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    Minnesota’s Boundary Waters are pristine. Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ could pollute them forever

    The story is co-published with Public Domain, an investigative newsroom that covers public lands, wildlife and government
    A little-known provision of Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would open thousands of acres of public lands at the edge of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness to a foreign-owned mining company.The move amounts to a giveaway “in perpetuity” to a company that has lobbied in Washington for years, environmental campaigners say, potentially opening up one of the US’s most famous wilderness areas to water-pollution risks.Earlier this month, conservationists cheered when Congress withdrew from the reconciliation bill several provisions that would have sold off hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land in Nevada and Utah. Those provisions had sparked fury among public land advocates and staunch opposition even from some Republicans, including the representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, who vowed to oppose the bill if the land sell-off provisions were retained.Despite that fury, a lesser-known public lands giveaway remained in the reconciliation bill. If approved as currently written, the provision could lease in perpetuity land near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness, an enormous complex of pristine lakes and untrammeled forests, to Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta PLC.Becky Rom, the national chair of Save the Boundary Waters, a campaign to protect the wilderness area from mining, described the provision as “a giveaway of critical and sensitive federal public land forever to a single mining company”.“It is a giveaway,” Rom added. “This is forever.”An ‘irreplaceable’ wilderness areaFirst set aside by Congress in 1964, the 1.1m-acre Boundary Waters canoe area wilderness, as it is officially known, is the only large-scale protected sub-boreal forest in the lower 48 states. Each year, about 150,000 visitors come to partake in the all-American tradition of canoe travel and enjoy a pristine landscape where wolves, moose, loons, bears and bald eagles thrive. Those who come to explore it help contribute to Minnesota’s $13.5bn outdoor recreation economy. According to the US Forest Service, the landscape contains “healthy forests with extremely high water quality”. It is “irreplaceable”.But the Boundary Waters also sit atop mineral-rich lands. Antofagasta has for years sought to develop a copper and nickel mine on public land near the wilderness, amid the headwaters that feed its famous lakes. The company and its American subsidiary, Twin Metals Minnesota, came close to success during the first Trump administration, which overturned an Obama-era denial and renewed mining leases for the project.The Biden administration, recognizing the threat the proposed mine posed to the environment, subsequently rescinded those discretionary leases, arguing that they were legally deficient. The Biden administration also issued an order that prohibited mining for 20 years in the portion of the Superior national forest where Antofagasta wants to extract copper and nickel. Twin Metals Minnesota, which declined to comment for this story, filed litigation to fight the Biden policies in court. That lawsuit is ongoing.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, the companies went to Capitol Hill in their quest to build their mine, which they say will directly employ more than 750 people and could revitalize “the entire region”. In the last three years alone, Antofagasta and Twin Metals have poured more than $1.6m into lobbying efforts in Washington DC, according to OpenSecrets.Among the lobbying shops they retained is Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the powerful firm that was the longtime home of David Bernhardt, interior secretary during Trump’s first term. Brownstein’s employees and its political action committee, in turn, were together among the top 10 donors last election cycle to the campaign committee of representative Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, the powerful chair of the House natural resources committee.Last month, that lobbying apparently bore fruit. Westerman’s committee unveiled its portion of the president’s reconciliation bill and it contained a major win for Antofagasta and Twin Metals.The bill, which passed the House and is now being considered by the Senate, includes provisions that rescind the Biden administration’s 20-year mining prohibition in the Superior national forest and grants Twin Metals 20-year mining leases to pursue its copper-nickel project on nearly 6,000 acres (2,500 hectares) of public land near the Boundary Waters. It also grants Twin Metals rights in perpetuity to lease renewals and it prohibits judicial review of the leases, meaning that citizens cannot sue to challenge them. Only one party retains rights to judicial review per the legislation: Twin Metals. If the federal government fails to comply with the reconciliation bill, Twin Metals can sue to enforce it.“The reconciliation bill compels the issuance of four leases forever,” said Rom. “To get there it expressly overrides four federal laws, it expressly overrides BLM regulations, so all of those rules that apply to everybody else in the world, the laws, the regulations, for Antofagasta they don’t apply.”“There is a heavy hand in here,” she added. “The heavy hand of Antofagasta.”Pollution fears and pushbackNeither Antofagasta nor Westerman’s office responded to requests for comment. Twin Metals has said its mine will provide a supply of strategic minerals that are important to national security and the emerging green energy economy.For conservationists like Rom – who grew up helping her father run an outfitting business in the Boundary Waters wilderness and has since spent decades working to protect the wilderness area – the major threat from Twin Metals’ proposed mine is water pollution. That threat was described in a 2016 letter by the US Forest Service, when it initially denied its consent to the Twin Metals mine leases during the waning days of the Obama administration. There is “inherent potential risk that development of a regionally-untested copper-nickel sulfide ore mine within the same watershed as the BWCAW might cause serious and irreplaceable harm to this unique, iconic, and irreplaceable wilderness area”.The agency’s letter particularly drew attention to the risk of acid mine drainage, a potent form of water pollution that is a well-known risk of the sort of sulfide-ore mining that Twin Metals and Antofagasta wish to undertake. Any drainage from the “mine workings and mining wastes are likely to be highly acidic”, the agency said of the Twin Metals mine. Any failure to contain such waste could have “potentially severe consequences for the BWCAW” and could “cover a very broad region”.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenTwin Metals Minnesota has denied that acid mine drainage will be a potential threat, calling it a “nonissue”.As the reconciliation bill moves through the Senate, conservationists as well as their allies in Congress are hoping it will be stripped out of the bill before it lands on Trump’s desk. They argue, among other things, that the bill’s Twin Metals provision may run afoul of Senate rules governing the reconciliation process, which disallows the body from including “extraneous provisions” in budget bills.Among the opponents of the Twin Metals provision is Minnesota’s junior senator, Tina Smith, though the state’s congressional delegation is split on the issue.“Senator Smith strongly opposes the reckless Republican provision in the US House-passed Big Beautiful Bill that would give a foreign conglomerate full permission to build a copper-nickel sulfide mine right on the doorstep of the Boundary Waters watershed,” wrote a spokesperson for Smith in a statement to Public Domain. “By including this language in their massive budget bill, Republicans in Congress have made it clear they don’t care about the science or the data, which shows unequivocally that this type of mining poses an unacceptable risk and stands to irreversibly pollute this pristine wilderness.” More

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    Elon Musk signals he may back down in public row with Donald Trump

    Elon Musk has suggested he may de-escalate his public row with Donald Trump after their spectacular falling out.The Tesla chief executive signalled he might back down on a pledge to decommission the Dragon spacecraft – made by his SpaceX business – in an exchange on his X social media platform. He also responded positively to a call from fellow multibillionaire Bill Ackman to “make peace” with the US president.Politico also reported overnight that the White House has scheduled a call with Musk on Friday to broker a peace deal after both men traded verbal blows on Thursday.The rolling spat – which played out over social media and in a Trump White House appearance – included the president saying he was “very disappointed in Elon” over Musk’s criticism of his tax and spending bill. Musk also said the president’s trade policies would cause a recession and raised Trump’s connections to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Musk had responded to a Trump threat to cancel his US government contracts on Thursday with a post on X stating he would retire his Dragon spacecraft, which is used by Nasa. However, responding to an X user’s post urging both sides to “cool off”, Musk wrote: “Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”Musk also appeared to proffer an olive branch in a reply to a post from the hedge fund owner Ackman, who called on Trump and Musk to “make peace for the benefit of our great country”. Musk replied: “You’re not wrong.”Politico also reported a potential peace call between Musk and the White House, claiming Trump’s aides had worked to persuade the president to tone down his public criticism of the Tesla owner before arranging the phone conversation for Friday.After a brief interview with Trump about Thursday’s Musk implosion, Politico reported that the president displayed “an air of nonchalance” about the spat. “Oh it’s OK” Trump said, when asked about the dispute. “It’s going very well, never done better.” Referring to his favourability ratings, Trump added: “The numbers are through the roof, the highest polls I’ve ever had and I have to go.”Politico reported that Trump’s aides had urged the president to focus on getting his tax and spending bill through the Senate instead of clashing with Musk, with one of his Truth Social posts reflecting a less confrontational tone. “I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform, before adding that the tax cut legislation was one of the “Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress”. More

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    The inevitable Trump-Musk feud is finally here – and it’s pathetic | Moira Donegan

    Ever since the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, threw his financial weight behind Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and appeared hopping around idiotically behind the candidate at a rally stage, political observers have wondered what would instigate the two men’s inevitable falling out.Would it be a matter of competing egos, with each man resenting the power and influence of the other? Would it be a matter of clashing cultures, with Trump’s sleaze rubbing the wrong way against Musk’s Silicon Valley creepiness? Would it be an ideological clash, with the paleocon nationalists of Trump’s dwindling inner circle turning against Musk’s cadre of teenage Doge hackers and cosmopolitan techno-reactionaries?It was bound to be something. Trump, after all, is not known for his ability to maintain cordial alliances – not even with those who have been as useful as Musk has been. Trump’s first term, to say nothing of his pre-presidency career, was marked by soured alliances, public remonstrances against onetime partners, and brief, disastrous tenures by employees and advisers who quickly left, angry. Musk, meanwhile, is known for his uncommonly odious personality, a management style that is euphemistically called “mercurial”, and his own increasingly erratic behavior, which includes clashes with a harem of women bearing his children, an allegedly problematic and escalating drug habit, and rumored bladder problems. It’s not just that these are not very smart guys; it’s that they are guys whose power and money has inflated their egos to such a pathological extent that they are no longer stable, or even especially functional. They would be sad enough cases if their personal deteriorations did not have world-historical consequences; if they hurt only themselves and did not create so much needless suffering for others. As it is, these men were bound to turn on one another and their inevitable fight was bound to reorient the Republican party – casting doubt on the unsteady coalition of new media types, manosphere influences and money that had carried them to victory in 2024.When it finally came this Thursday – with Trump and Musk posting increasingly hostile invective against one another on their respective proprietary social media platforms, Truth Social and X – the fight seems to have been largely about money. Trump posted that Musk had left the administration angry at cuts to electric vehicle subsidies and called for government contracts with Musk’s companies to be cancelled; for his part, Musk began a series of posts in which he claimed that Trump was named in the government’s Epstein files – “That is the real reason they have not been made public,” he said – and reposted tweets calling for Trump to be removed from office. Musk claimed credit for Republicans’ 2024 victory, and called Trump “ungrateful”. Tesla stocks plunged. Soon various rightwing media and Trump-world figures began getting in on the action, lining up behind Trump or Musk with the frightened, needful air of children whose parents are divorcing.Trump seems to have soured on Musk some weeks ago, when it became clear that Doge, Musk’s frenetic and aggressive extra-legal, cost-cutting venture that had sought to gut the federal bureaucracy in pursuit of the billionaire’s libertarian worldview, was chaotic, inefficient, and above all, wildly unpopular. Musk, meanwhile, was angered by Trump’s trade war, which threatened the value of his companies, and by the Trump domestic policy bill, which cut the federal subsidies for electric cars that have benefitted Musk’s auto company, Tesla.For his part, Musk has always had enemies within the Trump camp: Steve Bannon, the rightwing nationalist, had in fact always hated the South African billionaire, even if they shared a love of certain arm gestures. Unflattering leaks about Musk began appearing in the press, some of which seemed intended to embarrass him. Musk launched a media tour announcing his departure from the Trump administration and hinted at his frustration with the Trump administration and a broader anti-Washington grievance. He began posting about his distaste for the president’s bill; on his last day at work in the Oval Office, he showed up with a black eye.The feud creates new pressures for Republican politicians, who must now choose between angering Musk, whose money could fund a primary challenge to any of them, and provoking Trump, whose approval can make or break their political careers. And it presents a unique opportunity for Democrats, who now have an unprecedented opening to kill the Trump bill, exploit instability in the Republican coalition and widening fractures within the Maga coalition, and remind their voters that the Trump regime is not only corrupt but also incompetent – spiteful, petty and unable to agree on anything except for a shared desire to loot the government and deprive the people for the sake of further enriching the billionaire class.The Democrats have long been tepid and uncertain in the face of Trump’s second term, with a gun-shy and easily spooked party leadership scolding progressive politicians and the activist base alike to not oppose Trump-Musk, but to let them implode on their own. Now they have. The moment has come. It is up to the Democrats not to waste it.

    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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    Trump travel ban comes as little surprise amid barrage of draconian restrictions

    Donald Trump’s first travel ban in 2017 had an immediate, explosive impact – spawning chaos at airports nationwide.This time around, the panic and chaos was already widespread by the time the president signed his proclamation Wednesday to fully or partially restrict foreign nationals from 19 countries from entering the United States.Since being sworn in for his second term, Trump has unleashed a barrage of draconian immigration restrictions. Within hours of taking office, the president suspended the asylum system at the southern border as part of his wide-ranging immigration crackdown. His administration has ended temporary legal residency for 211,000 Haitians, 117,000 Venezuelans and 110,000 Cubans, and moved to revoke temporary protected status for several groups of immigrants. It has moved to restrict student visas and root out scholars who have come to the US legally.“It’s death by 1,000 cuts,” said Faisal Al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices, which was among several immigrants’ rights groups that challenged Trump’s first travel ban. “And that’s kind of the point. It’s creating layers and layers of restrictions.”Trump’s first travel ban in January 2017, issued days after he took office, targeted the predominantly Muslim countries of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. The order came as a shock – including to many administration officials. Customs and Border Protection officials were initially given little guidance on how to enact the ban. Lawyers and protesters rushed to international airports where travellers were stuck in limbo. Confusion spread through colleges and tech companies in the US, and refugee camps across the world.This time, Trump’s travel ban came as no surprise. He had cued up the proclamation in an executive order signed on 20 January, his first day back in the White House, instructing his administration to submit a list of candidates for a ban by 21 March. Though he finally signed a proclamation enacting the ban on Wednesday, it will not take effect until 9 June – allowing border patrol officers and travellers a few days to prepare.The ban includes several exemptions, including for people with visas who are already in the United States, green-card holders, dual citizens and athletes or coaches traveling to the US for major sporting events such as the World Cup or the Olympics. It also exempts Afghans eligible for the special immigrant visa program for those who helped the US during the war in Afghanistan.But the policy, which is likely to face legal challenges, will undoubtedly once again separate families and disproportionately affect people seeking refuge from humanitarian crises.“This is horrible, to be clear … and it’s still something that reeks of arbitrary racism and xenophobia,” Al-Juburi said. “But this does not yield the type of chaos that January 2017 yielded, because immigration overall has been upended to such a degree that the practice of immigration laws is in a state of chaos.”In his second term, Trump has taken unprecedented steps to tear down legal immigration. He has eliminated the legal status of thousands of international students and instructed US embassies worldwide to stop scheduling visa interviews as it prepares to ramp up social media vetting for international scholars.The administration has arrested people at immigration check-ins, exiled asylum seekers to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, and detained scholars and travellers at airports without reason. Although Trump’s travel ban excludes green-card holders, his Department of Homeland Security has made clear that it can and will revoke green cards as it sees fit – including in the cases of student activists Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The first Muslim ban was very targeted, it was brutal, it was immediate, and it was massive,” said Nihad Awad, the executive director at the Council on American–Islamic Relations. “Now, the administration is not only targeting nations with certain religious affiliations, but also people of color overall, people who criticise the US government for its funding of the genocide in Gaza.”And this new travel ban comes as many families are still reeling and recovering from Trump’s first ban. “We’re looking at, essentially, a ban being in place potentially for eight out of 12 years,” said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council. “And even in that period where the Biden administration lifted the ban, it was still very hard for Iranians to get a visa.”Iranian Americans who came to the US fleeing political persecution back home, who couldn’t return to Iran, have in some cases been unable to see their parents, siblings or other loved ones for years. “You want your parents to be able to come for the birth of a child, or to come to your wedding,” Costello said. “So this is a really hard moment for so many families. And I think unfortunately, there’s much more staying power for this ban.”Experts say the new ban is more likely to stand up to legal challenges as his first ban. It also doesn’t appear to have registered the same intense shock and outrage, culturally.“The first time, we saw this immediate backlash, protests at airports,” said Costello. “Now, over time, Trump has normalized this.” More

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    Judge blocks Trump’s ban on Harvard’s foreign students from entering the US

    A district judge in Boston has blocked the Trump administration’s ban on Harvard’s international students from entering the United States after the Ivy League university argued the move was illegal.Harvard had asked the judge, Allison Burrough, to block the ban, pending further litigation, arguing Trump had violated federal law by failing to back up his claims that the students posed a threat to national security.“The Proclamation denies thousands of Harvard’s students the right to come to this country to pursue their education and follow their dreams, and it denies Harvard the right to teach them. Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the school said in a filing to the judge.The filing also argued that the national security argument was flawed as the ban did not stop the same people from entering the country, it only barred them from entering to attend Harvard.Harvard amended its earlier lawsuit, which it had filed amid a broader dispute with the Republican president, to challenge the ban, which Trump issued on Wednesday in a proclamation.White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson earlier called Harvard “a hotbed of anti-American, antisemitic, pro-terrorist agitators”, claims that the school has previously denied.“Harvard’s behavior has jeopardized the integrity of the entire US student and exchange visitor visa system and risks compromising national security. Now it must face the consequences of its actions,” Jackson said in a statement.The suspension was intended to be initially for six months but can be extended. Trump’s proclamation also directs the state department to consider revoking academic or exchange visas of any current Harvard students who meet his proclamation’s criteria.The Trump administration has launched a multifront attack on the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges.Harvard argues the administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.Trump’s directive came a week after Burroughs announced she would issue a broad injunction blocking the administration from revoking Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, who make up about a quarter of its student body.Harvard said in Thursday’s court filing that the proclamation was “a patent effort to do an end-run around this Court’s order”.The university sued after the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, announced on 22 May that her department was immediately revoking Harvard’s student and exchange visitor program certification, which allows it to enrol foreign students.Noem’s action was temporarily blocked almost immediately by Burroughs. On the eve of a hearing before her last week, the department changed course and said it would instead challenge Harvard’s certification through a lengthier administrative process.Wednesday’s two-page directive from Trump said Harvard had “demonstrated a history of concerning foreign ties and radicalism” and had “extensive entanglements with foreign adversaries”, including China.It said Harvard had seen a “drastic rise in crime in recent years while failing to discipline at least some categories of conduct violations on campus”, and had failed to provide sufficient information to the homeland security department about foreign students’ “known illegal or dangerous activities”.The school in Thursday’s court filing said those claims were unsubstantiated. More

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    Trump news at a glance: President’s union with Musk up in flames as feud publicly spirals

    The relationship between the richest man in the world and the most powerful one has spectacularly exploded, as Elon Musk publicly agreed Donald Trump should be impeached and linked him to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Musk stepped down from his role as a special government employee on 28 May after showing discontent with Trump’s tax spending bill, officially known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but had until this week stayed relatively restrained in his remarks.But in series of posts on Thursday, the tech billionaire turned aggressively against the president, who had also begun publicly mocking Musk.“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. His comments came after Trump threatened to cut subsidies for Musk’s companies as it would save “billions” and accused Musk of acting out of self-interest.Here are the key stories at a glance:Musk calls for Trump to be impeached as extraordinary feud escalatesAmid the feud, Musk responded to a social media post in which a prominent Musk supporter and right-wing activist suggested Trump should be impeached and replaced by the vice-president, JD Vance, to which Musk replied, “Yes”.The Musk-Trump alliance began to unravel publicly earlier this week, when Musk described the tax spending bill as a “disgusting abomination” that the tech billionaire highlighted would add $2.4tn to the deficit over the next decade, citing a non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimate.Read the full storyTesla shares plunge, wiping $152bn off companyTesla shares dropped by about 14.2% on Thursday at market close, wiping roughly $152bn off the value of the company as the feud between Musk, the company’s CEO, and Trump erupted into full public view. One of Musk’s complaints was that Trump was looking to scrap a subsidy that helps Americans buy EVs, including those made by Tesla.Read the full storyEyes on Senate Republicans as Trump and Musk feud over tax and spend billAmid the dramatic row, eyes are now turning to Republican lawmakers weighing whether to pass the so-called One Big, Beautiful Bill Act in the Senate. It was approved by just a single vote in the House of Representatives with no Democratic support last month.Read the full storyTrump says it may be better to let Ukraine and Russia ‘fight for a while’Trump has said it may be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” rather than pursue peace immediately, as the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, urged him to increase pressure on Russia.Read the full storyUS sanctions four ICC judgesThe United States is imposing sanctions on four judges from the international criminal court for what it has called its “illegitimate actions” targeting the United States and Israel. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced the sanctions in a statement, targeting Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini-Gansou of Benin and Beti Hohler of Slovenia.Read the full storyTrump and Xi Jinping to meet in ChinaTrump said he had accepted an invitation to meet Xi Jinping in China after a phone conversation on trade was held between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies. In a post on Truth Social, the US president said the “very good” call lasted about 90 minutes and the conversation was “almost entirely focused on trade”.Read the full storyHegseth says Nato allies ‘very close’ to hiking defence spending target to 5%The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said Nato allies were “very close, almost near consensus” to an agreement to significantly raise targets for defence spending to 5% of GDP in the next decade.Read the full storyChinese students facing US visa ban say their lives are in limboChinese students in the United States are questioning their future in the country after the state department announced last week that it would “aggressively” revoke visas for Chinese students and enhance scrutiny of future applications from China and Hong Kong. The Guardian’s Amy Hawkins shares their stories.Read the full story.What else happened today:

    Trump has heaped criticism on the former German chancellor Angela Merkel for opening up her country to refugees, telling her successor: “I told her it shouldn’t have happened.”

    A leading TV weatherman in Florida has warned viewers on air that he may not be able to properly inform them of incoming hurricanes because of cuts by the Trump administration to federal weather forecasting.

    Joe Biden accused Trump of “distraction” after he launched an investigation into the former Democratic president’s time in office, claiming Biden’s top aides had covered up his cognitive decline and taken decisions on his behalf.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 4 June 2025. More

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    Trump v Musk: the two worst people in the world are finally having a big, beautiful breakup | Arwa Mahdawi

    If you paid attention during physics class you will remember the third law of ego-dynamics. Namely: when two egos of equal mass occupy the same orbit, the system will eventually become unstable, resulting in an explosive separation and some very nasty tweets.To see this theory in action please have a gander at the dramatic collapse of the Donald Trump and Elon Musk bromance. The news has been a nonstop horror show for what feels like forever. Watching two of the very worst people in the world direct their nastiness at each other is extremely cathartic.While I won’t contain my glee, I will collect myself long enough to go over the backstory. First, as you know, Musk spent $277m to help get Trump elected. If this happened somewhere else we would call it corruption and the US might invade the country to install democracy. But this is the US we’re talking about, so it was fine.After Musk donated all those quids, Trump provided the quo. Musk got his Doge gig, through which he weakened all the agencies that were regulating his businesses in the name of saving the US a load of money.This is the point where things started to go wrong and Musk’s reputation started to tank. Over the years the billionaire had managed to convince a depressingly large number of people that he was some sort of genius rocket man with anti-establishment views. Once he became part of the establishment, however, and started slashing federal jobs, a lot of people started to get annoyed with how much influence he had over their lives.Musk may be a space cadet but even he could see how much he was destroying his brand. It didn’t help, of course, that Tesla shares were dropping.So a week ago he did the sensible thing and announced that he was leaving his role with the Trump administration. Rather more interestingly, however, the “first buddy” publicly criticized Trump’s marquee tax bill. Whispers of a rift between Musk and Trump started circulating.At first when Musk parted ways with the Trump administration I thought the public divorce might be smoke and mirrors: a mutually beneficial PR exercise. Trump got rid of a creepy weirdo who nobody liked and kept causing him problems. Musk got to show his worried investors that he was putting all his energy back into the companies he’s supposed to be running. Rumours of a fallout, I thought, were greatly exaggerated.On Thursday, however, things escalated to the point where I don’t think this fallout can possibly be manufactured or exaggerated.Thursday afternoon, you see, is when the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein entered the chat. Writing on the social network he spent billions buying, Musk tweeted: “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” To be extra messy he added: “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”It’s worth noting that Musk, a man who reportedly foists his sperm on every woman of a certain age that he meets, has a well-documented history of calling other people sex offenders. The self-sabotage probably started when he called the British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth a “pedo guy” in 2018, without any justification, after Unsworth helped rescue 12 boys trapped in a Thai cave. Musk, in case you had forgotten, had made a lot of noise about how he was going to rescue the kids with a very special little submarine. He did not, in fact, rescue any children and Unsworth hurt the billionaire’s feelings when he suggested Musk “stick his submarine where it hurts”.Still, while Musk does not think before he tweets, this seems a tad reckless even for him. It certainly goes well beyond the bounds of “manufactured PR brawl” and enters “burning bridges” territory. And, of course, having been in bed with the guy you’ve just implied was in Epstein’s circle doesn’t exactly make you look good does it?As well as tweeting about Epstein, Musk also said Trump would have “lost the election” if he hadn’t intervened with his hundreds of millions. Musk also suggested that he might start a new political party.Trump, meanwhile, hasn’t exactly been holding his tongue. He called Musk “crazy” and threatened to cut off government contracts with the billionaire’s companies.So is this the end of a big, beautiful friendship? Is it, as conspiracy theorist and Trump ally Laura Loomer put it: “a Big beautiful breakup”?While it feels like it, we should remember that Trump has kissed and made up with his haters before. While the president has very thin skin (all that bronzer can wreak havoc on the epidermis), he’s also a pragmatist.Just look at “Little Marco” AKA Marco Rubio AKA the secretary of state. Before the 2016 election, Rubio described Trump as a “con artist” and suggested he had bladder issues. Trump, meanwhile, called Rubio a “nervous basket case” who was the sweatiest person he’d ever met. “It’s disgusting,” he said. “We need somebody that doesn’t have whatever it is that he’s got.” Various other barbs were exchanged but, almost a decade on, all seems to be forgiven. The two men are now as thick as thieves.It’s also possible that, as a simple woman, I can’t comprehend the testosterone-infused intricacies of what’s going on with Musk and Trump. Conservative commentator Jack Posobiec helpfully tweeted: “Some of y’all cant handle 2 high agency males going at it and it really shows. This is direct communication (phallocentric) vs indirect communication (gynocentric).”Still, while there may eventually be some sort of reconciliation, I for one am enjoying the drama. I think we all are. Well, maybe not Kanye West AKA Ye. On Thursday the disgraced rapper tweeted: “Brooooos please nooooo […] We love you both so much.” As Musk might say himself: bet you did Nazi that coming. More

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    Musk calls for Trump to be impeached as extraordinary feud escalates

    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