Trump news at a glance: Elon Musk rift deepens as president says ‘poor guy's got a problem'
Donald Trump appeared in no mood to patch things up with former top adviser Elon Musk on Friday, doubling down on his new hostility towards the Tesla and Space X tycoon with a number of disparaging statements.
The US president appeared to deny reports of a potential peacemaking phone call with Musk, telling ABC News he was 'not particularly' interested in talking to his former confidant right now.
The president also spoke to CNN, saying: 'I'm not even thinking about Elon. He's got a problem. The poor guy's got a problem.' Trump told Politico that the relationship with Musk was 'going very well, never done better'.
Here are the key Trump administration stories of the day:
Donald Trump appeared to dismiss a peace overture from his former close political ally Elon Musk, calling him someone who had 'lost his mind' as the extraordinary falling out between the two men looked set to continue.
The US president and the richest person in the world – who had been tasked with slashing the federal government – fell out in spectacular fashion on Thursday in a series of escalating social media posts that roiled the political world.
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Kilmar Ábrego García – the man whom the Trump administration mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador in March – returned to the US on Friday to face criminal charges.
In a press briefing, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said a federal grand jury in Tennessee had indicted the 29-year-old father on counts of illegally smuggling undocumented people as well as conspiracy to commit that crime.
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The US supreme court on Friday permitted the so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge), a key player in Donald Trump's drive to slash the federal workforce, broad access to the personal information of millions of Americans in Social Security Administration data systems while a legal challenge plays out.
The court's brief, unsigned order did not provide a rationale for siding with Doge. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices dissented.
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The US economy added 139,000 jobs in May, a slowdown compared with recent months as American businesses cope with uncertainty around Donald Trump's continuing trade war.
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A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis's unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.
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A Republican representative is facing a widespread backlash after saying that a Sikh should not have conducted a prayer in the US House.
Mary Miller, an Illinois representative, on Friday published – then deleted – a post saying that Giani Singh, a Sikh Granthi from southern New Jersey, should not have delivered the House's morning prayer.
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Enrique Tarrio, the former national leader of the far-right Proud Boys group, and four other members convicted of orchestrating the deadly 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack are suing the federal government for allegedly violating their rights.
Russia is at war with Britain, the US is no longer a reliable ally and the UK has to respond by becoming more cohesive and more resilient, according to a former White House adviser.
Senior US administration officials will meet with a Chinese delegation in London on Monday for the next round of trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing, Donald Trump said on Friday.
An event by the International Pride Orchestra this week swung from classical Gershwin favourites to choral patriotism to high drag in a rebuff to Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center and its subsequent snub of the LBGTQ+ ensemble.
Catching up? Here's what happened on 5 June 2025.
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The Independent
23 minutes ago
- The Independent
Attorneys in NCAA antitrust case to share $475M in fees, with potential to reach $725M
The attorneys who shepherded the blockbuster antitrust lawsuit to fruition for hundreds of thousands of college athletes will share in just over $475 million in fees, and the figure could rise to more than $725 million over the next 10 years. The request for plaintiff legal fees in the House vs. NCAA case, outlined in a December court filing and approved Friday night, struck experts in class-action litigation as reasonable. Co-lead counsels Steve Berman and Jeffrey Kessler asked for $475.2 million, or 18.3% of the cash common funds of $2.596 billion. They also asked for an additional $250 million, for a total of $725.2 million, based on a widely accepted estimate of an additional $20 billion in direct benefits to athletes over the 10-year settlement term. That would be 3.2% of what would then be a $22.596 billion settlement. 'Class Counsel have represented classes of student-athletes in multiple litigations challenging NCAA restraints on student-athlete compensation, and they have achieved extraordinary results. Class Counsel's representation of the settlement class members here is no exception,' U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken wrote. University of Buffalo law professor Christine Bartholomew, who researched about 1,300 antitrust class-action settlements from 2005-22 for a book she authored, told The Associated Press the request for attorneys' fees could have been considered a bit low given the difficulty of the case, which dates back five years. She said it is not uncommon for plaintiffs' attorneys to be granted as much as 30% of the common funds. Attorneys' fees generally are calculated by multiplying an hourly rate by the number of hours spent working on a case. In class-action lawsuits, though, plaintiffs' attorneys work on a contingency basis, meaning they get paid at the end of the case only if the class wins a financial settlement. 'Initially, you look at it and think this is a big number,' Bartholomew said. 'When you look at how contingency litigation works generally, and then you think about how this fits into the class-action landscape, this is not a particularly unusual request.' The original lawsuit was filed in June 2020 and it took until November 2023 for Wilken to grant class certification, meaning she thought the case had enough merit to proceed. Elon University law professor Catherine Dunham said gaining class certification is challenging in any case, but especially a complicated one like this. 'If a law firm takes on a case like this where you have thousands of plaintiffs and how many depositions and documents, what that means is the law firm can't do other work while they're working on the case and they are taking on the risk they won't get paid,' Dunham said. 'If the case doesn't certify as a class, they won't get paid.' In the request for fees, the firm of Hagens Berman said it had dedicated 33,952 staff hours to the case through mid-December 2024. Berman, whose rate is $1,350 per hour, tallied 1,116.5 hours. Kessler, of Winston & Strawn, said he worked 1,624 hours on the case at a rate of $1,980 per hour. The case was exhaustive. Hundreds of thousands of documents totaling millions of pages were produced by the defendants — the NCAA, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC — as part of the discovery process. Berman and Kessler wrote the 'plaintiffs had to litigate against six well-resourced defendants and their high-powered law firms who fought every battle tooth and nail. To fend off these efforts, counsel conducted extensive written discovery and depositions, and submitted voluminous expert submissions and lengthy briefing. In addition, class counsel also had to bear the risk of perpetual legislative efforts to kill these cases.' Antitrust class-action cases are handled by the federal court system and have been harder to win since 2005, when the U.S. Class Action Fairness Act was passed, according to Bartholomew. 'Defendants bring motion after motion and there's more of a pro-defendant viewpoint in federal court than there had been in state court,' she said. 'As a result, you would not be surprised that courts, when cases do get through to fruition, are pretty supportive of applications for attorneys' fees because there's great risk that comes from bringing these cases fiscally for the firms who, if the case gets tossed early, never gets compensated for the work they've done.' ___
The Independent
33 minutes ago
- The Independent
Yemen's al-Qaida branch leader threatens Trump, Musk and others
The leader of al-Qaida's Yemen branch has threatened both U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip in his first video message since taking over the group last year. The half-hour video message by Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki, which spread online early Saturday via supporters of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, also included calls for lone-wolf militants to assassinate leaders in Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states over the war, which has decimated Gaza. The video of al-Awlaki's speech showed images of Trump and Musk, as well as U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of State Pete Hegseth. It also included images of logos of Musk's businesses, including the electric carmaker Tesla. 'There are no red lines after what happened and is happening to our people in Gaza," al-Awlaki said. "Reciprocity is legitimate.' Yemen's al-Qaida branch long thought to be most dangerous Though believed to be weakened in recent years due to infighting and suspected U.S. drone strikes killing its leaders, the group known by the acronym AQAP had been considered the most dangerous branch of al-Qaida still operating after the 2011 killing by U.S. Navy SEALs of founder Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2022, a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan killed bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahri, who also helped plot 9/11. The Sept. 11 attacks then began decades of war by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, and fomented the rise of the Islamic State group. Al-Awlaki already has a $6 million U.S. bounty on his head, as Washington says al-Awlaki 'has publicly called for attacks against the United States and its allies.' He replaced AQAP leader Khalid al-Batarfi, whose death was announced by the group in 2024. Israel-Hamas war a focus of the Houthis as well AQAP seizing onto the Israel-Hamas war follows the efforts of Yemen's Houthi rebels to do the same. The Iranian-backed group has launched missile attacks on Israel and targeted commercial vessels moving through the Red Sea corridor, as well as American warships. The U.S. Navy has described their campaign against the Houthis as the most intense combat it has faced since World War II. The Trump administration also launched its own intense campaign of strikes on the Houthis, which only ended before the president's recent trip to the Middle East. The Houthis' international profile rose as the group remains mired in Yemen's long-stalemated war. Al-Awlaki may be betting on the same for his group, which U.N. experts have estimated has between 3,000 and 4,000 active fighters and passive members. The group raises money by robbing banks and money exchange shops, as well as smuggling weapons, counterfeiting currencies and ransom operations, according to the U.N. The Shiite Zaydi Houthis have previously denied working with AQAP, a Sunni extremist group. However, AQAP targeting of the Houthis has dropped in recent years, while the militants keep attacking Saudi-led coalition forces who have battled the Houthis. 'As the Houthis gain popularity as leaders of the 'Arab and Muslim world's resistance' against Israel, al-Awlaki seeks to challenge their dominance by presenting himself as equally concerned about the situation in Gaza,' said Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen expert of the Basha Report risk advisory firm. 'For a national security and foreign policy community increasingly disengaged from Yemen, this video is a clear reminder: Yemen still matters.'
The Independent
33 minutes ago
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JD Vance breaks his silence on Trump and Musk feud after seeing Elon's Epstein tweet during Theo Von interview
Vice President JD Vance's first reaction to Elon Musk 's Trump-Epstein tweet was caught Thursday on Theo Von's podcast. On the 'This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von,' episode released Saturday, Von showed Vance one of the most viral tweets from the pair's feud, in which the Tesla CEO claimed, '@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.' 'Ok, wow. I haven't even seen this one,' Vance said, explaining he was on a plane amid Musk and Trump 's online exchanges. 'First of all, absolutely not. Donald Trump didn't do anything wrong with Jeffrey Epstein,' Vance said. 'Whatever the Democrats and the media says about him, that's totally BS.' The social media exchange came just a week after Musk left his DOGE role in the Trump Administration. Vance chalked Musk's online outbursts up to him 'being new to politics' and frustrations that his 'businesses are being attacked non-stop' since he joined the White House. Musk's departure followed a Wall Street Journal report citing insiders who claimed that even Trump was getting frustrated with Musk and was doubtful whether his goals within DOGE could be reached. Musk has since spoken out about his disapproval of the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes various policy changes, including tax cuts, welfare reform, and infrastructure investments. 'Elon is entitled to his opinion,' Vance told Von on the podcast. 'I'm not saying he has to agree with the bill or agree with everything that I'm saying. I just think it's a huge mistake for the world's wealthiest man — I think one of the most transformational entrepreneurs ever — to be at war with the world's most powerful man, who I think is doing more to save the country than anybody in my lifetime.' Vance added, 'I just think you've got to have some respect for him and say, 'yeah, we don't have to agree on every issue.' But is this war actually in the interest of the country? I don't think so.' Despite Musk going 'so nuclear' online, Vance is hopeful that he can 'come back into the fold' within politics. 'I know the president was getting a little frustrated, feeling like some of the criticisms were unfair coming from Elon,' Vance said. 'But I think it has been very restrained, because the president doesn't think that he needs to be in a blood feud with Elon Musk. And I actually think that if Elon chilled out a little bit everything would be fine.'
