Dear Weekend Jolter,
I'm with Jeff Blehar on the unfolding, can’t-look-away breakup between President Trump and Elon Musk: It was always going to end this way.
The two men were simply too powerful, too mercurial, too confident to keep on as the codependent costars of a political buddy film for four long years.
The only surprise was that it was Musk who made the first move toward their inevitable split, when he torched the "Big Beautiful Bill" on his way out the DOGE door. That was shortly before the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the legislation would add $2.4 trillion to deficits over a decade, even with Republicans setting stricter Medicaid work requirements, among other modest changes. (As NR's editorial puts it, "Democrats say that Republicans are proposing steep cuts and fundamental changes to Medicaid. We wish.")
What followed was a meltdown only Ron Burgundy could adequately summarize. Our editorial on the feud offers a condensed tick-tock (a more detailed timeline can be found here):
"I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore," Musk declared on X a few days ago, in the post that started the unraveling. "This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it."
On Thursday, Trump shot back by contending that Musk was primarily concerned with protecting Tesla's subsidies. Musk accused Trump first of ingratitude and then of being in the Epstein files. Trump said he'd cancel Musk's federal contracts. Musk said he'd decommission the Dragon rockets serving the International Space Station.
And so on.
To put it lightly, this confrontation between whatever is the plural form of colossus got very ugly, fast. Their parting is shaping up to be the messiest divorce either man has gone through, which is saying something. The fact that neither superpower is known for his sense of discretion or proportion is a warning to both that their reputations are in for a beating, unless there’s a de-escalation in hostilities.
As the editorial notes, a smattering of Musk posts later pointed toward a possible cooling of tensions, including on the Dragon capsule. Friday was quieter. In media interviews, though, Trump said he's "not even thinking about" Musk and referred to him as "the man who has lost his mind." Our editors advise: “Both Trump and Musk should heed any better angels that have not already fled the scene.”
But, if you can, put down the popcorn. Practically speaking, in the near-term, Musk's outspoken opposition could throw a wrench into things as the Senate works on the tax-cut-and-spending bill ahead of a self-imposed July deadline. Before things went nuclear, Audrey Fahlberg reported:
The Trump-Musk tension over the president's signature policy bill is forcing congressional GOP leaders to do a careful dance: praising his efforts to claw back federal spending during his time at DOGE while also casting his opposition as a barrier to the president's domestic agenda.
"We had a great, very friendly, very fruitful conversation together," Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) told reporters at a press conference. "Twenty-four hours later, he does a 180 and he comes out against the bill. And it surprised me, frankly." . . .
Navigating Musk's opposition is a tricky political situation for congressional GOP leaders, given the tech CEO's ownership of the influential social media platform X and the possibility that the billionaire could fund primary challengers to any Republican politician at the drop of a hat. The rift has also given fodder to Democrats, who are harshly critical of the bill, mainly over its Medicaid and tax-cut provisions.
Pressed on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon about Musk's opposition to the legislation, House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R., Texas) embarked on a roughly five-minute-long tangent thanking Musk for his work on DOGE while characterizing his assessment of the bill as misguided.
As Audrey writes, some GOP lawmakers suspect Musk's opposition is tied in part to the bill's repeal of electric-vehicle tax credits that would affect Tesla, and he was reportedly frustrated about an ally being denied the top NASA job.
Jim Geraghty offers a broader explanation as to why Musk's frustrations ultimately boiled over, and gets the last words:
I think Elon Musk stands out among most right-of-center leaders because when he made the now-familiar, almost clichéd promise that government should cut spending, he meant it. What's more, Musk was naïve enough to think that other Republicans meant it, too.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On the Boulder attack: The Intifada in America Moves West
California sure has a peculiar way of "complying" with Trump executive orders: California's Trans-Athlete Ruse
On Sam Tanenhaus's long-awaited biography of WFB: A Flawed Portrait of Bill Buckley
ARTICLES
Audrey Fahlberg: Trump Doubles Down on Biden Autopen Allegations: 'Whoever Used the Autopen Was the President'
Rich Lowry: KJP's Latest Ruse
Noah Rothman: The West's Frontline Partners Are Awesome
Noah Rothman: Where Are the Dot Connectors?
Dan McLaughlin: Political Violence Is the Exception — Except for the Palestinian Cause
Dan McLaughlin: 'Climate Homicide' Is a New Front for Ridiculous Lawfare
Elliott Abrams: The Folly of an 'Interim' Agreement with Iran
Jeffrey Blehar: What Did Elon Musk Actually Accomplish, Except His Own Downfall?
John Gerardi: Male Dominates California Girls' High School Track Championship, Exposing Absurdity of State's Half Measures
Brittany Bernstein: There's No Evidence IDF Attacked Gaza Aid Center. U.S. Media Ran with the Hamas Claim Anyway
Abigail Anthony: Test Results Confirm How Bad the Fact-Checking Was on Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif
Matt Weidinger: The One Thing Both Parties Agree On: More Deficits and Debt
James Lynch: Colleges, Medical Schools Openly Flout Anti-DEI Legislation in Red States, Watchdog Finds
CAPITAL MATTERS
Jon Hartley & Joshua Rauh pitch an idea for embedding a critical business tax reform: How to Get More Growth from the Republican Tax Bill
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Brian Allen assesses Trump's intervention in the world of arts and culture: Trump as Art Czar: No, Stranger Things Haven't Happened
Armond White, on a "bizarrely savage view of human history": Tornado Fails History and Genre
THESE EXCERPTS ARE BONA FIDE
What did we think "by any means necessary" and "globalize the intifada" meant? Dan McLaughlin explains why acts of violence such as the one in Boulder last weekend are a natural evolution for anti-Israel agitators wielding this rhetoric:
As I've explained my general rule in the past, "My own long-standing view on political violence is that we should not blame people who have political opinions, even very floridly expressed, when someone who shares those views goes off the deep end and chooses violence." . . .
But there's one glaring exception to that rule: the Palestinian cause. That's because the cause itself is violence, and like the radical Islamist project more generally (of which it is a component), it manifests itself in violence that is both organized internationally and recurrent worldwide, such that even "lone wolf" nutjobs are doing more than overreacting to "globalize the intifada" rhetoric; they are imitating the central modus operandi of the movement.
Put another way: The violence is not incidental to the rhetoric; the rhetoric is incidental to the violence. Sunday's attack in Boulder is only the latest example, following the firebombing of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's home and the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.
Even to describe it as "the Palestinian cause" is misleading. While appeals to Western leftists (and, increasingly, to muddle-headed isolationists on the right) may emphasize the notion that the Palestinian people deserve a homeland, the real energy and activity has always been about eliminating the Jewish homeland and restoring the entirety of the Levant to Muslim rule. That this would require the annihilation of the Jewish population of Israel is a feature, not a bug.
Noah Rothman cheers a stunning battlefield success by Ukraine:
Accounts of the operation read like a science fiction thriller. Over the course of 18 months, Ukrainians constructed hundreds of low-cost quadcopter drones armed with explosive devices, smuggled them into Russia, and piled them into modified mobile cabins. Those cabins were loaded onto trucks where they were ferried to locations adjacent to several Russian airbases. There, the trucks opened remotely, releasing a fleet of suicide drones that executed simultaneous strikes on more than 40 strategic Russian military aircraft.
The strikes were wildly successful. Ukraine claims that roughly 34 percent of the aircraft used to deliver ballistic and cruise missiles to Ukrainian targets were damaged or destroyed — an assessment we shouldn't gainsay since Ukraine did most of the intelligence gathering ahead of this strike. The U.S. did not provide support, Washington insists. Ukraine targeted airfields as far away as Irkutsk, thousands of miles from home. . . .
The aircraft Ukraine disabled — supersonic Tu-22M long-range bombers, Tu-95 flying fortresses, A-50 early warning warplanes, etc. — are not easily repaired or replaced. This isn't the first time Ukraine has targeted Russian military infrastructure and brought Russia's war of choice home, but it is the most comprehensive of those attacks. Vladimir Putin's capacity to sustain his expansionist war depends to some extent on the Russia military's ability to absorb its losses. The more losses, the harder they are to absorb, and the closer we get to a just settlement to this conflict.
The Ukrainian operation has already had other clarifying effects. Russia's insistence that any threat to its nuclear-delivery vehicles could trigger a nuclear response has been revealed as just one more of Moscow's illusory red lines. The vivid illustration of the threat that low-cost drone swarms pose to sophisticated aerial assets should and will light a fire under Western efforts to harden its defenses and speed counter-drone innovation. And the contrast the Ukrainian operation strikes with Russia's conduct of its war is instructive. While Moscow rains rockets, drones, and missiles down on Ukrainian population centers, Ukraine goes to extended lengths to limit its activities to legitimate military targets. Just as Israel's pager attacks could not have been more discreet, Kyiv's circumspection accentuates the glaring moral distinction between the aggressor in this war and the target of its aggression.
America has many reasons to celebrate Ukraine's battlefield successes. Among them, that it provides yet more evidence that America's partners abroad are not the burdens their detractors make them out to be. They are clever and brave, ambitious and steadfast.
Audrey Fahlberg, in the room where it happened:
President Donald Trump dismissed former President Joe Biden's insistence that he "made the decisions" while president, calling his predecessor's regular use of the autopen to sign executive orders a "scandal" in response to a question from National Review in the Oval Office.
Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday directing the White House counsel, Justice Department, and other relevant authorities to investigate the matter, claiming that it has "become increasingly apparent" that White House aides used the president's mechanical signature pen to "conceal Biden's cognitive decline and assert Article II authority."
Trump suggested on Thursday that his predecessor was so cognitively impaired that he wasn't aware of many policy decisions that were made by his White House relating to presidential memoranda, clemency grants, and executive orders, suggesting that White House aides were making those decisions instead.
"He was never for open borders. He was never for transgender for everybody. He was never for men playing in women's sports. I mean, he changed and — all of these things that changed so radically," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, when pressed by National Review for his reaction to Biden's dismissal of the investigation. "I said it during the debate, and I say it now: he didn't have much of an idea of what was going on."
"Essentially, whoever used the autopen was the president," Trump said.
John Gerardi, with a California dispatch:
Clovis, Calif. — Over the weekend, this sleepy San Joaquin Valley suburb of Fresno became the focus of the national transgenderism debate. The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), the governing body for California high school athletics, hosted the statewide track and field championships at Clovis's Buchanan High School, during which a boy, AB Hernandez, dominated several of the girls' events.
Hernandez, a junior from Jurupa Valley High School, located near Riverside, is a boy who claims to be a transgender girl. Under CIF rules and California law, Hernandez has been permitted to compete in girls' sports. On Saturday, May 31, Hernandez took first place in the girls' triple jump, tied for first place in the girls' high jump, and got second place in the girls' long jump.
Yes, that's right, the California state girls' champion in the high and triple jump . . . is a boy.
The Trump administration, alerted that a boy was likely to compete in and win significant competitions in the state track and field competition, began threatening Governor Gavin Newsom with a loss of funding to the state and Title IX enforcement actions if California continued to ignore the president's February 5 executive order banning boys from girls' sports.
CIF changed its policies twice over the course of the week leading up to the championships, but claims it was unable to reach total conformity with the Trump order because of the requirements of California state law. Hernandez was permitted to continue competing in girls' events. However, CIF changed its policies to allow any girl who would have missed out on qualifying because of a transgender athlete to advance to the state competition, and medals and final rankings for the female competitors would be awarded as if the transgender athlete were not competing. In short, Hernandez's participation would not block anyone from qualifying and would not affect their final standings.
Of course, the consequence of this was patently ludicrous. For example, at the end of the triple jump competition, the stadium PA announcer acknowledged two "first place" finishers in the triple jump: Hernandez, who jumped 42' 2.75"; and Kira Gant Hatcher from St. Mary's College High School in Albany, Calif., who jumped 40' 5". Santia Ali from Clayton Valley Charter High School in Concord, Calif., had the third longest jump at 39' 10.75", but was awarded second place.
So Hernandez was competing, but his results were ignored. He essentially competed in a phantom league of his own, where his results would not actually affect the results of the girl competitors, but would certainly distract from their results.
CODA
A couple years back, a reader recommended I make some time for John Prine, a singer-songwriter that I knew little to nothing about but is held in high esteem in the country-folk world. So, to at least start to educate myself, I had casually been looking for a record to pick up, and last weekend, in a Lancaster, Pa., store, I fortuitously came across the late musician's debut.
I see, and hear, what the fuss is about — and where the comparisons to Dylan come from. Here are a couple tracks from that album; I hope you enjoy. (And thanks for the rec, Brooks.)
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