Trump

An Iranian spokesperson called the move a sign of a ‘supremacist and racist mentality’ dominating US policy.

Iran has sharply criticised United States President Donald Trump’s travel ban on its nationals and those of several countries, calling it “racist” and a sign of deep-rooted hostility towards Iranians and Muslims.

Trump earlier this week signed an executive order that bars and restricts travellers from 19 countries, including several African and Middle Eastern nations.

The policy, set to take effect on Monday, echoes measures introduced during Trump’s previous term in office from 2017-2021. In the executive order, Trump said he “must act to protect the national security” of the US.

Alireza Hashemi-Raja, who heads the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ department for Iranians abroad, said on Saturday that the decision reveals “the dominance of a supremacist and racist mentality among American policymakers”.

“This measure indicates the deep hostility of American decision-makers towards the Iranian and Muslim people,” he said in a statement.

The latest restrictions cover nationals from Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. A limited ban has also been applied to travellers from seven other countries.

Hashemi-Raja argued that the policy breaches international legal norms and denies millions the basic right to travel, based solely on nationality or faith. He said the ban would “entail international responsibility for the US government”, without elaborating.

The US and Iran have had no formal diplomatic relations since 1980, following the Islamic Revolution.

Despite decades of strained ties, the US remains home to the world’s largest Iranian diaspora, with about 1.5 million Iranians living there as of 2020, according to Tehran’s Foreign Ministry.

Protesters gathered after immigration agents took dozens of people into custody during raids across Los Angeles.

There have been tense confrontations in Los Angeles as riot police and demonstrators – protesting federal immigration raids – squared off in the downtown area.

Earlier on Friday, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents took dozens of people into custody during raids across Los Angeles city.

Caravans of unmarked military-style vehicles and vans loaded with uniformed federal agents streamed through the city as part of the operation.

The ICE agents raided several locations, including an apparel store in the city’s Fashion District, a Home Depot in Westlake District, and a clothing warehouse in South Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles City News Service.

In response, crowds of demonstrators protesting the raids massed outside a jail where some of the detainees were believed to be held and spray-painted anti-ICE slogans on the walls of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers – who did not take part in the immigration raids – were called in to quell the unrest. Wielding batons and tear gas rifles, LAPD officers faced off with the demonstrators after authorities ordered them to disperse on Friday night.

Some protesters hurled broken concrete towards the LAPD officers, the Reuters news agency reports. Police responded by firing volleys of tear gas and pepper spray.

LAPD spokesperson Drake Madison said police on the scene declared the gathering an unlawful assembly, meaning that those who failed to leave the area were subject to arrest, according to Reuters.

It’s not immediately clear how many arrests have been made.

Stoking fear and terror

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass condemned the federal immigration raids, saying they “sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city”.

Caleb Soto, of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told Al Jazeera that between 70 and 80 people had been detained, but only three lawyers have been allowed access to the detention centre where they were being held to provide legal advice.

“The chaotic manner of the raids that we saw today happening throughout Los Angeles and different day-labour worksites and garment worker work sites was an example of the purpose of what this Trump administration has set out to do, which is create as much fear as possible,” Soto told Al Jazeera.

He said the ICE agents conducting the raids did not obtain a judicial warrant required under US law, and granted by a judge if there is probable cause to carry out an arrest because of suspected criminal activity.

Soto said ICE agents were showing up at work sites “where they know that there are a lot of immigrant workers” and “people without documents”, and if someone starts running they use that as “reasonable suspicion” that the person is undocumented.

“They use that as the pretext to start arresting people who are there in that area and around them. We find that to be pretty unconstitutional,” he said.

The Los Angeles raids are the latest sweeps in several US cities over recent months as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Trump, who took immediate steps to ramp up immigration enforcement after taking office in January, has promised to arrest and deport undocumented migrants in record numbers.

In late May, his administration stated it would revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 people in the country, including Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

“We talked before about who will be the player to take them to the World Cup? I think he is the biggest trump card.”

Former Liverpool and Germany midfielder Dietmar Hamann was full of praise for Caoimhin Kelleher after the Republic of Ireland’s 1-1 draw with Senegal.

Kelleher’s resolve was finally broken in the 81st minute after making three big saves to keep the African side out in Dublin.

It has been a big week for the 26-year-old, who left Liverpool to join Brentford for an initial £12.5m, which could rise to £18m with add-ons.

According to former Premier League goalkeeper Shay Given, “in the current climate he’s worth every single penny, if not more”.

“No disrespect to Brentford, but I’m surprised there wasn’t a few more bigger clubs in,” Given said on RTE Sport.

“Unless clubs have gone, ‘let’s have a look at him at Brentford. We know they are a selling club, let’s see him as a number one for a year or two’.

“At 26 years of age he’s still plenty young enough. He looks the real deal”

United States President Donald Trump has imposed a travel ban on 12 countries, with restrictions on seven more.

And it’s not the first one of its kind – Trump issued a similar order in 2017 that focused on Muslim-majority countries.

He says the latest initiative aims to protect national security, but critics say the ban is racist and has nothing to do with safety.

So what is really at stake, and what might Trump gain from the ban?

Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom

Guests:

Yael Schacher – Director for Americas and Europe, Refugees International

Steven Heller – US immigration lawyer

Johanna Leblanc – National security law and US foreign policy specialist

Teams will try to resolve tariffs war amid spats over China’s curbs on rare minerals and US revocation of student visas.

United States President Donald Trump has announced a new round of trade talks with China in an apparent bid to dial down a bitter battle over tariffs between the world’s two biggest economies.

The president said on social media that the meeting would take place in London on Monday, his announcement coming one day after a rare leader-to-leader phone call with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping appeared to calm rising tensions.

“The meeting should go very well,” said Trump in a post on his Truth Social platform, adding that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer would meet the Chinese team.

The talks will mark the second round of negotiations between the two countries since Trump launched his trade war this year, targeting China with levies of up to 145 percent. Beijing struck back with countermeasures of 125 percent.

Following talks in Geneva last month, both sides agreed to temporarily bring down the triple-digit tariffs, with US tariffs cooling to 30 percent and China’s to 10 percent.

But the temporary halt is expected to expire in early August and Trump last week accused China of violating the pact, underscoring deeper differences on both sides.

US officials have accused China of slow-walking export approvals of rare earth minerals, which the country had limited after the tariff war broke out, triggering alarm among US companies.

Other US concerns include alleged fentanyl trafficking, the status of democratically governed Taiwan, and China’s state-dominated, export-driven economic model.

On Wednesday, Trump said on Truth Social that Xi was “VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH”.

However, he reported a “positive conclusion”, following his long-awaited phone call with Xi on Thursday, which likely paved the way for further high-level trade talks – though a swift resolution to the tariffs impasse remains uncertain.

The Chinese foreign ministry said Xi asked Trump to “remove the negative measures” that the US has taken against China, alluding to his administration’s decision to revoke the visas of Chinese students studying in the US.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to pause a court order to reinstate Education Department employees who were fired in mass layoffs as part of his plan to dismantle the agency.

The Justice Department’s emergency appeal to the high court said U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston exceeded his authority last month when he issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs of nearly 1,400 people and putting the broader plan on hold.

Joun’s order has blocked one of the Republican president’s biggest campaign promises and effectively stalled the effort to wind down the department. A federal appeals court refused to put the order on hold while the administration appealed.

The judge wrote that the layoffs “will likely cripple the department.”

But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote Friday that Joun was substituting his policy preferences for those of the Trump administration.

The layoffs help put in the place the “policy of streamlining the department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the administration’s view, are better left to the states,” Sauer wrote.

He also pointed out that the Supreme Court in April voted 5-4 to block Joun’s earlier order seeking to keep in place Education Department teacher-training grants.

The current case involves two consolidated lawsuits that said Trump’s plan amounted to an illegal closure of the Education Department.

One suit was filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts along with the American Federation of Teachers and other education groups. The other suit was filed by a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general.

The suits argued that layoffs left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including duties to support special education, distribute financial aid and enforce civil rights laws.

Education Department employees who were targeted by the layoffs have been on paid leave since March, according to a union that represents some of the agency’s staff. Joun’s order prevents the department from fully terminating them, but none have been allowed to return to work, according to the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. Without Joun’s order, the workers were scheduled to be terminated Monday.

Trump has made it a priority to shut down the Education Department, though he has acknowledged that only Congress has the authority to do that. In the meantime, Trump issued a March order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to wind it down “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

Trump later said the department’s functions will be parceled to other agencies, suggesting that federal student loans should be managed by the Small Business Administration and programs involving students with disabilities would be absorbed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Those changes have not yet happened.

The president argues that the Education Department has been overtaken by liberals and has failed to spur improvements to the nation’s lagging academic scores. He has promised to “return education to the states.”

Opponents note that K-12 education is already mostly overseen by states and cities.

Democrats have blasted the Trump administration’s Education Department budget, which seeks a 15% budget cut including a $4.5 billion cut in K-12 funding as part of the agency’s downsizing.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

The United States Supreme Court has sided with the administration of President Donald Trump in two cases about government records — and who should have access to them.

On Friday, the six-member conservative majority overturned a lower court’s ruling that limited the kinds of data that Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could access through the Social Security Administration (SSA).

In a separate case, the majority also decided that DOGE was not required to turn over records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a government transparency law.

In both cases, the Supreme Court’s three left-leaning justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan — opposed the majority’s decision.

DOGE has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign to reimagine the federal government and cut down on bureaucratic “bloat”.

Unveiled on November 13, just eight days after Trump’s re-election, DOGE was designed to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies”.

At first, it was unclear how DOGE would interact with the executive branch: whether it would be an advisory panel, a new department or a nongovernmental entity.

But on January 20, when Trump was sworn in for his second term, he announced that the existing US Digital Service — a technology initiative founded by former President Barack Obama — would be reorganised to create DOGE.

The government efficiency panel has since led a wide-scale overhaul of the federal government, implementing mass layoffs and seeking to shutter entities like the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

It also advertised cost-savings it had achieved or alleged fraud it had uncovered, though many of those claims have been contradicted or questioned by journalists and experts.

In addition, DOGE’s sweeping changes to the federal government made it the subject of criticism and concern, particularly as it sought greater access to sensitive data and systems.

Up until last week, DOGE was led by Elon Musk, a billionaire and tech entrepreneur who had been a prominent backer of Trump’s re-election bid. Musk and Trump, however, have had a public rupture following the end of the billionaire’s tenure as a “special government employee” in the White House.

That falling-out has left DOGE’s future uncertain.

Accessing Social Security data

One of DOGE’s controversial initiatives has been its push to access Social Security data, in the name of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse.

Early in Trump’s second term, both the president and Musk repeated misleading claims that Social Security payments were being made to millions of people listed as 150 years old or older. But fact-checkers quickly refuted that allegation.

Instead, they pointed out that the Social Security Administration has implemented a code to automatically stop payments to anyone listed as alive and more than 115 years old.

They also pointed out that the COBOL programming language flags incomplete entries in the Social Security system with birthdates set back 150 years, possibly prompting the Trump administration’s confusion. Less than 1 percent of Social Security payments are made erroneously, according to a 2024 inspector general report.

Still, Trump officials criticised the Social Security Administration, with Musk dubbing it “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and calling for its elimination.

In March, US District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander blocked DOGE from having unfettered access to Social Security data, citing the sensitive nature of such information.

Social Security numbers, for instance, are key to verifying a person’s identity in the US, and the release of such numbers could endanger individual privacy.

Lipton Hollander ruled that DOGE had “never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems”. She questioned why DOGE had not sought a “more tailored” approach.

“Instead, the government simply repeats its incantation of a need to modernize the system and uncover fraud,” she wrote in her ruling. “Its method of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.”

The judge’s ruling, however, did allow DOGE to view anonymised data, without personally identifying information.

The Trump administration, nevertheless, appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that Judge Lipton Hollander had exceeded her authority in blocking DOGE’s access.

The Supreme Court granted its emergency petition on Friday, lifting Lipton Hollander’s temporary restrictions on the data in an unsigned decision.

But Justice Brown Jackson issued a blistering dissent (PDF), suggesting that the Supreme Court was willing to break norms to assist a presidency that was unwilling to let legal challenges play out in lower courts.

“Once again, this Court dons its emergency-responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them,” Brown Jackson wrote.

She argued that the Trump administration had not established that any “irreparable harm” would occur if DOGE were temporarily blocked from accessing Social Security data.

But by granting the Trump administration’s emergency petition, she said the court was “jettisoning careful judicial decision-making and creating grave privacy risks for millions of Americans in the process”.

Is DOGE subject to transparency laws?

The second Supreme Court decision on Friday concerned whether DOGE itself had to surrender documents under federal transparency laws.

The question was raised as part of a lawsuit brought by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a government watchdog group.

It argued that DOGE’s sweeping powers suggested it should be subject to laws like FOIA, just like any other executive agency. But CREW also alleged that the ambiguity surrounding DOGE’s structures had kept it insulated from outside probes.

“While publicly available information indicates that DOGE is subject to FOIA, the lack of clarity on DOGE’s authority leaves that an open question,” CREW said in a statement.

The watchdog group sought to compel DOGE to provide information about its inner workings.

While a US district judge had sided with CREW’s request for records in April, the Supreme Court on Friday paused that lower court’s decision (PDF). It sent the case back to a court of appeals for further consideration, with instructions that the April order be narrowed.

“Any inquiry into whether an entity is an agency for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act cannot turn on the entity’s ability to persuade,” the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled.

It also said that the courts needed to exercise “deference and restraint” regarding “internal” executive communications.

After his mistaken deportation to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia faces US charges of transporting undocumented migrants.

A man the Donald Trump administration mistakenly deported to El Salvador has been brought back to the United States, where authorities say he will face criminal charges.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, a Salvadoran immigrant who had lived nearly half his life in Maryland before he was deported in March, faces charges of transporting undocumented migrants inside the US, according to recently unsealed court records.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday that Abrego Garcia was returned to the US to “face justice”.

The indictment against him was filed on May 21, more than two months after he was deported in spite of a court order barring his removal.

The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, which suspected Abrego Garcia of human trafficking but ultimately issued only a warning for an expired driver’s license, according to a Department of Homeland Security report.

Bondi, speaking at a news conference, said a grand jury had “found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring”.

She said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele agreed to return Abrego Garcia to the US after American officials presented his government with an arrest warrant.

Abrego Garcia had been sent to El Salvador as part of a Trump scheme to move undocumented migrants it accuses of being gang members, to prison in the Central American country without due process.

Bukele said in a social media post that his government works with the Trump administration and “of course” would not refuse a request to return “a gang member” to the US.

Deportation ‘a separate legal matter’

Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington, DC, said Abrego Garcia could face up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

But “that does not deal with the ongoing matter of whether or not he should be deported”, she added. “That’s a separate legal matter.”

Abrego Garcia will have the chance to enter a plea in court and contest the charges at trial. If he is convicted, he would be deported to El Salvador after serving his sentence, Bondi said.

In a statement, Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Andrew Rossman, said it would now be up to the US judicial system to ensure he received due process.

“Today’s action proves what we’ve known all along – that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so,” said Rossman, a partner at law firm Quinn Emanuel.

Abrego Garcia’s deportation defied an immigration judge’s 2019 order granting him protection from being sent back to El Salvador, where it found he was likely to be persecuted by gangs if returned, court records show.

Trump critics pointed to the erroneous deportation as an example of the excesses of the Republican president’s aggressive approach to stepping up deportations.

Officials countered by alleging that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang. His lawyers have denied that he was a gang member and said he had not been convicted of any crime.

Abrego Garcia’s case has become a flash point for escalating tensions between the executive branch and the judiciary, which has ruled against a number of Trump’s policies.

The US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, with liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying the government had cited no basis for what she called his “warrantless arrest”.

US District Judge Paula Xinis also opened a probe into what, if anything, the Trump administration did to secure his return, after his lawyers accused officials of stonewalling their requests for information.

WASHINGTON — The clamorous end to President Trump’s alliance with Elon Musk is increasing pressure on the White House over its signature legislation known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — a bill under intense scrutiny in the Senate that Musk wants killed over its price tag, but that Trump views as critical to the success of his presidency.

The bill faces strong headwinds among senators across the Republican spectrum, including fiscal conservatives who say it authorizes unsustainable spending, as well as moderates who fear the consequences of offsetting costly tax breaks in the bill with steep cuts to Medicaid.

Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin among those seeking to decrease spending in the bill, told NPR this week that it has “no chance of passing” the Senate in its current form.

“It’s easy to be the parent that says, ‘We’re going to go to Disney World.’ It’s hard to be the parent that says, ‘yeah, but we can’t afford it,” Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill Friday. “To get to yes, I need a commitment to return to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending.”

Trump’s relationship with Musk, the world’s richest man and the largest Republican donor during the 2024 presidential campaign, shattered on Thursday in an exchange of public insults between the two men. After leaving his role in the administration last week, where he was assigned to cut federal spending and government waste, Musk sounded off on the bill as an “abomination” that would cause the national debt to soar.

Trump responded by suggesting Musk opposed the legislation because it includes cuts to energy tax credits that have benefited Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company. The billionaire entrepreneur may also be angry, Trump mused, because his recommendation to head NASA was rejected — an important position for SpaceX, another Musk business.

Those comments set off an online tirade from Musk that claimed credit for Trump’s election victory and accused the president of links with Jeffrey Epstein, a notorious child sex offender.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote on X, his social media platform. “Such ingratitude.”

Musk contributed over $280 million to Trump and other Republicans during the 2024 presidential campaign. But his tenure in the White House has come at a steep cost. Tesla’s profits plummeted 71% over the first three months of the year, with reputation rankings showing a similarly precipitous drop amongst consumers. In Thursday alone, as his feud with Trump escalated, Tesla’s stock price dropped 14%.

“I’m not even thinking about Elon,” Trump told CNN’s Dana Bash in a phone interview on Friday. “He’s got a problem. The poor guy’s got a problem.”

Musk was also quieter on Friday, focusing his social media activity on his companies, a sign that both men see mutual destruction in the fallout from their feud.

But the source of their feud — the bill — remains on thin ice.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill could add $2.4 trillion to annual deficits over the next decade and result in 10.9 million people losing their health insurance, prompting GOP senators like Shelley Moore Capito, of West Virginia, where 28% of the state population is enrolled in Medicaid, to express concern.

But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, told reporters that the caucus is open to exploring cuts to another popular health program — Medicare, for Americans 65 and older — if it results in lowering the overall costs of the bill.

“The focus, as you know, has been on addressing waste, fraud, abuse within Medicaid and, but right now, we’re open to suggestions that people have them about other areas where there is, you know, clearly, waste, fraud and abuse that can be rooted out in any government program,” Thune said in a news conference.

Asked whether Medicare cuts are on the table, Thune replied, “I think anything we can do that’s waste, fraud and abuse are open to discussions.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, defended the bill against Musk’s attacks on Friday and said his calls to kill the bill were a “surprise.”

“I don’t argue with Elon on how to build rockets,” Johnson said. “I wish he wouldn’t argue with me about how to craft legislation.”

Johnson has said his goal is to have the legislation passed into law by Independence Day, before lawmakers start traveling home for a series of long summer recesses.

But there are other reasons for the deadline. The Treasury Department anticipates the country could risk default unless Congress raises the debt ceiling by August. And tax cuts passed in 2017, under the first Trump administration, are set to expire at the end of this year, leading Republicans to warn of a 68% tax increase if the bill fails.

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People inside government and Silicon Valley

WASHINGTON — When he first ran for office, Donald Trump appeared to be a new kind of Republican when it came to gay rights.

Years earlier, he overturned the rules of his own Miss Universe pageant to allow a transgender contestant to compete. He said Caitlyn Jenner could use any bathroom at Trump Tower that she wanted. And he was the first president to name an openly gay person to a Cabinet-level position.

But since returning to office this year, Trump has engaged in what activists say is an unprecedented assault on the LGBTQ+ community. The threat from the White House contrasts with World Pride celebrations taking place just blocks away in Washington, including a parade and rally this weekend.

“We are in the darkest period right now since the height of the AIDS crisis,” said Kevin Jennings, who leads Lambda Legal, a longtime advocacy organization. “I am deeply concerned that we’re going to see it all be taken away in the next four years.”

Trump’s defenders insist the president has not acted in a discriminatory way, and they point to public polling that shows widespread support for policies like restrictions on transgender athletes.

“He’s working to establish common sense once again,” said Ed Williams, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, which represents LGBT conservatives.

Harrison Fields, the principal deputy press secretary at the White House, said, “the overall MAGA movement is a big tent welcome for all and home to a large swath of the American people.”

“The president continues to foster a national pride that should be celebrated daily, and he is honored to serve all Americans,” Fields said.

Presidential actions were widely expected

Trump made anti-transgender attacks a central plank of his campaign reelection message as he called on Congress to pass a bill stating there are “only two genders” and pledged to ban hormonal and surgical intervention for transgender minors. He signed an executive order doing so in January.

His rally speeches featured a spoof video mocking transgender people and their place in the U.S. military. Trump has since banned them outright from serving. And although June is recognized nationally as Pride month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week that Trump has “no plans for a proclamation.”

“I can tell you this president is very proud to be a president for all Americans, regardless of race, religion or creed,” she added, making no mention of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Williams described Pride activities as a progressive catch-all rather than a civil rights campaign. “If you’re not in the mood to protest or resist the Trump administration,” he said, “Pride is not for you.”

Trump declined to issue Pride Month proclamations in his first term, but did recognize the celebration in 2019 as he publicized a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality headed by Richard Grenell, then the U.S. Ambassador to Germany and the highest-profile openly gay person in the administration. (Grenell now serves as envoy for special missions.)

“As we celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made to our great Nation, let us also stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation,” Trump posted on social media.

Times have changed where Trump is concerned

This time, there is no celebrating.

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Trump named himself chairman of after firing members of the board of trustees, canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights for this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington, D.C., at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions.

Trump, who indicated when he took up the position that he would be dictating programming, had specifically said he would end events featuring performers in drag. The exterior lights that once lit the venue on the Potomac River in the colors of the rainbow were quickly replaced with red, white and blue.

Multiple artists and producers involved in the center’s Tapestry of Pride schedule, which had been planned for June 5 to 8, told The Associated Press that their events had been quietly canceled or moved to other venues.

Inside the White House, there’s little second-guessing about the president’s stances. Trump aides have pointed to their decision to seize on culture wars surrounding transgender rights during the 2024 campaign as key to their win. They poured money into ads aimed at young men — especially young Hispanic men — attacking Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for supporting “taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners,” including one spot aired during football games.

“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” the narrator said.

Jennings flatly rejected assertions that the administration hasn’t been discriminatory. “Are you kidding me? You’re throwing trans people out of the military. That’s example No. 1.”

He points to the cancellation of scientific grants and funding for HIV/AIDS organizations, along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “petty and mean” order to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, which commemorates the gay rights activist and Navy veteran.

Jennings also said it doesn’t help that Trump has appointed openly gay men like Grenell and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to high-profile positions: “I would call it window dressing.”

Less tolerance for the issues as time passes

Craig Konnoth, a University of Virginia professor of civil rights, compared the U.S.’ trajectory to that of Russia, which has seen a crackdown on gay and lesbian rights after a long stretch of more progressive policies. In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court effectively outlawed LGBTQ+ activism.

Williams said Trump has made the Republican Party more accepting of gay people. First lady Melania Trump, he noted, has hosted fundraisers for his organization.

“On the whole, we think he’s the best president ever for our community. He’s managed to support us in ways that we have never been supported by any administration,” Williams said. “We are vastly accepted within our party now.”

Trump’s approach to LGBTQ+ rights comes amid a broader shift among Republicans, who have grown less tolerant in recent years.

While overall support for same-sex marriage has been stable, according to Gallup, the percentage of Republicans who think marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized as valid with the same rights as traditional marriage dropped to 41% this year. That’s the lowest point since 2016, a year after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, and a substantial decline from a high of 55% in 2021.

There’s been a similar drop in the share of Republicans who say that gay and lesbian relations are morally acceptable, which has dropped from 56% in 2022 to 38% this year. Democrats, meanwhile, continue to overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage and say that same-sex relations are morally acceptable.

An AP-NORC poll from May also found that Trump’s approach to handling transgender issues has been a point of relative strength for the president. About half (52%) of U.S. adults said they approve of how he’s handling transgender issues — a figure higher than his overall job approval (41%).

Douglas Page, who studies politics and gender at Gettysburg College, said that “trans rights are less popular than gay rights, with a minority of Republicans in favor of trans rights. This provides incentives for Republicans to speak to the conservative side of that issue.”

“Gay people are less controversial to Republicans compared to trans people,” he said in an email, “so gay appointees like Secretary Bessent probably won’t ruffle many feathers.”

Megerian and Colvin write for the Associated Press. Colvin reported from New York. Linley Sanders and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.

June 6 (UPI) — Federal officials on Friday filed an application with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to remove a lower court judge’s ruling currently prohibiting further dismantling of the Department of Education.

President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon are listed as the applicants on court documents.

The Trump administration is attempting to remove a temporary order instituted last month by U.S. District Court Judge Myong Joun in Massachusetts that forces the federal government to re-hire almost 1,400 fired employees and prohibits further layoffs.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer also asked the Supreme Court to stay Joun’s order while it considers the application, which would allow the administration to move forward with its plans to further dismantle the department.

Joun last month ruled the department, which was created in 1979, “must be able to carry out its functions and its obligations under the [Department of Education Organization Act] and other relevant statutes as mandated by Congress.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said at the time the federal government would immediately challenge the order “on an emergency basis.”

“The Constitution vests the Executive Branch, not district courts, with the authority to make judgments about how many employees are needed to carry out an agency’s statutory functions, and whom they should be,” Sauer, who filed the application on behalf of Trump and McMahon, wrote.

“For the second time in three months, the same district court has thwarted the Executive Branch’s authority to manage the Department of Education despite lacking jurisdiction to second-guess the Executive’s internal management decisions. This Court curtailed that overreach when the district court attempted to prevent the Department from terminating discretionary grants.”

In mid-March, McMahon confirmed nearly half of her department’s staff would be placed on leave as part of Trump’s plan to eliminate the agency, part of a larger push to cut federal spending.

With new legal muscle, the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation is upping pressure on Paramount Global to abandon efforts to settle President Trump’s $20-billion lawsuit targeting CBS and “60 Minutes.”

Respected Washington litigator Abbe David Lowell this week joined the team representing the New York advocacy group, which has vowed to sue Paramount should it settle with Trump. The group owns Paramount shares.

Lowell, who has represented Hunter Biden, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, is working on the case with attorney Norm Eisen, a Trump critic who helped House Democrats with strategy during Trump’s first impeachment hearings in 2019.

Eisen is a former ambassador to the Czech Republic who served as White House ethics advisor under President Obama.

Late Thursday, the two attorneys sent a strongly worded letter to Paramount’s chairwoman and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and other board members arguing that a Trump settlement would cause “catastrophic” harm to the embattled media company.

Hunter Biden (left) with his attorney Abbe Lowell (right) at a House committee hearing last year.

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

1st Amendment experts have labeled Trump’s lawsuit frivolous. But Paramount leaders are desperate to end the Trump drama and some believe a truce could clear a path for the Federal Communications Commission to approve the company’s $8-billion sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

Paramount needs the FCC to authorize the transfer of the CBS station licenses to the Ellison family.

The prospect of a Trump settlement has carved deep divisions within Paramount, which includes CBS News and “60 Minutes.”

“Trading away the credibility of CBS’s news division to curry favor with the Trump Administration is an improper and reckless act that will irreparably damage the company’s brand and destroy shareholder value,” Lowell said in a statement late Thursday.

“The board is legally and morally obligated to protect the company, not auction off its integrity for regulatory approval,” Lowell said.

The FCC review of Skydance’s proposed takeover of Paramount has become a slog. Skydance and Paramount face an October deadline to finalize the sale or the deal could collapse.

Paramount, in a statement, said that it is treating the FCC review and the Trump lawsuit as separate matters. “We will abide by the legal process to defend our case,” a corporate spokesman said.

Paramount’s lawyers entered mediation with the president’s legal team in late April, but no resolution has been reached. Paramount offered $15 million to Trump to end his suit, according to the Wall Street Journal, but the president rejected the overture and asked for more.

On Thursday, Redstone disclosed that she has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and is receiving treatment. Last month, doctors removed her thyroid but cancer cells had spread to her vocal chords.

In their seven-page letter, Lowell and Eisen told Paramount’s leaders that, should they approve a Trump settlement to gain traction at the FCC, they would be violating their fiduciary duty to shareholders and potentially breaking federal anti-bribery statutes.

“We believe [a settlement] could violate laws prohibiting bribery of public officials, thereby causing severe and last damage to Paramount and its shareholders,” Lowell and Eisen wrote.

“To be as clear as possible, you control what happens next,” they said.

The admonition follows a similar warning from three U.S. senators — Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) In a May 19 letter, the senators wrote that paying money to Trump to help win clearance for the Paramount sale could constitute a bribe.

“It is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act,” the three senators wrote in their letter.

In addition, two California Democrats have proposed a state Senate hearing to examine problems with a possible Trump settlement.

The senators invited two former CBS News executives — who both left, in large part, because of the controversy — to testify before a yet-unscheduled joint committee hearing in Sacramento.

The California lawmakers, in their letter, said a Trump settlement could also violate California’s Unfair Competition Law because it could disrupt the playing field for news organizations.

Earlier this week, Paramount asked shareholders to increase the size of its board to seven members at the company’s annual investor meeting next month.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation was created in 2012 to protect and defend public interest journalism.

This spring, Lowell left his former major law firm, Winston & Strawn, where he had been a partner for years. He formed his own boutique firm, Lowell & Assoc., with a focus on “public interest representation in matters that defend the integrity of the legal system and protect individuals and institutions from government overreach,” according to its website.

Lowell’s firm also includes lawyer Brenna Frey, who made a high-profile exit from another prominent law firm, Skadden Arps, after it cut a deal with Trump to avoid becoming a target. That law firm agreed to provide $100 million in free legal services.

Last month, Frey appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to air her decision to resign from Skadden Arps.

“I was able to tell my story on CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ because of the independence of a courageous news division, which is what’s at risk now,” Frey said in a statement.

June 6 (UPI) — A federal judge temporarily paused President Donald Trump‘s ban on foreign nationals coming to study, teach, or do research at Harvard University, pending a hearing later in June.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs’ ruling Thursday night came after Harvard filed a suit in Boston alleging Trump’s proclamation, issued a day earlier, was unlawful because it violated the First Amendment.

Burroughs said she was granting Harvard’s motion for a restraining order against the Homeland Security Department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Justice Department, State Department and the Student and Exchange Visitor Program after accepting Harvard’s claim that it would otherwise “sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there was an opportunity to hear from all parties.”

The motion was in a hastily amended complaint by Harvard after Trump on Wednesday suspended entry of all foreign nationals “who enter or attempt to enter the United States to begin attending Harvard,” and directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to consider cancelling the visas of foreigners already there.

She said the court would reconvene on June 16 for a full hearing on whether Trump’s proclamation is legal.

Burroughs’ order also extended through June 20 a temporary restraining order she issued May 23, preventing DHS from implementing a ban on Harvard sponsoring holders of F-1 and J-1 non-immigrant visas, something the university has been permitted to do for more than seven decades.

The school’s legal team argued Wednesday’s proclamation was an effort to get around this restraining order.

“The proclamation simply reflects the administration’s effort to accomplish the very result that the Court sought to prevent. The Court should not stand for that,” Harvard’s legal counsel alleged in court filings.

Harvard has maintained that the orders represent executive overreach, while Trump insists there is a national security risk posed by its foreign students.

The Trump administration has demanded that Harvard water down its diversity, equality and inclusion policies in hiring and admissions, beef up enforcement of anti-Semitism measures on campus following anti-Gaza war protests and hand over the records of its international students.

Trump’s proclamation stated that the step was in the national interest because he believed Harvard’s refusal to share “information that the federal government requires to safeguard national security and the American public” showed it was not suitable for foreign nationals.

In April, Trump cancelled more than $2 billion in federal funding that the university receives and threatened to remove its tax-exemption status and ability to enroll overseas students.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Hill that Harvard’s lawsuit was a bid to “kneecap the President’s constitutionally vested powers” to suspend entry to the country of persons whose presence was not in line with national interests.

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” McLaughlin said. “The Trump administration is committed to restoring common sense to our student visa system; no lawsuit, this or any other, is going to change that. We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.”

The tech billionaire and owner of Tesla and Starlink, Elon Musk, has accused United States President Donald Trump of being one of the names in the still-sealed Epstein files, and claims that this is the real reason key documents are still being withheld from the public.

In January 2024, many of the so-called “Epstein files” compiled by US federal investigators were released to the public. However, some remained sealed.

Trump’s presidency began with a strong boost from Musk, who donated large sums to Trump’s presidential campaign and was appointed to lead a newly formed federal agency aimed at streamlining government operations, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

But that relationship fractured after Musk resigned from the role in May 2025, following mounting public backlash over fiscal policies and a sharp decline in Tesla’s stock.

Since then, Musk has become increasingly vocal in his criticism of Trump, calling his “One Big Beautiful Bill” a “disgusting abomination” for increasing the national debt and eliminating electric vehicle subsidies, and, now, accusing him of links to Epstein.

Here’s what we know about the Epstein files and Musk’s accusations.

What are the Epstein files?

The “Epstein files” are a collection of documents compiled by US federal authorities during investigations into the activities of Jeffrey Epstein, the now-deceased financier and convicted sex offender.

These files include flight logs, contact lists, court records and other materials documenting his activities and associations with high-profile individuals.

The first major release of the documents took place in January 2024, when a federal judge ordered the unsealing of records from a 2015 defamation lawsuit against Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.

In February 2025, the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) followed up with an official declassification of additional documents, many of which had already leaked, featuring redacted flight logs and contact books.

However, many documents remain sealed or heavily redacted, prompting public calls for full disclosure.

US Attorney General Pamela Bondi stated that the FBI is reviewing tens of thousands of documents, with further releases pending necessary redactions to protect victims and ongoing investigations.

What has Musk said about the Epstein files?

On Thursday, Musk publicly accused President Donald Trump of being named in the unreleased Epstein files.

In a post on his social media platform X, Musk wrote: “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” He did not provide any evidence to support this claim.

Time to drop the really big bomb:@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.

Have a nice day, DJT!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025

Has Trump responded?

Trump has not directly addressed Musk’s claim regarding the Epstein files.

However, during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House on Thursday, Trump said he was “very disappointed” by Musk’s criticism of the fiscal bill and suggested that Musk’s opposition was down to the elimination of electric vehicle subsidies.

“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday.

Trump also threatened to terminate federal contracts and subsidies for Musk’s companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, stating that this would save the US government billions of dollars.

What do we know about Trump’s relationship with Epstein?

Trump and Epstein were acquaintances in the 1980s and 1990s, often seen at social occasions together in New York and Palm Beach, Florida. Their appearances together were documented in news coverage and social pages at the time, while US media reported the two became close during the 1990s when Epstein bought a mansion near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach.

A 1992 video published by NBC News shows Trump and Epstein socialising and watching dancers at a party hosted at Mar-a-Lago.

In a 2002 profile of Epstein by New York Magazine, Trump was quoted describing Epstein as a “terrific guy” who enjoyed the company of beautiful women “on the younger side”.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said.

Flight logs released during court proceedings against Maxwell show that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet at least seven times between 1993 and 1997, occasionally with family members.

Epstein’s “Black Book” – a contact directory obtained in 2015 by Gawker, a now-defunct US blog that covered celebrities and media – was later submitted as court evidence and listed multiple phone numbers and addresses for Trump, including his office, home and Mar-a-Lago.

What happens now?

Once allies, Musk’s relationship with Trump has deteriorated significantly since his criticism of Trump’s fiscal policy and subsequent allegations about the Epstein files.

Trump’s threats to cut federal contracts with Musk’s companies led to a 14 percent drop in Tesla’s stock value. Musk has since called for Trump’s impeachment and replacement with US Vice President JD Vance.

This public spat has also drawn attention from political figures, with some Democrats demanding the release of the full Epstein files and questioning whether they are being withheld due to potential implications for Trump.

June 5 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to cut Elon Musk‘s government contracts through Tesla amid his departure from his role cutting government spending and opposition to Trump’s sweeping legislative agenda bill.

Trump threatened to end all government contracts with the Musk-founded Tesla in a post on Truth Social and suggested that would be a fast way to reduce government spending.

“The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts,” Trump wrote.

Tesla share prices declined by more than 14% on Thursday and shed $152 billion in value from the EV maker.

Trump on Thursday accused Musk of going “crazy” after the president canceled the federal electric vehicle mandate imposed by the Biden administration.

“I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday. “He just went crazy!”

Trump said he asked Musk to leave his advisory position with DOGE, although Musk was scheduled to exit the position at the end of May.

Musk earlier said Trump would not have won the Nov. 5 election without his help.

He contributed an estimated $250 million to Trump’s campaign effort.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk said Thursday morning in a post on X.

Musk has criticized the proposed “one big, beautiful” federal government budget bill as increasing the nation’s debt and negating his work with DOGE.

The entrepreneur opposes the spending bill that the House has passed and is before the Senate because it removed tax credits and subsidies for buying EVs, Trump claimed.

“I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done that months ago,” Trump said in a subsequent Truth Social post on Thursday afternoon.

“This is one of the greatest bills ever presented to Congress,” he continued. “It’s a record cut in expenses, $1.6 trillion dollars, and the biggest tax cut ever given.”

If the measure is not passed, Trump said it will trigger a 68% tax increase, “and things far worse than that.”

The president said the “easiest way to save money … is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts” with Tesla.

Later on Thursday, Musk in an X post said it is “time to drop the really big bomb” on the president.

Trump “is in the Epstein files,” Musk said. “That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

Musk did not say in what context Trump allegedly appears in the Epstein files, but ended his post with: “Have a nice day, DJT!”

He made a subsequent post that asks: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Trump and Musk often appeared together at high-profile events in the first four months of the administration.

The rift between US President Donald Trump and his former adviser Elon Musk has erupted into the open, with each trading insults after the tech billionaire criticised one of Trump’s key domestic policies.

The two billionaires escalated the feud throughout Thursday, lobbing barbs at each other on the social media sites they each own, suggesting a bitter conclusion to their unlikely alliance.

The day began with Trump saying he was “disappointed” with Musk’s criticisms of his administration’s centrepiece tax and spending bill, musing that it may be the end of their “great relationship”.

Musk then accused Trump of “ingratitude”, adding: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election”.

After hours of sparring, Trump appeared to downplay the situation. “Oh it’s okay,” he told news site Politico. “It’s going very well, never done better.” His aides have scheduled a phone call with Musk for Friday, the same news site reported.

Musk also appeared to believe there was a need to patch things up. Late on Thursday, in response to post by Bill Ackman, a prominent Trump backer, which suggested the pair needed to make peace, he wrote: “You’re not wrong”

The breaking point in the relationship between the president and his one-time ally came after weeks of Musk lobbying against Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill, which was passed by the US House last month and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.

Shortly after leaving the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) after 129 days in the job, Musk took to his site X to call the bill a “disgusting abomination” and posting: “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong.”

He argued that the bill will irresponsibly add to the US national debt, and encouraged his followers to phone their representatives to express opposition to the spending plan.

Speaking to reporters during a news conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday, Trump defending the bill and said: “I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here. All of a sudden he had a problem.”

He went on to suggest that Musk was upset about the removal of subsidies and mandates for electric vehicles, which could affect his Tesla business.

Musk denied this was the case and wrote: “Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.”

“Pork” is a term used in US politics to describe wasteful government spending, particularly on things meant to curry favour with particular groups or local areas.

The partnership between the two men began when Musk endorsed Trump last July after an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. The Tesla boss reportedly funnelled $290m (£213m) into getting him back into the White House.

Amid a flurry of posts on X after Thursday’s news conference, Musk took credit for the sweeping Republican victory in last November’s election, writing: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”

“Such ingratitude,” he added.

Musk went on to post a poll, asking his followers: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Over the course of the day, Musk went on to repost a tweet calling for Trump to resign, argue that his global tariff plan will trigger a US recession, and to suggest without evidence that Trump appears in unreleased files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on charges of sex trafficking and died by suicide while awaiting trial. Trump was president at the time. He said he knew Epstein “like everybody in Palm Beach knew him” but had a “falling out with him a long time ago”.

The White House condemned Musk’s allegation, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying in a statement: “This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted.”

On his Truth Social network, Trump claimed that Musk “just went CRAZY” and went on to post: “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

Musk’s companies, including Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink have direct contacts with the US government and, like many other businesses, also benefit from subsidies and tax breaks.

In response, Musk said SpaceX “will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately”. The craft is used to shuttle people and supplies to the International Space Station.

However, he later he appeared to back down from that threat, saying in response to a post on X urging him to cool off: “Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”

Telsa stock dropped by 14% within hours of the row bursting out into public.

According to the most recent analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the spending bill working its way through Congress will increase the US national debt by $2.4tn over 10 years and leave nearly 11 million people without government-backed health insurance.

The White House disputes those figures, saying they don’t account for revenues brought in by increased tariffs.

Put in charge of radically slashing government spending at Doge, Musk initiated mass sackings and wholesale elimination of departments such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Doge claims to have saved $180bn, although that number has been disputed, and is well short of Musk’s initial aim to cut spending by up to $2tn.

Published on
06/06/2025 – 6:42 GMT+2

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In three hours on Thursday, shares in Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company plunged by more than 14% in a stunning wipeout, as investors dumped their holdings amid a bitter war of words between the president and the world’s richest man.

By the end of the trading day, $150 billion (€139bn) of Tesla’s market value had been erased — more than what it would take to buy all the shares of Starbucks and hundreds of other big publicly traded US companies.

The disagreement started over the president’s budget bill, then quickly turned nasty after Musk said that Trump wouldn’t have been elected without his help. Trump then implied that he may turn the federal government against Musk’s companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote on his social messaging service Truth Social. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

The drop on Thursday partially reversed a big run-up in the eight weeks since Musk confirmed that Tesla would be testing an autonomous, driverless “robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas, this month.

Investors fear Trump might not be in such a rush to usher in a future of self-driving cars in the US, and that could hit Tesla.

“The whole goal of robotaxis is to have them in 20 or 25 cities next year,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, said. “If you start to heighten the regulatory environment, that could delay that path.”

He added that there’s a fear Trump is not going to play ‘Mr Nice Guy’ anymore.

However, Trump’s threat to cut government contracts could be aimed more at another of Musk’s businesses, SpaceX. The privately held rocket company has received billions of dollars for sending astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, providing launches and doing other work for NASA. The company is currently racing to develop a mega-rocket for the space agency to send astronauts to the Moon next year.

A subsidiary of SpaceX, the satellite internet company Starlink, appears to also have benefited from Musk’s once-close relationship with the president.

On a trip with Trump to the Middle East last month, Musk announced that Saudi Arabia had approved Starlink for aviation and maritime use. Though its not clear how much politics has played a role, a string of other recent deals in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and elsewhere has followed, as Trump has threatened tariffs and sent diplomats scrambling to please the president.

One measure of SpaceX’s success: A private financing round followed by a private sale of shares in recent months reportedly valued it at $350 billion (around €325bn), up from an estimated $210 billion (about €195.3bn) a year ago.

Now all that is possibly in danger. Tesla shares got an even bigger lift from Musk’s close relationship with Trump, initially at least.

After the presidential election in November, investors rushed into the stock, adding more than $450 billion (€418.5bn) to its value in a few weeks. The belief was that the company would see big gains as Trump eased regulatory oversight of Tesla. They also bet that the new administration would embrace Musk’s plans for millions of cars on US roads without drivers behind the wheel.

After hitting an all-time high on 17 December, the shares retreated as Musk’s time as head of a government cost-cutting group led to boycotts and a hit to Tesla’s reputation. They’ve recently popped higher again after Musk vowed to focus more on Tesla and its upcoming driverless taxi launch.

Now investors aren’t so sure, a worry that has translated into big paper losses in Tesla stock held by Musk personally.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that his first call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping since returning to office was “very positive,” announcing that the two countries will hold trade talks in hopes of breaking an impasse over tariffs and global supplies of rare earth minerals.

“Our respective teams will be meeting shortly at a location to be determined,” Trump wrote on his social media platform after the call, which he said lasted an hour and a half.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will represent the U.S. side in negotiations.

The Republican president, who returned to the White House for a second term in January, also said Xi “graciously” invited him and First Lady Melania Trump to China, and Trump reciprocated with his own invitation for Xi to visit the United States.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Trump initiated the call between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies.

The ministry said in a statement that Xi asked Trump to “remove the negative measures” that the U.S. has taken against China. It also said that Trump said “the U.S. loves to have Chinese students coming to study in America,” although his administration has vowed to revoke some of their visas.

Comparing the bilateral relationship to a ship, Xi told Trump that the two sides need to “take the helm and set the right course” and to “steer clear of the various disturbances and disruptions,” according to the ministry statement.

Trump had declared one day earlier that it was difficult to reach a deal with Xi.

“I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” Trump posted Wednesday on his social media site.

Craig Singleton, senior director of China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the phone call “simply paused escalation on trade” but “didn’t resolve core tensions” in the bilateral relations.

With the White House still weighing more punitive measures, the current calm could be upended as Beijing also is prepared to fight back the moment Washington escalates, Singleton said. “We’re likely one competitive action away from further confrontation,” he said.

In his note, Gabriel Wildau, managing director at the consultancy Teneo, wrote that the call “prevented derailment of trade talks but produced no clear breakthroughs on key issues.”

Trade negotiations between the United States and China stalled shortly after a May 12 agreement between the two countries to reduce their tariff rates while talks played out. Behind the gridlock has been the continued competition for an economic edge.

The U.S. accuses China of not exporting critical minerals, and the Chinese government objects to America restricting its sale of advanced chips and access to student visas for college and graduate students.

Trump has lowered his 145% tariffs on Chinese goods to 30% for 90 days to allow for talks. China also reduced its taxes on U.S. goods from 125% to 10%. The back and forth has caused sharp swings in global markets and threatens to hamper trade between the two countries.

Bessent had suggested that only a conversation between Trump and Xi could resolve these differences so that talks could restart in earnest. The underlying tension between the two countries may persist, though.

During the call, Xi said that the Chinese side is sincere about negotiating and “at the same time has its principles,” and that “the Chinese always honor and deliver what has been promised,” according to the Foreign Ministry.

Even if negotiations resume, Trump wants to lessen America’s reliance on Chinese factories and reindustrialize the U.S., whereas China wants the ability to continue its push into technologies such as electric vehicles and artificial intelligence that could be crucial to securing its economic future.

The United States ran a trade imbalance of $295 billion with China in 2024, according to the Census Bureau. Although the Chinese government’s focus on manufacturing has turned it into a major economic and geopolitical power, China has been muddling through a slowing economy after a real estate crisis and COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns weakened consumer spending.

Trump and Xi last spoke in January, three days before Inauguration Day. The pair discussed trade then, as well as Trump’s demands that China do more to prevent the synthetic opioid fentanyl from entering the United States.

Despite long expressing optimism about the prospects for a major deal, Trump became more pessimistic recently.

“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US,” Trump posted last week. “So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”

Weissert and Megerian write for the Associated Press.