Tesla Loses Key Status Marker as Elon Musk Backlash Ramps Up

In March, Musk walked into what he understood to be an ambush, facing heated backlash from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Donald Trump had arranged the volatile meeting: “Bring them all in here, and we’ll have at it,” Trump said, according to The Atlantic. The advisers were frustrated with what they felt was Musk overstepping into their agencies.

Musk’s tenure wasn’t a total failure, according to former federal employees. He had managed to force out some of the federal workforce and shutter agencies (while “traumatizing the employees who remain,” The Atlantic reported). But ultimately, his Department of Government Efficiency’s Silicon Valley, hacking-and-slashing approach to reshaping the government failed to make bureaucracy more efficient. And some of his haphazardly introduced policies, such as requiring federal employees to submit weekly bullet-pointed progress reports, have quietly fallen by the wayside.

“He had some missteps in all of these agencies, which would have been fine because everyone acknowledges that when you’re moving fast and breaking things, not everything is going to go right. But it’s different when you do that and you don’t even have the buy-in of the agency you’re setting on fire,” one outside Trump adviser told The Atlantic.