The Week In Musk: Mission (Mostly) Accomplished?

In this week’s Musk Watch roundup: Elon's shift away from DC, Tesla’s quarterly earnings, a power struggle at the IRS, and Grok’s “eyes.”

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Elon Musk attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 10, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

After months away from his car company, Elon Musk has promised to spend more time at Tesla while still maintaining his work for the White House in a limited capacity. "Starting probably in next month, in May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly," the Tesla chief said during a Tuesday conference call that followed the release of the company’s weak first quarter earnings report. Since October, Musk has spent much of his time campaigning for Donald Trump, helping build his administration, and serving in the White House as a top presidential adviser.

Claiming mission “mostly” accomplished, Musk specified that his new schedule will accommodate “a day or two per week” spent on government matters. Musk initially pledged to reduce government spending by $1 trillion annually, but has fallen far short of the goal. The DOGE website claims $160 billion in cuts, spread over multiple years. The Musk Watch DOGE Tracker reveals that Musk has only itemized $61.5 billion in cuts, and just $12.6 billion are verifiable.

Musk said he would continue to devote time each week to DOGE-related matters “for the remainder of the president's term, just to make sure that the waste and fraud we stopped won't come roaring back.”

That was enough for some Tesla bulls. “Investors wanted to see him recommit to Tesla,” said Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives, an influential Tesla investor. “This is a big step in the right direction.” Shares of Tesla closed at 259.51 on Thursday, a 9% increase from Tuesday.

In the earnings report, Tesla disclosed a 71% drop in net income year-over-year and a 20% decline in revenue from its vehicle sales. Its total revenue, $19.3 billion, was down 9% from a year ago. Tesla had previously disclosed a 13% decline in car sales during the first quarter of this year, despite industry-wide sales of electric vehicles climbing 7% during Q1. In positive news for Tesla, the company reported a quarterly free cash flow of $664 million, a significant turnaround from a year ago. Tesla also increased its sale of regulatory credits from $443 million to $595 million.

Tesla linked its Q1 slump to customers holding out to buy the recently refreshed Model Y. But Musk only briefly acknowledged the backlash Tesla has faced from his work directing DOGE. Consumers interested in buying electric vehicles tend to lean left politically, and Tesla has faced constant protests from progressives in response to Musk’s work for DOGE. Separately, anti-Musk vandals have targeted Tesla showrooms, facilities, and cars since January.

Responding to this “blowback,” Musk dubiously blamed the protests on “paid” demonstrators and urged investors to buck up. “I encourage people to look beyond the bumps and potholes of the road immediately ahead of us,” he said. “Lift your gaze to the bright shining citadel on the hill — I don't know, some Reagan-esque imagery — and that's where we're headed.”

“Absent macro issues, we don't see any reduction in demand,” Musk added. Among those macro issues is Trump’s trade war with China. Musk said on the call that he has shared his opposition to tariffs with Trump and hopes the president would “perhaps weigh my advice differently in the future.”

Significant growth in Tesla’s energy storage division saved the company from far worse quarterly earnings. But a U.S.-China trade war, if prolonged, could cripple the division. "The impact of tariffs on the energy business will be outsized since we source LFP battery cells from China," said Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja on an after-earnings call.

Musk promises self-driving Teslas are just around the corner

On the call, Musk also said that “millions of Teslas [will be] operating autonomously in the second half of the year,” though he has spent the past decade promising that fully autonomous Teslas are right around the corner. Independent testing last year found that Tesla’s self-driving system requires significant human intervention to operate safely. “The system is not robust enough to operate unsupervised. It still makes far too many errors,” auto analyst Sam Abuelsamid told the AP this week. “It will suddenly make mistakes that will lead to a crash.”

However, on Thursday, the Trump administration announced that it would slash self-driving regulations for U.S. automakers, including by reducing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s crash reporting rules. “This administration understands that we’re in a race with China to out-innovate, and the stakes couldn’t be higher,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. “Our new framework will slash red tape and move us closer to a single national standard that spurs innovation and prioritises safety.” Paring back NHTSA regulations of self-driving vehicles, rules that Musk has long criticized, will help Tesla launch its fleet of steering wheelless Cybercabs.

The Tesla “self-driving” product closest to release is the “10 to 20” Model Ys (per Musk) that the company will test in June as a ride-sharing service in Austin, Texas. But that program will be assisted by remote operators and take place in a geo-fenced area, meaning it won’t match Musk’s “fully autonomous” sales pitch. Instead, it will operate similarly to Waymo’s current model, which Musk has criticized as unscaleable.

As for Tesla's long-awaited "affordable" model, the company committed to launching it this year but said production could be sluggish. It plans to revisit its 2025 delivery forecast following the release of its Q2 earnings.

Musk’s White House screaming match

Perhaps hastening Musk’s departure from the White House are the frequent conflicts he has had with top members of the administration. His most recent altercation, which took place in the West Wing, was with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. From Axios:

The latest trouble between Musk and Bessent began brewing on April 16, when Trump named Gary Shapley — Musk's choice — as acting commissioner of the IRS. Bessent wanted Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender in the position.

Bessent lobbied Trump to install Faulkender and fumed that Musk was causing trouble by going behind his back. On Thursday, at a meeting in the White House, Bessent confronted Musk and, a source said, "the F bombs started to fly." Bessent criticized Musk for overpromising and under-delivering budget cuts with DOGE. Musk clapped back by calling Bessent a "Soros agent" and accusing him of having run "a failed hedge fund." (Trump has praised Bessent's financial acumen.)

Two sources who overheard the argument recalled that at one point Bessent yelled,"F**k you," and Musk replied, "Say it louder."

Bessent ultimately got his way, with Faulkender replacing Musk’s choice, Shapley, as acting commissioner of the IRS on Friday. But not before Musk shared a post on X from right-wing gadfly Laura Loomer describing Bessent as a “Trump hater,” an allegation Musk wrote was “troubling.”

DOGE aids Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign

The Justice Department has granted members of DOGE access to a sensitive immigration database known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Courts and Appeals System (ECAS). Records stored in ECAS include interactions that immigrants have had with U.S. immigration authorities and law enforcement, as well as their names and addresses. It is the latest step by DOGE to enhance Trump’s effort to deport immigrants. From the Washington Post:

Last week, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement who are working with DOGE asked to use a sensitive Medicare database, including personal health information and addresses, to help ICE locate people the administration does not think are in the country legally.

At DOGE’s behest, the Social Security Administration listed more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead in a bid to make them self-deport, overriding the objections of career staff. At the IRS, officials agreed this month to share data with the Department of Homeland Security, suggesting that the administration may want to use tax information to find as many as 7 million people suspected of being in the country illegally.

And at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, DOGE staffers are looking to identify and kick out mixed-status households, vowing to ensure that undocumented immigrants do not benefit from public housing programs even if they live with citizens.

Last week, Wired reported that DOGE is constructing a massive data repository that could be used to surveil and track down immigrants.

Grok's eyes; xAI’s ‘proper’ valuation; X fights ‘deepfake’ election inference law

The chatbot developed by Musk’s artificial intelligence company has been endowed with another mortal sense: sight. On Tuesday, xAI announced the launch of Grok Vision, a feature that allows the chatbot to see through the cameras of iPhone users and answer real-time questions about what it is looking at. Use cases for the function include asking Grok to identify items and symbols or scan documents. Grok was also given auditory abilities, allowing a “Hey, Siri” style utility. Other recent features added to Grok include “memory,” allowing it to recall past dialogues, and a design tool for the creation of applications and documents.

In light of xAI’s recent advancements, including its ability to claim the leading compute power in the industry thanks to its Colossus supercomputer hive, Musk told investors on a recent call that he intends to put a “proper value” on the AI venture. The comment was reported by CNBC, with sources telling the network that they believe Musk will soon seek another funding round. The vast majority of xAI’s $6 billion funding round in December came from the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and the UAE, per CNBC. After X, the social media platform, was acquired by xAI last month, Musk valued the combined entity at $80 billion. But that appraisal has been belittled by critics as “funny money.”

X, meanwhile, is suing the state of Minnesota over a law banning the use of AI-generated “deepfakes” to influence elections. Arguing that the state law violates the First Amendment, the social media platform said it “will inevitably result in the censorship of wide swaths of valuable political speech and commentary.” The law bans the use of videos, pictures, or audio created by AI but made to look real for the purpose of manipulating voters.

State Department lobbies for SpaceX; FBI and DEA explore Starlink use; Bezos' Starlink competitor faces launch delays

Earlier this month, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr lobbied European governments to adopt Starlink, the satellite communications service operated by Musk’s SpaceX. The State Department has followed suit, promoting Starlink to U.S. allies by favorably contrasting it to satellite providers from China. “It is important to ensure satellite services provided by untrusted suppliers, such as those from China, are not permitted to operate in your country,” read a State Department undated memo, obtained by Nextgov, explaining how U.S. officials should discuss satellite services with allied countries.

The memo references why some European countries are wary of Starlink; SpaceX, and thus Musk, maintains the authority to shut down the service at any time, as it has during Ukraine’s use of Starlink. From Nextgov:

If asked about the Starlink satellite-communications service, U.S. officials are told under the memo to acknowledge that parent company SpaceX may restrict the delivery or operation of ground terminals as local regulations require — and otherwise as it pleases.

At the Justice Department, its two largest agencies — the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration — are considering the adoption of Starlink, according to FedScoop. Both agencies submitted requests for information (RFI) regarding Starlink last month, indicating they are in the early phase of potential procurement. The bureau, which is weighing the purchase of between five and 100 Starlink Mini Kits, said in its RFI that Starlink “offers the ability to maintain internet ability while responding, and on scene of, various incidents.” The DEA’s RFI said that low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, the kind that make up Starlink’s 7,000-strong constellation, would provide communication access for agency personnel “in regions historically underserved by traditional satellite providers.”

In its consumer business, Starlink is trying to balance out demand among its U.S. customer base. In high-demand markets like San Diego and Phoenix, Starlink has added a $250 one-time “congestion charge” that new customers must pay to start using the service, per PC Mag. But in much of rural America, excluding the South and the Midwest, Starlink is offering $200 “regional savings” discounts to new customers as well as free dish installations in some areas.

One factor driving Starlink’s ballooning growth is the lack of competitive alternatives, particularly on the consumer level. While Paris-based Eutelsat operates OneWeb, a constellation of roughly 650 LEO satellites with lower speeds than Starlink, it only serves government agencies, businesses, and other large enterprises. On the retail side, Amazon’s Project Kuiper is one of the main contenders looking to challenge Starlink’s dominance. But the venture has reportedly encountered significant production delays. So far, Project Kuiper has only constructed a few dozen satellites, despite promising the FCC to have more than 1,600 satellites in orbit by the summer of next year. From Bloomberg:

The slow pace, combined with rocket launch delays, means the company will probably have to seek an extension from the Federal Communications Commission, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters.

The agency, which has oversight of transmissions from space, expects the company to have half its planned constellation of 3,236 satellites operating by the end of July 2026. To meet that requirement, Amazon would have to at least quadruple the current rate of production, which has yet to consistently reach one satellite a day, two of the people said.

Industry analysts say getting an FCC extension should be straightforward, but some have begun to wonder whether that assumption will hold given that Elon Musk, who runs the rival Starlink service, is advising the White House on spending and personnel decisions.

To meet its FCC deadline, the Amazon subsidiary is scrambling to book flights aboard crafts from Blue Origin (founded by Jeff Bezos), United Launch Alliance, and SpaceX.

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Musk Minutes

Democrats in Washington State have introduced legislation that would tax profits Tesla receives from its sale of emissions credits in the state. (The Columbian)

DOGE has essentially been handed control over the Department of the Interior. Last week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum placed DOGE member Tyler Hassen, a former oil executive, in charge of eliminating “redundant efforts” at the department and creating “significant efficiencies.” The department oversees the National Park Service, the Forestry Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Bureau of Land Management, among other federal entities. (Washington Post)

Should Musk leave the White House next month, his influence will remain in Washington, as evidenced by a former Tesla employee being installed as a senior adviser to the FBI. Tarak Makecha, the Tesla alum, also works for a division of the Justice Department. (The Intercept)

DOGE is shuttering the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a foreign aid agency established by George W. Bush. (Politico)

The New York Times has produced a few graphs depicting how the reach of some right-wing X users nosedived after they criticized Musk. In all three cases, the engagement decline took place after the users condemned Musk’s support for H-1B immigration visas. (New York Times)

Voting is underway to decide whether members of a small municipality in coastal Southern Texas want to incorporate as a SpaceX company town called Starbase. With the vast majority of potential voters having recently moved to the area, the incorporation of Starbase appears to be a formality. Musk has already spent years industrializing the area to build and launch his rockets. He now wants the town to serve as home to SpaceX, which is currently headquartered in Hawthorne, California. Voting concludes on May 3. (Texas Tribune)