Tesla, at its fourth-quarter earnings call Wednesday, reported earnings per share of $0.73 and revenue of $25.7 billion, falling short of Wall Street’s estimates. Despite this, the stock rose 3% in after-hours trading due to the company’s commitment to returning to growth in 2025, with plans to launch a robotaxi business and produce more affordable electric vehicle models.

CEO Elon Musk announced that paid, unsupervised full-self-driving(Unsupervised FSD) rides are expected to launch in June in Austin, with the service expanding to California by the end of the year.

In his remarks, Musk discussed the company’s plans for autonomous vehicle technology and the production of cybercab. The company’s purpose-built robotaxi is scheduled to enter volume production in 2026, with fleet-testing of existing models happening later this year.

Tesla also confirmed that production of more affordable models is on track to begin in the first half of 2025, which is expected to boost sales, with a potential price tag of under $30,000.

United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” banning transgender mutilation of minors. The order directs federal agencies to defund and oppose medical interventions, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, which are “irreversible and destructive.”

"Today, it was my great honor to sign an Executive Order banning the chemical castration and medical mutilation of innocent children in the United States of America," Trump announced on Truth Social. "Our Nation will no longer fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support so-called 'gender affirming care,' which has already ruined far too many precious lives. My Order directs Agencies to use every available means to cut off Federal financial participation in institutions which seek to provide these barbaric medical procedures, that should have never been allowed to take place!"

The order on the White House website reads in part,

"Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.  This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.

"Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding.  Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.

"Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures."

The executive order defines “chemical and surgical mutilation” as the use of puberty blockers, sex hormones, and surgical procedures to alter a child’s physical appearance or reproductive anatomy.

The order directs the Department of Health and Human Services to withdraw funding for institutions that provide transgender procedures to minors and to publish a review of medical literature on treating gender dysphoria in minors within 90 days.

Federally run insurance programs, such as TRICARE and Medicaid, are ordered to exclude coverage for these procedures, and the Office of Personnel Management is directed to ensure federal employee health plans eliminate coverage for pediatric transgender surgeries and hormone treatments by 2026.

The order also tasks the Justice Department with enforcing existing laws, including prioritizing prosecutions under laws against female genital mutilation, and calls for investigations into alleged fraud and deception by medical providers regarding the long-term effects of transgender procedures for minors.

In earlier executive orders, Trump also directed transgender people incarcerated in the federal prison system, to be housed in facilities that match their biological sex. The order instructs the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or immigration detention centers.

Trump also signed an executive order that could lead to a ban on transgender women serving in the military, including in combat roles. The order directs the Pentagon to craft a policy on transgender troops that reflects the administration’s view that being transgender is “not consistent” with military service

The executive order notes that transgender individuals pose a risk to “unit cohesion” and “stability among service members” and that their transition-related medical care can affect military readiness.

The order also mandates that sleeping quarters and bathrooms be separated by sex assigned at birth, rather than gender identity, which would affect transgender men and women differently.

Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg, the Chief Test Pilot for Boom Supersonic, successfully piloted the XB-1 jet to break the sound barrier for the first time on Jan. 28. The jet is a one-third-scale trijet supersonic demonstrator for Boom’s future airliner Overture, designed to maintain Mach 2.2, with over 1,000 nautical miles of range, and is powered by three General Electric CJ610 engines.

The XB-1 jet took off from the storied Mojave Air & Space Port in California under mostly clear skies Tuesday. Some 11.5 minutes into the flight — the 12th overall for the XB-1 — at an altitude of around 10,668 meters, the test plane achieved speeds of Mach 1.1 during the flight, marking the first time a civil aircraft has gone supersonic over the continental United States.

The jet went supersonic two additional times during the flight, at about 17 and 22 minutes after takeoff, to allow pilots to test the jet's handling performance during supersonic flight. The size of the experimental airspace for today's flight limited how long the jet was able to fly above Mach 1.

"This is such a huge step, building the first civil supersonic jet, you know, right here in America," said Boom advisor and former Chief Engineer Greg Krauland during the company's livestream on X. "This jet really does have much of the enabling technologies that are going to enable us to go ahead and to build a commercial supersonic airliner that is available to the masses."

The XB-1 landed roughly 30 minutes after liftoff on its bespoke landing gear, designed specifically for the aircraft.

"I'm just to-the-moon excited about how well that went," Krauland said.

The XB-1 is a technology demonstrator, meaning Boom Supersonic is testing it in order to validate the design and subsystems of the jet to pave the way for the company's Overture passenger aircraft.

Tuesday's milestone marks a significant step towards the return of supersonic commercial travel, which has not been seen since the retirement of the Concorde over two decades ago.

Overture is a planned 64-to-80 seat supersonic aircraft that Boom Supersonic hopes can become the first passenger jet to fly faster than the speed of sound since the British-French Concorde, which made its last flight in 2003.

Colorado-based Boom Supersonic already has over 100 orders for Overture from major airliners worldwide. The company hopes to help return supersonic airliners to service, potentially cutting flight times in half.

Tuesday's flight was filmed and monitored by two different chase planes, a Dassault Mirage F1 fighter jet, and a Northrop T-38 Talon, the same aircraft NASA uses to train its astronauts.

The test flight was livestreamed using broadband internet beamed to Earth from SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation. A Starlink Mini unit was installed in the T-38 chase plane, enabling unprecedented live video of the aviation milestone.

"We're getting broadband speeds, you know, at point eight Mach [at] 31,000 feet ... The capability that is brought to the game of flight test has been pretty incredible, actually — very surprised by the capability," Boom Supersonic Chief Flight Test Engineer Nick Sheryka said during the company's livestream.