This week we talk about Elon Musk, deportations, and the First Amendment.
We also discuss electric vehicles, free speech, and Georgia.
Recommended Book: Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Transcript
Greenpeace is a protest-focused, environmentalist nongovernmental organization that was originally founded in Canada in the early 1970s, but which has since gone on to tackle issues ranging from commercial whaling to concerns about genetic engineering, worldwide.
They have 26 independent organizations operating across nearly 60 countries, and their efforts are funded by a combination of grants and donations from individual supporters; and that’s an important detail, as they engage in a lot of highly visible acts of protest, many of which probably wouldn’t be feasible if they had corporate or government funders.
They piss a lot of people off, in other words, and even folks who consider themselves to be environmentalists aren’t always happy with the things they do. Greenpeace is vehemently anti-nuclear, for instance, and that includes nuclear power, and some folks who are quite green in their leanings consider nuclear power to be part of the renewable energy solution, not something to be clamped down on. The same is true of their other stances, like their protests against genetic engineering efforts and their at times arguably heavy-handed ‘ecotage’ activities, which means sabotage for ecological purposes, to making their point and disrupt efforts, like cutting down forests or building new oil pipelines, that they don’t like.
Despite being a persistent thorn in the side of giant corporations like oil companies, and despite sometimes irritating their fellow environmentalists, who don’t always agree with their focuses or approaches, Greenpeace has nonetheless persisted for decades in part because of their appreciation for spectacle, and their ability to get things that might otherwise be invisible—like whaling and arctic oil exploration—into the press. This is in turn has at times raised sufficient awareness that politicians have been forced to take a stand on things they wouldn’t have otherwise been forced to voice an opinion on, much less support or push against, and that is often the point of protests of any size or type, by any organization.
A recent ruling by a court in North Dakota, though, could hobble this group’s future efforts. A company involved in the building of the Dakota Access pipeline accused Greenpeace of defamation, trespass, nuisance, civil conspiracy, and other acts, and has been awarded about $667 million in damages, payable by Greenpeace, because of the group’s efforts to disrupt the construction of this pipeline.
The folks at the head of Greenpeace had previously said that a large payout in this case could bankrupt the organization, and while there’s still a chance to appeal the ruling, and they’ve said they intend to do so, this ruling is already being seen as a possible fulcrum for companies, politicians, and government agencies that want to limit protests in the US, where the right to assemble and peaceably express one’s views are constitutionally protected by the first amendment, but where restrictions on protest have long been used by government officials and police to stifle protests they don’t like for various reasons.
What I’d like to talk about today is another, somewhat unusual wave of protests we’re seeing in the US and to some degree globally right now, too, and the larger legal context in which these protests are taking place.
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When US President Trump first stepped into office back in early 2017, there were protests galore, huge waves of people coming out to protest the very idea of him, but especially his seeming comfort with, and even celebration of, anti-immigration, racist, and misogynistic views and practices, including his alleged sexual abuse and rape of dozens of women, one of whom successfully took him to court on the matter, winning a big settlement for proving that he did indeed sexually assault her.
The response to his second win, and his ascension to office for another term in 2025, has been more muted. There have been a lot of protests, but not at the scale of those seen in 2017. Instead, the majority of enthusiasm for protest-related action against this administration has been aimed at Elon Musk, a man who regularly tops the world’s richest people lists, owns big-name companies like SpaceX and Tesla, and who has his own collection of very public scandals and alleged abuses.
One such scandal revolves around Musk’s decision to plow hundreds of millions of dollars into getting Trump reelected. As a result of that investment, he was brought into the president’s confidence, and now serves as a sort of hatchet-man via a pseudo-official agency called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Musk and his team have been jumping from government agency to government agency, conducting mass firings, harassing employees, hacking and by some accounts stealing and deleting all sorts of sensitive data, and generally doing their best to cause as much disruption as possible. Many of their efforts have been pushed back against, eventually, by courts, but that’s only after a lot of damage has already been done.
The general theory of their operation is ostensibly to cut costs in the US government, and though outside analysts and watchdogs have shown that they haven’t really managed to do that on any scale, and that their actions will probably actually add to the government’s deficit, not reduce it, Musk and Trump claim otherwise, and that’s enough for many people in their orbit. The unsaid purpose of this group, though, seems to be making the government so ineffective and hollow that businesses, like Musk’s and those of his friends, can step in and do things that were previously done by government agencies, and can reap massive profits as a consequence; folks having to pay more for what was previously provided by the government, and a bunch of rich folks profiting because they’re the only ones capable of providing such services, now that the agencies have been gutted.
The courts are still scrambling, as they move a lot slower than individuals with seeming authority and the support of a vindictive president can move, but this has already caused a lot of consternation across the political spectrum, and Musk, though popular with a certain flavor of Republican and far-right voter, has pissed off a lot of more conventional Republicans, in addition to pretty much every Democrat.
This is important context for understanding why the most vocal and enthusiastic protests in the US these first few months of 2025 have targeted Musk, and more specifically, Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla.
Tesla was once celebrated by the political left as the EV company that made EVs sexy and popular, at a time in which this type of vehicle was anything but.
Musk’s shift to the political far-right changed that, though, and the general theory of these protests is that Musk is mostly held financially afloat by Tesla’s huge market valuation: Tesla stocks are worth way more than those of other car companies, with a price multiple—how much the stock is worth, compared to how much business the company actually does, and how much their assets are worth—is more akin to that of a dotcom-era tech startup than a car company, the stock price valued at something like 120-times the apparent book value of the company.
So Musk, who owns a lot of Tesla stock, can basically borrow money against that stock, and this allows him to tap tens of billions of dollars worth of borrowed money on a whim, because the banks know he’s good for it. In this way he can inflate his supposed worth while also getting liquid cash whenever he needs it, despite not having to sell those stocks he owns.
This method of acquiring liquid wealth by leveraging non-liquid assets has allowed him to support Trump’s reascension, but it’s also allowed him to do things like buy Twitter, which he has renamed X and converted into a sort of voicebox for the right and far-right. It has also allowed him to do things like offer money to potential voters who are signed up to vote and who sign petitions that are supportive of far-right causes; which is not quite paying for votes, which is illegal in the US, but it is the closest thing to paying for votes you can get away with, and there’s still debate whether this is actually legal or not, but either way, until the courts catch on up this, too, he’s been able to influence vote outcomes to varying degrees because of that access to money.
Some of the biggest and most consistent protesting efforts in the post-second-term-Trump US have revolved around Tesla, its cars, and its dealerships, and the theory of operation here is that by protesting Tesla, you might be able to decrease the company’s market valuation, which in turn decreases Musk’s access to money. Less market value for the company means Musk can’t borrow as much money against it, and if he has less access to liquid wealth, to cash rather than stocks and other illiquid assets, he may become less relevant in the administration, and less capable of influencing elections across the country (and to some degree the world, as he’s throwing money at candidates he favors globally, now, too).
These protests have been traditional, in the sense of gathering peacefully outside Tesla dealerships, chanting slogans and carrying signs, but also of a more aggressive sort, including spraypainting Tesla vehicles, doing things to embarrass folks who own these cars, and in some few cases, setting them on fire or otherwise destroying them.
The general idea, again, is to make the brand toxic, which in turn should reduce sales, and that, ideally, for the protestors, would then reduce Musk’s access to money, which he is using to influence elections and other such activities and outcomes.
The administration has responded to these protests with a bizarre and, it’s generally agreed, pretty embarrassing car commercial for Tesla, held outside the White House, in which Trump claimed he was buying one, and told Americans to buy a car to support Tesla because it’s a wholesome American company.
Trump also recently said that he would consider people caught defacing Teslas or even just protesting the brand in non-destructive ways to be domestic terrorists, which is a pretty chilling thought, as some post-9/11 rules about how the government can treat terrorists are still on the books; calling someone a terrorist is a means of doing away with due process and human rights, basically, so this is a threat to go full violent authoritarian on people using their first amendment rights in ways this administration doesn’t like.
These protests are occurring within the context of another notable, protest-oriented storyline, one in which students who participated in protests against the US and Israel’s actions in Gaza at Columbia University in New York last spring have been arrested; one was on a visa to the US and was in the process of becoming a doctor—her visa has now been revoked—and the other, who has a green card, and who is thus a permanent US resident, and who has no criminal record, faces a case in immigration court in Louisiana, where he was shipped after being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
His hearing has been scheduled for April 8, and his lawyers are challenging both his detention and the government’s apparent efforts to make an example of him, trying to deport him and do away with his citizenship because he protested against the government’s actions.
The administration is claiming they can do this, and can do a bunch of other stuff, including deporting immigrants who they claim, without evidence, are members of a Venezuelan gang; they say there’s legal precedent that gives them the ability to deport enemy aliens, those who are antagonistic to the US and its government, basically—the same sort of rulings that were used to justify deporting anyone sympathetic to the communist party back in the mid-to-late 20th century.
This same concept is being floated to justify the deportation of some of the people who have protested against Israel’s and the US’s actions in Gaza, the accusation being that they are supporting Hamas and other organizations that have been declared terrorist organizations by the US, so when folks protest against these governments’ activities in the region, they’re also supporting the causes of terrorist organizations—which then arguably gives the US government the right to deport them, because they weren’t born in the US.
The legality of all this is still being debated and working its way through the court system, but the ultimate goal seems to be giving the administration the ability to deport whomever they like, and establishing that immigrants of any kind don’t have the free speech rights that natural born US citizens enjoy; which isn’t concretely established in law, and which these many efforts and court cases are meant to sort out more formally.
This administration has also shown itself to be just really antagonistic against any person or entity that defies or criticizes it, including journalistic entities, politicians, or protesting individuals; they’ve used lawsuits, executive orders, and a slew of other tools to legally punish, financially punish, and in many cases socially punish, telling their supporters that it would be a real shame if something happened to these people, seemingly aiming to scare their opponents, while also possibly sparking stochastic violence against them.
And this isn’t a US-exclusive thing.
In Georgia, the country not the state, the government is levying huge fines on people who protested against its pivot toward allying with Russia instead of moving toward the EU two years ago; they’re using a so-called “foreign agent bill” to accuse anyone who says or does something against the government of being paid by foreign entities, which in turn allows them to crack down on these people hard, while seemingly not violating their good, dedicated, patriotic citizens’ rights.
They’ve also started levying fines for the equivalent of about $16,000 on those who participate in protests that even briefly block traffic, which is one more way to asymmetrically hobble people and organizations that might otherwise cause a regime trouble; anyone who does these things in their favor can just have these fines waived or ignored.
We’re seeing similar things in Turkey and Hungary, right now, two other countries that have seen widescale protests and significant efforts by their governments to attack those protestors, to get them to stop. In some case these efforts backfire, leading to more and more substantial pushback by the population against increasingly aggressive and abusive regimes.
It’s impossible to know ahead of time which way things will go, though, and right now, in the US, most of these anti-protestor efforts are still young, as are the anti-Tesla, anti-Musk protests, themselves. One side or the other could be forced to pivot by judicial rulings—though this could also lead to a long-predicted constitutional crisis, in which the judges say the government can’t do something they want to do, and the government just ignores that ruling, creating an entirely different and arguably more substantial problem.
Show Notes
https://apnews.com/article/columbia-protests-immigration-detention-mahmoud-khalil-755774045e5e82849e3281e8ff72f26d
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/21/middleeast/turkey-protests-erdogan-mayor-intl-latam/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/23/world/middleeast/turkey-ekrem-imamoglu-istanbul.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/world/middleeast/turkey-erdogan-democracy-istanbul-mayor-detention.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Turkish_protests
https://apnews.com/article/turkey-mayor-jailed-istanbul-f962743f724f00a318f84ffaed7f58de
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/us/politics/what-is-doge-elon-musk-trump.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/protesters-gather-tesla-showrooms-dealerships-denounce-elon-musk-doge-rcna197595
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/nyregion/columbia-trump-concessions-watershed.html
https://apnews.com/article/hungary-pride-ban-orban-lgbtq-rights-e7a0318b09b902abfc306e3e975b52df
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y0zrg9kpno
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hungarys-president-signs-law-banning-pride-parade-despite-protests-2025-03-19/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hungarys-orban-vows-fast-crackdown-media-ngos-over-foreign-funding-2025-03-15/
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/15/europe/georgia-protests-authoritarianism-fears-intl-cmd/index.html
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/03/georgia-authorities-freeze-accounts-of-organizations-supporting-protesters-to-kill-the-peaceful-protests/
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250323-georgia-cracks-down-on-pro-eu-protests-with-crippling-fines
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/23/nyregion/mahmoud-khalil-trump-allegations.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/23/us/politics/spacex-contracts-musk-doge-trump.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/21/oil-protest-activism-greenpeace-dakota-pipeline-verdict
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/greenpeace-lawsuit-energy-transfer-dakota-pipeline
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/18/climate/greenpeace-lawsuit-first-amendment/index.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-to-know-about-greenpeace-after-it-was-found-liable-in-the-dakota-access-protest-case
https://apnews.com/article/greenpeace-dakota-access-pipeline-lawsuit-verdict-5036944c1d2e7d3d7b704437e8110fbb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_protest
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