The regulatory problems of Elon Musk technology billionaire began to disappear in the past.
Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, federal agencies that have examined Musk and their commercial empire in recent years have begun to seem very different. In the Department of Agriculture, for example, President Donald Trump dismissed the person who was investigating the Almíscar Neuralink company. In other agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Department, Trump and Musk have tried to reduce the number of employees – potentially limping the capacity of these regulators to enforce the law against companies, including Tesla and X. de Musk.
In recent months, Trump’s Department of Justice has abandoned a case against Musk’s Rocket Company, Spacex, and its Labor Department has canceled a planned civil rights review of its automaker, Tesla. Another regulatory issue against Spacex has negotiated with the National Council of Labor Relations.
And in more than 40 other federal agency issues, regulators have not taken public measures in their investigations for several months or more – raising questions about whether these cases may have become inactive, according to a NBC News review on regulatory issues involving musk companies. These subjects vary widely, from Tesla’s “autonomous” resource security investigations to alleged safety violations at Spacex workplace.
Jon Michaels, professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an administrative law expert, said he would not be surprised if federal agencies were slowly the more than 40 matters in progress involving musk companies.
“You’re not just going against Elon Musk. You’re going against Elon Musk, who is in large ranges from the federal government,” he said, referring to the comprehensive role of Musk as consultant at the Government’s Efficiency Department of the Government Department (Doge).
He added that some individual federal workers may fear for their safety because of Musk’s documented pattern to highlight people for criticism of their huge social media platform, even if they are widely unknown.
And while other Republican presidents also loosened the environmental rules or the application of labor law, Michaels said this time is different because of musk’s personal involvement in bringing a chainsaw to the federal government.
“The administrative state, as we traditionally understood, will be disabled,” he said.
Movements can help Musk companies to avoid potential fines for alleged federal law violations. At stake it is over $ 2 billion in potential responsibility, as well as changes in the workplace that Musk could have to make if he loses these regulatory fights, according to a recent report by Senate Democrats.
Some agencies also helped Musk’s business relaxing written regulations. Last month, the transportation department reduced the threshold for autonomous car companies, including Tesla, to report safety incidents, and this week, the Federal Aviation Administration granted Pacex permission to perform 25 launches per year of its huge star ship, an increase of five times despite impacts on environment and air travel.
The new regulators approach is one of the most tangible rewards for Musk and potentially other business executives after many of them have their support behind Trump’s campaign last year to recover the White House. Musk, the richest person in the world, spent about $ 290 million to help Trump and other Republicans and have been a Trump White House consultant since January. Musk said he plans to return to the technology world in the coming weeks.
Musk is not the only beneficiary of Trump’s actions. The Trump administration has also abandoned regulatory issues against other companies, including a Clean Air Law case against a Louisiana rubber factory, consumer protection actions against financial services companies and lawsuits against cryptocurrency companies.
Trump also advanced with the action against which Musk lobbyed directly, such as tariffs, which would have potentially negative impacts on his business.
Required to comment on the Trump government handling of Almíscar-related regulatory issues, Harrison Fields, White House spokesman, said in a statement: “All government officials will fulfill conflict requirements.”
Musk and Musk companies did not respond to requests for comments on the handling of regulatory questions involving their commercial empire. Musk’s allies argued since 2023 or anterior that he had been unfairly targeted by regulatory actions by the Biden government, even if Musk companies kept and gain major government contracts under President Joe Biden.
The change regulatory environment occurs when Musk benefits from other ways of the new government, including potentially new or expanded contracts for your Satellite Starlink internet service and your Spacex rocket service. Reuters reported last month that Spacex is one of the front lines to help build the Trump missile shield Shield Shield, a system to prevent hostile missiles for the country.
A regulatory matter involving Tesla ended the first day of Trump in office. Trump signed an executive order on January 21 interrupting the operations of the federal contract compliance programs office, a labor department agency that revised government contractors to ensure that they follow civil rights laws. Tesla was among 2,000 hired on a list for scheduled audits. (Audits are not totally random; the office said it chose hired based on various criteria, including the counting of employee directors.) Not to mention Tesla in particular, Trump said these audits have reduced the importance of individual merit in hiring. The new office head, appointed on March 24, is a lawyer who previously represented Spacex in a labor dispute.
On February 24, an administrative complaint against Spacex in 2023 during the Biden government was rejected by the Justice Department, according to a document in the Federal Court shortly after the dismissal. The complaint claimed that Spacex discriminated against refugees in hiring, an allegation that Spacex denied. Spacex had circumvented, saying that the system of Judges of Administrative Law of the DOJ violated the Constitution. Spacex has agreed to give up its counter -contained costume on February 28.
In a statement to NBC News, Harmet Dhillon, Trump’s assistant prosecutor for civil rights, said DOJ dismissed the case due to several factors, including Spacex Contactuit.
“The Biden Department of Justice Civil Rights Division began this action and Spacex has gained an injunction to stop the process in progress. Based on a review of all factors, including the pending injunction and the constitutional challenge to the original process, Civil Rights Division said that the most appropriate course of action was to reject the complaint,” Dhillon said.
Musk had long called the Justice Department’s case, and said Spacex received conflicting guidance from other federal regulators about hiring non -permanent residents.
A third case involves the National Council of Labor Relations and has been pending since 2022, when Spacex says it has fired several employees for sending an open letter to co -workers about working conditions. The NLRB, recently under Trump’s control, said in a lawsuit on April 23 that he was interested in “potentially liquidating legal disputes currently pending between NLRB and Spacex” and asked a federal court to pause his procedures entirely as discussions continued. On Monday, the Court of Appeals agreed. The NLRB did not respond to a commentary request for why it changed course.
Spacex defended employees, saying that they caused an interruption and violated various corporate policies.
Tom Moline, one of Spacex staff, said in an interview that he is concerned about new conflicts of interest to the NLRB.
“They must be independent of workers and employers,” he said.
“Anyone could see that there are conflicts of interest there, in my opinion,” he added. “We saw Doge employees planting in all these federal agencies.” The NLRB is one of many offices where doge is active. A security expert claimed that Doge caused a data violation there, a claim that the Labor Council denied.
Decisions to abandon regulatory actions comply with expert forecasts last year, who said musk companies would likely benefit from Trump regulators, and the changed scenario means that when Musk will turn his attention to his technology companies, he will operate with fewer restrictions than before. Musk said in a Tesla gains call on April 22 that his time commitment to Doge “would fall significantly” from May, by allocating more time to Tesla.
Cary Coglianese, law professor and director of the University of Pennsylvania regulatory program, said Musk is not alone among business executives who are benefiting from Trump regulators.
“This is an administration that is decreasing the processes of application in general. So, is it receiving special treatment? Or is receiving exactly the type of relaxed regulatory scrutiny that any business can enjoy under the Trump government? This is a difficult question to answer,” he said.
But he added that the pattern is suspicious if he maintains, and he said Musk did not sail ethical issues the way the White House consultants have. Musk kept his roles in the private sector, including as Tesla and Spacex CEO, while serving as a “special government official.” This is a temporary federal worker category that includes much more people than just Almíscar, although, unlike other people, there is no evidence that Musk has presented paperwork describing the steps he took to avoid conflicts of interest.
“As a citizen, I must say that there may be some special treatment and, as a citizen, should probably worry about the appearance of special treatment,” said Coglianese.
“We must keep those who are having influence on government policy to very high standards and, as long as it has the participation of ownership and managerial control of companies that are being investigated or benefiting from the work of government agencies, it is certainly, if nothing more, the appearance of illegitimacy,” he said.
White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement prior to NBC News: “For concerns about conflicts of interest between Elon Musk and Doge, President Trump has stated that he will not allow conflict, and Elon himself has pledged to refuse possible conflicts.”
In addition to these three cases, there are more actions and investigations in which the Trump government has not rejected the matter or took recent measures, and Senate’s democrats say they fear these issues inactive, even if they are not technically closed. And there are dozens of actions and investigations in which Trump fired the people who managed them, increasing the likelihood that these probes go into hibernation.
Musk and his companies have faced dozens of investigations and lawsuits by federal agencies in January, according to research by the Senate’s permanent subcomprehension about investigations. In a report last month, they estimated that Musk and their companies faced at least $ 2.37 billion in potential responsibility And all investigations and lawsuits resulted in supervision, not including intangible costs, such as being forced to change labor practices.
“The truth is that the breathtaking scope and the scale of the benefits that Musk is gaining from his current position can never be known, and that’s by design,” Democratic researchers said in their report.
Many cases “could” disappear quietly, “the report said, with potentially” discarded unlawful investigations, they postponed indefinitely or resolved in various ways that prioritize musk private interests about public responsibility. ”
Of the 11 federal agencies that Senate Democratic researchers identified as investigating musk companies from January, most of them, such as the Federal Aviation Administration, suffered cuts from Musk’s doge. Trump’s budget plan released earlier this month can press other cuts.
In January, Trump dismissed the Department of Agriculture Department, Phyllis Fong. One of the investigations in which his office was working was a Neuralink investigation, the musk brain science startup, to conduct experiments in ways that allegedly caused unnecessary suffering and death for animals, according to Reuters. It is unclear whether this investigation is underway and the USDA IG office did not respond to a commentary request. A fong lawyer also did not respond to a request for comment.
Neuralk said it is “committed to working with animals in the most human and ethical way possible.” The startup did not respond to a request for commentary on the resignation of Fong.
Trump and Musk’s doge have tried to dramatically reduce the consumer’s financial protection bureau, which is accused of protecting Americans from financial fraud. The department received more than 100 Tesla complaints last year, mainly related to leasing of vehicles or loans offered or issued by Tesla, and had about 30 open or unresolved complaints about Tesla last week, according to the CFPB website. The CFPB did not respond to a request for commentary on what happens to these complaints now. A Federal Court of Appeals paused the mass dismissal of Trump’s CFPB for now.
Musk asked at the end of CFPB, posting in February at X: “CFPB Rip” with a tombstone emoji.
Trump tried to remove two democratic members from the equal employment opportunities committee, which police the discrimination in hiring. It is unclear whether these movements can disrupt an EEOC process in 2023 against Tesla for alleged racial harassment at a factory in Fremont, California. An audience in this process is scheduled for June, and Trump’s authority to dismiss EEOC commissioners without cause is also being challenged in court.
An EEOC -Voice door refused to comment on if there was any negotiation accordingly.
Trump has appointed new leadership to the Securities Commission, and it is unclear what changes they can make in issues involving Musk companies. SEC sued Musk in person in January, six days before Biden left office, claiming that he did not disclose in 2022 that he had bought more than 5% of Twitter shares and therefore maintained “artificially low” prices, according to SEC. Musk is scheduled to register a response to the court in June.