- Elon Musk says he’ll step back from his role in Trump’s DOGE program by May, prompting a 5% surge in Tesla stock.
- Investors are hopeful his renewed focus on Tesla will help the company recover after a brutal quarter.
Elon Musk sent shockwaves through Wall Street Tuesday after announcing plans to scale back his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump-era initiative he spearheaded after helping bankroll the 2024 presidential campaign. The move sparked a 5% surge in Tesla’s stock during after-hours trading, as investors bet on Musk re-centering his focus on the struggling electric automaker.
Speaking during Tesla’s earnings call, Musk said he’ll begin pulling away from DOGE in May, limiting his involvement to “a day or two per week” moving forward. “I’ll still lend a hand to make sure the waste and fraud we stopped don’t come roaring back,” he told investors. But his days as a self-styled “First Buddy” in Washington may be numbered—federal rules for special government employees cap such work at 130 days per year, a threshold the Trump administration hits by month’s end.
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The announcement came on the heels of grim financial news for Tesla: a 20% drop in automotive revenue and a staggering 71% plunge in net income for the first quarter. But Musk’s retreat from D.C. seems to have reignited investor optimism, with hopes rising that he’ll return full-time to steering the company through fierce global competition and PR crises.
Musk’s political clout has waned amid fierce backlash over DOGE’s sweeping agency cuts, including major trims at the IRS, SEC, FAA, and National Park Service. Critics say those reductions disproportionately targeted regulators overseeing Musk’s ventures. Tesla, meanwhile, faces growing protests in the U.S. and Europe over Musk’s political entanglements, including his alignment with Germany’s far-right AfD party.
DOGE claims to have saved the government $160 billion, though many of its more aggressive estimates have mysteriously vanished from its website. Inside federal agencies, reports of chaos—like officials being physically removed from offices and white noise machines installed to muffle dissent—have alarmed lawmakers.
Still, with Tesla’s stock down 41% in 2025 and its EV lineup aging fast, Musk’s potential full-time return to corporate leadership could be exactly what investors are hoping for. Whether he’s done breaking furniture in D.C. or just taking a breather remains to be seen.
