Day Of Action Protests Across The Country Criticize Trump And DOGE Policies

People at a ”Hands Off!" protest in California (David McNew/Getty Images)

Groups that once were biggest fans of EVs like Tesla show steepest decline in wanting to own one now

Over the past two years, the only demographic group surveyed that saw an increase in their interest in EVs was Republicans, and that growth was negligible.

Rani Molla

4/8/25 4:30AM

Tesla is responsible for creating the electric vehicle market and in many ways is synonymous with EVs. It’s also possible Tesla played a role in shooting itself in the foot.

Back in March 2023, some 59% of US adults said they owned, were strongly considering purchasing, or might consider purchasing an electric vehicle. Now that number is 51%, according to new data from Gallup, which surveyed more than a thousand adults each time.

Over the past two years, American interest in EV ownership has declined among pretty much every demographic group. The largest declines were among moderates, those who live out West, Democrats, college grads, and young people. Only among Republicans did that number seemingly rise, but, given the survey’s overall plus or minus 4 percentage point margin of error, it’s not statistically significant growth.

The thing is, many groups who saw the biggest decline in EV interest are those who historically have been — and currently are — most interested in EVs to begin with. In other words, EVs’ most likely customers are the most likely to have fallen out of love with the idea of owning one.

What’s going on? It could be a lot of things, from EV range anxiety to concern about Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s role in the government. Gallup didn’t ask direct questions about Tesla.

While Musk didn’t publicly endorse President Trump until July of 2024, he said he had been steadily moving to the right politically. He announced that he would no longer support Democrats back in May 2022, soon after he began his acquisition of Twitter.

The Gallup surveys were taken in March of 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Survey data from YouGov shows that Tesla has faced declining popularity among moderates, liberals, and the general population that kicked into high gear around 2022. Amid rising competition and declining popularity, Tesla’s market share in the US fell below 50% for the first time last summer.

Notably, EV sales in the US hit a record earlier this year and despite declines in Tesla sales, they are still the top-selling EV brand in the country.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5