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      Musk calls for Trump to be impeached as extraordinary feud escalates

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      Elon Musk called for Donald Trump to be impeached after mocking his connections to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as the president threatened to cancel federal contracts and tax subsidies for Musk’s companies in an extraordinary social media feud on Thursday.The deterioration of their once close relationship into bitter acrimony came over the course of several remarkable hours during which the president and the world’s richest man hurled deeply personal insults over matters significant and insignificant.In the most churlish moment of the astonishing saga, Musk said on X the reason the Trump administration had not released the files into Epstein was because they implicated the president. He later quote-tweeted a post calling for Trump to be removed and said Trump’s tariffs would cause a recession.“Time to drop the really big bomb: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” Musk wrote, after Trump threatened to cut subsidies for Musk’s companies as it would save “billions”.The direct shots at Trump were the latest twist in the public feud over a Republican spending bill that Musk had criticized. Trump and Musk had been careful not to hit each other directly, but the pair discarded restraint as it escalated online.The bizarre drama served to underscore the degree to which Trump and Musk’s relationship has been one of mutual convenience, despite the White House claiming for months that they were simply ideologically aligned.It also caused the rightwing writer Ashley St Clair, who gave birth to Musk’s 14th known child and sued Musk for child support, to weigh in. “Let me know if u need any breakup advice,” she posted on X, tagging Trump.Shares in Tesla, Musk’s electronic vehicle company, fell almost 15% on Thursday afternoon with the decline timed to when Trump’s remarks began. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, is not publicly traded, but competitors to SpaceX rose on the news.For weeks, Musk has complained about the budget bill, and used the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimating the bill would add $2.4tn to the deficit over the next decade as an opening to condemn the legislation as a “disgusting abomination”.On Thursday, Trump appeared to finally have had enough of Musk’s complaints. Speaking in the Oval Office as the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, looked on in bemusement, Trump mocked Musk’s recent black eye and questioned why he didn’t cover it up.“You saw a man who was very happy when he stood behind the Oval desk. Even with a black eye. I said, do you want a little makeup? He said, no, I don’t think so. Which is interesting,” Trump said. “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will any more.”Trump then ratcheted up his barbs against Musk, accusing him of turning against the bill solely out of self-interest, as the bill did not benefit Tesla, Musk’s electronic vehicle company. Trump also pulled the nomination of Musk’s preferred candidate to lead Nasa.“I’m very disappointed with Elon,” Trump said. “He had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out we’re going to cut the EV mandate.”Musk then went on the warpath.Within minutes of Trump’s comments appearing in a clip on X, where Musk was responding in real time, Musk accused the president of lying about the bill, and accused Trump of being ungrateful for the millions he spent to get him elected.“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk said in a post on X. He added: “Such ingratitude.”Musk taking credit for Trump’s election win initially threatened to be the touchpoint for their relationship, given Trump had made a point to say that Musk’s contributions had no effect on him winning the battleground state of Pennsylvania.But then Trump posted on Truth Social that he had fired Musk from his role as a special adviser because he was “wearing thin” at the White House, and Musk responded: “Such an obvious lie. So sad.”It was less than a half an hour later that Musk fired off his Epstein tweet, in effect accusing him of being part of an alleged child sexual abuse ring linked to Epstein, using a dog whistle for the Maga movement to try to set them against the president.In doing so, Musk ignored his own connections to Epstein. In 2014, like Trump, Musk was photographed at a party with Ghislaine Maxwell, a former Epstein girlfriend who was convicted in 2021 on charges that she helped the financier’s sex-trafficking activities.The public feud comes after a remarkable partnership that lasted longer than many Democrats on Capitol Hill and in Trump’s orbit predicted.Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Trump’s re-election campaign through his specially created America Pac, which shouldered a large portion of Trump’s door-knocking campaign, although the actual impact of that ground-game effort is unclear. More

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      Trump and Musk trade barbs as rift over tax and spend bill erupts into open

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      A public feud erupted between Donald Trump and Elon Musk on Thursday, with the president saying he was “very disappointed” by the former adviser’s opposition to his top legislative priority, and Musk firing back that Trump would not have won election without his financial support.The falling-out came days after Musk had stepped down as head of Trump’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and then pivoted to attacking the One Big Beautiful Bill, which would extend tax cuts, fund beefed-up immigration enforcement and impose new work requirements for enrollees of federal safety net programs.While the Tesla CEO has focused his complaints on the price tag of the bill, which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will add $2.4tn to the deficit over the next decade, Trump accused him of turning against it because of provisions revoking incentives for consumers to purchase electric vehicles.“I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot,” Trump said, adding that “he knew every aspect of this bill. He knew it better than almost anybody, and he never had a problem until right after he left.”“Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will any more,” the president said.Musk responded almost immediately on X, saying that the president’s comment was “false”, and “this bill was never shown to me even once”. He then pivoted to personal attacks on Trump, after praising him just days earlier in an Oval Office appearance to mark the end of his time leading Doge.“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” he said, responding to a video of Trump’s remarks. “Such ingratitude.”The tech boss’s criticism has become the latest obstacle facing the One Big Beautiful Bill , which the House of Representatives approved last month by a single vote.The Senate this week began considering the bill, not long after Musk commenced the barrage of tweets over its cost, which he warned would undo Doge’s efforts to save the government money by cancelling programs and pushing federal workers out of their jobs. Musk said he believed the initiative could reduce spending by $1tn, though its own dashboard shows it has saved less than 20% of that amount since Trump was inaugurated.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, spent weeks negotiating with his fractious Republican majority to get the bill passed narrowly through his chamber, and on Wednesday said he had been trying to speak with Musk about his concerns. In an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday, he called the Tesla CEO “a good friend” and said the two had exchanged text messages ahead of a call he expected to take place that morning.View image in fullscreen“I just want to make sure that he understands what I think everybody on Capitol Hill understands. This is not a spending bill, my friends, this is a a budget reconciliation bill. And what we’re doing here is delivering the America first agenda,” Johnson said.“He seems pretty dug in right now, and I can’t quite understand the motivation behind it,” the speaker added.Later in the day, Johnson told reporters at the Capitol that the call did not take place, but that the disagreement “isn’t personal”. On X, Musk publicly questioned Johnson’s resolve to cut government spending, prompting the speaker to reply that he “has always been a lifelong fiscal hawk”.The Senate’s Republican leaders have shown no indication that they share Musk’s concerns. Instead, they are eyeing changes to some aspects of the measure that were the result of hard-fought negotiations in the House, and could throw its prospects of passage into jeopardy.One issue that has reappeared is the deductibility of state and local tax (Salt) payments, which the tax bill passed under Trump in 2017 limited to $10,000 per household. House Republicans representing districts in Democratic-run states that have higher tax burdens managed to get a provision increasing the deduction to $40,000 into the One Big Beautiful Bill act.But there are almost no Republican senators representing blue states. The majority leader, John Thune, said after a meeting with Trump on Wednesday that his lawmakers were not inclined to keep that provision as they negotiate the bill.“We also start from a position that there really isn’t a single Republican senator who cares much about the Salt issue. It’s just not an issue that plays,” Thune said.That could upset the balance of power in the House, where Republicans can lose no more than three votes on any bill that passes along party lines. More

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      US state department says World Cup fans ‘want to see’ Donald Trump’s travel ban

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      A US state department spokesperson on Thursday claimed that attendees of the upcoming World Cup and Olympics should support the restrictions on travel from 19 countries ordered by Donald Trump.On Wednesday evening, the US president signed a sweeping order banning travel from 12 countries and restricting travel from seven others, reviving and expanding a policy from his first term.“I think people from around the world, and Americans going to these events, would want to see actions like this,” said US state department spokesperson Tommy Pigott at a press briefing on Thursday afternoon. “This is part of what it means to host an event. We take security concerns extremely seriously, we want people to be able to go to the World Cup and do so safely.”The order claims at various points that the restrictions are a response to supposed deficiencies in each country’s own vetting procedures. Pressed on Thursday on what relevance other country’s procedures had on the US’s ability to vet immigrants themselves, Pigott declined to elaborate.Nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen will be “fully” restricted from entering the US, according to Wednesday’s proclamation. Meanwhile, the entry of nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela will be partly restricted. The order is set to go into effect on 9 June.The order does contain an exception for “any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives, travelling for the World Cup, Olympics, or other major sporting event as determined by the secretary of state.” However, that exception does not explicitly cover a number of specific cases or situations that will be relevant for players from affected countries who intend to play in the United States.First, the exception does not specify whether the “World Cup” referred to in the order includes the Club World Cup, which starts this month and is being hosted by the US. Asked by the Guardian whether the Club World Cup – in which a number of players from the banned countries are due to play – was included in the exception, a state department spokesperson declined to comment other than to say they would not get into hypotheticals or specific cases.Fifa also declined to comment to the Guardian when asked about this distinction and whether the organization was involved in lobbying Trump to carve out this exception as part of the travel ban.The definition of “major event” is also left open to interpretation, making it unclear whether or not this summer’s Gold Cup qualifies. That tournament, the regional soccer championship for North and Central America and the Caribbean will feature Haiti, who are scheduled to play the United States in Austin, Texas on 19 June in addition to group games in San Diego, California and Arlington, Texas.A spokesperson for Concacaf, the confederation that oversees the Gold Cup, did not respond to a request for comment. The state department declined to comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe order also lays out a number of exceptions regarding current visa holders, providing a list of visa types for which holders will not be subject to travel restrictions. The P-1 visa most often issued to professional soccer players in MLS, the NWSL and other leagues is not listed among those who qualify for the exception, but specific type of banned visas are specified for individual countries in the order.Venezuela, for example, has various types of B, F, M and J visas that are banned under the order. That means that the order does not impact P-1 visas issued to nationals of Venezuela. MLS currently has three players on international duty with Venezuela. One, the San Jose Earthquakes’ Josef Martínez, became a US citizen last year. The other two, Inter Miami’s Telasco Segovia and LAFC’s David Martínez, are recent arrivals to MLS and do not yet have permanent residency. Venezuela are set to play a World Cup qualifier on Thursday night against Bolivia, and are scheduled for another at Uruguay on Tuesday 10 June – one day after the ban is set to be enforced.An MLS spokesperson declined to elaborate when asked if there were concerns about the Venezuelan players’ immigration status. Asked on Thursday if the travel ban could impact current US visa holders from these countries, Pigott said that the exceptions will apply on a “case-by-case basis.” More

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      Trump and Musk’s spectacular bust-up – podcast

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      Archive: Fox News, CBS News, CNBC, Associated Press, ABC 7 Chicago, NBC
      Listen to Today in Focus’s episode about Musk city
      Subscribe to the Guardian’s new narrative series Missing in the Amazon
      Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
      Help support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politcspodus More

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      Why the reaction to Trump’s travel ban is different this time

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      Many of Donald Trump’s critics may have become so inured to the treadmill of iniquities that his second presidency has brought, that a long-expected travel ban announced against citizens of a dozen countries failed to register the same intense shock and outrage as his similar move made during his first presidency.Of course, there was condemnation. Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator from California, accused the president of “bigotry”, while Chris Murphy, his Democratic colleague from Connecticut, suggested the timing may have been designed to deflect attention from the negative economic impact of his “Big Beautiful Bill” currently wending its way through Congress.But the denunciations seemed to carry a rote, lost-in-the-noise quality.It is easy to forget the storm of opprobrium that initially greeted the proposal for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” when then candidate Trump first made it nearly a decade ago. Even some of his fellow Republicans on the primary campaign trail at the time denounced the idea of a “Muslim ban” as “unhinged”.The context then was a spate of Islamic State-inspired terror attacks, first in Europe and then, in December 2015, in the California city of San Bernardino, where a radicalized husband and wife shot and killed 14 people at a health workers’ Christmas party.The policy met fierce legal and popular resistance after Trump tried to impose it immediately after taking office in January 2017, targeting seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.Chaotic scenes ensued, as protesters descended on US international airports. Only after the administration retooled the policy following protracted courtroom fights was it able to implement it – only for Joe Biden to rescind it in 2021 as “a stain on our national conscience”.The immediate and narrow backdrop to the latest ban is similar: an attack in Boulder, Colorado, this time by an Egyptian citizen, on an event in support of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.“The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” Trump said in a video message announcing the policy. “We don’t want them.”Yet the broader context is vastly different – and illustrative of how successful the president has been in shifting the Overton window of political acceptability compared with eight years ago. This new ban is taking place against a backdrop of creeping authoritarianism, brutal government cuts and an ideological attack on civic institutions ranging from universities to scientific and cultural organisations.Effective legal challenges to the travel ban this time round seem much less likely, experts believe. “They seem to have learned some lessons from the three different rounds of litigation we went through during the first Trump administration,” Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University law center, told the New York Times.The length of time taken in preparing the restrictions – in contrast with the hastily imposed 2017 ban – and the varied character of the 19 countries singled out make it less susceptible than its predecessor, Vladeck said.Strikingly, Egypt – a signatory to the 1979 Camp David peace accords with Israel and a recipient of US military aid – is absent from the list of countries affected, strongly suggesting that last weekend’s attack was merely a pretext for a move already in the works.Of the 12 included on the main ban list, some are predominantly Muslim, but five – Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Myanmar, Eritrea and Equatorial Guinea – are not. The others are Iran, Afghanistan, Chad, Somalia, Libya, Sudan and Yemen. Of course, all are non-white and part of the developing world.Additionally, less stringent restrictions have been imposed on another seven countries: Cuba, Venezuela, Laos, Togo, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Turkmenistan – but only the last two have Muslim majorities.Rather than being based in Islamophobia, the latest crackdown is playing out on a wider canvas of xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiment, manifested most visibly in Trump’s drive to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Some groups, namely Venezuelans and Haitians, have already lost temporary protected status in a move that has been upheld by the courts.It is also happening in tandem with a prohibition issued against Harvard University from enrolling foreign students as Trump resorts to all levers available in an effort to prevail in a power struggle with the world’s wealthiest higher education institution.Yet the ban has roots in prejudices that emerged early in Trump’s first term, when he railed at an Oval Office meeting with congressional leaders against immigration from “shithole countries”, an unflattering description which, according to the New York Times, included Haiti.“Why do we want people from Haiti here?” Trump said in the January 2018 meeting, when told that they were among those who could benefit from a proposed immigration bill. At the same gathering, the president lamented the failure to woo immigrants from white European countries like Norway.At an earlier meeting, he complained – based on a policy paper given to him by Stephen Miller, now the White House deputy chief of staff – that 15,000 Haitians had entered the country since his inauguration, adding that “they all have Aids”. Similar complaints were issued against the entry of 2,500 Afghans.The anti-Haitian animus re-emerged in last year’s presidential election campaign. Trump, in a debate with Kamala Harris, his Democratic presidential opponent, issued his notorious “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs” accusation against a Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio, based on a false internet rumor that police had previously officially denied.That backdrop will surely condemn Trump in the court of public opinion, whatever rulings the judiciary may decide.Amid a chorus of condemnation from Democrats, many of whom compared this ban to his first “Muslim ban”, Amnesty International captured the more universal principle at play.“Trump’s new travel ban is discriminatory, racist, and downright cruel,” the organization said. “By targeting people based on their nationality, this ban only spreads disinformation and hate.”Even if judges issue future rulings upholding the policy, it seems a fitting judgment likely to stand the test of time, if not the strict letter of the law. More

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      Trump’s crypto ventures may be his most dangerous moneymaking scheme | Mohamad Bazzi

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      Throughout his business career, Donald Trump sought new ways to leverage his name to make easy money. He ran an airline, a university and a winery. Thanks to the Apprentice show that made him a reality TV star, the US president slapped his name on real estate projects around the world built by other companies – along with Trump-branded steaks, vodka, deodorant and bottled water. Many of these businesses ultimately failed, but Trump rarely invested his own funds and he still walked away with hefty licensing fees.Today, as the most powerful person in the world, Trump has found perhaps the easiest way to profit off his name: cryptocurrency. Days before his inauguration for a second term on 20 January, Trump’s family business launched a meme coin, called $Trump, which is a type of digital currency often connected to an online joke or mascot. It has no inherent value beyond speculation. The coin quickly soared in value up to $75 per token, but it crashed days later. No matter the ultimate price, Trump and his family rake in millions of dollars in fees as the coin is traded by speculators hoping to turn a quick profit, or those trying to curry favor with him.It’s difficult to keep up with all the ways that Trump is corrupting the US presidency and using it for personal profit, but his crypto ventures are among the most dangerous because they potentially allow him and his family to collect hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign investors and governments that would normally have a harder time funneling money to a US politician. Thanks to the memecoin and other deals, the Trump family’s wealth increased by nearly $3bn in the last six months. Trump has proven himself the most successful president – at monetizing the presidency.While he is exempt from conflict of interest laws that ban federal employees from profiting off their positions, every US president since the 1970s had voluntarily abided by these rules – until Trump. Previous occupants of the White House either sold their financial holdings or set them aside in blind trusts. But in his first term, Trump refused to divest from his business empire, which is mostly centered around the Trump Organization and is still managed by his sons.Since Trump’s first term, his family business has also evolved beyond a real estate conglomerate that licenses the Trump name to hotels, luxury towers and golf courses around the world, earning millions of dollars in branding and management fees without investing its own funds in most projects. The business now includes a portfolio of social media and crypto ventures, providing Trump with new ways to profit from being in office. And Trump is more emboldened to ignore norms set by past presidents, thanks to a compliant Congress led by Republicans and a US supreme court ruling last year which gave Trump “absolute immunity” from prosecution for his official acts as president.Trump’s foray into cryptocurrency underscores the ways he can leverage the presidency for personal gain by exploiting his sense of impunity and an industry that is notorious for fraud and a lack of transparency. After the value of his memecoin collapsed, Trump’s crypto venture announced in April that the 220 largest buyers of the token would be invited to a private gala dinner with the president at his Virginia golf club, while the top 25 buyers would get access to a VIP reception with Trump and a White House tour. Once that contest was under way, the $Trump coin got a new round of media attention and its value jumped by more than 50%. The more people bought the token, the more Trump and his family profited from crypto transactions that are usually shrouded in anonymity. Since the memecoin’s launch in January, Trump-affiliated businesses received $312m from crypto sales and $43m in other fees, according to a Washington Post analysis of trading data.Of course, US presidents for decades have used private dinners and gatherings to grant special access to wealthy donors and raise funds for their political parties or their own campaigns. But campaign contributions carry legal restrictions on how they can be spent, and US donors can’t remain anonymous and must disclose all of their donations to political candidates. The sweepstakes dinner organized by Trump’s crypto business was not a fundraiser or campaign event – it was a gathering arranged to directly enrich him and his family.Beyond the inherent conflict of Trump doing business within an industry that he has immense power to regulate as president, Trump also opened himself up to foreign influence as his memecoins became a vehicle for foreign actors to funnel money to his family. While Trump’s crypto business has refused to release a list of those invited to last month’s dinner at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, media organizations compiled lists of attenders that included foreign citizens who would normally be forbidden from donating funds to US politicians. (The Washington Post found that nearly half of the top 220 Trump memecoin holders purchased their coins from crypto exchanges that reject US-based customers, meaning they are probably foreign buyers. And 19 of the top 25 buyers, who were invited to a VIP reception with Trump before the dinner on 22 May, and a “special tour” the next day, had bought coins from similar exchanges.)The best-known foreign investor who attended Trump’s dinner was Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire who founded the crypto platform Tron and had spent more than $20m on the president’s memecoins, earning him the distinction of being the contest’s top buyer. In 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission, under Joe Biden’s administration, charged Sun with fraud and market manipulation. But a few weeks after Trump took office, the SEC asked a federal court to pause its lawsuit.What could be behind the SEC’s change of heart about pursuing charges against Sun under the second Trump administration? Sun is one of the top investors in World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture launched by Trump’s family in September. After Trump won the November election, Sun bought $75m in World Liberty tokens, and he was named an adviser to the company.World Liberty is at the heart of another foreign entanglement – and potential conflict of interest – for Trump and the crypto industry. On 1 May, the president’s son Eric and a business partner, Zach Witkoff (who is also the son of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy), announced that an investment fund backed by the government of Abu Dhabi would invest $2bn using a stablecoin – a form of digital currency – offered by World Liberty. That transaction could eventually generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the president and his family.Years before he got into the business, Trump had dismissed cryptocurrencies as “a scam” which have values that are “based on thin air”. But Trump changed his tune dramatically when he met with the highest-paying customers of his personal memecoin at last month’s dinner. “The past administration made your lives miserable,” Trump told his guests, referring to a Biden administration crackdown on crypto companies. And then the president promised to do things differently: “There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto.”Already, the Trump administration has been pushing to deregulate the industry and in April instructed the justice department to disband a unit that focused on investigating crypto-related fraud. Last year, a federal judge sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded the now bankrupt FTX crypto exchange, to 25 years in prison for perpetuating one of the largest financial frauds in modern history, and bilking his customers out of billions of dollars.Once Trump dismantles regulation and law enforcement of the industry, he has promised to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet”. And the president will continue to enrich himself and his family along the way.

      Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University More