Why are the people being paid to fix the problems DOGE created also taking money from Musk?
This article was originally published by The American Prospect.
The profound damage done by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to nearly every sector of American life has made a target out of the businesses of its mastermind, Elon Musk. A wave of anti-Tesla legislation has washed over the states, along with campaigns to pressure local governments and other entities to divest from the company Musk controls as CEO.
Musk, who retains influence throughout the government through his loyal allies and federal contracts even after his formal departure from Washington, is now desperate to detoxify Tesla. Here’s why he may succeed.
Despite his embrace of Donald Trump and far-right parties in Europe, and despite draconian DOGE cuts to foreign aid that Bill Gates described as “the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children,” Musk continues to enjoy the services of lobbyists for progressive causes, both in Congress and in states such as California, New York, Colorado, Maryland, and Oregon. These lobbyists have been pulling off the neat, sick trick of working for Musk while simultaneously working for organizations harmed by DOGE, Musk, and Trump.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boulder, Colorado and Eugene, Oregon all saw huge “No Kings” protests on Trump’s birthday. Yet these four cities have been spending public funds to retain four different lobbying firms that also work for Musk, even as DOGE drastically cut jobs and funding for social services in each of these cities and Trump’s recently passed megabill threatened further cuts.
New disclosures from Congressional and state-level firms who stuck with Musk even after he took over Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign tell a sordid tale. These Musk firms have been getting paid to solve problems that were either caused or made worse by DOGE, Musk, and Trump.
In Congress, the most striking example of a firm profiting from Musk clean-up duty may be Cassidy & Associates, which represents Tesla in addition to numerous environmental nonprofits and philanthropies. Since Trump’s inauguration and America’s DOGE-ification, one of these clients used the firm to lobby for “wildland fire mitigation technology,” even as DOGE cuts to the U.S. Forest Service weakened its ability to respond to wildfires.
Another client used Cassidy to lobby on the Rescue Oceans Act, even as DOGE slashed NOAA programs that support marine life conservation and Trump opened the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. Cassidy also represents one of the most effective, courageous environmental organizations in the country, the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is suing Musk’s xAI on behalf of the NAACP over illegal air pollution from xAI’s data center in Memphis, Tennessee.
How do these lobbying firms retain their credibility even as they lobby for seemingly inimical interests? Because respectable people and companies continue to hire them—and power, as much as anything, is about perception. Bill Gates called out Musk for DOGE’s cruel foreign aid cuts in May, three and a half months after a man named Bill Gates said that DOGE could be “a valuable thing.” And right after Gates gave DOGE his blessing, Microsoft (which Gates co-founded, and where he remains a shareholder and technology advisor) and Google signed with the congressional lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld, which represents Tesla and some of Trump’s biggest fossil-fuel backers, among them ExxonMobil.
Musk’s desperate plan to detoxify Tesla also depends on progressive lobbyists in blue, DOGE-stricken states. In Massachusetts, as Trump attempted a hostile takeover of Harvard, Harvard’s lobbying firm Tremont Strategies continued to represent Tesla. In Oregon, the firm CFM Advocates made the extraordinarily cynical decision to add Tesla as a client one week before the 2024 election, at a time when a Trump victory threatened profound harm to many of the firm’s other clients, such as Portland Public Schools and Oregon Public Broadcasting. Yet after CFM’s work for Musk and these Musk victims was exposed in March, the firm scrambled to create a firewall between Tesla and one of its clients, the progressive Portland suburb of Tigard.
Some lobbying firms ditched Musk much earlier. In May 2024, the progressively-aligned congressional firm Pioneer Public Affairs cut ties with Tesla, recognizing that Musk, despite being the CEO of an electric car company, had already become a destructive force in American politics. The practice of representing Musk and DOGE victims has only become more indefensible over time. Other firms are likely to crumble in the face of public pressure.
Pressure is mounting in California, where anti-Tesla activists pushed CalPERS to sell half of its Tesla stock last November, and the state assembly is now considering a bill (AB 33) that would ban driverless vehicles from delivering commercial goods. Shamefully, the lobbying firm Shaw Yoder, which represents more than 40 DOGE-damaged local governments in California, including 11 local transit agencies, is opposing the bill on Tesla’s behalf.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in New York are considering legislation that would shut down Tesla showrooms. Yet Tesla’s New York firm Ostroff Associates also represents eight disability rights groups whose members are losing housing and employment protections because of DOGE cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other federal agencies.
The dissonance of these lobbying firms working for Musk’s company and the object of his destructive tour through government is only growing. And if the firms don’t drop Musk, they run the risk of having Musk’s victims drop them.
The above photo of a Tesla takedown protest in Brooklyn, taken by Rhododendrites on March 15, is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
