A MAGA-world civil war erupted yesterday when a social media post on American culture turned into a pitched battle over race, immigration and billionaires versus the working class, Axios' Ben Berkowitz and Zachary Basu write. - Why it matters: The fight exposes one of the MAGA movement's deepest contradictions. It came to prominence chiefly via the white, less-educated, working class — but is now under the full control of billionaire technologists and industrialists, many of them immigrants.
The battle royale on X sets up a tense MAGA vs. DOGE moment that could infect the early stages of President-elect Trump's second presidency. - While some want to make America great by restricting immigration and promoting the American worker, others want to cut costs and increase efficiency no matter who does the work.
 How it happened: The skirmishes started Sunday when Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his adviser on AI policy.
- Krishnan's appointment triggered an anti-Indian backlash on social media, based largely on his past advocacy for lifting caps on green cards.
Vivek Ramaswamy escalated the conflict into a full-blown war yesterday with a tweet blaming an American culture that "venerated mediocrity over excellence" for the growth in foreign tech workers. - "This can be our Sputnik moment," he wrote. "We've awaken[ed] from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump's election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness."
Elon Musk's X is the town square for the MAGA movement. By stepping into that square and firmly criticizing American culture — while praising the immigrant work ethic and parenting model — Ramaswamy threw down a gauntlet. - Musk tried to defend his DOGE co-leader and explain his argument, framing it as using immigration to supplement, rather than replace, American workers.
- "Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning," Musk wrote.
 Between the lines: The problem for many MAGA adherents was accepting the very notion of immigrants telling them America needs more immigration to fill lucrative jobs in America.
- It revived old tensions around the H-1B visa, which is reserved for people who "perform services in a specialty obligation" but practically speaking has become a crucial tool of Silicon Valley's growth.
 Ramaswamy's parents immigrated from India, the home country of as many as 75% of petitioners in recent years for an H1-B visa.
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