Nationwide Tesla Protests Against Elon Musk Are Escalating

On Saturday, over 350 protesters convened upon a Tesla showroom in Manhattan as part of the nationwide “Tesla Takedown” protests against billionaire and President Donald Trump ally Elon Musk. After some protesters occupied the showroom, six arrests were made; five were reportedly for disorderly conduct, and one was for resisting arrest, obstructing government administration, and violating local law.

Protestors from St. Louis to Charlotte, Tucson to Palo Alto, and New York City to Portland are raging against one oblong machine—and the guy in charge of it. In response to Musk’s growing power within the Trump administration—and that gesture he made at the inauguration—protests have targeted showrooms, dealerships, charging stations, and the Cybertruck itself in an attempt to meddle with Musk’s finances and highlight how he’s meddling with federal spending programs.

“Nobody voted for Elon Musk,” protestors chanted at the West Village showroom in Manhattan on Saturday, “Oligarchs out, democracy in.” One sign, referencing one of Musk’s other companies SpaceX, read “Send Musk to Mars Now!!”

According to New York state senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat representing the district with the showroom, protesters have gathered there for weeks, with each protest’s crowd growing larger than the last.

Hoylman-Sigal told The New York Times that it was “cathartic for New Yorkers to go to the streets,” adding that Musk and Trump would see that “cutting the federal government off at its knees is going to hurt a lot of people.”

Some of these nationwide protests have involved tens of people standing on the side of a road outside a Tesla dealership and receiving honks of support from drivers. Others have brought hundreds of people to Tesla hubs in places like New York City, which has resulted in increased police presence and arrests.

Some Tesla owners have also joined in the protests in their own ways—by selling their vehicles. “I’m sort of embarrassed to be seen in that car now,” one owner told the Times before trading in the car.

While many of these demonstrations have not led to property damage, there have been reports of individuals vandalizing Teslas, planting a Molotov cocktail near a vehicle, and firing shots into a dealership. According to court documents, surveillance photographs, police records, and local media reports reviewed by The Washington Post, there’s been more than a dozen “violent or destructive acts” directed at Tesla facilities since Trump’s inauguration.

Earlier this week in Maryland, graffiti was found at a Tesla dealership a day after a protest that read “No Musk” with a sign that resembles a swastika. Police in Massachusetts said on Tuesday that seven Tesla charging stations were intentionally set on fire, and the incident is being investigated as suspicious. On Thursday, law enforcement in Portland said that at least seven shots were fired at a Tesla dealership, damaging three cars and shattering windows, according to the CBS affiliate KOIN.

Also on Thursday, a man in Boston was arrested for reportedly placing stickers of Musk on several Teslas, calling the move “free speech” in a video. (His pre-trial hearing for Randall is scheduled for May.)

Musk replied to the video on X, his social media site, writing, “Damaging the property of others, aka vandalism, is not free speech!”

The Tesla CEO has also posted other times about the protests this week on X, saying that he is investigating groups he claims are behind the demonstrations and asking his followers for any intel they may have.

“An investigation has found 5 ActBlue-funded groups responsible for Tesla “protests”: Troublemakers, Disruption Project, Rise & Resist, Indivisible Project and Democratic Socialists of America,” Musk posted on Saturday. “ActBlue funders include George Soros, Reid Hoffman, Herbert Sandler, Patricia Bauman, and Leah Hunt-Hendrix.”

As Forbes reported, “there is no other evidence” besides Musk’s investigation “linking Soros or Hoffman to the Tesla protests” and “ActBlue does not fund groups, but instead is a platform through which donors can give money to campaigns or organizations.”

In a statement from White House spokesperson Harrison Fields last week, he said that these “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.”

Since Trump has been in office, Musk, his boss, and others at the Department of Government Efficiency have, in part, laid off scores of federal workers across the country and threatened to fire more government workers if they didn’t respond to emails justifying their jobs.