Business
Can Trump and Musk Convince More Conservatives to Buy Teslas?
After climbing into a Tesla Model S last week, President Trump pledged to buy one. The next day, the Fox News host Sean Hannity said he had bought a Model S Plaid to support the embattled company, saying a Tesla “has more American parts in it than any other car made in our country.”
In a backlash to the backlash against the tactics of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, prominent conservatives are rallying to the side of the electric car company led by Mr. Musk. They are hoping to swing enough like-minded consumers to offset a boycott of the electric automaker by liberals and Democrats or anyone offended by Mr. Musk’s actions.
But how effective can such a rescue mission be? Analysts say it can help but only to an extent.
So many Democratic buyers appear to be fleeing Tesla that even Mr. Trump’s best sales pitch is unlikely to woo enough new customers to fill the vacuum, auto experts said. Analysts at JPMorgan predict Tesla will deliver its fewest cars in the first quarter than it had in three years.
“When you make your product unattractive to half the market, I promise you, you won’t increase your sales,” said Alexander Edwards, president of Strategic Vision, an automotive research and consulting firm.
Mr. Edwards has been surveying car buyers for decades. Since 2016, the surveys have found that electric-car owners were up to four times as likely to identify as Democrats or liberals as to identify as Republican or conservative. Among Tesla owners, the spread was consistently two to one.
The gap narrowed sharply through 2024. This year, as sales have fallen, slightly more Tesla buyers identify as Republicans than Democrats, at 30 percent versus 29 percent.
“Democrats are fleeing the brand and saying they won’t consider it in the future, so there is naturally a greater proportion of Republican and independent buyers,” Mr. Edwards said.
He said Democrats first started losing interest in Tesla when Mr. Musk bought Twitter, now X, in 2022. Then, last July, when Mr. Musk publicly backed Mr. Trump, the share of Democrats who said they would “definitely consider” a Tesla fell by half.
Overall, about 8 percent of car owners would now definitely consider a Tesla, according to Mr. Edwards’s surveys. That compares with 22 percent five years ago, when Tesla often topped rankings of luxury brands that buyers would consider.
Tesla’s slipping sales, he said, “are mostly, if not completely, attributed to the statements and behavior of Elon Musk.”
The automaker did not respond to a request for comment.
Tesla remains America’s best-selling electric vehicle brand by far with about 44 percent of the market, despite a 5.6 percent drop in U.S. sales, to about 634,000 cars in 2024, according to Kelley Blue Book. Many drivers are determined to stick with the electric vehicle pioneer, whose cars can travel several hundred miles on a charge and can be easily refueled at the company’s extensive charging network.
Josh Anders, 44, traded a gasoline-powered sport utility vehicle for a Tesla Model 3 in 2019. A resident of Fort Wayne, Ind., he was blown away by the car’s energy efficiency, technology and limited maintenance needs. He soon traded for another, and is about to take delivery of the latest Model Y S.U.V.
“Owning a Tesla was one of the best decisions I ever made, and I’m sticking by it,” Mr. Anders said. “I would love a Rivian R1S, but I can’t afford it. I’m a tech guy, and I love all the features and innovations.”
Mr. Anders, a father of four and creative director of a Christian nonprofit music and arts organization, said he leans conservative, and is uncomfortable with boycotts.
“Elon’s not perfect, and Tesla’s not perfect, but it’s a community of dreamers and doers. I appreciate a brand that’s constantly pushing the boundaries,” he said. “I don’t need every company to share my beliefs. I just need them to share a commitment to progress.”
Still, cars have a long history of becoming part of the political fray.
The Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid introduced in 2011 after General Motors received federal government assistance, was derided by some conservatives as the “Obamacar.” The fuel-sipping Toyota Prius and the gas-guzzling Hummer from G.M. were often lauded and attacked by people on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Isaac Seliger, a business owner and grant writer in Scottsdale, Ariz., said he’d had little interest in electric vehicles even though his son, who died recently, was a devoted fan of Tesla.
Now, said Mr. Seliger, who described himself as politically independent, he is determined to buy a Tesla, because he wants to defy groupthink and polarization. A friend told him that she would stop speaking to him if he did.
“As a former lefty and antiwar guy, this all makes me want to buy a Tesla more,” Mr. Seliger, 73, said. “I’ll absolutely be making a political statement. But if I bought a Porsche Macan, that’s a statement, too, where people pigeonhole you as an obnoxious older Porsche driver.”
Mr. Seliger added that he found criticisms of Mr. Musk overblown.
“So Elon was a hero of the left, and now he’s a Nazi? That’s just crazy,” he said. “He strikes me as a smart guy who makes great stuff.”
To many people who have faith in Tesla and Mr. Musk, the company’s sales and stock price, which is down about 48 percent from a December high, will eventually recover. The stock was up 12 percent over the last four days of trading.
But some automotive experts say Tesla may struggle because the company has not regularly updated its cars or introduced new models. In addition, the company’s chargers, which once could be used only by Teslas, are opening access to nearly every major competitor, said Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, an electric vehicle charging data firm. And other automakers are offering new electric models, often with notably affordable monthly payments.
“He’s rapidly losing the advantages in range, tech, value and convenience that drove people to Tesla,” Mr. McDonald said. “For a lot of people, it’s time to move on and try something new.”
Of course, most buyers don’t choose cars based on politics. But a brand’s image matters. Tesla sales slipped even as overall U.S. electric vehicle sales grew 7.3 percent in 2024, to 1.3 million. Mr. Edwards said Mr. Musk was making it too easy for people to shop elsewhere.
“People can love their Hyundai, G.M., Rivian or BMW just as much,” he said.
Republicans certainly buy electric cars, but fewer of them have made the plunge to fully electric models. Rural states, where Republicans outnumber Democrats, have fewer chargers than more urban states. Strategic Vision data shows Republicans are more likely to work outside the home, and are less willing to put up with inconveniences like long charging stops. And a 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that more Republicans than Democrats say electric vehicles cost too much and are less reliable than gasoline cars.
In the New York metropolitan area, the nation’s largest car market, new Tesla registrations fell 13 percent, to 47,000 cars, in 2024, according to S&P Global Mobility. That same year, more than 101,000 people registered a Tesla in Los Angeles, the second-largest market, a drop of 8 percent. Still, nearly one in eight new cars in Los Angeles was a Tesla. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where Tesla was founded, nearly one in five new cars was a Tesla. But sales tumbled 17 percent to 54,000 cars.
Consumers in the Houston area bought 12,000 Teslas. But Bay Area residents bought 4.5 times as many Teslas, in a smaller market for new cars overall. Some areas saw big increases, including Miami-Fort Lauderdale where sales jumped 32 percent, to nearly 23,000 cars, in 2024. Tesla sales also rose sharply in Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and St. Louis. But the company’s gains in these places could not offset steeper declines in larger, more liberal metro areas.
Experts say wealthy conservatives such as Mr. Hannity and Mr. Trump have the disposable income to make a personal automotive statement by opting for a Tesla. But they may not be able to persuade Americans of more modest means.
Mr. McDonald also noted that Mr. Trump and other conservatives had spent years vilifying electric cars, mocking climate change and criticizing former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s climate and auto policies.
“The messaging is inconsistent,” Mr. McDonald said. “Is the guy in Arkansas who drives a Ram pickup going to buy a Tesla now? How far can you go against your own beliefs to support Elon Musk?”
Layoffs have continued with another tech company saying it was cutting people to enable it to use more artificial intelligence.
Groupon announced in a security filing this month that it will cut up to 400 jobs, or nearly 25% of its worldwide workforce, as part of a broader restructuring plan to make the platform AI-native. The Chicago company plans to carry out the layoffs in the coming months.
Earlier the company’s Chief Executive Officer Dušan Šenkypl had said the company “fell short of our expectations” last quarter.
Since 2022, more than 800,000 tech workers have been laid off, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts.
The surge in pink slips started in 2023, when companies that had gone on hiring sprees during the COVID-19 pandemic began to cut back. From January to April this year, U.S. tech employers announced 85,411 job cuts, up 33% from the same period last year, according to global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Groupon said in the filing that the decision to shift toward an AI-based company is to “better deliver on our mission, serving both customers and merchants.”
The company said the layoffs will cost it as much as $13 million, but save it more than $20 million per year.
This announcement comes as many e-commerce companies are shifting their business models to AI to reduce costs by automating many roles.
Artificial intelligence has also triggered fierce competition for top talent and is also fueling tens of thousands of layoffs this year. The result is that the class divide is widening in Silicon Valley as a tiny group of employees are landing unprecedented packages for AI skills, while many others struggle to find work.
The have-nots are doing everything that used to guarantee great jobs — refreshing resumes, optimizing LinkedIn profiles and doing interviews — but companies are much more picky these days. The tech jobless are rethinking their lives. Some are taking pay cuts, while others are leaving tech. Some are going back to study or launch startups. Some have retired.
Groupon shares, which have fallen 27% over the last 12 months, slipped 1% on Thursday to $21.20.
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC has filed renewal applications with the Federal Communications Commission “under protest” after an order mandating a years-early review of the network’s eight television station licenses.
The criticism was part of the network’s applications for the FCC review, which were filed ahead of a deadline Thursday. In an objection to the early renewal, Disney’s New York station WABC called the FCC order “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” and said it was “legally indefensible.”
“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” the station wrote in its filing. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”
The licenses for the eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.
The FCC order came shortly after ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow” days before a gunman tried to breach the White House Correspondents’ Assn. gala last month that President Trump attended.
Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he is unhappy with their coverage, but the order is the first time the government has acted on his wishes, sparking anger from free speech advocates. The FCC has said the order is part of an investigation into whether Disney’s diversity and inclusion policies violate federal law and the agency’s rules against “unlawful discrimination.”
In its response, WABC said the “only plausible reason” to issue the order was to “punish the station for speech the government does not like.”
“The ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company. It is to the public,” WABC wrote. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Thursday that Disney filed its applications to renew its broadcast licenses only after the company was told its previous answers were “disingenuous, deficient and improper.”
“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”
FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the panel’s only Democrat who has backed Disney in its fight, cheered the Burbank media and entertainment company’s filing, saying in a post on X that she was “glad to see them expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
Andrew here. Warning: If you bet on prediction markets about things you could know about from your work, it may be insider trading. That’s the lesson from new charges against an employee of Google.
Also, Jamie Dimon is thinking about spending $20 billion on acquisitions; we go through some possible targets. And take our quiz about the U.F.C. fight scheduled to take place at the White House.
Gaming prediction markets
In the public’s view, prediction markets are a way to bet on the N.B.A. playoffs, the Texas Senate race or what Costco executives will say on their next earnings call.
They’re also often seen as a hive of insider trading, a view reinforced by charges filed on Wednesday against a Google employee who made more than $1 million on Polymarket. The case raises more questions about how these platforms are policed — and who should do the policing.
What happened: The Google employee, Michele Spagnuolo (who used the handle AlphaRaccoon), was accused of betting on what people were searching for on Google — wagers he was sure to win because he had access to internal search data.
“Spagnuolo correctly predicted virtually all of the outcomes on these positions,” the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wrote in its complaint.
A Google representative said in a statement that using confidential information for making these kinds of bets was “a serious breach of our policies.”
Spagnuolo isn’t the only person charged with insider trading on Polymarket. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan last month accused Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. Special Forces soldier, of betting on the capture of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, an operation he participated in.
Insider trading is an increasing problem for prediction markets. Polymarket has faced significant scrutiny because its unregulated offshore platform has long made it easy to bet anonymously. (Kalshi, which is regulated in the U.S., has also suffered from insider trading.)
Polymarket has started clamping down on that practice, according to The Information — though some longtime users have chafed at those efforts. “Polymarket will go down the drain if they make KYC mandatory,” one user wrote on the company’s Discord discussion forum, referring to “know your customer” practices.
What are policymakers doing? Critics have accused the C.F.T.C., the primary American regulator of prediction markets, of failing to adequately police the industry. (Mike Selig, the commission’s chairman, told ABC News that his agency actively patrolled for wrongdoing.)
Some lawmakers are seeking to crack down on insider trading, including Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and several bipartisan groups of senators.
Why it matters: Prediction markets have become big businesses. (Kalshi was most recently valued at $22 billion.) But a growing perception that they’re rife with cheating could threaten their popularity.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to fund U.S. drone companies. Shares in Unusual Machines, a drone start-up in which Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisory board member, are soaring in premarket trading after The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported on the potential investments. (The Times hasn’t independently confirmed the report.) The deals, aimed at bolstering domestic production, are still in the negotiation stage — equity stakes are a possibility — as the Pentagon vets the companies, The Journal adds.
Investors brace for Thursday’s inflation data. The Personal Consumption Expenditures report for April, which will be closely watched by the Fed, is expected to show on Thursday that headline inflation hit a three-year high of 3.9 percent. The wartime energy spike is a big culprit, and that’s likely to tie the Fed’s hands on interest rates. Lisa Cook, a Fed governor whom President Trump has tried to fire, is the latest policymaker to say that there’s even a rate increase in the cards.
Jensen Huang reportedly agrees to join the board of a Chinese university. Huang, the Nvidia C.E.O., is expected to be the latest U.S. business leader to join the advisory board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, The Financial Times reports. Tim Cook, Apple’s departing C.E.O., is the chairman, and Michael Dell and Elon Musk are members. (Nvidia is trying to jump-start business in China as the Washington-Beijing trade war continues.) Laura Loomer, a right-wing agitator, quickly seized on the Huang news, calling it “a massive scandal!!!!” on social media, and a national security risk.
What might Dimon buy?
Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, is sitting on a pile of cash and says he’s open to a deal. He even put a number on it: up to $20 billion.
While that’s not a big sum relative to the bank’s assets, it got us thinking: Where could JPMorgan, whose last major acquisition was First Republic during the 2023 regional-banking crisis, go fishing for a company to buy? Brian O’Keefe asked Mike Mayo, a banking analyst at Wells Fargo.
Here are three possibilities:
Wealth management. Driven by solid margins and lucrative high-net-worth customers, this area of finance has experienced an M.&A. boom in recent years. (The First Republic deal already bolstered JPMorgan’s wealth-advisory ranks.) Such a move would tick a lot of boxes, Mayo said, adding, “It could be a high-end private bank, it could be kind of a mass-affluent brokerage firm, it could be wealth advisory.”
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Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s wealth management division, told analysts in February that her unit had reviewed 25 potential deals last year and passed on all of them.
Payments. JPMorgan has invested heavily in new payment platforms, including in JPM Coin, a digital token it has tested with Coinbase and Mastercard. The bank handles between $5 trillion and $10 trillion in transactions daily, Mayo said. “There could be more opportunities to enhance the efficiency, the effectiveness, the timeliness or the geographic reach in the payments area,” he added.
Digital banking. Dimon recently singled out Revolut, the British banking app that is plotting expansion into the U.S., as an emerging competitive threat. “To the extent that an acquisition could help JPMorgan become the next Revolut outside the United States, that would seem to be attractive,” Mayo noted.
There are some big asterisks to consider. Because of its size, JPMorgan would most likely be barred from buying another U.S. lender on antitrust grounds. For that reason, Mayo thinks that a deal, if there is one, would probably happen abroad.
Dimon himself is being coy. The bank may have amassed ample capital for acquisitions, but “it’s not burning a hole in our pocket at all,” Dimon said on Wednesday at an investor conference. “If it sits there for a while, no problem,” he added.
Dimon did not suggest any potential targets on Wednesday.
Here are some guesses:
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Aberdeen Group, Invesco or Julius Baer in wealth management?
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Revolut is too big, but how about Wise or Toast in payments?
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Or what about Monzo or Bunq, fintech banks that have grown rapidly in Europe?
Meta will charge for its chatbot
Meta will begin charging customers for access to its A.I.-powered chatbot, a big change for a company best known for its free products — and the latest sign that even deep-pocketed companies are wrestling with the enormous cost of artificial intelligence.
On Wednesday, we looked at how companies were reining in the costs of consuming A.I., including by switching to cheaper models. Meta’s move shows that the companies supplying A.I. models are also reckoning with ballooning costs, and seeking revenue to make up for those losses.
Meta is spending a fortune on A.I. Last month the company increased its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to as high as $145 billion, and Meta’s C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, said it would spend at least $600 billion on A.I. infrastructure in the next few years.
Some investors have looked skeptically on that plan. The company’s stock is down 2.3 percent this year.
Meta will use paid subscriptions to offset some of its A.I. investment. The basic tier of the chatbot, Meta One Plus, will be $7.99 per month. A premium version, Meta One Premium, will cost $19.99. From Bloomberg, which reported the subscription news earlier:
Meta has long argued that its A.I. investments are already paying off in the form of highly targeted and efficient advertising, which is improved thanks to A.I. models. But the company is also looking for other ways to recoup its A.I. spending, and consumer chatbot subscriptions have become popular with several other A.I. competitors, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI. Both rivals offer similarly priced subscription tiers.
The company has sought to expand its subscription business, testing plans for WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. It has also tried to cut costs in other corners of its business. This month, Meta laid off 10 percent of its employee base, about 8,000 workers.
Investors, eager to see revenue gains from A.I., cheered Meta’s subscription-chatbot plan. The company’s stock price was up 3.7 percent at the market close on Wednesday.
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Elsewhere, shares in the software maker Snowflake are soaring in premarket trading on Thursday after it reported strong quarterly results that suggested that A.I. agents weren’t clobbering its core subscription business. Salesforce’s analyst call on Wednesday, however, renewed fears that this sector was still vulnerable to A.I. disruption.
Quiz: U.F.C. on the South Lawn
This question comes from a recent Times article. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.)
President Trump is getting ready to celebrate his 80th birthday — and America’s 250th — with an evening of mixed martial arts. Preparations are underway to host Ultimate Fighting Championship matches in an octagon on the White House’s South Lawn on June 14. Construction of the temporary arena, along with a 90-foot-tall arch known as “The Claw,” featuring LED lights and audio equipment, began this week.
U.F.C. plans to spend around $60 million on the event, said Mark Shapiro, the president and chief operating officer of TKO Group Holdings, U.F.C.’s parent company, on a recent earnings call. (He added that U.F.C. would lose about $30 million on the event but that it would be “an investment for the long term.”)
The expenses include about $700,000 to repair the lawn after the fight, Dana White, the U.F.C. president and chief executive, told Sports Business Journal.
How many people will the temporary arena hold for the U.F.C. event at the White House?
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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“SpaceX-Tesla Merger Is ‘Only a Matter of When,’ Early Investor Says” (Bloomberg)
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Shares in the European food-delivery company Delivery Hero are down sharply on Thursday after Uber, which is pursuing a takeover bid for the company, raised its stake to nearly 37 percent. (WSJ)
Politics, policy and regulation
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The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey subpoenaed FIFA over soaring World Cup ticket prices. (WSJ)
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Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said he would impose a 100 percent tax on payouts to state residents from the $1.8 billion fund tied to the Justice Department’s settlement with President Trump. (Politico)
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