President Trump's public intervention to boost Tesla marks the most extraordinary chapter yet in the partisan war over America's preeminent electric vehicle brand, Axios' Zachary Basu and Nathan Bomey write.

Why it matters: Elon Musk's assault on the federal government has supercharged Tesla's evolution from liberal status symbol to pride-of-MAGA protectorate. The company's stock has taken a beating along the way.

• "We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly," says JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman.

💥 What's happening: Musk's efforts to fire thousands of federal workers and dismantle whole government agencies have sparked "Tesla Takedown" protests in at least 100 cities over the last month.

• Those protests spurred vandalism of vehicles and violent incidents at Tesla facilities — including the use of Molotov cocktails.

Some current Tesla owners have embraced a quieter form of resistance by applying bumper stickers disavowing Musk's politics — or badges disguising the vehicle's branding. (Fast Company posted instructions on "How to remove your Tesla badge.")

With Tesla's stock hemorrhaging $800 billion in market cap since December, Trump held an event at the White House on Tuesday to publicly rally support for his billionaire benefactor's brand.

• Standing alongside Musk and a row of Teslas on the South Lawn, Trump said he'd buy a Model S sedan for White House staff, and threatened to classify anti-Tesla violence as domestic terrorism. (Photos)
• Photographers captured a shot of Trump holding a sales-script-like note listing Tesla prices and features — a brazen challenge to ethical norms, as the president said he hoped the event would boost Tesla sales.
• "He's built this great company, and he shouldn't be penalized because he's a patriot," Trump said.

🔭 Zoom out: "Tesla is becoming a political symbol of Trump and DOGE, and that is a bad thing for the brand," warned Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, a longtime Tesla bull.

• Through the first two months of 2025, Tesla sales are down 71% in Germany, 45% in Norway, 44% in France and 44% in Spain, according to registration data reported by Electrek.
• Sales have also been slumping in the critical markets of California and China, Bloomberg reported.
• The company doesn't report U.S. sales, but Tesla's U.S. registrations fell 11% in January, according to S&P Global Mobility.

🔋 The other side: Plenty of investors on Wall Street are still bullish on Tesla, and Musk has vowed to double production in the U.S. within two years as Trump pushes for a manufacturing renaissance.

The bottom line: Ives, the Tesla mega-bull, warns that the next few months will bring a "moment of truth" for investors who want to see Musk recommit to the company — and decouple from DOGE.

• Musk's biggest ambitions for Tesla include self-driving cars and humanoid robots, with plans to launch a self-driving car network in Austin, Texas, later this year.

Musk told investors in January that 2025 may end up as "the most important year in Tesla's history."

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David Solomon — Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO — said after President Trump's visit to the Business Roundtable this week that "the business community understands what the president is trying to do with tariffs."

• "The business community is always going to want lower tariffs ... everywhere in the world," Solomon told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo yesterday. "At the moment, there is some uncertainty — the market is digesting that."

Solomon told Bartiromo that Trump projected a "sense of optimism" during his closed-door remarks Tuesday to the biggest-ever meeting of the BRT, made up of the CEOs of America's largest companies.

• Solomon, whose firm manages or supervises trillions of dollars in assets, praised the administration for being "engaged with the business community. ... That's a different experience than what we've had over the course of the last four years."

📱 One CEO in the room for Trump's remarks told Mike: "Let's slow down and have a little perspective. We may not like how fast this is going, and have real concerns. But let's play a long game."

• The CEO told us that amid the current uncertainty, many BRT members are medium-term and long-term optimistic that Trump policies will encourage capital spending, economic growth and consumer activity.

🥊 Reality check: A front-page story in today's Wall Street Journal is headlined, "CEO Frustrations With Trump Over Trade Mount — in Private."

• Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a well-known professor at Yale School of Management, who organized a CEO Caucus in Washington on Tuesday, said he heard "universal revulsion against the Trump economic policies ... They're also especially horrified about Canada."
• Trump has been dismissive of CEOs' concerns about tariff uncertainty. Last weekend, he told Bartiromo they had "plenty of clarity."

Watch Solomon's video.

Well-funded MAGA forces close to the White House are preparing a "100-year plan" to try to sustain Trumpism long after President Trump leaves office.

• Why it matters: Top executives at the America First Policy Institute tell Mike and Axios' Tal Axelrod that the group is scaling up as an incubator for the America First movement beyond Jan. 20, 2029 — promising to proselytize its policies for the next century.

The institute was launched in 2021 — by now-Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, now-Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Larry Kudlow, a Fox Business host who was a first-term Trump official — to help keep Trump's ideas in the political ether after he left office.

• During the president's Mar-a-Lago exile and through his 2024 comeback bid, the institute became something of an administration in waiting, pumping out policy papers and staffing up with Trump 1.0 alums.

🏛️ Now AFPI is retooling as a shadow White House policy shop — and training ground for future administration talent.

• The group — along with America First Works, a sister organization focused on political work and policy advocacy — just moved into a posh new office on Pennsylvania Avenue next to the Willard InterContinental, wedged between the White House and Capitol.

The group is naming an expanded leadership team "to further advance the America First movement and policies that put the American people first."

• Greg Sindelar, CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), is interim president and CEO, replacing Rollins. "This is about thinking not even five years down the road," Sindelar told us. "This is about thinking 100 years down the road, and how do we make AFPI a permanent institution in the public square."
• Chad Wolf, Trump's former acting Homeland Security secretary, will be AFPI's executive vice president and chief strategy officer.
• David Bernhardt, Interior Secretary in Trump I, is an EVP focusing on litigation and research.

Go deeper: See the leadership team.

America's metro areas are growing faster than the country overall — driven largely by foreign immigration, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes from census data out today.

• Why it matters: An exodus of city-dwellers rocked many U.S. metros during the pandemic. Some are now clawing back residents — and their productivity, creativity and tax dollars.

🧮 By the numbers: The number of people living in U.S. metro areas rose by almost 3.2 million between 2023 and 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau said today — a gain of about 1.1%.

• By comparison, the total U.S. population rose 1%.
• Nearly 90% of U.S. metro areas grew from 2023 to 2024.

🔬 Zoom in: Some metros hit hardest by pandemic population loss — think New York, D.C. and San Francisco — grew between 2023 and 2024, though some are still down relative to 2020 (mapped above).

Cities can thank international migration for this latest population spike.

• "All of the nation's 387 metro areas had positive net international migration between 2023 and 2024, and it accounted for nearly 2.7 million of the total population gain in metro areas," the bureau said.

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Tech evangelists predict the arrival of "superintelligence" any year now — but others doubt AI will ever produce its own Da Vincis and Einsteins, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes.

• In a post on X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman touted the company's development of "a new model that is good at creative writing" and showed off its work — a thousand-word "metafictional" composition on "AI and grief."

Why it matters: Creativity could be the final hurdle for AI to leap in proving it's humanity's peer. But until then, many see it as the last bastion of humanity's irreplaceability.

🎨 The big picture: Whether telling stories or researching scientific breakthroughs, today's generative AI isn't very good at creative leaps and novel insights.

• It's bounded by what it "knows" — the data it is trained on — and how it "thinks," by guessing the next word or pixel that best fulfills its prompt.

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Chris Lehane, OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, tells Axios that two years after ChatGPT exploded onto the scene, it's time to accelerate AI policy for the Trump era.

• Why it matters: For top AI companies, the policy message has shifted from begging for regulation and warning of dangers to projecting confidence about the policies needed to keep growing and beat China in the AI race, Axios' Ashley Gold writes.

"There's a real focus from the administration on developing an AI strategy to ensure U.S. economic competitiveness and national security are prioritized," Lehane said. "Our workstream is intersecting with where the administration is going."

• Lehane was at the White House last week and has had many meetings with Trump officials about AI policy. He expects a full strategy to be released by the summer.

🖼️ The big picture: Lehane says the U.S. view on AI is shifting as the industry grows more comfortable and ambitious with the technology.

• "Globally, the conversation around AI has changed. There's been a definite pivot," he said.
• "Maybe the biggest risk here is actually missing out on the opportunity. There was a pretty significant vibe shift when people became more aware and educated on this technology and what it means."

Full interview.

The number of migrants trying to travel through the dangerous jungles of the Darién Gap to get from Colombia into Panama has fallen dramatically in recent months to the lowest levels since the pandemic, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

• The number of migrants illegally crossing the U.S. southern border plummeted in February to its lowest level in decades.

Why it matters: The decline is the latest sign that fewer migrants from South America are risking the treacherous, 2,600-mile journey north to the U.S. border in the early days of President Trump's immigration crackdown.

🧮 By the numbers: Only 408 migrants traveled northward through the Darién Gap in February, according to Migración Panama, an agency in Panama that keeps track of migration in the region.

• That's the fewest in a month since November 2020, when 365 traveled the path during the pandemic.
• Nearly 82,000 people traveled through the Darién Gap in August 2023.

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The Nashville Zoo welcomed a female clouded leopard cub — a rare species native to Asia, Axios Nashville's Adam Tamburin writes.

• The zoo will launch a competition to name the cub this week.

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