A nationwide protest movement is taking shape

Americans are targeting Tesla dealerships for their anti-Musk protests

“Now is the winter of our discontent” wrote William Shakespeare in Richard III. Though describing conditions in the 15th Century, these words precisely describe our current situation in the second month of Trump’s far too long four year term.

Now is the winter of our discontent as an unelected illegal immigrant (Musk famously overstayed his student visa after he quit college) literally and figuratively takes a chainsaw to our Federal government in the name of “destroying waste and fraud.”

Now is the winter of our discontent as that felon in the White House destroys our international alliances and cozies up to a brutal dictator while blaming the victim for the war that they have endured for the past three years.

Now is the winter of our discontent as the green shoots of an early spring uprising takes shape across America, with the #TeslaTakedown protests specifically targeting Elon Musk and his source of wealth, the EV brand Tesla.

From the Philadelphia Enquirer:

The idea behind the nationwide #TeslaTakedown protests — with Week Three planned for next Saturday — is to weaken Musk by attacking the main source of his wealth, his massive stake in the EV giant where he still serves as inattentive CEO. The goal is both to cripple new sales of Tesla and also tank its astronomic stock price that underwrites Musk, and there are powerful signs it is already working. Many experts say the CEO’s right-wing politics are why U.S. sales of its EVs flattened in 2024 and fell below 50% of the domestic market, and also why Tesla’s value on Wall Street has plunged as much as 21% since Trump’s inauguration.

“Tesla Takedown isn’t asking Congress to change the laws that Trump and Musk are already ignoring and will continue to ignore, or asking courts to send federal marshals to enforce the orders they have already issued finding many of the actions taken by the putschists to be illegal,” the journalist Edward Hasbrouck wrote in hailing the newest form of direct action. “Instead, Tesla Takedown is an effort to directly undermine the wealth, power and popular appeal of Musk and his collaborators."

Tesla has rapidly become a lightning rod across the country for angry protesters to target.

From the Rolling Stone:

There have now been protests outside of Tesla locations in over 100 cities, and the movement is picking up speed and going global. Our website has thousands of visitors a day, signing on for protests, creating their own and downloading our resources. Just as many people are showing up in front of Tesla real estate through entirely separate organizations, like Indivisible and a new formation of rank and file federal workers called the Federal Unionists Network. Another massive day of action is planned this weekend. There are reports that Tesla’s shareholders are already souring on the company’s CEO and chairperson. The stock is dipping.

Though tied up in several of his corporations, Musk’s net worth of roughly $400 billion is the result of the massive overvaluation of Tesla’s hugely inflated stock price. Sales of Tesla have been plummeting around the world as consumers sour on the brand run by an immature edgelord who thinks it’s ok to Sieg Heil in front of the world.

From Inside EV’s:

The story gets worse in other parts of the world. In Germany, where Tesla was the longtime EV sales leader even as new entries from Volkswagen, BMW, Audi and various Chinese brands started showing up, sales declined a whole 60% in January—just 1,277 registrations in Europe's biggest car market, according to Fortune. Tesla’s sales were also down 63% in France in January, another large car market, from a year earlier. They also dropped 8% in the UK year-over-year in January even as all-electric vehicle sales rose to 21% of the British new car market, a seven-point increase from 2024. "No Tesla cracked the UK's top 10 best-seller list last month, something that has regularly happened in the past," Ars Technica reported this week.

And one trend that's especially worth watching is what's happening in China, which makes up more than a third of Tesla's global sales. In China, which leads the world in total all-electric and hybrid sales, Tesla dropped 11.5% in January.

But one factor feels inescapable at this point: the backlash to Elon Musk's increased involvement in politics. In the U.S., the Tesla CEO spent the past week—illegally, according to many lawyers and constitutional scholars—breaching the U.S. Treasury Department's payment systems as part of President Trump's effort to unilaterally defund various government agencies. In Germany, Musk's vocal support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been widely cited as a turn-off for EV buyers, and the same has been said of his politics in the UK.

And more national protests are taking shape as well. Last week’s President Day was the first “No Kings Day” where tens of thousands of Americans across the nation took to the streets. Here in LA a few thousand showed up including yours truly and we marched in front of City Hall down to the historic Pueblo Monument.

Economic protests are also taking shape as boycotts of companies that embrace Trump’s anti-DEI policies, including Target and Amazon, are underway. Forbes has compiled the list of companies and organizations here.

While these protests may not be massive yet, they are a clear indication that not everybody in this country is fine with the destruction being waged by Musk and Trump. We The People still have the power in this country and it’s time to exercise that power.