On March 3rd, crowds gathered outside the Tesla dealership on S Macadam in Portland, protesting the corporation’s involvement in the current administration. A day later, President Donald Trump—who cannot currently drive—vowed to purchase a Tesla during an exhibition in which Elon Musk rolled out five Teslas for show in front of the White House.
Tesla’s stock has been tanking around the world since the inauguration, as Musk’s controversial position as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) outrages people everywhere.
According to Stephen Fowler’s NPR article, DOGE announced a goal to cut $1 trillion in fiscal spending by September. As of March 3, they’ve boasted $105 billion in cuts, the largest of which have come from USAID and the Department of Education. However, the receipts provided on DOGE’s website have been shown to be frequently misleading, with certain claims quietly removed, and the public providing calculations showing that the posted receipts don’t match the amounts said to have been saved.
Just some of the departments affected by these cuts include: the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Labor, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Justice, Social Security Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Energy, and the National Archives and Records Administration.
However, according to Fowler, “DOGE has so far focused on things like contracting and employee head count, which account for a small slice of the government spending pie. It recalls a similar move for Musk, who, after he bought Twitter in 2022, got rid of most of the staff. But unlike private industry, where employee salaries and benefits are the top expense, in the federal government personnel costs make up just about 4% of spending.”
These cuts caused a wave of National Park Service employees to be laid off last month, sparking rage on social media as workers shared their grief, pain, and desperation over losing the jobs they loved. In February, fired workers at Yosemite National Park hung an American flag upside down off El Capitan, a powerful image of distress and a commentary on the administration’s impact on everyday lives.
All this came on the heels of the January controversy when Musk performed a Nazi salute during a speech at Capital One Arena. His supporters have vehemently denied the gesture, but global Jewish leaders and scholars of far-right extremism have stated that “Musk had unambiguously performed the Nazi ‘Heil Hitler’ salute.”
Since these events, Americans all over the country have taken to the streets to protest Tesla, hoping that a dent in the company’s stocks and profits will convey the anger of millions against an unelected individual wreaking havoc on so many lives. The protests are further fueled by rumors that Tesla products will start to be integrated into the government, such as Cybertrucks being updated for use in the military, and concerns that one of Musk’s end goals is to privatize social security.
Indeed, signs at the March 3rd protest read things such as, “No One Voted for Elon the Muskrat,” “Tesla Funds Fascists,” “Make Mine a Tesla Model Nein,” “De-Musk America,” and “Burn a Tesla, Save Democracy.”
President Trump has addressed the boycotts on his social media platform, Truth Social, saying, ” . . . the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for.”
Multiple protestors at the Portland Tesla dealership have vowed to continue organizing protests every Saturday for as long as it takes to see change happening in the upper echelons of the government.
In the meantime, Tesla stock has plunged nearly 48% this year losing more than $700 billion in market value and slashing Musk’s personal net worth by roughly $148 billion, about a quarter of his peak net worth of $464 billion.
