EXCLUSIVE I've seen hundreds of political dirt files - but the shocking smears the Liberals are peddling to bury Sussan Ley shocked even ME. It's no wonder women are fleeing the party in droves: PETER VAN ONSELEN
A new low for sleazy political operators
The two-horse race for the Liberal leadership has become a divisive, bitter showdown between two of the most senior and culpable members of the team that delivered the Coalition its shattering election result.
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The Guardian
29 minutes ago
- The Guardian
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. Read the full story 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. Read the full story 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. Read the full story 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. Read the full story 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. Read the full story 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. Read the full story 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.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Will Musk's explosive row with Trump help or harm his businesses?
When Elon Musk recently announced that he was stepping back from politics, investors hoped that would mean he would step up his involvement in the many tech firms he explosive row with President Donald Trump - and the very public airing of his dirty White House laundry - suggests Musk's changing priorities might not quite be the salve they had been hoping of Musk retreating somewhat from the public eye and focusing on boosting the fortunes of Tesla and his other enterprises, he now finds himself being threatened with a boycott from one of his main customers - Trump's federal government. Tesla shares were sent into freefall on Thursday - falling 14% - as he sounded off about President Donald Trump on social rebounded a little on Friday following some indications tempers were so, for the investors and analysts who, for months, had made clear they wanted Musk off his phone and back at work, the situation is far from ideal. 'They're way behind' Some though argue the problems for Musk's businesses run much deeper than this spat - and the controversial role in the Trump administration it has brought a spectacular end veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher, that is especially so for Tesla."Tesla's finished," she told the BBC on the sidelines of the San Francisco Media Summit early this week. "It was a great car company. They could compete in the autonomous taxi space but they're way behind." Tesla has long attempted to play catch-up against rival Waymo, owned by Google-parent Alphabet, whose driverless taxis have traversed the streets of San Francisco for years - and now operate in several more month, Musk is supposed to be overseeing Tesla's launch of a batch of autonomous robo-taxis in Austin, posted to X last week that the electric vehicle maker had been testing the Model Y with no drivers on board."I believe 90% of the future value of Tesla is going to be autonomous and robotics," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told the BBC this week, adding that the Austin launch would be "a watershed moment"."The first task at hand is ensuring the autonomous vision gets off to a phenomenal start," Ives is Elon Musk?How the Trump-Musk feud eruptedBut with Musk's attention divided, the project's odds of success would appear to have there's something else to factor in too: Musk's own talk in Silicon Valley lately centres less on whether Musk can turn things around and more on whether he even cares."He's a really powerful person when he's focused on something," said Ross Gerber, President and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management."Before, it was about proving to the world that he would make EVs - the tech that nobody else could do. It was about proving he could make rockets. He had a lot to prove."A longtime Tesla investor, Gerber has soured on the stock, and has been pairing back his holdings since Musk's foray into right-wing politics. He called Thursday an "extremely painful day.""It's the dumbest thing you could possibly do to think that you have more power than the president of the United States," Gerber said, referring to Musk's social media tirade against BBC reached out to X, Tesla, and SpaceX seeking comment from Mr Musk but did not receive a response. The Tesla takedown A particular problem for Musk is that, before he seemingly created an enemy in Donald Trump, he already had one in the grassroots social media campaign against his dubbed #TeslaTakedown, have played out across the country every weekend since Trump took April, Tesla reported a 20% drop in car sales for the first three months of the year. Profits plunged more than 70%, and the share price went down with it."He should not be deciding the fate of our democracy by disassembling our government piece by piece. It's not right," protestor Linda Koistinen told me at a demonstration outside a Berkeley, California Tesla dealership in said she wanted to make a "visible stand" against Musk personally."Ultimately it's not about the tech or the Tesla corporation," said Joan Donovan, a prominent disinformation researcher who co-organized the #TeslaTakedown protests on social media."It's about the way in which the stock of Tesla has been able to be weaponized against the people and it has put Musk in such a position to have an incredible amount of power with no transparency," Donovan aspect of Musk's empire that has raised the ire of his detractors is X, the social media platform once known as Twitter."He bought Twitter so that he had clout and would be able to - at the drop of a hat - reach hundreds of millions of people," Donovan said. The personal brand There is another possibility here Musk's high-profile falling out with Trump help rehabilitate him in the eyes of people who turned against him because of his previous closeness to the president?Patrick Moorhead, chief analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, thinks it could."We're a very forgiving country," Moorhead says in a telephone interview."These things take time," he acknowledges, but "it's not unprecedented".Swisher likened Musk's personal brand to that of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates more than two decades said Gates was once regarded as "the Darth Vader of Silicon Valley" because of his "arrogant and rude" despite his flaws, Gates has largely rehabilitated his image."He learned. He grew up. People can change," Swisher told me, even though Musk is "clearly troubled." Space exit The problem for Musk is the future for him and his companies is not just about what he does - but what Trump decides while Trump needed Musk in the past, not least to help fund his presidential race, it's not so clear he does Smith, writer of the Noahpinion Substack, said Trump's highly lucrative foray into cryptocurrencies - as unseemly as it has been - may have freed him from depending on Musk to carry out his will."My guess is that this was so he could get out from under Elon," Smith Trump's most menacing comment of the day, he suggested cutting Musk's government contracts, which have an estimated value of $38 billion.A significant chunk of that goes to Musk's rocket company SpaceX - seemingly threatening its despite the bluster, Trump's warning may be a little more hollow than it because SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft ferries people and cargo to the International Space Station where three NASA astronauts are currently demonstrates that SpaceX has so entrenched itself in the US space and national security apparatus, that Trump's threat could be difficult to carry could make a similar argument about Musk's internet satellite company, Starlink. Finding an alternative could be easier said than if there are limits on what Trump can do, the same is also true of the middle of his row with Trump, he threatened to decommission the Dragon - but it wasn't long before he was rowing to an X user's suggestion he that he "cool down" he wrote, "Good advice. Ok, we won't decommission Dragon."It's clear Musk and Trump's friendship is over. It's less certain their reliance on each other the future for Musk's businesses is then, it seems Trump - and his administration's actions - will continue to have a big say in them. Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson The Jacinda Ardern One
How does it feel to be held up as the 'anti-Trump' by progressives across the globe? Jacinda Ardern was prime minister of New Zealand for 6 years and is now committed to promoting empathy and kindness in world leadership. She joins Nick in the Political Thinking studio to reflect on her unexpected rise to power and being described as a 'global pinup for progressive values'. She also opens up about how growing up in a Mormon family prepared her for politics and reveals what she told Donald Trump in the aftermath of the murder of 51 people in a mosque in New Zealand in 2019. Producer: Daniel Kraemer
