As the U.S. competes for essential tech metals, calls for establishing a Critical Minerals Czar (or special envoy or task force) are plentiful and palpable, and this should be a priority of the Trump

Instead, you will see images of J.D. Vance’s face, artificially stretched, bloated, and reddened, Photoshopped onto a Minion — or the Kevin James meme, or Butter Pants from Shrek, or the Las Vegas Sphere.

The beauty of social media’s algorithmic culture is that engagement of any kind often begets more of that content in one’s feed. Every time Vance clicks on a picture of himself, even out of disgust, it’ll catalyze the system to show him even more. (It’s a special kind of torture we’ve built, isn’t it?)

The AfD’s appeal to Vance, Musk and others in President Trump’s orbit is its shared distrust of E.U. regulations, limits on speech as they apply to the far right, and, perhaps above all, the AfD’s signature opposition to immigration.

Last year, the vice president made prices a central theme of the GOP election campaign. Now that eggs cost more than ever, he’s gone quiet.