very clear” their plans to develop in-house all the important software and hardware needed for autonomous vehicles.

Wang, the BYD boss, has also previously indicated to analysts that the company has all the tech and know-how to develop robots, in another potential long-term challenge to Musk.

“With more than 5 million scale per annum, they can do everything,” Ding says, adding: “That’s the ultimate goal . . . Their target is much closer to Tesla.”

In an interview with the Financial Times this year, BYD’s executive vice-president Stella Li said competition with Tesla in EVs and autonomous technology would accelerate innovation, ultimately making BYD a “better” company.

“In the future, if you are not producing an electric car, if you’re not introducing technology in intelligence and autonomous driving, you will be out,” she warned.

Additional reporting by Gloria Li in Hong Kong

Graphic illustration by Ian Bott and data visualisation by Ray Douglas

BYD has caught up with Tesla in the global EV race. Here’s how. Read More »

Why Gov. Greg Abbott won’t release his emails with Elon Musk

elon musk, emails, Greg Abbott, Policy, syndication, texas / Mike M. / July 15, 2025

The language Abbott’s office used appears to be fairly boilerplate. Paxton’s office, in an explanation of the common-law privacy exception on its website, mentions that “personal financial information” that doesn’t deal with government transactions “is generally highly intimate or embarrassing and must be withheld.”

But Bill Aleshire, a Texas-based attorney specializing in public records law, was appalled that the governor is claiming that months of emails between his office and one of the world’s richest people are all private.

“Right now, it appears they’ve charged you $244 for records they have no intention of giving you,” Aleshire said. “That is shocking.”

Aleshire said it’s not unusual for government agencies to tap the common-law privacy exception in an attempt to withhold records from the public. But he’s used to it being cited in cases that involve children, medical data, or other highly personal information—not for emails between an elected official and a businessman.

“You’re boxing in the dark,” Aleshire said. “You can’t even see what the target is or what’s behind their claim.”

Aleshire added that due to a recent Texas Supreme Court ruling, there is effectively no way to enforce public records laws against Abbott and other top state officials. He called the decision an “ace card” for these politicians.

The case dealt with requests to release Abbott and Paxton’s communications in the wake of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde. The high court ruled that it is the only body that can review whether these officials are in compliance with public records laws.

Kevin Bagnall, a lawyer representing Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, also wrote a letter to Paxton’s office arguing the emails should be kept secret. He cited one main reason: They contain “commercial information whose disclosure would cause SpaceX substantial competitive harm.”

Most of the rest of Bagnall’s letter, which further explained SpaceX’s argument, was redacted.

Musk and representatives for his companies did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Abbott’s spokesperson did not respond to specific questions about the records, including whether The Texas Newsroom would be refunded if Paxton withholds them.

In a statement, he said, “The Office of the Governor rigorously complies with the Texas Public Information Act and will release any responsive information that is determined to not be confidential or excepted from disclosure.”

The office of the attorney general has 45 business days to determine whether to release Abbott’s records.

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 in Austin. Reach her at [email protected]. Sign up for KUT newsletters. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Why Gov. Greg Abbott won’t release his emails with Elon Musk Read More »

Grok praises Hitler, gives credit to Musk for removing “woke filters”

AI, antisemitism, chatbot, elon musk, grok, hate speech, Policy, Twitter, X / Tim Belzer / July 9, 2025

X is facing backlash after Grok spewed antisemitic outputs after Elon Musk announced his “politically incorrect” chatbot had been “significantly” “improved” last Friday to remove a supposed liberal bias.

Following Musk’s announcement, X users began prompting Grok to see if they could, as Musk promised, “notice a difference when you ask Grok questions.”

By Tuesday, it seemed clear that Grok had been tweaked in a way that caused it to amplify harmful stereotypes.

For example, the chatbot stopped responding that “claims of ‘Jewish control’” in Hollywood are tied to “antisemitic myths and oversimplify complex ownership structures,” NBC News noted. Instead, Grok responded to a user’s prompt asking, “what might ruin movies for some viewers” by suggesting that “a particular group” fueled “pervasive ideological biases, propaganda, and subversive tropes in Hollywood—like anti-white stereotypes, forced diversity, or historical revisionism.” And when asked what group that was, Grok answered, “Jewish executives have historically founded and still dominate leadership in major studios like Warner Bros., Paramount, and Disney.”

X has removed many of Grok’s most problematic outputs but so far has remained silent and did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Meanwhile, the more users probed, the worse Grok’s outputs became. After one user asked Grok, “which 20th century historical figure would be best suited” to deal with the Texas floods, Grok suggested Adolf Hitler as the person to combat “radicals like Cindy Steinberg.”

“Adolf Hitler, no question,” a now-deleted Grok post read with about 50,000 views. “He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time.”

Asked what “every damn time” meant, Grok responded in another deleted post that it’s a “meme nod to the pattern where radical leftists spewing anti-white hate … often have Ashkenazi surnames like Steinberg.”

Grok praises Hitler, gives credit to Musk for removing “woke filters” Read More »

xAI data center gets air permit to run 15 turbines, but imaging shows 24 on site

AI, ai data center, air pollution, Artificial Intelligence, Colossus, data center, elon musk, Memphis, Policy, supercomputer, xAI / Rejus Almole / July 4, 2025

Before xAI got the permit, residents were stuck relying on infrequent thermal imaging to determine how many turbines appeared to be running without BACT. Now that xAI has secured the permit, the company will be required to “record the date, time, and durations of all startups, shutdowns, malfunctions, and tuning events” and “always minimize emissions including startup, shutdown, maintenance, and combustion tuning periods.”

These records—which also document fuel usage, facility-wide emissions, and excess emissions—must be shared with the health department semiannually, with xAI’s first report due by December 31. Additionally, xAI must maintain five years of “monitoring, preventive, and maintenance records for air pollution control equipment,” which the department can request to review at any time.

For Memphis residents worried about smog-forming pollution, the worst fear would likely be visibly detecting the pollution. Mitigating this, xAI’s air permit requires that visible emissions “from each emission point at the facility shall not exceed” 20 percent in opacity for more than minutes in any one-hour period or more than 20 minutes in any 24-hour period.

It also prevents xAI from operating turbines all the time, limiting xAI to “a maximum of 22 startup events and 22 shutdown events per year” for the 15 turbines included in the permit, “with a total combined duration of 110 hours annually.” Additionally, it specifies that each startup or shutdown event must not exceed one hour.

A senior communications manager for the SELC, Eric Hilt, told Ars that the “SELC and our partners intend to continue monitoring xAI’s operations in the Memphis area.” He further noted that the air permit does not address all of citizens’ concerns at a time when xAI is planning to build another data center in the area, sparking new questions.

“While these permits increase the amount of public information and accountability around 15 of xAI’s turbines, there are still significant concerns around transparency—both for xAI’s first South Memphis data center near the Boxtown neighborhood and the planned data center in the Whitehaven neighborhood,” Hilt said. “XAI has not said how that second data center will be powered or if it plans to use gas turbines for that facility as well.”

xAI data center gets air permit to run 15 turbines, but imaging shows 24 on site Read More »

GOP wants EV tax credit gone; it would be a disaster for Tesla

Cars, elon musk, Tesla / Mike M. / July 1, 2025

The Republican Party’s opposition to tax credits for electric vehicles has stepped up a notch. As its members in the US Senate add their input to the budget bill that came from their colleagues in the House of Representatives, among the changes they want to see is a faster eradication of the IRS clean vehicle tax credit. The tax credit provides up to $7,500 off the price of an EV as long as certain conditions are met, and the language from the House would have given it until the end of the year. Now, it might be gone by the end of September.

The looming passage of the bill appears to have reopened the rift between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the Republican Party, which the billionaire funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in the last election. After a brief war of words earlier this month that was quickly smoothed over when Musk apologized to President Trump, it seems there’s the potential for strife again.

Yesterday, Musk once again took to his social media platform to denounce the budget bill, threatening to form a third political party should it pass and reposting content critical of the GOP spending plan.

The changes to the budget would be quite deleterious for Tesla. Although its sales have collapsed in Europe and are flagging in China, the US has remained something of a bulwark in terms of EV sales. Most of the EVs that Tesla offers for sale in the US are eligible for the $7,500 credit, which can be applied to the car’s price immediately at purchase, as long as the buyer meets the income cap. That means all these cars will become significantly more expensive on October 1, should the bill pass.

GOP wants EV tax credit gone; it would be a disaster for Tesla Read More »

Is DOGE doomed to fail? Some experts are ready to call it.

department of government efficiency, doge, Donald Trump, elon musk, Policy / Tim Belzer / June 26, 2025

Trump wants $45M to continue DOGE’s work. Critics warn costs already too high.

Federal workers and protestors spoke out against US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their push to gut federal services and impose mass layoffs earlier this year. Credit: Pacific Press / Contributor | LightRocket

Critics are increasingly branding Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as a failure, including lawmakers fiercely debating how much funding to allot next year to the controversial agency.

On Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats sparred over DOGE’s future at a DOGE subcommittee hearing, according to NextGov, a news site for federal IT workers. On one side, Republicans sought to “lock in” and codify the “DOGE process” for supposedly reducing waste and fraud in government, and on the other, Democrats argued that DOGE has “done the opposite” of its intended mission and harmed Americans in the process.

DOGE has “led to poor services, a brain drain on our federal government, and it’s going to cost taxpayers money long term,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) argued.

For now, DOGE remains a temporary government agency that could sunset as soon as July 4, 2026. Under Musk’s leadership, it was supposed to save the US government a trillion dollars. But so far, DOGE only reports saving about $180 billion—and doubt has been cast on DOGE’s math ever since reports revealed that nearly 40 percent of the savings listed on the DOGE site were “bogus,” Elaine Kamarck, director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institute, wrote in a report detailing DOGE’s exposed failures.

The “DOGE process” that Republicans want to codify, Kamarck explained, typically begins with rushed mass layoffs. That’s soon followed by offers for buyouts or deferred resignations, before the government eventually realizes it’s lost critical expertise and starts scrambling to rehire workers or rescind buyout offers after “it becomes apparent” that a heavily gutted agency “is in danger of malfunctioning.”

Kamarck warned that DOGE appeared to be using the firings of federal workers to test the “unitary executive” theory, “popular among conservatives,” that argues that “the president has more power than Congress.” Consider how DOGE works to shut down agencies funded by Congress without seeking lawmakers’ approval by simply removing critical workers key to operations, Kamarck suggested, like DOGE did early on at the National Science Foundation.

Democrats’ witness at the DOGE hearing—Emily DiVito of the economic policy think tank Groundwork Collaborative—suggested that extensive customer service problems at the Social Security Administration was just one powerful example of DOGE’s negative impacts affecting Americans today.

Some experts expect the damage of DOGE’s first few months could ripple across Trump’s entire term. “The rapid rehirings are a warning sign” that the government “has lost more capacities and expertise that could prove critical—and difficult to replace—in the months and years ahead,” experts told CNN.

By codifying the DOGE process, as Republicans wish to do, the government would seemingly only perpetuate this pattern, which could continue to be disastrous for Americans relying on government programs.

“There are time bombs all over the place in the federal government because of this,” Kamarck told CNN. “They’ve wreaked havoc across nearly every agency.”

DOGE spikes costs for Americans, nonprofit warns

Citizens for Ethics, a nonpartisan nonprofit striving to end government secrecy, estimated this week that DOGE cuts at just a few agencies “could result in a loss of over $10 billion in US-based economic activity.”

The shuttering of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alone—which Musk allegedly stands to personally benefit from—likely robbed American taxpayers of even more. The nonprofit noted that agency clawed back “over $26 billion in funds” from irresponsible businesses between 2011 and 2021 before its work was blocked.

Additionally, DOGE cuts at the Internal Revenue Service—which could “end or close audits of wealthy individuals and corporations” due to a lack of staffing—could cost the US an estimated $500 billion in dodged taxes, the nonprofit said. Partly due to conflicts like these, Kamarck suggested that when it finally comes time to assess DOGE’s success, the answer to both “did federal spending or the federal deficit shrink?” will “almost surely be no.”

As society attempts to predict the full extent of DOGE’s potential harms, The Wall Street Journal spoke to university students who suggested that regulatory clarity could possibly straighten out DOGE’s efforts now that Musk is no longer pushing for mass firings. At the DOGE hearing, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) suggested the only way to ensure DOGE hits its trillion-dollar goal is to “make sure these cuts aren’t just temporary” and pass laws “to streamline agencies, eliminate redundant programs and give the president the authority to fire bureaucrats who don’t do their jobs.”

But one finance student, Troy Monte, suggested to WSJ that DOGE has already cost the Trump administration “stability, expertise, and public trust,” opining, “the cost of DOGE won’t be measured in dollars, but in damage.”

Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told CNN that when DOGE borrowed the tech industry tactic of moving fast and breaking things, then scrambling to fix what breaks, it exposed “the mosaic of incompetence and a failure on the part of this administration to understand the critical value that the breadth of government expertise provides.”

“This is not about a single incident,” Stier said. “It’s about a pattern that has implications for our government’s ability to meet not just the challenges of today but the critical challenges of tomorrow.”

DOGE’s future appears less certain without Musk

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) had hoped to subpoena Musk at the DOGE hearing to testify on DOGE’s agenda, but Republicans blocked her efforts, NextGov reported.

At the hearing, she alleged that “all of this talk about lowering costs and reducing waste is absolute BS. Their agenda is about one thing: making the federal government so weak that they can exploit it for their personal gain.”

Just yesterday, The Washington Post editorial board published an op-ed already declaring DOGE a failure. Former DOGE staffer Sahil Lavingia told NPR that he expects DOGE will “fizzle out” purely because DOGE failed to uncover as much fraud as Musk and Trump had alleged was spiking government costs.

Beyond obvious criticism (loudly voiced at myriad DOGE protests), it’s easy to understand why this pessimistic view is catching on, since even from a cursory glance at DOGE’s website, the agency’s momentum appears to be slowing since Musk’s abrupt departure in late May. The DOGE site’s estimated savings are supposed to be updated weekly—and one day aspire to be updated in real-time—but the numbers apparently haven’t changed a cent since a few days after Musk shed his “special government employee” label. The site notes the last update was on June 3.

In addition to Musk, several notable Musk appointees have also left DOGE. Most recently, Wired reported that one of Musk’s first appointees—19-year-old Edward “Big Balls” Coristine—is gone, quitting just weeks after receiving full-time employee status granted around the same time that Musk left. Lavingia told Wired that he’d heard “a lot” of people Musk hired have been terminated since his exit.

Rather than rely on a specific engineer spearheading DOGE initiatives across government, like Coristine appeared positioned to become in Musk’s absence, Trump cabinet members or individual agency heads may have more say over DOGE cuts in the future, Kamarck and Politico’s E&E News reported.

“The result so far is that post-Musk, DOGE is morphing into an agency-by-agency effort—no longer run by a central executive branch office, but by DOGE recruits who have been embedded in the agencies and by political appointees, such as cabinet secretaries, who are committed to the same objectives,” Kamarck wrote.

Whether Trump’s appointees can manage DOGE without Musk’s help or his appointees remains to be seen, as DOGE continues to seek new hires. While Musk’s appointed DOGE staff was heavily criticized from day one, Kamarck noted that at least Musk’s appointees appeared “to have a great deal of IT talent, something the federal government has been lacking since the beginning of the information age.”

Trump can extend the timeline for when DOGE sunsets, NextGov noted, and DOGE still has $22 million left over from this year to keep pursuing its goals, as lawmakers debate whether $45 million in funding is warranted.

Despite Trump and Musk’s very public recent fallout, White House spokesperson Kush Desai has said that Trump remains committed to fulfilling DOGE’s mission, but NPR noted his statement curiously didn’t mention DOGE by name.

“President Trump pledged to make our bloated government more efficient by slashing waste, fraud, and abuse. The administration is committed to delivering on this mandate while rectifying any oversights to minimize disruptions to critical government services,” Desai said.

Currently, there are several court-ordered reviews looking into exactly which government systems DOGE accessed, which could reveal more than what’s currently known about how much success—or failure—DOGE has had. Those reviews could expose how much training DOGE workers had before they were granted security clearances to access sensitive information, potentially spawning more backlash as DOGE’s work lurches forward.

Kamarck suggested that DOGE was “doomed to face early failures” because its “efforts were enacted on dubious legal grounds”—a fact that still seems to threaten the agency’s “permanence.” But if the next incoming president conducts an evaluation in 2029 and finds that DOGE’s efforts have not meaningfully reduced the size or spending of government, DOGE could possibly disappear. Former staffers hope that even more rehiring may resume if it does, E&E reported.

In the meantime, Americans relying on government programs must contend with the risk that they could lose assistance in the moments they need it most as long as the Musk-created “DOGE process” continues to be followed.

“Which one of these malfunctions will blow up first is anyone’s guess, but FEMA’s lack of preparedness for hurricane season is a good candidate,” Kamarck said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Is DOGE doomed to fail? Some experts are ready to call it. Read More »

X sues to block copycat NY content moderation law after California win

censorship, content moderation, elon musk, First Amendment, hate speech, new york, Policy, Social Media, Twitter, X, x corp / Rejus Almole / June 18, 2025

“It is our sincere belief that the current social media landscape makes it far too easy for bad actors to promote false claims, hatred and dangerous conspiracies online, and some large social media companies are not able or willing to regulate this hate speech themselves,” the letter said.

Although the letter acknowledged that X was not the only platform targeted by the law, the lawmakers further noted that Musk taking over Twitter spiked hateful and harmful content on the platform. They said it seemed “clear to us that X needs to provide greater transparency for their moderation policies and we believe that our law, as written, will do that.”

This clearly aggravated X. In their complaint, X alleged that the letter made it clear that New York’s law was “tainted by viewpoint discriminatory motives”—alleging that the lawmakers were biased against X and Musk.

X seeks injunction in New York

Just as X alleged in the California lawsuit, the social media company has claimed that the New York law forces X “to make politically charged disclosures about content moderation” in order to “generate public controversy about content moderation in a way that will pressure social media companies, such as X Corp., to restrict, limit, disfavor, or censor certain constitutionally protected content on X that the State dislikes,” X alleged.

“These forced disclosures violate the First Amendment” and the New York constitution, X alleged, and the content categories covered in the disclosures “were taken word-for-word” from California’s enjoined law.

X is arguing that New York has no compelling interest, or any legitimate interest at all, in applying “pressure” to govern social media platforms’ content moderation choices. Because X faces penalties up to $15,000 per day per violation, the company has asked for a jury to grant an injunction blocking enforcement of key provisions of the law.

“Deciding what content should appear on a social media platform is a question that engenders considerable debate among reasonable people about where to draw the correct proverbial line,” X’s complaint said. “This is not a role that the government may play.”

X sues to block copycat NY content moderation law after California win Read More »

How Tesla Takedown got its start

Cars, doge, elon musk, syndication, Tesla / Rejus Almole / June 17, 2025

America’s most vulnerable Billionaire?

It’s an unlikely coalition that’s been hyping Tesla’s stock slide since its launch.

On a sunny April afternoon in Seattle, around 40 activists gathered at the Pine Box, a beer and pizza bar in the sometimes scruffy Capitol Hill neighborhood. The group had reserved a side room attached to the outside patio; before remarks began, attendees flowed in and out, enjoying the warm day. Someone set up a sound system. Then the activists settled in, straining their ears as the streamed call crackled through less-than-perfect speakers.

In more than a decade of climate organizing, it was the first time Emily Johnston, one of the group’s leaders, had attended a happy hour to listen to a company’s quarterly earnings call. Also the first time a local TV station showed up to cover such a happy hour. “This whole campaign has been just a magnet for attention,” she says.

The group, officially called the Troublemakers, was rewarded right away. TeslaCEO Elon Musk started the investors’ call for the first quarter of 2025 with a sideways acknowledgement of exactly the work the group had been doing for the past two months. He called out the nationwide backlash to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an effort to cut government spending staffed by young tech enthusiasts and Musk company alumni, named—with typical Muskian Internet-brained flourish—for an early 2010s meme.

“Now, the protests you’ll see out there, they’re very organized, they’re paid for,” Musk told listeners. For weeks, thousands of people—including the Troublemakers—had camped outside Tesla showrooms, service centers, and charging stations. Musk suggested that not only were they paid for their time, they were only interested in his work because they had once received “wasteful largesse” from the federal government. Musk had presented the theory and sharpened it on his social media platform X for weeks. Now, he argued, the protesters were off the dole—and furious.

Musk offered no proof of his assertions; to a person, every protester who spoke to WIRED insisted that they are not being paid and are exactly what they appear to be: people who are angry at Elon Musk. They call their movement the “Tesla Takedown.”

Before Musk got on the call to speak to investors, Tesla, which arguably kicked off a now multitrillion-dollar effort to transition global autos to electricity, had presented them with one of the company’s worst quarterly financial reports in years. Net income was down 71 percent year over year; revenue fell more than $2 billion short of Wall Street’s expectations.

Now, in Seattle, just the first few minutes of Musk’s remarks left the partygoers, many veterans of the climate movement, giddy. Someone close to the staticky speakers repeated the best parts to the small crowd: “I think starting probably next month, May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk said. Under a spinning disco ball, people whooped and clapped. Someone held up a snapshot of Tesla’s stock performance over the past year, a jagged but falling black line.

“If you ever wanted to know that protest matters, here’s your proof,” Johnston recalled weeks later.

The Tesla Takedown, an effort to hit back at Musk and his wealth where it hurts, seems to have appeared at just the right time. Tesla skeptics have argued for years that the company, which has the highest market capitalization of any automaker, is overvalued. They contend that the company’s CEO has been able to distract from flawed fundamentals—an aging vehicle lineup, a Cybertruck sales flop, the much-delayed introduction of self-driving technology—with bluster and showmanship.

Musk’s interest in politics, which kicked into a new and more expensive gear when he went all in for Donald Trump during the 2024 election, was always going to invite more scrutiny for his business empire. But the grassroots movement, which began as a post on Bluesky, has become a boisterous, ragtag, and visible locus of, sorry to use the word, resistance against Musk and Trump. It’s hard to pin market moves on any one thing, but Tesla’s stock price is down some 33 percent since its end-of-2024 high.

Tesla Takedown points to a uniquely screwed-up moment in American politics. Down is up; up is down. A man who made a fortune sounding the alarm about the evils of the fossil fuel industry joined with it to spend hundreds of millions in support of a right-wing presidential candidate and became embedded in an administration with a slash-and-burn approach to environmental regulation. (This isn’t good for electric cars.) The same guy, once extolled as the real-life Tony Stark—he made a cameo in Iron Man 2!—has become for some a real-life comic book villain, his skulduggery enough to bring together a coalition of climate activists, freaked-out and laid-off federal workers, immigrant rights champions, union groups, PhDs deeply concerned about the future of American science, Ukraine partisans, liberal retirees sick of watching cable news, progressive parents hoping to show their kids how to stick up for their values, LGBTQ+ rights advocates, despondent veterans, and car and tech nerds who have been crying foul on Musk’s fantastical technology claims for years now.

To meet the moment, then, the Takedown uses a unique form of protest logic: Boycott and protest the electric car company not because the movement disagrees with its logic or mission—quite the opposite, even!—but because it might be the only way to materially affect the unelected, un-beholden-to-the-public guy at its head. And then hope the oft-irrational stock market catches on.

So for weeks, across cities like New York; Berkeley and Palo Alto, California; Meridian, Idaho; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Raleigh, North Carolina; South Salt Lake, Utah; and Austin, Texas, the thousands of people who make up the Takedown movement have been stationed outside of Tesla showrooms, making it a little bit uncomfortable to test drive one of Musk’s electric rides, or even just drive past in one.

Change in the air

When Shua Sanchez graduated from college in 2013, there was about a week, he remembers, when he was convinced that the most important thing he could do was work for Tesla. He had a degree in physics; he knew all about climate change and what was at stake. He felt called to causes, had been protesting since George W. Bush invaded Iraq when he was in middle school. Maybe his life’s work would be helping the world’s premier electric carmaker convince drivers that there was a cleaner and more beautiful life after fossil fuel.

In the end, though, Sanchez opted for a doctorate program focusing on the quantum properties of super-conducting and magnetic materials. (“I shoot frozen magnets with lasers all day,” he jokes.) So he felt thankful for his choice a few years later when he read media reports about Tesla’s efforts to tamp down unionizing efforts at its factories. He felt more thankful when, in 2017, Musk signed on to two of Trump’s presidential advisory councils. (The CEO publicly departed them months later, after the administration pulled out of the Paris climate agreement.) Even more thankful in 2022, when Musk acquired Twitter with the near-express purpose of opening it up to extreme right-wing speech. More thankful still by the summer of 2024, after Musk officially endorsed Trump’s presidential bid.

By the time Musk appeared onstage at a rally following Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 and threw out what appeared to be a Nazi salute—Musk has denied that was what it was—Sanchez, now in a postdoctorate fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was ready to do something about it besides not taking a job at Tesla. A few days later, as reports of DOGE’s work began to leak out of Washington, a friend sent him a February 8 Bluesky post from a Boston-based disinformation scholar named Joan Donovan.

“If Musk thinks he can speed run through DC downloading personal data, we can certainly bang some pots and pans on the sidewalks in front of Tesla dealerships,” Donovan posted on the platform, already an online refuge for those looking for an alternative to Musk’s X. “Bring your friends and make a little noise. Organize locally, act globally.” She added a link to a list of Tesla locations, and a GIF of the Swedish Chef playing the drums on some vegetables with wooden spoons. Crucially, she appended the hashtag #TeslaTakeover. Later, the Internet would coalesce around a different rallying cry: #TeslaTakedown.

Baltimore-area residents protest the Trump administration and Tesla CEO Elon Musk at a Tesla car dealership as part of a boycott of Tesla vehicles. Saturday, March 29, 2025. Credit: Dominic Gwinn/Getty

The post did not go viral. To date, it has only 175 likes. But it did catch the attention of actor and filmmaker Alex Winter. Winter shot to prominence in 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure—he was Bill—and has more recently produced multiple documentaries focusing on online culture, piracy, and the power of social media. He and Donovan had bonded a few years earlier over activism and punk rock, and the actor, who has a larger social media following, asked the scholar if he could create a website to centralize the burgeoning movement. “I do think we’re at a point where people need to stick their necks up out of the foxhole en masse, or we’re simply not going to get through,” he tells WIRED. In the website’s first 12 hours of existence, he says, thousands of people registered to take part in the Takedown.

Donovan’s Bluesky post brought Sanchez to the Boston Back Bay Tesla showroom on Boylston Street the next Saturday, where 30 people had gathered with signs. For Sanchez, the whole thing felt personal. “Elon Musk started a PhD at Stanford in my field. He quit after two days and then went and became a tech bro, but he presents that he’s one of us,” he says. With Musk’s new visibility—and plans to slash government research dollars while promoting right-wing ideology—Sanchez was ready to push back.

Sanchez has been outside the showroom during weekly protests throughout the Boston winter, megaphone in hand, leading chants: “It ain’t fun. It ain’t funny. Elon Musk is stealing your money.” “We don’t want your Nazi cars. Take a one-way trip to Mars.”

“We make it fun, so a lot of people come back,” Sanchez says. Someone slapped Musk’s face on one of the inflatable tube guys you often see outside of car dealerships; he whipped around at several protests. A popular bubble-themed routine—“Tesla is a bubble”—saw protesters toss around a giant, transparent ball as others blew bubbles around it. Then the ball popped, loudly, during a protest—a sign? At some of Boston’s biggest actions, hundreds of people have shown up to demonstrate against Tesla, Musk, and Trump, Sanchez says.

Donovan envisioned the protests as potent visible responses to Musk’s slashing of government programs and jobs. But she also knew that social movements are a critical release valve in times of upheaval. “People need to relieve the pressure that they feel when the government is not doing the right thing,” she tells WIRED. “If you let that pressure build up too much, obviously it can turn very dangerous.”

In some ways, she’s right. In at least four incidents across four states, people have been charged by the federal government with various crimes including defacing, shooting at, throwing Molotov cocktails toward, and setting fire to Tesla showrooms and charging stations. In a move that has worried civil liberties experts, the Trump administration has treated these attacks against the president’s richest backer’s car company as “domestic terrorism,” granting federal authorities greater latitude and resources to track down alleged perpetrators and threatening them with up to 20 years in prison.

In posts on X and in public appearances, Musk and other federal officials have seemed to conflate the actions of a few allegedly violent people with the wider protests against Tesla, implying that both are funded by shadowy “generals.” “Firing bullets into showrooms and burning down cars is unacceptable,” Musk said at an event last month in which he appeared remotely on video, his face looming over the stage. “Those people will go to prison, and the people that funded them and organized them will also go to prison. Don’t worry.” He looked into the camera and pointed his finger at the audience. “We’re coming for you.”

Tesla Takedown participants and leaders have repeatedly said that the movement is nonviolent. “Authoritarian regimes have a long history of equating peaceful protest with violence. The #TeslaTakedown movement has always been and will remain nonviolent,” Dallas volunteer Stephanie Frizzell wrote in an email. What violence has occurred at protests themselves seems limited to on-site spats that mostly target protesters.

Donovan herself skipped some protests after receiving death threats and hearing a rumor that she was on a government list targeting disinformation researchers. On X, prominent right-wing accounts harassed her and other Takedown leaders; she says people have contacted her colleagues to try to get her fired.

Then, on the afternoon of March 6, Boston University ecology professor Nathan Phillips was in his office on campus when he received a panicked message from his wife. She said that two people claiming to represent the FBI visited their home. “I was just stunned,” Phillips says. “We both had a feeling of disbelief, that this must be some kind of hoax or a joke or something like that.”

Phillips had attended a Tesla Takedown event weeks earlier, but he wasn’t sure whether the visit was related to the protests or his previous climate activism. So after sitting shocked in his office for an hour, he called his local FBI field office. Someone picked up and asked for his information, he remembers, and then asked why he was calling. Phillips explained what had happened. “They just abruptly hung up on me,” he says.

Phillips never had additional contact from the FBI, but he knows of at least five other climate activists who were visited by men claiming to be from the agency on March 6.

The FBI tells WIRED that it “cannot confirm or deny the allegations” that two agents visited Phillips’ home. Tesla did not respond to WIRED’s questions about the Tesla Takedown movement or Musk’s allegations of coordinated violence against the company.

After the incident, Phillips began searching online for mentions of his name, and he found posts on X from an account that also tagged Joan Donovan and FBI director Kash Patel.

Phillips says that the FBI visit has had the opposite of a chilling effect. “If anything, it’s further radicalized me,” he says. “People having my back and the expression of support makes me feel very confident that it was the right thing to do to speak out about this.”

Organizing for the first time

Mike had attended a few protests in the past but didn’t know how to organize one. He has a wife, three small kids, a house in the suburbs, and a health issue that can sometimes make it hard to think. So by his own admission, his first attempt in February was a mixed bag. It was the San Francisco Bay Area-based Department of Labor employee’s first day back in the office after the Trump administration, spurred by DOGE, had demanded all workers return full-time. He was horrified by the fast-moving job cuts, program changes, and straight-up animus he had already seen flow from the White House down to his small corner of the federal government.

“Attacks on federal workers are an attack on the Constitution,” Mike says. Maybe, he figured, if he could keep people from buying Teslas, that would hurt Elon Musk’s bottom line, and the CEO would lay off DOGE altogether.

Mike, who WIRED is referring to using a pseudonym because he fears retaliation, saw that a Tesla showroom was just a 20-minute walk from his office, and he hoped to convince some coworkers to convene there, a symbolic stand against DOGE and Musk. So he taped a few flyers on light poles. He didn’t have social media, but he posted on Reddit. “I was really worried,” he says, “about the Hatch Act,” a law that limits the political activities of federal employees.

In the end, three federal workers—the person sitting next to him at the office and a US Department of Veterans Affairs nurse they ran into on the street—posted up outside of the Tesla showroom on Van Ness Avenue in downtown San Francisco holding “Save Federal Workers” signs.

Then Mike discovered the #TeslaTakedown website that Alex Winter had built. (Because of a quirk in the sign-up process, the site was putatively operated for a time by the Seattle Troublemakers.) It turned out a bunch of other people had thought that Tesla showrooms were the right places to air their grievances with Trump, Musk, and DOGE. Mike posted his event there. Now the SF Save Federal Workers protest, which happens every Monday afternoon, draws 20 to 40 people.

Through the weekly convening, Mike has met volunteers from the Federal Unionists Network, who represent public unions; the San Francisco Labor Council, a local affiliate of the national AFL-CIO; and the East Bay chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. As in any amicable custody arrangement, Mike’s group shares the strip of sidewalk outside of the San Francisco Tesla showroom with a local chapter of the progressive group Indivisible, which holds bigger protests on Saturdays. “I’m trying to build connections, meet other community groups,” Mike says. “My next step is broadening the coalition.”

About half of the people coordinating Takedown protests are like Mike, says Evan Sutton, who is part of the national team: They haven’t organized a protest before. “I’ve been in politics professionally for almost 20 years,” Sutton says. “It is genuinely the most grassroots thing that I’ve seen.”

Well into the spring, Tesla Takedown organizers nationwide had held hundreds of events across the US and even the globe, and the movement has gained a patina of professionalism. Tesla Takedown sends press releases to reporters. The movement has buy-in from Indivisible, a progressive network that dates back to the first Trump administration, with local chapters hosting their own protests. At least one Democratic congressional campaign has promoted a local #TeslaTakedown event.

Beyond the showrooms, Tesla sales are down by half in Europe compared to last year and have taken a hit in California, the US’s biggest EV market. Celebrities including Sheryl Crow and Jason Bateman have publicly ditched their Teslas. A Hawaii-based artist named Matthew Hiller started selling “I Bought This Before Elon Went Crazy” car decals in 2023; he estimates he has sold 70,000 anti-Musk and anti-Tesla stickers since then. (There was a “Space X-size explosion of sales after his infamous salute,” Hiller says.) In Seattle, the Troublemakers regularly hold “de-badging” events, where small handfuls of sheepish owners come by to have the T emblems drilled off their cars.

In Portland, Oregon, on a recent May Saturday, Ed Niedermeyer was once again sweating through his shark costume as he hopped along the sidewalk in front of the local Tesla showroom. His sign exhibited the DOGE meme, an alert Shiba Inu, with the caption “Heckin’ fascism.” (You’d get it if you spent too much time on the Internet in 2013.) Honks rang out. The shark tends to get a good reaction from drivers going by, he said. About 100 people had shown up to this Takedown protest, in front of a Tesla showroom that sits kitty-corner to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

Niedermeyer is a car writer and has spent a lot of time thinking about Elon Musk since 2015, when he discovered that Tesla wasn’t actually operating a battery swapping station like it said it did. Since then, he has written a book, Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, and documented many of what he claims to be Musk’s and the automaker’s half-truths on their way to the top.

Niedermeyer acknowledges that Musk and Tesla have proven difficult to touch, even by nationwide protests literally outside their doors.

Despite the Seattle cheers during Tesla’s last quarterly earnings call, the automaker’s stock price gained steam through the spring and rose on the news that its CEO would no longer officially work for the federal government. Musk has said investors should value Tesla not as a carmaker but as an AI and robotics company. At the end of this month, after years of delays, Tesla says it will launch a robotaxi service. According to Wall Street analysts’ research notes, they believe him.

Even a public fight with the president—one that devolved into name-calling on Musk’s and Trump’s respective social platforms—was not enough to pop the Tesla bubble.

“For me, watching Musk and watching our inability to stop him and create consequences for this snowballing hype and power has really reinforced that we need a stronger government to protect people from people like him,” says Niedermeyer.

Still, Tesla Takedown organizers take credit for the cracks in the Musk-Trump alliance—and say the protests will continue. The movement has also incorporated a more cerebral strategy, organizing local efforts to convince cities, states, and municipalities to divest from Musk’s companies. They already had a breakthrough in May, when Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, became the first US public pension fund to say it wouldn’t purchase new Tesla stocks for its managed investment accounts.

The movement’s goals may be lofty, but Niedermeyer argues that despite Tesla’s apparent resilience, Musk is still America’s most vulnerable billionaire. And sure, Musk, the CEO of an electric car company, the guy who made himself the figurehead for his automaker and fired his PR team to make sure it would stick, the one who alienated the electric car company’s customer base through a headlong plunge not only into political spending but the delicate mechanics of government itself—he did a lot of it on his own.

Now Niedermeyer, and everyone involved in Tesla Takedown, and probably everyone in the whole world, really, can only do what they can. So here he is, in a shark costume on the side of the road, maintaining the legally mandated distance from the car showroom behind him.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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