Elon Musk isn’t stepping back from DOGE until next month, but President Donald Trump is already talking about him in the past tense. Trump heaped praise on his billionaire buddy Wednesday as he spoke to reporters at the Oval Office about Musk’s looming departure from the cost-cutting task force.

For Tesla, the quarterly financial consequences of Musk’s decision to wield the hatchet for Trump’s attack on federal jobs, public programs and civil society couldn’t be clearer. In the longer run, Tesla faces big-world challenges,