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    Taoiseach must tread carefully amid tensions before Trump meeting

    St Patrick’s Day has long been one of the sacred moments of the Irish-American calendar with more than 200 years of parades in New York and a shamrock reception at the White House launched by Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 to cement political ties between the two nations.But this year’s annual meeting between the taoiseach and the US president, a week early because of a congressional recess on 17 March, is laden with anxiety over the future of Ireland’s economy, which is heavily reliant on US multinationals Donald Trump wants to repatriate.While nobody expects Micheál Martin to be subjected to the same humiliating attack as Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the US president’s unpredictability and thin skin means Ireland’s taoiseach should be prepared for anything on Wednesday.Adding to the tensions was the recent public contradiction by the Irish foreign minister, Simon Harris of an account of a phone call he had with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, whose representatives had said Ireland’s “trade imbalance” had been raised as a priority during the conversation.Harris told reporters: “The trade imbalance wasn’t specifically referenced. I was on the call. I was on it for over 20 minutes. It was a very good conversation.” Some saw it as an untimely poking of the beast.Martin is going to DC with three missions: protecting the Irish economy from Trump’s tariffs, raising the plight of the Palestinians, who have strong public support in Ireland, and pressing home the EU’s request that the US sticks with Europe for another few years to give it the time to build up an independent defence capacity.The Irish prime minister is afforded a full day of events in an unusually long agenda – adding to the risk of being tripped up.Martin will start with a traditional breakfast meeting with the vice-president, JD Vance, before a “stakeout” or questions from the media stationed outside the White House.At about 10am, he will move to the Oval Office to sit down in front of the cameras with Trump before the pair disappear from public view behind closed doors for the bilateral meeting.The delegation will then participate in the House speaker’s lunch, an event usually also attended by the president with other meetings before they all convene again for the Shamrock Bowl reception in the East Room, again hosted by Trump, at about 5pm.“The real risk moment is the media spray,” said one source close to the Irish government, referring to the on-camera press event in the Oval Office before Martin’s private meeting with Trump. In the past this has just been a 15-20 minute session with cameras but Trump has got into the habit of turning it into an unscheduled press conference.As Zelenskyy found recently, this can result in hostile questions or tension between the guest and his host – in Martin’s case, potentially on Palestine or trade.The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, has already complained that it was a nonsense that Ireland “of all places” is running a trade surplus with the world’s biggest economy.Last year Ireland exported €72bn to the US – a 34% increase on 2023 – compared with imports valued at €22bn.The US may also raise EU regulation of the big tech firms such as X, Google, Facebook, Instagram, all of which have their EU headquarters in Dublin.Writing in the Irish Times, historian Eoin Drea was withering about Ireland’s reliance on the US.“No other country in the EU is as hopelessly and naively dependent on the US as Ireland,” he said, warning that at “a stroke of pen” Trump could precipitate a budgetary crisis in Dublin.“Ireland is woefully unprepared for Washington’s new political mantra”, he added.One senior business source concurred: “There is obviously intense diplomacy going on. Brexit shows that we know as a country how to read a risk but this time we have been caught offside.”The source added that the fallout from last year’s European court ruling forcing Apple to pay up €13bn in back taxes was a case in point.“We were embarrassed by it. We didn’t want the money. For years nobody really cared about Americans in Ireland, but now the whole world is paying attention. It means that our trade has now got bound up with politics,” said the business source.They were also scathing about a new taskforce set up by Harris to head off ill winds with the inaugural meeting with business representatives two weeks ago.“It was headless chickens. After about an hour and three-quarters of talking what were we left with? Minutes and a diary line for the next meeting, which is not until May. It was fairly perfunctory.”Former Irish ambassador to the US Daniel Mulhall said he hoped Martin would emerge unscathed from the day-long Trump experience.“You have to remember Trump likes to like people and he likes to be liked. He’s even managed to convince himself that Putin likes him so it’s not a big stretch to conclude that maybe he likes Micheál too,” he said.“But my view is that there is a long established St Patrick’s Day [tradition of] visits by the taoiseach and they carry a certain kind of tone and content. This gives me hope.”Mulhall suggested an invitation to host a special EU-US summit at Trump’s Irish golf resort in Doonbeg in County Clare combining flattery and business.This however is not in Ireland’s gift – such an invitation would have to come from European Council president, António Costa. More

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    US judge blocks deportation of Palestinian activist detained by Ice

    A judge has blocked the deportation of the prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s protests against Israel over the war in Gaza. Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University until this past December who holds permanent US residency, is being detained by US immigration authorities at a facility in Louisiana after his arrest, according to information from officials.A spokesperson for the US’s homeland security department – as well as the country’s top diplomat – confirmed the arrest. In a statement to the Associated Press, a homeland security department spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said Khalil’s arrest was made to support Donald Trump’s presidential orders “prohibiting antisemitism”.The department alleged that Khalil’s activism constituted “activities aligned to Hamas”.Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, also confirmed the arrest, adding on X: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”Jesse M Furman, an Obama-appointed judge in New York’s southern district, announced the block in an order on Monday amid protests over Khalil’s arrest.Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called on the department of homeland security on Monday evening to “produce facts and evidence of criminal activity”.“Absent evidence of a crime, such as providing material support for a terrorist organization, the actions undertaken by the Trump administration are wildly inconsistent with the United States constitution,” Jeffries’ statement read.Khalil served as lead negotiator for the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University last spring. On Monday, an online tracker administered by the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) indicated he was at the LaSalle detention center near the central Louisiana community of Jena. The facility is operated by the private contractor GEO Group.According to Zeteo, which first reported on the arrest, Khalil’s attorneys did not immediately know where he was being detained. The same tracker showing Khalil in custody in Louisiana on Monday indicated on Sunday that he was at an immigration detention center in New Jersey.But when Khalil’s wife, a US citizen who is eight months pregnant, attempted to visit him at the New Jersey center, she was reportedly told he was not there.Khalil was detained by Ice agents despite having a green card and therefore being a permanent US resident. Khalil’s attorney said Ice agents hung up the phone during the detention when she asked if they had a warrant.“The Trump administration’s outrageous detention of Mahmoud is designed to instill terror in students speaking out for Palestinian freedom and immigrant communities,” said Jewish Voice for Peace in a statement on the arrest. “This is the fascist playbook. We all must fiercely reject it, and universities must start protecting its students.”Trump has vowed to target foreign students for deportations as well as “agitators” involved in protests on US college and university campuses. The second Trump administration has made a specific focus of Columbia University, recently announcing the cancellation of $400m in grants over claims the school isn’t doing enough to combat antisemitism.A Zionist activist group, Betar USA, claimed credit for releasing Khalil’s name to the Trump administration, praising his detention. The Anti-Defamation League has listed the group as a hate group – the only Jewish group on the list.“This blatantly unconstitutional act sends a deplorable message that freedom of speech is no longer protected in America,” Murad Awawdeh, president and chief executive of New York Immigration Coalition, said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.“Furthermore, Khalil and all people living in the United States are afforded due process.“A green card can only be revoked by an immigration judge, showing once again that the Trump administration is willing to ignore the law in order to instill fear and further its racist agenda. DHS must immediately release Khalil.”Abené Clayton contributed to this report More

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    State department official reportedly deleted abusive tweets about Rubio

    A top official in the US state department deleted abusive tweets in which he said the then Florida senator Marco Rubio – who is now secretary of state – had a “low IQ” and spread unsubstantiated rumors about his sexuality, CNN reported.In tweets from 7 January 2021, Darren Beattie referred to scurrilous online rumors and added: “Forget the war promotion and the neocon sugar daddies, forget the low IQ, forget the 2016 primary, Rubio is TOUGH ON CHINA (and good for military industrial complex) So be a good DOG and vote for him!!!”The day before, Donald Trump had incited supporters to storm Congress in an attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, an attack Rubio condemned.On 7 January, after repeating baseless innuendo about Rubio, Beattie posted: “Does Marco Rubio have a future in politics?”Rubio served another four years in the Senate before becoming secretary of state under Trump, despite having run against Trump in 2016 and amid widespread criticism of his embrace of policy positions, particularly regarding rapprochement with Russia, that contradict views long held in the Senate.Beattie was a speechwriter in the first Trump administration, until CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, a specialist in unearthing old online content, reported that Beattie attended a white nationalist conference in 2016.After leaving the White House, Beattie founded Revolver News, a far-right website which spread January 6 conspiracy theories. Last month, Beattie was made acting under-secretary of state for public diplomacy, an appointment that stoked protests from Democrats and progressive commentators.Responding to remarks such as “competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work”, the commentator Van Jones called Beattie’s appointment “shameless and despicable” and said the Trump administration was “bring[ing] in people out of the trash can … horrible people who you wouldn’t hire to run a bodega”.On Monday, Kaczynski and fellow CNN reporter Em Steck reported that while Beattie had left most of his offensive comments online, he appeared to have “purged” criticism of Rubio from X, the social media platform owned by the Trump ally Elon Musk.In other now-deleted posts, Beattie called Rubio “fake” and questioned his bona fides as a pro-Trump Republican.Beattie told CNN: “Secretary Rubio is 100% America First and it’s a tremendous honor to work for him in advancing President Trump’s world historical agenda.”Rubio has declined to comment on Beattie’s appointment.On 5 February, the former senator told reporters Beattie would focus on “not wanting this Department of State to be involved in censorship”, then dodged a question about criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against antisemitism.Asked if he had seen Beattie’s X account, Rubio said, “OK, thank you guys,” and ended the briefing. More

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    The Guardian view on Nigel Farage: not even Donald Trump is as damaging to Reform as its own leader | Editorial

    One constant of British political life is that Nigel Farage never stays out of the spotlight for long. Having built a political career on railing against the establishment – while, paradoxically, embedding himself within it – Mr Farage finds himself embroiled in yet another melodrama. This time, however, the threat comes not from the usual suspects – remainers, the BBC or “woke” elites – but from his own side.The affair revolves around Rupert Lowe, a little‑known businessman, elected as one of Reform UK’s five MPs in 2024 under Mr Farage’s leadership. That should have been the beginning of a forgettable contribution to British public life. Yet, thanks to the intervention of Elon Musk – the world’s richest man and Donald Trump’s “government efficiency” tsar – Mr Lowe has a starring role in Mr Farage’s latest soap opera.Earlier this year the tech billionaire was so annoyed by Mr Farage’s decision to distance himself from the imprisoned far-right agitator Tommy Robinson that he touted Mr Lowe as a possible replacement. Relations between Mr Farage and Mr Lowe have deteriorated since. Their feud burst out into the open this month, culminating this weekend with Reform UK alleging misconduct by Mr Lowe, which he denies. Mr Lowe, who has been suspended from the party and lost its whip in parliament, derides it as a vanity project driven by one man’s ego. He has threatened to sue Reform UK for libel.Mr Farage’s reaction, however, is telling. For all his bravado about free speech, the moment a rival emerges – however minor – his instinct seems to be to cut them down. This is not the first time. His political parties – Ukip, the Brexit party, Reform UK – have operated more like personality cults than democratic organs, and loyalty to the leader has eclipsed ideological purity. Challenging Mr Farage doesn’t end well for those who dare. The difference this time is that Mr Musk’s intervention gives the affair an absurdly transatlantic flavour.This illuminates a larger problem. If Mr Farage’s goal is to broaden his electoral appeal, association with Trumpism is a hindrance, not a help. While Mr Trump retains a firm grip on the Republican party, the US president remains deeply unpopular in Britain, where even Tories see him as a liability. The perception that Mr Farage is too close to Mr Trump and too sympathetic to Vladimir Putin is hurting him in the polls. The opportunist in Mr Farage knows this. His strategy has been to present himself as the plebeian face of rightwing populism – foregrounding his love of pints over his attendance at Mar-a-Lago banquets. Yet the contradictions are piling up.Mr Farage seeks to appear an insurgent, yet he operates like an autocrat. He wants to court the support of Trumpian figures, yet he knows their influence is more likely to repel than to attract British voters. He wants Reform UK to grow – but only under him. For all the bluster, this latest episode only highlights that Mr Farage, like Mr Trump, has always been far better at breaking things than building them. That ought to be a warning to mainstream parties seeking to emulate Trumpian talking points around cutting foreign aid or sacking bureaucrats – especially with an upcoming byelection in a Labour stronghold. If Reform UK eventually ends up on the scrapheap of history, it won’t be because of Mr Lowe or Mr Musk, or even Mr Trump. It will be because, in the end, Mr Farage is his own biggest problem.

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    Canada’s designated PM Mark Carney meets with Trudeau as Trump threat looms

    Canada’s incoming prime minister, Mark Carney, has met with Justin Trudeau as the pair discuss a transfer of power after the former central banker’s landslide victory at the Liberal party’s leadership race.The meeting on Monday sets the stage for an imminent federal election and gives Canada a fresh leader to square off against the United States president, with the two countries locked in a bitter trade war provoked by Donald Trump.Briefly speaking to reporters, Carney said he was “honoured” to receive nearly 86% of the vote, one of the most decisive wins of a party leader in decades.But, the 59-year-old former banker said he had “a lot of wood to chop” as he prepares to assume the reins of a country tearing on the verge of economic calamity.Carney is widely expected to call an election within days, reflecting both the urgency of Canada’s trade war with the United States, and the awkward reality that as prime minister without a seat in parliament, he is unable to attend sessions of the House of Commons.First, however, Trudeau must visit the governor general – the largely ceremonial representative of King Charles – and officially tender his resignation. Carney will then swear oaths of office and allegiance and form a cabinet. This is expected to happen in the coming days.After his meeting with Trudeau, Carney said the transition “will be seamless and it will be quick.’Under Canadian law, an election period must be at least 37 days and no more than 51 days, with the vote falling on a Monday. Party insiders have indicated Canadians will probably vote on 28 April or 5 May.The former governor of the Bank of England and of Canada takes the job of prime minister as Ottawa finds itself at odds with its closest ally and largest trading partner. Last week Trump announced a 25% tax on all Canadian goods, with a carve-out for the automotive and energy sectors. The tariffs have the power to push Canada’s fragile economy into a recession.Carney spent much of his acceptance speech on Sunday evening foreshadowing the theme that will probably define his tenure as prime minister: conflict with the volatile and unpredictable president who has threatened repeatedly to annex Canada.“America is not Canada. And Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape or form,” Carney told supporters. “We didn’t ask for this fight. But Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves,” Carney said. “So the Americans, they should make no mistake, in trade as in hockey, Canada will win.While the Liberals trail slightly in the polls, Carney’s ascension within the party, and Trudeau’s exit, has dramatically revived their chances of eking out a victory in the next election – a result that was widely seen as unthinkable just weeks ago.Carney, a political novice who has never held elected office, also criticised his main political rival: the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre.“Donald Trump thinks he can weaken us with his plan to divide and conquer. Pierre Poilievre’s plan will leave us divided and ready to be conquered,” Carney said. “Because a person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him.”Carney also suggested Poilievre’s partisan nature was a liability in the existential fight for Canada’s future. “His anger isn’t action. His division isn’t strength. Division won’t win a trade war,” he said.Earlier that evening, Poilievre accused Carney of being “sneaky” at a Sunday evening rally in London, Ontario.“And now our Liberal friends, after they’ve caused all this damage, are going to pull a sneaky trick. They’re going to try to get elected for a fourth term. A fourth term by replacing Justin Trudeau with his economic adviser, Mark Carney,” he said. “Carney’s advice drove up taxes, housing costs and food prices, while he personally profited from moving billions of dollars and thousands of jobs out of Canada to the United States.”Carney’s dominant win outshone most expectations and provides the leader with both a strong mandate and a unified party. He won in all 343 of the Liberal party districts. His closest rival, the former finance minister Chrystia Freeland finished a distant second with only 8% of the vote, and was unable to win the most votes in her own district. More

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    The Guardian view on Ursula von der Leyen’s first 100 days: the steepest of learning curves | Editorial

    In a press conference on Sunday to mark 100 days since the beginning of her second term as European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen erred on the side of understatement when asked whether she still considered the US to be an ally. The answer was yes, she replied, before adding that “we have our discussion points without question”.Hard to argue with that. Regarding the war in Ukraine, international trade and existential questions concerning the future of European defence and security, the geopolitical landscape bears no resemblance to the one that Ms von der Leyen looked out upon on 1 December. As Mr Trump and his “America first” outriders have confounded cherished assumptions about the transatlantic alliance, they have also sought to encourage authoritarian nationalism in EU member states.In France and Germany, the fabled engine of European integration, this has been uncomfortably akin to knocking at an open door. In Paris, days after Ms von der Leyen reassumed office, Michel Barnier’s shortlived government collapsed when Marine Le Pen pulled the rug from under it. In Germany, well before Elon Musk and JD Vance championed its cause, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party had reached historically high levels of support that would see it finish comfortably second in February’s snap German election.As Ms von der Leyen put it on Sunday: “Our European values, democracy, freedom, the rule of law are under threat.” The response, from Brussels and in national capitals, needs to be both robust and more expeditious than is often the case in the labyrinthine world of EU policymaking. Happily, the initial signs are positive.The move last week by EU leaders to disapply the bloc’s fiscal rules to military spending, potentially freeing up £670bn, is a significant step towards achieving greater strategic autonomy from Washington. It followed the unveiling of extraordinarily radical proposals in the same week by Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz. Bypassing a constitutional restriction on state borrowing, these are designed to facilitate not only far greater spending on defence, but also on the modernisation of a stagnating economy.After decades in which EU economic policy has been skewed by Berlin’s traditional debt aversion – shared with other “frugal” member states such as the Netherlands and Denmark – this is a very different direction of travel. As Europe exits an era defined by an uncritical commitment to free trade and dependency on the US security umbrella, it is also the right one. Recognising the desire of many member states to formalise common borrowing arrangements introduced following Covid, Ms von der Leyen said “nothing is off the table” in relation to defence. But, as the Draghi report argued last autumn, the same kind of fiscal firepower is required to meet the challenge of the green transition and compete with the US and China for the jobs and future industries of the 21st century.Last month in Brussels, a different kind of centenary was marked when a bust of a former commission president, Jacques Delors, was unveiled. Born in 1925, Mr Delors became the preeminent champion of a “social” vision, in which common EU institutions would deploy pooled resources in order to build a Europe where solidarity and growth were intertwined. That perspective faded from view following the neoliberal turn in the 1980s. As Ms von der Leyen navigates the rest of her five-year term, its time has come again.

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    The making of Elon Musk: how did his childhood in apartheid South Africa shape him?

    With an imposing double-winged redbrick main building, and school songs lifted directly from Harrow’s songbook, Pretoria boys high school is every inch the South African mirror of the English private schools it was founded in 1901 to imitate.Elon Musk, who has rapidly become one of the most powerful people in US politics, spent his final school years in the 1980s as a day pupil on the lush, tree-filled campus in South Africa’s capital, close to his father’s large detached home in Waterkloof, a wealthy Pretoria suburb shaded by purple jacaranda blossoms in spring.View image in fullscreenSouth Africa was rocked by uprisings as apartheid entered its dying years. In 1984, black townships across the country revolted. By 1986, the white minority government had imposed a state of emergency. But in the segregated white enclaves, life was affluent and peaceful.“While the country as a whole was very much in flames and in turmoil, we were blissfully very safe in our little leafy suburbs, going about our very normal life,” said Jonathan Stewart, who was a year above Musk at Pretoria boys, which also counts the Labour politician Peter Hain, the Booker prize-winning novelist Damon Galgut and the murderer and Paralympian Oscar Pistorius among its former pupils.“You had this wealthy set, in relative terms, and everybody else was excluded.”View image in fullscreenMusk, who was born in Pretoria in 1971, railed on his social media platform X last month against the “openly racist laws” of the country of his birth and responded “yes” to the statement: “White South Africans are being persecuted for their race in their home country.”After the posts by the man now at the helm of Donald Trump’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), a special group Trump has created, the US president signed an executive order accusing South Africa’s government of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners, citing a law allowing land to be expropriated in certain circumstances. The order cut aid to South Africa, which receives 17% of its HIV/Aids budget from the US, and offered asylum to Afrikaners.It was not clear the extent to which Musk, who left South Africa in 1989 for his mother’s country, Canada, and then went to the US, had a direct hand in encouraging Trump to issue the order.Trump has taken an interest in the alleged persecution of white South Africans since his first presidency, when an Afrikaner rights group travelled to the US to claim, falsely, that white farmers were being murdered for their land with the complicity of the government. Trump saw one of the group’s leaders interviewed on Fox News and tweeted his support.Trump has also been influenced by other interests, including US groups critical of South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) over the war in Gaza, which he referred to in his executive order.View image in fullscreenBut with Musk now among Trump’s closest advisers, it is unlikely he has not made his views known to the president, given they are also tied up with his business interests in South Africa.Musk has claimed that land reform laws, in a country where the white minority, who make up just 7% of South Africa’s population, still own more than 70% of agricultural land, are racist and amount to theft. He has endorsed claims that the killings of white farmers amount to genocide; research suggests the crimes are financially motivated.Musk’s attacks have ratcheted up at a time when he is in a dispute with the South African government about affirmative action laws, as he tries to sell his Starlink satellite network in the country. The world’s richest man objects to a law requiring that foreign investors in the telecoms sector provide 30% of the equity in the South African part of the enterprise to Black-owned businesses.Trump’s executive order will add to the pressure on South Africa’s government to exempt Musk from the Black empowerment laws.X’s press team and Musk’s lawyer did not respond to interview requests or emailed questions.To what extent Musk’s years growing up under the collapsing apartheid regime influenced his positions today, from making what looked like a Nazi salute – a characterisation he rejects – at Trump’s inauguration celebrations last month to his embrace of far-right political parties such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, remains an open debate.View image in fullscreenWhite, English-speaking South Africans such as Musk’s family benefited from apartheid’s racial hierarchy but lived mostly separate lives from the ruling Afrikaners.Musk spent the first two years of South Africa’s five high school years at the all-white Bryanston high school in Johannesburg’s leafy northern suburbs. Founded in 1968, it is a mixed-sex, English-language, fee-paying state school, made up of rectangular mid-century buildings.Like South Africa then and now, Bryanston high was sports mad. “It was a little bit like when you think of American society,” said Lesley Burns, who finished at the school in 1984, Musk’s first year. “There were all the jocks and the popular guys in the football team.”Musk, who was on the school’s chess team in 1985, was viciously bullied. The hounding culminated with him being thrown down a set of stairs, beaten so badly that he was hospitalised. The school declined an interview.View image in fullscreenMusk’s father moved him and his brother, Kimbal, to Pretoria boys, where he was well liked, according to Gideon Fourie, who had computer science classes with Musk.“He was a very average personality,” Fourie said. “He wasn’t in any way like a super jock, or a super nerd, or a super punk … He had a group of friends.”South African media were subjected to strict government censorship. Newspapers would appear with censored sections blacked out, particularly reports of the growing unrest in the townships and mass arrests, until those were also banned.In contrast, the fee-paying Pretoria boys was liberal, for its time. In 1981 it became the first government school to admit a Black pupil. The then headteacher, Malcolm Armstrong, used a loophole that allowed it to let in the sons of diplomats from the “homelands” within South Africa that the apartheid system claimed were independent states.“Armstrong even defied the authorities by meeting with the ANC [African National Congress] in Dakar while it was still banned,” said Patrick Conroy, who was in Kimbal’s year, two years below Musk. “He frequently addressed our school assemblies, emphasising the importance of democracy, human rights and social justice.”The school’s current headteacher, Gregary Hassenkamp, was also in Kimbal’s year and has similar memories of his predecessor, although he noted that not all teachers shared Armstrong’s liberal views.View image in fullscreen“I remember him forcing boys to think about the country in which we lived and the attitudes we had,” Hassenkamp said in an interview in his wood-panelled office, wearing a flowing black gown and a tie and socks in the school’s red, white and green colours.Musk has previously described himself as “not a conservative” and backed the Democratic candidate in every presidential election going back to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, until he moved to the right. But Musk is clearly suspicious of democracy and the leaders it produces.In the 1930s, his grandfather headed an anti-democratic fringe political movement in Canada with fascist overtones, which campaigned for government by elite technocrats. He then moved to apartheid South Africa because the racist system appealed to him.Musk now appears happy to embrace the US version of the “strongman” ruler by backing Trump’s claim that the will of the president is paramount.Some of Musk’s school peers speculated that his current views of South Africa may be influenced by his missing out on the ups and downs of the negotiations to end apartheid and the “miracle” of Nelson Mandela becoming the country’s first Black president in 1994.Since then, the governments led by Mandela’s ANC party have failed to address the world’s worst economic inequality. While its Black economic empowerment policies offer tax breaks and state contracts to Black-owned companies, Black people are five times likelier than white people to be unemployed. South Africa also has one of the world’s highest murder rates.It is not uncommon to hear white South Africans say they are being discriminated against, often citing affirmative action laws. In mid-February, hundreds gathered outside the US embassy in Pretoria carrying signs with slogans such as “Thank God for President Trump” and “Make South Africa Great Again”.View image in fullscreenWhile it is rare to hear white South Africans say they want a return to apartheid, it is also not uncommon to hear older people express nostalgia for that time.“It was a good time, because we had no crime. There were no problems. People, Blacks and whites, got on very well with each other,” Errol Musk said in a video interview from his spacious Cape Town home, when asked about his son Elon’s childhood. “Everything worked. That’s the reality. Of course people don’t want to hear that, but that’s the truth.”Musk and his two younger full siblings, Kimbal and Tosca, have had a tumultuous relationship with their father. Kimbal told Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson that their father would scream at them for two to three hours, calling them worthless and pathetic. Their mother, Maye, has accused him of physical abuse.“It’s rubbish,” Errol said when asked about the allegations, which he has repeatedly denied.The brothers became estranged from their father in 2017, not for the first time, when he had a child with his 30-year-old stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout, according to Isaacson. In Errol’s telling, they got angry with him when he expressed his support for Trump in 2016, at a party in Cape Town they threw for his 70th and Musk’s 45th birthdays.“Things changed when Biden came in and Elon realised they’re trying to destroy America,” Errol said. “Now we exchange messages about every day. Of course, he’s not always able to answer, so his PA will answer me.”Additional reporting by Chris McGreal More

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    As Wyoming slides further to the right, legislators double down on trans bills

    When Wyoming legislators in 2022 passed a law banning trans girls from competing in middle and high school girls’ sports, the Cowboy State, by its governor’s own estimate, had a grand total of four transgender student athletes competing within its boundaries.Still, in this year’s legislative session, which wrapped up on Friday, trans athletes were again a focus of lawmakers. They introduced bills to extend the ban on trans women in athletics to intercollegiate sports and ban universities from competing against teams with trans women.Lawmakers also proposed legislation requiring public facilities from restrooms to sleeping quarters to correspond with assigned sex at birth, restrooms in public schools to have exclusive use designations by assigned sex at birth, prohibiting the state from requiring the use of preferred pronouns, and establishing legal definitions for “biological sex”, “man” and “woman”.Five of the seven bills made it through the legislature. The volume of proposals spotlights the new conservative vision of the role of government emerging in the state, as well as the Republican divisions on the issue.Debate on trans-focused bills isn’t new to this legislative session. In 2022, Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, described the state’s trans sports bill as “draconian” but still let it pass into law. Last year, 10 bills were introduced on the topic, and the legislature enacted a ban on gender affirming care for minors.Wyoming politicians pushed controversy over the inclusion of a trans woman in a Wyoming sorority in 2022, and in 2024 over the University of Wyoming’s scheduled volleyball game against San Jose State University, whose team has a trans woman. Wyoming ultimately forfeited the game.But the intense focus on the issue comes as Wyoming, never exactly a liberal state, has slid further to the right in recent years, a trend evidenced by an escalation of social issue bills that wouldn’t be out of place in Washington DC or other red-state legislatures.For Santi Murillo, the first trans athlete at the University of Wyoming, the influx of bills has been dehumanizing.“I consider myself to be a good person who contributes back to my community. But because I’m trans, I’m being attacked,” Murillo, who is also the communications director for LGBTQ+ non-profit Wyoming Equality, said. “That’s what a lot of that fear comes from, is being labeled as Santi the trans person, not Santi the cheer coach, not Santi my neighbor.”Several Republican lawmakers who’ve introduced or sponsored trans bills this year said their proposals were aimed at protecting women and girls. “To protect safe spaces and to create level playing fields for women, biological women, that’s the sole intent of these types of bills,” said Republican representative Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, the chair of the state’s newly empowered Freedom caucus and the primary sponsor of “Biological Males in Women’s Sports”.It’s a topic legislators say they have found high on the minds of their constituents. “I have a very conservative rural district, and they just want to see these things addressed and some policies put out,” said Martha Lawley, a Republican representative who sponsored two related bills this session. She said that she heard more about the topic than any other from her constituents in the past year.That concern is new, said Murillo, now 27. Murillo said she didn’t see this level of fear in the Wyoming she grew up in. She transitioned while a cheerleader at the University of Wyoming, which put her squarely in the public eye.“I had a really positive transition experience for the most part. Especially doing so very publicly,” Murillo said. “UW games are huge, especially football games. There’s no hiding there.”Murillo views the current debate as driven by politicians, not people.So does Sara Burlingame, the director at Wyoming Equality. She believes that some see the spotlight on trans issues as an effective wedge issue to both motivate hardline voters to the polls, and split conservatives, much like efforts to ban gay marriage used to.“Far-right Republicans recognized that they used to be able to fundraise and campaign off of gay panic,” Burlingame said. “They’re looking at what hits that sweet spot of lighting up people’s amygdala and getting them all fired up. And they feel like, hey, if someone you know was carrying this message, I would go and vote for them. I would drive myself to the polls.”The focus on trans issues detracts from conversations about other major challenges ahead in the state, Burlingame said, like declining revenues in the gas and oil market that are leaving a gap in public funding. “I think they don’t have a solution for that,” Burlingame said of some Republican legislators. “So their solution is to attack trans kids.”Burlingame sees the hyper-focus on gender as a departure from decades of Wyoming politics that erred toward libertarianism and small government, a departure that sped up this year as Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus became the first chapter of the nationally-based Freedom Caucus to take control of a state house.“In the past, we had old, white, rancher Republican men who had no fondness for different gender identities or sexual orientation,” she said. “But they had a very specific belief in the role of government, and they wouldn’t vote to take anybody’s rights away because they just didn’t believe that was the role of government.”Senator Cale Case is one of those Republicans outspoken in his opposition to the trans bills. Case, in the legislature since 1993, questions what problem they aim to solve, and said their sponsors are driven by fear.“They don’t like to hear the word tolerance. They talk about freedom, and they have lots of bills with freedom in the title, but their bills restrict freedoms,” Case said.Within supporters of the bills, there are divisions, too.Jayme Lien, the representative who brought the What is a Woman Act, said she has not spoken with LGBTQ+ Wyomingites about the bill. Lien pointed towards testimony from the national group Gays Against Groomers, designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a far-right extremist group of self-identified LGBTQ+ people engaged in anti-trans organizing, in support of her legislation and argued that the safety concerns of LGBTQ residents were misplaced.“I just want them to know that this is to protect them as well. And I think in the long run, once it’s implemented into law, they will see that this also protects them and their culture and community,” Lien argued.Republican senator Wendy Schuler brought the state’s 2022 bill limiting trans girls’ access to certain sports team, and she introduced “Fairness in Sports – Intercollegiate Athletics” in this year’s legislative session.Schuler, who competed in five varsity athletics at the University of Wyoming said that she “doesn’t know what the answer is” for transgender athletes in Wyoming, but that her priority is “making sure our biological girls were all taken care of in terms of their access to athletics”.“I understand the trans athletes here, she said. “I totally get where they’re coming from, because I had to sit on the sidelines while I was playing baseball with my brothers.”Schuler said that she consulted with teenagers and some transgender Wyomingites in writing her bills, which lead to exemptions for non-contact sports.While standing firm behind sports bills, Schuler derided the bills focused on bathroom usage and the legal definitions as an ineffective use of legislative time, and indicative of national theatrics meeting Wyoming politics.“In terms of the bathroom stuff, and you know what is a woman and some of these other bills that have come through the pipe this year, I just think we had lots more important things we should have been focusing on,” Schuler said. “But that’s what the social issues of the day seem to be.”In what she owned as a “contradiction”, Schuler voted yes on all three bills that came before her.Schuler said she “thinks the world” of Murillo, and Murillo and Burlingame also spoke kindly of Schuler.For Murillo, having friendships with people she views as infringing on her rights is complicated, but is a sort of necessity when advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in deep-red states.“It’s a totally different kind of ball game,” Murillo said. “Doing this work in a red state, you have to be willing to have those conversations. You have to be willing to set aside those things, find that common ground.”If current political trends continue, Burlingame and Murillo fear that there will be less legislators willing to work out compromises. Wyoming’s 2024 summer primary saw complete Republican upheaval and a glut of mailers, often accusing politicians of a “radical gender agenda”. Case said that there is pressure on elected officials in Wyoming to toe the line, or else.“Some of my colleagues who still have a longer career ahead of them, and also have aspirations, are in agony on every one of these votes. These are good people, friends of mine,” Case said. “I’m not doing that. I’m gonna get pounded for this. It might cost an election. But honestly, I don’t think it’s right and I feel so much better inside.”Murillo said in light of rhetoric surrounding the flood of legislation, she no longer considers Wyoming a safe place to be transgender.“I definitely used to feel safe here, but no, not any more. I feel like the air has just shifted here,” Murillo said. More