President Donald Trump and billionaire inventor Elon Musk had a major falling out last month after the tech magnate publicly campaigned against Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, calling it a "disgusting abomination."
The world's most powerful man and the world's richest man subsequently traded barbs online — Trump threatening to terminate Musk's governmental subsidies and contracts and Musk both threatening to decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and suggesting that "the real reason" the Epstein files had not been made public was because Trump was somehow implicated in them.
There were, however, some signs of a possible reconciliation.
Trump, for instance, said of Musk during a June 9 press conference, "We had a great relationship and I wish him well — very well, actually." Musk, expressed regret over some of his more incendiary posts aimed at the president, deleted them, and stated, "They went too far."
Musk has since crossed the Rubicon, kicking off an anti-MAGA campaign and announcing the formation of a new political party he says "is needed to fight the Republican/Democrat Uniparty."
'The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS.'
The announcement was poorly received by many inside the MAGA coalition. Trump was especially critical of Musk's announcement, noting Sunday evening on Truth Social, "I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely 'off the rails,' essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks."
RELATED: The political future of Elon Musk
"He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States — The System seems not designed for them," continued Trump. "The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS, and we have enough of that with the Radical Left Democrats, who have lost their confidence and their minds!"
As Trump indicated, third parties — such as the Libertarian or Green parties, failed Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang's Forward Party, and even President Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party — have long proven unable to make a meaningful splash. It certainly does not help Musk that 57% of voters already have an unfavorable opinion of him, according to a national Quinnipiac University poll released last month.
In addition to suggesting that Musk's animus was fueled by the BBB's elimination of "the ridiculous Electric Vehicle Mandate, which would have forced everyone to buy an Electric Car in a short period of time," Trump indicated that Musk was angry that he pulled his nomination for Jared Isaacman to run NASA.
"I was surprised to learn that he was a blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before," wrote Trump. "Elon probably was, also. I also thought it inappropriate that a very close friend of Elon, who was in the Space Business, run NASA, when NASA is such a big part of Elon's corporate life."
It appears that Musk, who spent more than $270 million last year in hopes of getting Trump elected and lost key tax credits for Tesla as a result of the BBB, has long entertained the idea of forming another party.
While recognizing that it was "not realistic," he suggested in May 2022 that "a party more moderate on all issues than either Reps or Dems would be ideal."
It's clear the billionaire began taking the idea more seriously in recent weeks.
On June 5, he asked his global audience on X, "Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?" Of the over 5.6 million people worldwide who responded, 80.4% said, "Yes."
On Independence Day, Musk ran a similar poll, this time asking his followers in and outside of America whether he should create the America Party and promising to do so the day after Trump signed his administration's signature legislative achievement. Over 1.24 million users cast votes, with 65.4% saying, "Yes."
Musk's plan for 2026, he said, is to "laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts. Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people."
RELATED: 'There's nowhere to go': Will Elon Musk stop the AI Antichrist — or become it?
Tesla investors appear unsettled by Musk's grand strategy. Shares in the company fell nearly 8% in pre-market trading.
"Musk diving deeper into politics and now trying to take on the Beltway establishment is exactly the opposite direction that most Tesla investors want him to take during this crucial period for Tesla," Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities, wrote. The moves, he added, are "just causing exhaustion from many investors."
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Evers clearly did not appreciate being put in his place.
In the wake of the ruling, Evers claimed that the majority-liberal court's decision was "unconscionable."
Republicans, meanwhile, celebrated the ruling, in one instance throwing leftists' NoKings hashtag back at them.
State Sen. Julian Bradley (R) noted that the governor's "ridiculous and unlawful veto that held up money to teach kids to read has been UNANIMOUSLY ruled unconstitutional," adding that "even the far left-wing justices couldn't find a way to justify @GovEvers' actions. #NoKings."
Wisconsin's Republican-led legislature sued Evers in April 2024 over his partial veto of a bill intended to help fund literacy programs in the Badger State.
Senate Bill 971 empowered the GOP-controlled state Joint Committee on Finance to direct $50 million set aside in the biennial budget to specific Department of Public Instruction programs created after the budget bill passed, including the literacy coaching program, the DPI's Office of Literacy, and grants for early literacy curriculum.
While Evers approved SB 971, he improperly exercised partial-veto power to strike certain sections of the legislation in part and others in full that he claimed overly complicated "the allocation of funding related to literacy programs in Wisconsin by creating multiple appropriations for what could be accomplished with one."
'Wisconsin families are the real winners here.'
The Democratic governor suggested further that his actions would ensure greater flexibility in meeting the "investment needs for coaches, grants, and professional development alike."
While Evers may partially veto an appropriation bill under Article V, Section 10(1)(b) of the Wisconsin Constitution, this was not an appropriations bill.
The Republican legislators' complaint noted that if the governor mistakenly believed SB 971 was an appropriations bill, "he should have requested the legislature recall the bill in order to pass both houses of the legislature with the proper vote." After all, any bill that appropriates funds must pass both chambers with a roll-call vote — something that had not taken place in this case.
The complaint noted further that the unconstitutional partial veto of SB 971 left the legislature in a dilemma: While the JCF wanted to fund the appropriate literacy programs, "any money directed under the partially vetoed version of [SB 971] might (but should not) be treated by DPI as money that can be used by the Office of Literacy for any nondescript 'literacy program' of DPI's invention."
The Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with the Republican legislature against Evers Wednesday and torpedoed his narrative concerning the JCF, which he suggested had been wrong to withhold funds.
The court noted that the Wisconsin Constitution "does not authorize the governor to partially veto a non-appropriation bill, which the governor may veto only in its entirety."
"We hold the governor breached his constitutional boundaries because the bill he partially vetoed was not an appropriation bill," said the ruling. "We also hold JCF did not improperly withhold funds the legislature appropriated to JCF."
As a result of the court's decision, SB 971 as passed by the state legislature — without Evers' changes — is the law.
The Associated Press suggested that the Wisconsin Supreme Court's ruling might also result in the legislature pushing budget and other spending bills in a similar manner to get around Evers' future partial vetoes, thereby securing greater control over spending.
State Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R) and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) said in a joint statement that the ruling "is a rebuke of the Governor’s attempt to break apart a bipartisan literacy-funding bill and JCF's constitutional authority to give supplemental funding to agencies."
"While the governor wanted to play politics with money earmarked for kids' reading programs, it is encouraging to see the court put an end to this game. Wisconsin families are the real winners here," they added.
Evers did his best to spin his efforts and pin the holdup of funds on Republicans, writing, "I will never apologize for fighting for our kids and our schools. Not today, not ever."
"Twelve lawmakers should not be able to obstruct resources that were already approved by the full legislature and the governor to help get our kids up to speed and ensure they have the skills they need to be successful," continued Evers. "It is unconscionable that the Wisconsin Supreme Court is allowing the legislature's indefinite obstruction to go unchecked."
The Democratic governor urged the JCF to immediately release the $50 million before the money goes back into the state's general fund next week.
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Republicans are having more babies than Democrats, and the difference has only increased in the Donald Trump era.
Several reports, along with data from the National Center for Health Statistics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show a clear relationship between red and blue counties and their fertility rates.
Not only do fertility rates get higher the more a county votes for Republicans, but the contrast with Democrat counties is growing stronger over time.
'We need a culture that values our children intrinsically.'
According to a data analysis by the Institute for Family Studies, Trump support equals more families. For every 10% increase in Trump votes in 2024, there is an expected fertility rate increase of 0.09 in a woman's lifetime.
The IFS also noted that in counties that had less than 25% of their votes going to Trump, like D.C., the median fertility rate was 1.31. In counties with a more than 75% vote share for Trump, the median fertility rate was 1.84. Of course, 2.1 or above is the ideal replacement rate, but the contrast is still large.
Moreover, the gap in fertility rates has grown by 85% in the last 12 years.
In the Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney era of 2012, there was an 8% fertility difference between red and blue counties. According to the IFS, that difference has more than tripled to a 26% difference in 2024.
RELATED: America last: Hillary Clinton lets truth slip about illegal aliens and low US birth rates
In counties with more than 100,000 people, the "most Democratic" voter turnout correlates with a drastically lower fertility rate than the rest of the country, with a 1.37 birth rate. While moderate Democrat numbers are closer to the American average, the swing is big toward the "most Republican" counties, which average a 1.76 birth rate.
The Republican fertility advantage can be directly attributed to marriage, says Grant Bailey, research associate at IFS.
"Republicans (and conservatives) marry at higher rates, and married adults have much higher fertility rates than do singles," Bailey told Blaze News. "With that said, even within marriage, conservatives have more children than their liberal peers."
Bailey explained that even many married liberals never have children, and that drives an even bigger divide between the fertility rates across party lines.
RELATED: Hormonal birth control: As bad for you as smoking
"It’s no secret that birth rates have been in free fall worldwide for decades and that continuing on our current course will spell economic and social disaster for many," Erika Ahern told Blaze News.
Ahern, an author at CatholicVote and a mother of seven, said that increasing a family’s demand for children requires "a shift in how we as a society value children and family altogether."
Ahern added, "Instead of emphasizing the cost and inconvenience of children, we need a culture that values our children intrinsically."
According to CDC data, the top 10 states with the highest birth rates in 2023 were Republican, and the bottom 10 were Democrat.
South Dakota is the only state with a birth rate above 2, at 2.01. Nebraska, North Dakota, Alaska, and Louisiana round out the top five.
On the bottom end, Vermont has just a 1.3 birth rate, the worst in the nation. Other than Oregon, which ranks 48th on the birth rate list, the Northeast dominates the bottom of the rankings. Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island are all near the bottom, with birth rates of 1.4 or below.
In 2022, Vermont, Wyoming, and Delaware had the fewest births by state in the country, with five states having fewer than 10,000. This can be attributed to population size for all but Vermont, which came in last on the CDC's fertility rate rankings for 2022.
California had by far the most births of any state in 2022, approximately 420,000, but nowhere near the highest fertility rate; it was 11th worst.
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Vice President JD Vance is not exactly a shrinking violet. The Marine veteran who rose from relative poverty to become second in command of the world's greatest nation has a habit of seeking out fruitful confrontation.
At the Munich Security Conference in February, for instance, Vance told European officials to their faces that they were stepping toward tyranny and turning their backs on the values they once shared in common with the United States. Just weeks later, he bashed the U.K.'s censorship regime with leftist British Prime Minister Keir Starmer seated right next to him in the Oval Office.
While he has long participated in fiery exchanges with Democratic lawmakers and other antagonists, both in person and on Elon Musk's X, Vance evidently wanted to bring the conversation to leftists on their own turf.
The vice president created an account Wednesday on the liberal Twitter knockoff Bluesky. Things went off the rails pretty quickly.
Vance kicked off his Bluesky residency by writing, "Hello Bluesky, I've been told this app has become the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis. So I'm thrilled to be here to engage with all of you."
'I might add that many of those scientists are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids.'
Accompanying his initial post was a screenshot of the Supreme Court's majority decision in United States v. Skrmetti, in which the court upheld Tennessee's ban on sex-change genital mutilations and sterilizing puberty blockers for minors — clearly a touchy subject for the Bluesky crowd.
RELATED: Sacrificing body parts and informed consent to the sex-change regime
Vance highlighted a portion of the decision in which Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "There are several problems with appealing and deferring to the authority of the expert class. First, so-called experts have no license to countermand the 'wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.'"
Roberts noted further in the excerpt, "Contrary to the representations of the United States and the private plaintiffs, there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children. Third, notwithstanding the alleged experts' view that young children can provide informed consent to irreversible sex-transition treatments, whether such consent is possible is a question of medical ethics that States must decide for themselves."
Vance added in a follow-up message, "To that end, I found Justice Thomas's concurrence on medical care for transgender youth quite illuminating. He argues that many of our so-called 'experts' have used bad arguments and substandard science to push experimental therapies on our youth."
"I might add that many of those scientists are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids," continued Vance. "What do you think?"
— (@)
Regardless of whether Vance's intention was to troll the netizens of Bluesky, the result was the same.
Apoplectic leftists immediately piled into the comments various smears and accusations. Many threatened to report Vance in hopes of getting him banned for some perceived offense or another.
The attacks were, however, interrupted roughly 12 minutes after Vance's first post when the platform suspended him, according to Axios reporter Marc Caputo.
Leftists looking to vent were confronted with a message that read, "Not found. Account has been suspended."
RELATED: Runaway judges, rogue rulings — and JD Vance is having none of it
Despite the appearance that Vance's account may have been suspended because of his politics or perhaps because he shared a court ruling that struck at the heart of the sex-change regime, Bluesky claimed in a statement obtained by Forbes, "Vice President Vance's account was briefly flagged by our automated systems that try to detect impersonation attempts, which have targeted public figures like him in the past."
"The account was quickly restored and verified so people can easily confirm its authenticity," continued the statement. "We welcome the Vice President to join the conversation on Bluesky."
As of Thursday morning, Vance's initial posts were buried in negative comments, although he had netted over 7,500 followers. According to the user tracker Clearsky, he had been blocked by over 81,000 users at the time of publication.
Blaze News reached out to the vice president's office for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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The Minnesota man who is suspected of killing a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband was caught by police hiding in a rural field, but who he is and possible motives only get murkier as more information is revealed.
Vance Boelter also allegedly took the life of the Hortmans' golden retriever, Gilbert; shot Democratic state Senator John Hoffman and his wife in their home; and had stacks of No Kings flyers that were recovered in his car. While some have claimed that Boelter was a Trump supporter, the discovered flyers, which simply said “No Kings,” in reference to the nationwide anti-Trump protests, have caused some confusion.
“I mean, none of this makes any sense,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray of “Pat Gray Unleashed” comments. “Nobody knows necessarily his motivation. They are calling it political.”
The last time Boelter is known to have been a registered Republican was over 20 years ago in Oklahoma.
But it gets weirder, as Boelter is married, but he has a roommate.
“How is he married, and he has a roommate? I don’t understand this situation. His roommate says he was a big Trump supporter,” Gray explains, noting that his wife was found with passports, food, cash and a loaded-up car.
“Was he going to abandon the roommate and take off with his wife?” Gray asks, dumbfounded, though he does know one thing. “I think we have an idea what kind of guy he is: a psycho murdering kind of guy.”
“Man, what a weird situation,” he adds.
Keith Malinak notes that even stranger, Hortman recently cast a vote that caused issues between her and her own party.
“She’s the one that crossed party lines to go and vote and stop this health care for illegals in Minnesota, which is strange because she’s really extreme left on many issues,” Malinak says.
To enjoy more of Pat's biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Democrats lost the White House and the U.S. Senate in November and were unable to make sufficient headway in the House to make their hysterical opposition to Republican initiatives insurmountable. In the months since, they have continued losing in various ways, especially in the way of public confidence.
The disapproval rating for the party as a whole was 58.3% as of May 25, according to polling by the Economist and YouGov. A new CNN survey conducted by SSRS and published June 1 revealed that only 16% of Americans figure the party's leaders as strong and only 19% of respondents indicated the party was capable of getting things done.
The Democratic Party has apparently lost a lot more than face and confidence — it no longer has a stranglehold on the middle class, a critical demographic that accounts for roughly half the electoral pie.
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten built up to this revelation on Monday, noting first that when it comes to the economy, Americans just trust Republicans more.
When asked which political party's views were closer to their own on the economy, 38% of respondents said the Republican Party in a CNN survey. Thirty-one percent said the Democrats' views were representative.
"How is that possible, Democrats? How is that possible after all the recession fears? After the stock markets been doing all of this?" said an exasperated Enten, simulating market ups and downs with his hand. "After all the tariffs that Americans are against? And Republicans still hold an eight-point lead on the economy — are you kidding me?"
CNN talking head Kate Bolduan appeared keen for Enten to paint a silver lining on this bad news for Democrats, but he was unable to deliver. Instead, Enten noted that other polling data similarly suggests Americans regard the GOP as the party with the better economic plan.
'Donald Trump and the Republican Party have taken that mantle away.'
"The Republicans still hold an advantage on the all-important key issue of the day," said Enten. "And that is the reason why, even if Donald Trump's approval ratings are a little bit lower than they used to be, Republicans are not out of the ballgame because they still have a clear advantage on the economy."
Enten was not finished burdening Bolduan with bad news for Democrats.
He suggested that Democrats have for decades — since at least 1989 — held a significant, double-digit advantage over Republicans with the middle class. Enten noted, however, that the Democratic Party's advantage had slipped in recent years to a negligible lead, "well within the margin of error."
"Now, in our latest CNN poll, among registered voters, 'which is the party of the middle class?' It is tied," said Enten. "This, I think, speaks to Democratic ills more than anything else. They have traditionally been the party of the middle class. No more. Donald Trump and the Republican Party have taken that mantle away."
'A key advantage for Democrats historically has gone Adios amigos.'
According to a 2024 Gallup poll, 54% of Americans identify as part of the middle class.
There are numerous factors at play here besides former President Joe Biden's disastrous time in the White House, a few of which were highlighted by the New York Times earlier this year.
RELATED: Democrats are just noticing a long, deep-running problem
The Times noted that while Democrats rushed to pin their estrangement from the working and middle classes on the party's embrace of gender ideology and woke policies, Democratic leaders' prioritization of consumers over workers; promotion of job-killing climate and globalist initiatives; and shift away from unions hurt the relationship.
When asked which was the party of the middle class, 34% of respondents in the CNN survey said the Democratic Party, 32% said the Republican Party, and 33% said neither party.
"A key advantage for Democrats historically has gone adios amigos," said Enten. "And now there is no party that is the party of the middle class. Republicans have completely closed the gap."
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Every so often, some prominent person gives himself a dopamine boost by loudly declaring that the American two-party system is “broken,” and thus “it’s time” for “a third party.” Elon Musk is the latest, and the fact that he’s the richest person on Earth doesn’t make the idea any less naive and superficial. Musk last […]
The court unanimously rejected lawsuits seeking to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries more to the left's liking.
The Democrat-run police department 'has repeatedly released criminal aliens into the community' for at least a year, says the AG's office.
A new study of voting records found that congressional lawmakers are less conservative than the voters they work for in 41 out of 50 states, according to The Institute for Legislative Analysis. “While one may expect the most conservative lawmakers in Congress to represent the deepest red states, the data proves this is simply not […]
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