Avengers of Progressivism to T-Mobile: 'Stop Funding Musk'

Many of the left's leading unions and advocates have joined the next phase of the history-shifting #TeslaTakedown movement.

Photo by Rhododendrites.

It may be the most successful boycott movement of the 21st century. Now, it's expanding to give one of the largest telecommunications providers in the world some good advice.

T-Mobile plans to launch its "T-Satellite" service in July 2025, partnering with Elon Musk's Starlink. On Tuesday, Tesla Takedown announced the launch of "T-MOBILE: STOP FUNDING MUSK."

The new campaign urges T-Mobile " to cancel your contracts with Starlink and either end your T-Satellite program or find a new satellite service provider."

This is the first time the establishment of the progressive movement has joined forces with the irreplaceable Tesla Takedown.

Why T-Mobile?

The coalition behind "Stop Funding Musk"—including Communications Workers of America, AFT, Stop the Money Pipeline, the Working Families Party, and the Sunrise Movement—has called on T-Mobile to live up to the company's stated mission to be "a greater force for good, committed to environmental sustainability, digital equity, and responsible business practices."

Implicitly, this effort also asks the question, "Why would you want to make the unforced error of destroying your company's brand the way Elon has with Tesla?"

Axios reported in late May, "Tesla was in 8th place in the 2021 reputation ranking of America's 100 most visible companies, but last year tumbled to 63rd and now is near the very bottom at 95th."

And the stink isn't just connected to Elon's flagship company. SpaceX suffered a similar reputational cost from 2024 to 2025.

Surely, the plea for T-Mobile to spare itself the stench of Elon's malice will be a big theme on June 28th. That's when protesters all over the world will be back at Tesla dealerships wishing Elon a crappy birthday as part of the #MuskMustFall Global Day of Celebration.

Tackling our collective action problem

This new phase expands the wildly successful movement that was born in some of the darkest days in recent American history.

In early February, there seemed little hope that Musk would suffer any consequences for his unprecedented interference in American democracy and his attempts to normalize Nazism. Law firms, universities, and media conglomerates were lining up to cave to the new regime Musk had become the face of with his efforts to gut the good government does, leaving hundreds of thousands, mostly children, to die and helping cost taxpayers over a trillion dollars with his aggressive animus and ignorance.

America's leading institutions, along with many Democrats in Congress, seemed to suffer from a classic collective action problem.

Anyone who wasn't content to spend the next four years (at least) as a toady for Trump's insatiable lust for dominance knew they would eventually have to stand up to the regime. But they were waiting for someone else to show them how. Thankfully, the people were not so complacent.

You've probably read WIRED's self-declared "definitive" story on this incredible movement born out of an opposition that was trying to regain its footing. And you can measure the Takedown's success in so many ways that it's dizzying.

There's the diminished stock price, the crashing sales, the nosediving resale value.

And then there's the flameout of Musk himself, who still owns the disastrous presidency he bought but finds himself less able to access its spoils after the toxicity of his DOGE group helped convince Trump to remove him from any official role in the regime. Musk has largely recanted from the tantrum he launched in the wake of being dumped. But after tacitly accusing Trump of committing sex crimes against children with the president's old best pal Jeffrey Epstein, the rift is unlikely ever to be healed. This creates instability in the MAGA/Tech Fascist alliance determined to undermine American democracy.

But perhaps the most crucial success of the Tesla Takedown is what it taught Americans determined to fight for their freedoms.

Imposing direct costs

Over the last half year, good Americans have struggled to become experts in anti-authoritarianism by necessity.

That's probably why you're well aware of Erica Chenoweth and her role as one of the researchers who established the 3.5%, which, with significant caveats, found "no government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population mobilized against it during a peak event."

In her recent Pod Save America interview, she used the Takedown as an example of how protest moves beyond symbolism and communication to impose direct costs on the major sponsor of this regime. That movement of movement is key because transitioning from protest and persuasion to non-cooperation is essential for a successful resistance movement, Chenoweth explained.

The way the Takedown convinced people to sell their Teslas and their Tesla stock is "more than just a communication device. It's an invitation for people to use their own like material resources to impose costs or withhold benefits."

And the #TeslaTakedown showed America how to do that from the outset of the movement.

A movement that can stop Trump

The formation of an Avengers of progressivism to expand the fight against Elon Musk, combined with the massive, historic No Kings event last Saturday, has left me with a recently unfamiliar sense of optimism that is tested every time I check the news. Yet, it is proving resilient.

We've begun to solve our collective action problem. Effectively expanding the movement to put the power of workers and advocates behind the non-cooperation will increase our people power by orders of magnitude.

This progress speaks to Andrea Pitzer's notion that we now have "the bones of a nationwide movement that can stop" Donald Trump.

And if the good guys write history, that movement will have to note the grit of everyone who participated in the Tesla Takedown.

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