A Tesla stranded in floodwater after heavy rainfall (Fatih Aktas/Getty Images)

The public’s impression of Tesla has sunk to its lowest levels ever

Tesla’s image is especially bad among moderates and liberals.

3/14/25 8:16AM

Tesla’s stock price isn’t the only thing that’s taken a dive recently.

Americans’ overall impression of the company is more negative than ever, according to data shared with Sherwood News by YouGov, a market research company that continually surveys people on how they perceive different brands. Indeed, carmaker’s reputation is at its lowest point since YouGov began tracking Tesla back in 2016 — not good news for a company already struggling with sales.

Americans’ opinions of Tesla started falling precipitously in the spring of 2022, around the time CEO Elon Musk initiated his purchase of Twitter. It hit negative territory — meaning more Americans had a negative impression of the company than a positive one — in the summer of that year, right before the acquisition went through and as his politics moved more vocally to the right.

Since then, Musk has aligned himself firmly with now President Donald Trump and has begun slashing federal budgets and head counts as the leader of an extragovernmental organization he named the Department of Government Efficiency. If the general public’s perception of Tesla is any indication, they don’t like what he’s been up to.

Of course, Americans’ opinions vary by political affiliation. Only among conservatives does Tesla have a positive net impression score, at about 7. For comparison, Americans’ average net impression of all carmakers is quite a bit higher, at 17.

Tesla’s net impression among moderates is -9 and a lowly -35 among liberals. Population-wide, Tesla is at -12.8, the lowest on record.

Trump’s recent Tesla purchase aside, Musk’s move into partisanship probably won’t do his car company many favors among consumers. As JPMorgan noted this week, Musk is mostly alienating Democrats — the very people most likely to buy EVs in the first place.

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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.

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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