I don’t know how Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly got my phone number, but a text from him landed the other day with a thud.

“Elon Musk came after me again,” said the text. Sure, sure — I knew it was a ploy for cash, but I was intrigued.

Turns out the impetuous billionaire had gratuitously insulted Kelly after the senator had posted a long thread on X about his recent trip to Ukraine.

“What I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people,” wrote Kelly. “Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin.”

Musk’s reaction: “You are a traitor.”

Let that sink in, to quote Musk himself.

Kelly is an American patriot. He flew 39 combat missions as a U.S. Navy pilot during Operation Desert Storm. Later, as a NASA astronaut, he twice commanded the space shuttle.

Musk, by contrast, left South Africa at age 17 in part to avoid compulsory military service.

His puerile insult brought to mind the infamous remark then-presidential candidate Donald Trump made in 2016 about Republican Sen. John McCain, also of Arizona, a Navy pilot who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

“He’s a war hero ‘cause he was captured,” said Trump, who ducked the Vietnam draft by claiming he had bone spurs. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

I don’t know which billionaire is less suited to wield power in a democracy, Musk or Trump. Neither has a lick of empathy, an indispensable trait in a great leader.

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan last month. “So we’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.”

Musk recently reposted a meme denigrating Americans who receive federal benefits as “the Parasite Class.” This from someone whose empire, including Tesla and Space X, were built with billions of dollars in government funding, i.e. your tax dollars.

Musk’s frosty attitude toward his fellow humans helps explain why he is able to sleep at night while denying lifesaving food and medicine to people in the many undeveloped countries that used to be helped by the U. S. Agency for International Development, the first of the programs he’s been trying to chain-saw out of existence.

Trump and Musk’s slash-and-burn approach to government, to the economy, to relationships with traditional allies, and the way they have reduced the White House to a Tesla dealership amply demonstrate their lack of concern for the American people. (Have you checked your 401(k) balance lately?)

But more important, their actions show they are not really interested in an efficient government, the putative reason Musk became, essentially, co-president.

It’s hard to keep track of all the lawsuits that have been filed accusing the pair of illegally slashing government agencies and programs. Their method is pure madness.

Take their plan to cut by half the workforce of the Internal Revenue Service. According to Washington Post contributor Natasha Sarin, a Yale Law School professor who served as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in the Biden administration, IRS layoffs at the scale promised would “very conservatively, lead to a $400-billion increase in uncollected taxes over the next decade. It could easily mean more than $2 trillion in losses.”

On Thursday, federal judges in California and Maryland ruled that thousands of federal workers across 19 agencies had indeed been fired illegally and ordered their reinstatement. Thanks to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a name George Orwell would have been proud to dream up, the country now finds itself mired in a legal morass that could last years.

Anyway, the U.S. Constitution was never designed with efficiency in mind. The founders created a system of checks and balances specifically to prevent concentrating power in the hands of one person. Our supine Republican Congress, in fear of alienating Musk and Trump, has abdicated its role in this critical balance, handing over control of the purse strings to Trump and Musk.

“When you have an efficient government,” President Truman once said, “you have a dictatorship.”

In their fecklessness, Musk and Trump are perfect for each other. They are the political reincarnation of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, the tragically self-absorbed couple in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”

“They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together,” wrote Fitzgerald, “and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

And oh, what a mess Trump and Musk have made.

The question now is whether Americans will stand up to this terrible twosome and wrench our democracy back from their grasping little hands.

Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian

There is this big debate about where the line is between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel’s government. Where is that line for you? I’ve criticized the Israeli government, and I’ve criticized Netanyahu, as you know. Criticism of Israel and how it conducted the war is not antisemitic. But it begins to shade over, and it shades over in a bunch of different ways. When you use the word “Zionist” for Jew — you Zionist pig — you mean you Jewish pig. There was an incident on the New York subway and a bunch of people got on, protesters or whatever, and said, “All the Zionists, get off.” When the head of the Brooklyn Museum, who was Jewish, but the Brooklyn Museum had nothing to do with Israel or taking positions on Israel — her house is smeared in red paint. That’s antisemitism. And a lot of the slogans that people use either are or slide into antisemitism. The one that bothers me the most is genocide. Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people, a whole nationality of people. So if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened. In fact, the opposite happened. And Hamas is much closer to genocidal than Israel. And I told Netanyahu, I said to him what I thought: You gotta reduce the number of casualties and make sure aid gets in and stuff like that. Here is the difficulty: Hamas has a different way of waging warfare, of using innocent Gazans as human shields. They put rockets in hospitals. They put their military supplies in schools. What is a country supposed to do when rockets are being fired from a school? So Israel’s been in a much more difficult position because of what Hamas did. And it’s not that Israel is above criticism. Of course it is not above criticism. But Hamas — I’m sorry, it matters so much to me. I feel so deeply about it. No one blames Hamas. I mean, the news reports every day for a while showed Palestinians being hurt and killed. I see the pictures of a little Palestinian boy without a leg, or one that sticks in my head, there’s a little girl, like 11, 12, crying because her parents were both killed. I ache for that. But on the news, they never mention that Hamas used the Palestinian people as human shields. And so when these protesters come and accuse Israel of genocide, I said, “What about Hamas?” They don’t even want to talk about Hamas.

One final thing. This is very important. Jewish people were subject, at least in my judgment, to the worst genocide ever. I put in the book, on the day they got Kyiv, the Nazis asked 33,000 Jews to line up by a trench, strip naked, and they shot them all dead. Every day Auschwitz killed 20,000 people. My family was killed from a place called Chortkiv in western Ukraine. And this was vicious and horrible. And it is vicious of the opponents to call this genocide. Criticize it? For sure. Say Israel went too far? For sure. And you know what it does? It increases antisemitism, because they’re making Israel and the Jewish people look like monsters, which they are not.

I will say, it’s a word that a U.N. special committee has used. Please. The U.N. has been anti-Israel, antisemitically against Israel. [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan was my idol. He became famous when in 1976 [it was 1975] they tried to pass a resolution, Zionism is racism. To say that the Jewish people should not have a state when every other people should have a state is antisemitism, the old double standard, ipso facto. And the international organizations, I have no faith in them being fair. These same international organizations, when horrible things go on in Darfur or China or wherever, they look the other way.

I’m curious how you think about how protests should be addressed, considering the context of what you just said. The Trump administration just announced it’s pulling $400 million in funding from Columbia University, giving the reason as “relentless violence, intimidation and antisemitic harassment.” I’m wondering what you make of that. Columbia did not do enough. I criticized them. And believe me, I believe in free speech, I believe in the right to protest, as you read in my book. I started my career protesting the Vietnam War. I say to some people, “If I were your age, I’d be protesting something or other.” So I get that, and I love it, and it’s about America. But when it shades over to violence and antisemitism, the colleges had to do something, and a lot of them didn’t do enough. They shrugged their shoulders, looked the other way. Columbia among them. So what did they do? They took away $400 million. I’m trying to find out what they took away. Are they taking away money from cancer research, or Alzheimer’s? What is the $400 million? It could be hurting all students. Students who go there who have nothing to do with the protest, students who might have protested peacefully, or Jewish students who were victims of some of those protests. So I think we have to see. My worry is that this $400 million was just done in typical Trump fashion: indiscriminately, without looking at its effect.

What do you make of what happened last weekend when ICE arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate who is Palestinian, an activist and a green-card holder, who was one of the few participants in last year’s campus protests to identify himself publicly. Apparently Trump has made good on his campaign pledge and is set to deport him because of his participation. I don’t know all the details yet. They’re trying to come out, and there’ll be a court case which will determine it. If he broke the law, he should be deported. If he didn’t break the law and just peacefully protested, he should not be deported. It’s plain and simple.

Hours after President Donald Trump invoked a wartime law to target terrorist organization Tren de Aragua (TdA) Saturday, a federal judge ruled the law could not be used to deport five Venezuelans and ordered the plane they were believed to be on to return to the U.S.

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows deportation of natives and citizens of an enemy nation without a hearing, has been invoked three times, during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.

All Venezuelan citizens 14 years or older who are members of TdA, are within the U.S. and are not naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the U.S. may be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed as “alien enemies,” according to Trump’s proclamation.

‘WEAPONIZED MIGRATION’: US FACES DEADLY CONSEQUENCES WITH MADURO IN POWER, VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION WARNS

Hours before the proclamation was signed, a lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy Forward and the ACLU of the District of Columbia, claiming it could be used to deport any Venezuelan in the country, regardless of whether they are a member of TdA.

At a hearing Saturday afternoon, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the D.C. Circuit granted a temporary restraining order preventing the deportation of the five Venezuelans, who had already been in federal custody for two weeks.

Two planes that may have been en route to deport illegal immigrants were ordered returned by the judge. However, it is unclear as of Saturday night if they have done so.

“Tonight, a DC trial judge supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans. TdA is represented by the ACLU,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “This order disregards well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk. The Department of Justice is undeterred in its efforts to work with the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and all of our partners to stop this invasion and Make America Safe Again.”

The Trump administration appealed the restraining order, alleging it is improper to delay a presidential act before it is announced, affiliate FOX 32 Chicago reported.

Peruvian police transfer several members of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization in Lima Oct. 5, 2023. (Cris Bouroncle/AFP via Getty Images)

“The United States is not at war, nor has it been invaded. The president’s anticipated invocation of wartime authority — which is not needed to conduct lawful immigration enforcement operations — is the latest step in an accelerating authoritarian playbook,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, wrote in a statement. 

“From improperly apprehending American citizens to violating the ability of communities to peacefully worship to now improperly trying to invoke a law that is responsible for some of our nation’s most shameful actions, this administration’s immigration agenda is as lawless as it is harmful.”

An in-person hearing on the lawsuit’s merits is scheduled for D.C. Monday.

Police officers search for evidence in apartment buildings at 12th and Dallas in Aurora, Colo., Dec. 17, 2024. (Fox News Digital)

The move fulfills a campaign promise made during an October rally, when Trump announced he would use the law to combat Tren de Aragua (TdA) members in the U.S.

Tren de Aragua (TdA), designated a foreign terrorist organization Feb. 20 by the Department of State, has thousands of members, many of whom the White House says have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”

Colorado officials confirmed TdA occupied entire apartment complexes in Aurora, noting a special task force had to be established to combat its activity.

TRUMP TO INVOKE WARTIME ALIEN ENEMIES ACT OF 1798 TO FAST-TRACK DEPORTATIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

As of Sept. 11, 2024, the Aurora Police Department linked the gang to nearly a dozen people, resulting in eight arrests. 

“Two of the eight individuals who were taken into custody were involved in a July shooting at one of the specific properties in the city that have experienced issues with TdA activity,” according to a statement. “In line with these arrests, we can also now confirm that criminal activity, including TdA issues, had significantly affected those properties.”

Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, right (Fox Nation)

CLICK HERE FOR MORE IMMIGRATION COVERAGE

The White House said the gang has continued to engage in mass illegal migration to the U.S. to “further its objectives of harming United States citizens,” undermining public safety.

TdA operates in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolás Maduro regime-sponsored narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela, and commits brutal crimes, including murders, kidnappings, extortion and human, drug, and weapons trafficking, according to the White House.

It grew significantly while Tareck El Aissami served as governor of Aragua between 2012 and 2017. In 2017, El Aissami was appointed vice president of Venezuela. 

Soon after, the Treasury Department designated El Aissami a specially designated narcotics trafficker under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, and he remains a U.S. fugitive.

In 2020, Maduro and other regime members were charged with narcoterrorism and other crimes in an alleged plot against America.

Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano and Bradford Betz contributed to this report.