The Week In Musk: Trump threatens to deport Elon

Elon Musk looks on during a cabinet meeting at the White House on March 24, 2025. Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Tesla's vehicle sales are slumping, and the company is struggling to bring new technologies to market. SpaceX can't seem to stop losing its most ambitious and expensive rocket in unscheduled explosions. But Elon Musk, the head of both companies and former "first buddy" to the president, has decided now is the right time to reignite his feud with Donald Trump.

Late last week, as Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" was working its way through the Senate, Musk called the bill "utterly insane" and said it would destroy millions of American jobs. He added that the legislation "gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future," an apparent reference to the bill's phasing out of Biden-era green energy subsidies that benefited Tesla.

By Monday, Musk had committed to helping unseat hundreds of Republican lawmakers who voted for the bill. "Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!" he wrote. "And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth." This is a sharp reversal from May, when Musk said he would spend "a lot less" in future elections.

Musk then promised to form a new political party, the America Party, the day after the bill passed. The bill narrowly passed the House on Thursday and now awaits Trump's signature. In other words, keep an eye out for the creation of the "America Party" over the next 24 hours.

Musk also chose Thursday to reup his calls for the Justice Department to release its "unredacted [Jeffrey] Epstein files." He had previously alluded to the "Epstein files" after his last spat with Trump in June, even suggesting that the DOJ hadn't released its evidence on the late pedophile because the president was implicated in Epstein's crimes. Musk ultimately apologized for the remark, deleting the post and stating that it had gone "too far."

As for Trump, he initially took Musk's comments in stride, even calling Musk "a wonderful guy" on Sunday. But the president proceeded to meet aggression with aggression. On Tuesday, Trump threatened to weaponize the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the White House entity that Musk formed and led, against its creator. "DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon," he said. "Wouldn’t that be terrible?" He also said that he would look into deporting Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in South Africa, and again warned that Musk's companies could lose the billions of dollars they receive through federal contracts and subsidies.

"Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!"

Why the federal government can't quit Musk

For the federal government, disentangling itself from Musk's companies, primarily SpaceX, would not be an easy task. It's hard to imagine, for example, how the White House would fulfill the Pentagon's launch and communications needs without SpaceX. This week, as Trump was threatening to cut off Musk's companies, the U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX another contract worth $82 million to launch a weather satellite. The U.S. Air Force has also been testing a piece of "advanced communications hardware" from SpaceX called Starshield.

Meanwhile, Trump's Federal Communications Commission has continued to take actions benefiting SpaceX. The FCC on Tuesday announced a rule change allowing more devices to be eligible for the direct-to-cell service that Starlink, a SpaceX subsidiary, is launching with T-Mobile. The agency said the change was made to help more emergency responders access the satellite network.

Tesla reports record sales plunge from last year

For the second quarter in a row, Tesla suffered a record sales slump. The company reported on Wednesday that it sold 384,122 cars in Q2 2025, a 13.5% drop, or approximately 60,000 units, from a year earlier. Its sales fell by 21% in the U.S., per a Cox Automotive estimate. The good news for Tesla is that its Q2 sales matched consensus forecasts on Wall Street.

The Q2 numbers put Tesla on track to lose its title as the world's top seller of electric vehicles. BYD, a Chinese EV maker, has outperformed Tesla's sales by 279,000 units this year. Additionally, the New York Times reported that Tesla's factories were operating at just 70% capacity in Q2. Waning interest in its luxury offerings, the Cybertruck, the Model S, and Model X, contributed to the slowed production.

The Cybertruck may have been Tesla's biggest underperformer. The company had planned for an annual production capacity of 250,000 Cybertrucks at its Gigafactory in Texas. But it appears that only 5,000 units were delivered in Q2, per Electrek. (That number may not be precise, given the cryptic ways that Tesla presents its sales of specific vehicle models.) Tesla also had a year-over-year decline in its deployment of energy storage products, its only growth division in Q1.

In other Tesla news:

• Wedbush analyst Dan Ives warned that the Musk-Trump "soap opera" continues to weigh on Tesla's stock. “Tesla investors want Musk to focus on driving Tesla and stop this political angle," he wrote in a note to clients. "Being on Trump’s bad side will not turn out well, and Musk knows this."

• After firing a top Tesla executive last week, Musk plans to personally supervise the company's sales in North America and Europe, according to Bloomberg.

• Ford CEO Jim Farley said that his company has no plans to license Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" technology. Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Farley said that while Ford had been in talks with Tesla, he was unconvinced by Musk's camera-exclusive approach to self-driving, preferring Alphabet-owned Waymo's use of lidar along with cameras and radar. When cameras "will be completely blinded, the lidar system will see exactly what’s in front of you," said Farley. Waymo has already signed a multi-year technology integration deal with Hyundai and a preliminary agreement with Toyota.

• The Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report found that Tesla's brand perception is plummeting not only among Democrats but also Republicans following Musk's breakup with Trump.

• A U.S. district judge in Miami has allowed plaintiffs to move forward with design defect and failure to warn claims against Tesla. The case is tied to a fatal 2019 crash involving a Model S whose driver was using Tesla's Autopilot software at the time of the collision.

• Musk claimed last week that Tesla had completed its first "fully autonomous delivery of a Tesla Model Y from factory to a customer home across town, including highways," reaching a maximum speed of 72 miles per hour. He also said that "no remote operators" took control of the vehicle at any point during the delivery, although that claim cannot be verified.

xAI facility in Memphis receives permit to operate gas turbines

The xAI facility in South Memphis has received a permit from the Shelby County Health Department to operate 15 gas turbines at the site, despite pollution concerns from local officials and residents. "In Memphis, the air quality fails to meet the EPA standard for smog, which is ground-level ozone," Patrick Anderson, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Musk Watch. "Our most basic ask is that if they're going to approve the permanent use of these turbines through this permit — and we think they shouldn't until they fix the smog problem — then they should at least require offsets, basically requiring someone else to reduce emissions so there's no net increase [of smog]."

Last month, the Southern Environmental Law Center and NAACP filed a 60-day notice signaling their intent to sue xAI and its local affiliates for violating the Clean Air Act.

SpaceX agrees to block criminal use of Starlink in Brazil

SpaceX has reached a two-year deal with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office of Brazil to block the use of Starlink by criminals engaged in illegal, highly toxic mining operations deep within the Amazon. "The use of satellite internet has transformed the logistics of illegal mining," said federal prosecutor André Porreca. "This new reality demands a proportional legal response. With the agreement, connectivity in remote areas also becomes a tool for environmental responsibility and respect for sovereignty." The deal requires that Starlink disconnect terminals once their use for criminal activity has been confirmed.

In other Starlink news:

• The Colombian navy intercepted an unmanned "narco sub" in the Caribbean that was equipped with a Starlink kit for navigation and steering. The remote-controlled submersibles are used by drug traffickers to transport cocaine and other drugs throughout the world. Last year, law enforcement officials in India captured a similar submersible that was operated via Starlink.

• Iran's communications ministry has banned the use of Starlink nationwide, saying that it will "not permit foreign entities to bypass lawful regulatory frameworks under the pretext of internet access." After Israel attacked Iran last month, Musk activated Starlink over the country at the behest of a Trump official who said the internet service could be used to instigate regime change in Iran. A State Department-backed nonprofit has also provided Starlink internet to Iranian citizens, presumably through extralegal means. But the Trump administration's cuts to foreign aid have curtailed the project.

• Seeking a license for Starlink to operate in Lebanon, Musk personally called the country's president, Joseph Aoun, last week. Aoun, who had already met with Starlink's licensing director, said he was open to allowing Musk to operate in his country. Lebanon has among the slowest internet speeds in the world, and its stationary infrastructure is frequently damaged by Israeli bombs.

• Between December and May, 472 Starlink satellites were deorbited and incinerated in the Earth's atmosphere, according to a Federal Communications Commission filing from SpaceX. The environmental consequences of satellites repeatedly disintegrating in the atmosphere are not yet fully understood. But the satellites do release aluminum oxide and exotic metals, contributing to the depletion of the ozone layer.

• For $15 a month, Starlink is offering a Residential Lite subscription to eligible low-income New Yorkers. The plan, which SpaceX was required to offer per New York law, caps download speeds at 25 Mbps. On the other side of the country, in parts of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, Starlink is charging new subscribers a one-time $1,000 demand surcharge.

• Ookla's Internet Speedtest has found that Starlink is the top-performing in-flight Wi-Fi. Starlink is currently being offered by Hawaiian Airlines and Qatar Airways. While United Airlines has a deal to provide Starlink across its entire fleet, the airline recently had to turn off Starlink on planes that were testing the service due to static interference.

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Musk Minutes

In a post on X, Musk voiced regret for a February stunt in which he waved around a chainsaw and suggested that DOGE was using similar methods to cut government workers. "Maybe you shouldn’t have taken the chainsaw on stage and acted a fool," one X user wrote to Musk. "Valid point," he replied. "[Argentine President Javier] Milei gave me the chainsaw backstage and I ran with it, but, in retrospect, it lacked empathy." (X)

X plans to test a feature that would allow large language models like Grok to submit Community Notes, the peer-to-peer fact-checking service that Musk implemented in place of employee moderators. (TechCrunch)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating SpaceX after a large crane collapsed at the company's facility in Starbase. Since 2014, OSHA has penalized SpaceX at least six times for various violations. (CNBC)

SpaceX intends to construct a large private park for employees at its Starlink factory in Texas. Plans for the complex mention pickleball courts, picnic areas, and kayaking. (Bloomberg)

The number of patients who are using Neuralink's N1 brain implant has increased to seven. In February, Neuralink, Musk's brain-machine startup, said that only three people had received the implant, so the pace of its deployment appears to have increased considerably in recent months. Neuralink received Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA in May, accelerating access to the device for patients with severe speech impairments. (PC Mag)

During a New York Times interview published last week, Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel claimed that Musk had given up on his dream to turn Mars into a libertarian utopia. Musk, according to Thiel, came to the realization last year that "the socialist U.S. government, the woke AI would follow you to Mars." In response to Thiel, Musk wrote on X, "Of course moving to Mars is not yet an option, but it will be if civilization can last another 25 years or so." (New York Times)