Tesla chief executive Elon Musk asked a US federal judge on 8 March to scrap a settlement he reached with securities regulators in 2018 that required some of his tweets be pre-approved, a condition that has fomented an ongoing conflict with the government over whether he and Tesla have followed the rule.

In a motion filed in Manhattan federal court, Musk’s lawyers argued that the Twitter oversight policy has become unworkable, while the Securities and Exchange Commission has abused the deal to make “round after round of demands for voluminous, costly document productions, with no signs of abatement".