Demonstrators flock to Tesla showrooms to protest against Musk
A growing backlash to Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his efforts to slash the federal workforce on behalf of President Donald Trump grew to its strongest level yet when protests unfolded outside at least 90 Tesla shops and charging stations Saturday.
Protesters gathered at Tesla showrooms in cities including New York, Boston, San Francisco and Tucson, to chant and wave signs, according to news reports and events logged through the Action Network, a platform for organizing left-leaning causes. At least nine people were arrested outside a Tesla showroom in New York during a protest that drew an estimated 300 people, according to the Associated Press.
The protests, assembled under the tagline “Tesla Takedown,” encourage shareholders and vehicle owners to dump their stock and their cars and call on others to exert public pressure to blunt Musk’s actions as the de facto leader of the U.S. DOGE Service.
Sociologist Joan Donovan, a professor of journalism and mass media studies at Boston University who is credited with amplifying and organizing the effort, said she was inspired by residents in Waterville, Maine, protesting at a Tesla charging station. What began with Donovan and about 50 people gathering outside a Tesla store in Boston last month has grown weekly to encompass dozens of cities and thousands of participants, she said.
“This Saturday was by far the biggest. We had at least 300 people, including a 15-person brass band,” Donovan said of the Saturday protest outside a Tesla showroom in Boston.
Across the country, the atmosphere was a mix of festive and fierce: The New York arrests included demonstrators who entered the Tesla showroom, while at least 150 people lined up outside a Tesla shop in Jacksonville, Florida, holding signs urging passing drivers to “Honk For The Rule of Law” and flashing pictures of a cartoon Tesla Cybertruck in flames, according to the Florida Times-Union.
The White House has dismissed the latest round of demonstrations.
“Protests will not deter President Trump and Elon Musk from delivering on the promise to establish DOGE and make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers across the country,” deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said in an email.
Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The protests come as a movement to push back against the Trump administration’s policies slowly gains its footing more than six weeks after his second inauguration, which ushered in Musk’s rapidly rising influence over the federal government.
Tesla’s stock prices have tumbled by one-third since Trump’s inauguration, though they remain higher than the same time last year, according to data from NASDAQ.
Musk’s actions under DOGE, his disparaging comments about people who use federal benefits and a gesture he made that many interpreted to be a Nazi salute have left some once-loyal Tesla customers with buyer’s remorse. Tesla drivers in Washington have seen their vehicles vandalized, while others have sought to distance themselves from the brand by adding anti-Musk bumper stickers - or selling their cars completely.
Concerns about how Musk’s behavior reflects on those in Tesla’s orbit aren’t just limited to its customers: Shareholders and staffers are concerned Musk is destroying the company’s long-held sustainability mission and doing long-term damage to the brand.
“For Musk, the only way to communicate to him is to hit him in his wallet,” said Donovan, the protest organizer. “We can’t vote him out because we didn’t vote him in.”
What the protests have made clear to Donovan in recent weeks is the breadth of dissatisfaction with DOGE. People across generations have come out, she said, after learning about the demonstrations in the local paper, on Reddit or on Bluesky, a rival social media site to Musk-owned X.
People are protesting the loss of jobs by friends in the federal government, or have reacted with worry over the threat to Social Security, Donovan said, noting that she met a young MIT student who at one point hoped to work for Tesla but felt repulsed by Musk’s sharing of a post calling Americans who use federal benefits a “parasite class.”
“Musk doesn’t seem to realize that no one else is delighting in the misery of a laid-off workforce,” Donovan said.
Julie DeLaurier, who was among the protesters arrested in New York on Saturday, said the Tesla Takedown protests have been a rallying point for people across generational and ideological lines.
DeLaurier, who faced a trespassing charge after making it inside the Tesla showroom, rebuked Musk for driving wealth inequality and misinformation. Her protests were not motivated by partisanship, but patriotism, she said.
“I’m a patriot. I love the promise of this country,” DeLaurier said. She sees that promise as being under urgent threat by Musk and Trump and hopes the protests can be a way to build a coalition with “disaffected MAGAs,” she said of Trump supporters.
“They’ve been duped,” DeLaurier said. “They’ve been conned, and now they’re being milked for their lives.”
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Video: Demonstrators gathered outside a New York City Tesla store Saturday to protest the automaker’s billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, and his push to slash government spending on behalf of President Donald Trump.(c) 2025 , The Washington Post
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