More than eight out of every 10 respondents to a Morgan Stanley survey believe Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s controversial political activities are hurting his business.

In total, 85% of the 245 participants polled by the firm believe Musk’s foray into politics has either had a “negative” or “extremely negative” impact on business fundamentals. The majority of respondents also expect Tesla deliveries to fall this year, according to the survey.

While a small sampling, these results offer the latest sign of mounting frustration with the billionaire entrepreneur as he’s become a rising figure in international and American politics. It also comes at a pivotal point for Tesla’s stock, with shares plunging nearly 40% this year.

When asked about Musk’s efforts with U.S. government efficiency and other political activities, 45% of respondents said these actions had a “negative” effect on the company. Another 40% said they were having an “extremely negative” impact.

On the other hand, 3% said they were “positive” for the business. Meanwhile, 12% called them “insignificant.”

To be sure, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas reported that his survey respondents are drawn from his email distribution list and should not be taken as a random representative sample. He also noted that the respondents are not necessarily owners of Tesla stock. The survey was taken over a 17-hour period, starting on Tuesday afternoon.

Jonas also asked about expectations for the company’s performance. In a separate question, 59% said they anticipated Tesla would deliver fewer cars to customers in 2025 compared with the prior year. What’s more, 21% of total respondents said they expected a decline of more than 10%. That comes as some analysts have raised alarm that recent reports of vandalism could spook potential customers.

Just 19% of responders said they forecasted deliveries to rise in 2025, while another 23% said they would be flat between the two years.

Musk’s political profile has grown after his public support of President Donald Trump in the runup up to last year’s election and his subsequent role leading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The Tesla executive’s efforts to slash the federal government’s spending and workforce has drawn the ire of critics who see his team as working too quickly and haphazardly.

Musk acknowledged in an interview with Fox Business on Monday that his high-profile role in Trump’s administration meant he was running his businesses, which also include X and SpaceX, “with great difficulty.” That day, Tesla shares tumbled more than 15% for their worst session since 2020.

Despite the recent nosedive, 45% of respondents said they anticipate Tesla shares will be at least 11% higher by the end of the calendar year. Around 36% expect the stock to tumble another 11% or further by year-end, while 19% see the stock staying within 10% of its price around $220.

After a New York Times report last week unearthed criticisms of Musk’s team from members of Trump’s cabinet, the president offered a vote of confidence on Tuesday. Trump evaluated five Tesla vehicles parked at the White House after the president said on social media that he would buy one as a symbol of support.

Trump also said he would declare violence at Tesla dealerships to be acts of domestic terrorism.

It’s happening: Southwest Airlines will start charging passengers to check bags for the first time.

It’s a stunning reversal that shows the low-cost pioneer is willing to part with a customer perk executives have said set it apart from rivals in more than half a century of flying in hopes of increasing revenue.

Southwest’s changes come after months of pressure from activist Elliott Investment Management. The firm took a stake in the airline last year and won five board seats as it pushed for quick changes at the company, which held on for decades — until now — to perks such as free checked bags, changeable tickets and open seating.

For tickets purchased on or after May 28, Southwest customers in all but the top tier-fare class will have to pay to check bags, though there will be exceptions. Elite frequent flyers who hold “A-List Preferred” status will still get two bags and A-List level members will get one free checked bag. Southwest credit card holders will also get one free checked bag.

“Two bags fly free” is a registered trademark on Southwest’s website. But its decision to about-face on what executives long cast as a sacrosanct passenger perk brings the largest U.S. domestic carrier in line with its rivals, which together generated $5.5 billion from bag fees last year, according to federal data.

Southwest executives have long said they didn’t plan to charge for bags, telling Wall Street analysts that it was a major reason why customers chose the airline.

“After fare and schedule, bags fly free is cited as the No. 1 issue in terms of why customers choose Southwest,” CEO Bob Jordan said on an earnings call last July.

But Southwest has changed its tune.

“What’s changed is that we’ve come to realize that we need more revenue to cover our costs,” COO Andrew Watterson said in an interview with CNBC about the baggage fee changes. “We think that these changes that we’re announcing today will lead to less of that share shift than would have been the case otherwise.”

In September, Southwest’s then-chief transformation officer, Ryan Green, told analysts that its analysis showed Southwest would lose more money from passengers defecting to rivals if it started charging for bags than it would make from the fees.

“The fact that free bags is a key driver of choice creates the risk that customers may choose the competition if we change the policy,” he said.

Southwest said last month that it had parted ways with Green.

The airline also said Tuesday that it will launch a new, basic economy fare, something rivals have offered for years.

Southwest, in addition, will change the way customers earn Rapid Rewards: Customers will earn more of the frequent flyer miles depending on how much they pay. Redemption rates will vary depending on flight demand, a dynamic pricing model competitors use.

And flight credits for tickets for tickets purchased on or after May 28 will expire one year, or earlier, depending on the type of fare purchased.

It’s the latest in a string of massive strategy changes at Southwest as its performance has fallen behind rivals.

Last July, Southwest shocked passengers when it announced it would ditch its open seating model for assigned seats and add “premium” extra legroom options, ending decades of an single-class cabin.

The airline is also looking to slash its costs. Higher expenses coming out of the pandemic have taken a bite out of airline margins.

Last month, Southwest announced its first mass layoff, cutting about 1,750 jobs roughly 15% of its corporate staff, many of them at its headquarters, a decision CEO Jordan called “unprecedented” in the carrier’s more than 53 years of flying.

“We are at a pivotal moment as we transform Southwest Airlines into a leaner, faster, and more agile organization,” he said last month.

Earlier this year, Southwest announced the retirement of its longtime finance chief, Tammy Romo, who was replaced by Breeze executive Tom Doxey, and its chief administrative officer, Linda Rutherford. Both executives worked at Southwest for more than 30 years.

Southwest has also cut unprofitable routes, summer internships and employee teambuilding events its held for decades.

Dick’s Sporting Goods on Tuesday said it’s expecting 2025 profits to be far lower than Wall Street anticipated, making it the latest retailer to forecast a rocky year ahead as consumers contend with tariffs, inflation and fears around a potential recession. 

In an interview with CNBC, Executive Chairman Ed Stack said the company’s exposure to China, Mexico and Canada for sourcing is very small, but it recognizes that falling consumer confidence could impact spending.

“I do think it’s just a bit of an uncertain world out there right now,” said Stack. “What’s going to happen from a tariff standpoint? You know, if tariffs are put in place and prices rise the way that they might, what’s going to happen with the consumer?”

On a call with analysts, CEO Lauren Hobart insisted the company is not seeing a weak consumer, and said its guidance is based on the overall uncertain environment.

“We definitely are feeling great about our consumer,” said Hobart. “We are just reflecting an appropriate level of caution given so much uncertainty out in the marketplace.”

Shares of the company opened about 2% lower.

Despite the weak guidance, the sporting goods retailer posted its best holiday quarter on record. Its comparable sales rose 6.4%, far ahead of the 2.9% growth that analysts expected, according to StreetAccount. 

Here’s how Dick’s did in its fiscal fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: $3.62 vs. $3.53 expected

Revenue: $3.89 billion vs. $3.78 billion expected

The company’s reported net income for the three-month period that ended Feb. 1 was $300 million, or $3.62 per share, compared with $296 million, or $3.57 per share, a year earlier.  

Sales rose to $3.89 billion, up about 0.5% from $3.88 billion a year earlier. Like other retailers, Dick’s benefited from an extra week in the year-ago period, which has skewed comparisons. But unlike many of its peers, Dick’s still managed to grow both sales and profits during the quarter, even with one less selling week. 

In the year ahead, Dick’s is expecting earnings per share to be between $13.80 and $14.40, well short of Wall Street estimates of $14.86, according to LSEG. It anticipates net sales will be between $13.6 billion and $13.9 billion, which at the high end is in line with estimates of $13.9 billion, according to LSEG. Dick’s expecting comparable sales to grow between 1% and 3%, compared with estimates of up 2.5%, according to StreetAccount. 

The gloomy earnings outlook comes after a wide array of other retailers gave weak forecasts for the current quarter or the year ahead amid concerns about sliding consumer confidence and the impact tariffs and inflation could have on spending. Kohl’s also offered a weak outlook for the year ahead on Tuesday, leading its shares to plummet 15%.

Some retailers blamed an unseasonably cool February for a weak start to the current quarter, but most recognized they’re also operating in a tough macroeconomic backdrop, and it’s harder than ever to forecast how consumers are holding up. In February, consumer confidence slid to its lowest levels since 2021, the jobs report came in weaker than expected and unemployment ticked up. Over the last few years, a strong job market has led many economists to brush away concerns about rising credit card delinquencies and debt, but those cracks could grow deeper if unemployment continues to rise. 

On Monday, some of those concerns triggered a stock market sell-off, extending losses after the S&P 500 posted three consecutive negative weeks. The Nasdaq Composite saw its worst day since September 2022, while the Dow lost nearly 900 points and closed below its 200-day moving average for the first time since Nov. 1, 2023.

Beyond the uncertain macroeconomic environment, Dick’s plans to invest more heavily in its “House of Sport” concept and e-commerce in the year ahead, which it also expects will weigh on profits. The massive, 100,000-square-foot stores are a growth area for the company and include features like rock climbing walls and running tracks. 

In the year ahead, Dick’s plans to spend $1 billion on a net basis building 16 additional House of Sport locations and 18 Field House locations, which take some of the experimental elements of the House of Sport but fit it into the size of a traditional Dick’s store. 

The strategy comes at a strong point for sports in the country, which is expected to be a tail wind for the business. The 2026 World Cup will be held in North America, women’s sports are more popular than ever, and consumers are increasingly focused on health and wellness. 

“We’re going to have a moment here in the next three or four years, from a sports standpoint, that I think is going to put sport on steroids,” said Stack. “We’re going into a sports moment right now, and we are investing very heavily into that sports moment over the next several years because this is going to last through [2030] and maybe beyond.”

— Additional reporting by CNBC’s Courtney Reagan.

The Trump Organization sued Capital One in Florida on Friday for allegedly “unjustifiably” closing more than 300 of the company’s bank accounts on the heels of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters.

The lawsuit said that the Trump Organization and related entities “have reason to believe that Capital One’s unilateral decision came about as a result of political and social motivations and Capital One’s unsubstantiated, ‘woke’ beliefs that it needed to distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views.”

“In essence, Capital One ‘de-banked’ Plaintiffs’ Accounts because Capital One believed that the political tide at the moment favored doing so,” the Trump Organization claims in the civil case filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court in Miami-Dade County.

The suit seeks a declaratory judgment that the bank improperly terminated the Trump companies’ accounts in June 2021, as well as punitive and other monetary damages for what the suit alleged was “the devastating impact” of the terminations on the companies’ ability to transact and access their funds.

The closures came more than four months after the riot at the U.S. Capitol, which began after Trump for weeks falsely claimed that he had won the 2020 presidential election over former President Joe Biden.

The suit’s named plaintiffs are the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, DJT Holdings, DJT Holdings Managing Member, DTTM Operations, and Eric Trump, the president’s son, who with his brother, Donald Trump Jr., runs the Trump Organization.

The complaint says the plaintiffs and affiliated entities held hundreds of accounts at Capital One for decades before they were closed. Eric Trump said the amount of damages suffered by the companies is “millions of dollars.”

Alejandro Brito, a lawyer who is representing the Trump Organization in the suit, told CNBC the company “is contemplating other suits against financial organizations that engaged in similar conduct.”

Brito said Capital One’s actions “was an attack on free speech.”

A spokesperson for the bank wrote in an email to CNBC, “Capital One has not and does not close customer accounts for political reasons.”

Eric Trump said in a statement, “The decision by Capital One to ‘debank’ our company, after well over a decade, was a clear attack on free speech and free enterprise that flies in the face of the bedrock principles and freedoms that define our country.”

“Moreover, the arbitrary closure of these accounts, without justifiable cause, reflects a broader effort to silence and undermine the success of the Trump Organization and those who dare to express their political views,” said Eric Trump.

For years, American financial companies have fought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the chief U.S. consumer finance watchdog — in the courts and media, portraying the agency as illegitimate and as unfairly targeting industry players.

Now, with the CFPB on life support after the Trump administration issued a stop-work order and shuttered its headquarters, the agency finds itself with an unlikely ally: the same banks that reliably complained about its rules and enforcement actions under former Director Rohit Chopra.

That’s because if the Trump administration succeeds in reducing the CFPB to a shell of its former self, banks would find themselves competing directly with nonbank financial players, from big tech and fintech firms to mortgage, auto and payday lenders, that enjoy far less federal scrutiny than Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-backed institutions.

“The CFPB is the only federal agency that supervises non-depository institutions, so that would go away,” said David Silberman, a veteran banking attorney who lectures at Yale Law School. “Payment apps like PayPal, Stripe, Cash App, those sorts of things, they would get close to a free ride at the federal level.”

The shift could wind the clock back to a pre-2008 environment, where it was largely left to state officials to prevent consumers from being ripped off by nonbank providers. The CFPB was created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis that was caused by irresponsible lending.

But since then, digital players have made significant inroads by offering banking services via mobile phone apps. Fintechs led by PayPal and Chime had roughly as many new accounts last year as all large and regional banks combined, according to data from Cornerstone Advisors.

“If you’re the big banks, you certainly don’t want a world in which the non-banks have much greater degrees of freedom and much less regulatory oversight than the banks do,” Silberman said.

The CFPB and its employees are in limbo after acting Director Russell Vought took over last month, issuing a flurry of directives to the agency’s then 1,700 staffers. Working with operatives from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Vought quickly laid off about 200 workers, reportedly took steps to end the agency’s building lease and canceled reams of contracts required for legally mandated duties.

In internal emails released Friday, CFPB Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez detailed plans to remove roughly 800 supervision and enforcement workers.

Senior executives at the CFPB shared plans for more layoffs that would leave the agency with just five employees, CNBC has reported. That would kneecap the agency’s ability to carry out its supervision and enforcement duties.

That appears to go beyond what even the Consumer Bankers Association, a frequent CFPB critic, would want. The CBA, which represents the country’s biggest retail banks, has sued the CFPB in the past year to scuttle rules limiting overdraft and credit card late fees. More recently, it noted the CFPB’s role in keeping a level playing field among market participants.

“We believe that new leadership understands the need for examinations for large banks to continue, given the intersections with prudential regulatory examinations,” said Lindsey Johnson, president of the CBA, in a statement provided to CNBC. “Importantly, the CFPB is the sole examiner of non-bank financial institutions.”

Vought’s plans to hobble the agency were halted by a federal judge, who is now considering the merits of a lawsuit brought by a CFPB union asking for a preliminary injunction.

A hearing where Martinez is scheduled to testify is set for Monday.

In the meantime, bank executives have gone from antagonists of the CFPB to among those concerned it will disappear.

At a late October bankers convention in New York, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon encouraged his peers to “fight back” against regulators. A few months before that, the bank said that it could sue the CFPB over its investigation into peer-to-peer payments network Zelle.

“We are suing our regulators over and over and over because things are becoming unfair and unjust, and they are hurting companies, a lot of these rules are hurting lower-paid individuals,” Dimon said at the convention.

Now, there’s growing consensus that an initial push to “delete” the CFPB is a mistake. Besides increasing the threat posed from nonbanks, current rules from the CFPB would still be on the books, but nobody would be around to update them as the industry evolves.

Small banks and credit unions would be even more disadvantaged than their larger peers if the CFPB were to go away, industry advocates say, since they were never regulated by the agency and would face the same regulatory scrutiny as before.

“The conventional wisdom is not right that banks just want the CFPB to go away, or that banks want regulator consolidation,” said an executive at a major U.S. bank who declined to be identified speaking about the Trump administration. “They want thoughtful policies that will support economic growth and maintain safety and soundness.”

A senior CFPB lawyer who lost his position in recent weeks said that the industry’s alignment with Republicans may have backfired.

“They’re about to live in a world in which the entire non-bank financial services industry is unregulated every day, while they are overseen by the Federal Reserve, FDIC and OCC,” the lawyer said. “It’s a world where Apple, PayPal, Cash App and X run wild for four years. Good luck.”