Trump says he’s ‘very disappointed’ in Elon Musk. Musk strikes back in real time.
Isaac Wasserman/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump hit back on Elon Musk following Musk’s rampage against his domestic megabill, saying on Thursday he’s “very disappointed” in the Tesla billionaire.
“Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said.
Musk responded to the comments in real time on X, where he continued to swipe at the legislation and at Trump directly.
“Where is this guy today??” Musk wrote as he reupped another user’s compilation of past Trump tweets criticizing high deficits, unbalanced budgets and more.
At one point, Musk responded to a user: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”
The president was asked about Musk’s relentless criticisms of the tax and immigration bill while taking reporter questions alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office.
“He hasn’t said anything about me that’s bad. I’d rather have him criticize me than the bill, because the bill is incredible,” Trump said of Musk.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed the House last month by a single vote. The measure would extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and boost spending for the military and border security, while making some cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other assistance programs.
It now faces headwinds in the Senate, specifically among a small group of Republican fiscal hawks.
Musk has said the the legislation, estimated by the nonpartisan budget office to add $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, would undermine the Department of Government Efficiency’s goal to reduce government spending and trim the national debt.
Trump contended on Thursday that Musk, the CEO of Tesla, was really “upset” because the legislation would remove tax credits for electric vehicles.
“But I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people,” Trump said. “He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it. All of a sudden, he had a problem.”
Musk pushed back on X and suggested Trump was not telling the truth.
“False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!” he wrote.
In another post, Musk wrote: “Whatever.”
“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,” the post read.
“In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that both big and beautiful,” Musk added. “Everyone knows this! Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill. Slim and beautiful is the way.”
Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva joined concerned citizens of SE Arizona in front of Tucson’s Federal Building to protest an open pit copper mining project that would destroy the Santa Rita Mountains, May 3, 2025. Deja Foxx attends the Prada Fall/Winter 2024 Womenswear fashion show during Milan Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2024 – 2025, Feb. 22, 2024, in Milan.
(WASHINGTON) — A special election primary in Arizona’s 7th District on Tuesday was the latest flare-up of the Democratic Party’s clashes over age and experience as candidates vie to replace the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva.
Grijalva, who served as the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, died earlier this year from complications with cancer treatments. His daughter, former Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva, ran to fill his seat and is the projected winner, according to the Associated Press.
She faced challenges from five other candidates, two of the most prominent being Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old progressive activist, and former state Rep. Daniel Hernandez.
With 65% of the vote counted according to the AP’s estimate as of 11:19 p.m. EST, Grijalva lead with 62% of the vote, followed by Deja Foxx with 20.6%.
If elected, Foxx would have been the first Gen Z woman to serve in Congress.
“Adelita’s victory tonight isn’t just a win for families in Southern Arizona. It’s a win for all those who believe in a government that works for everyday people,” said Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party.
In the heavily blue district, the winner of the primary will likely have a glide path in November. Progressive groups and lawmakers have largely thrown their support behind Grijalva, 54, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Emilys List. She also boasts endorsements from both of Arizona’s two senators.
Grijalva is campaigning on protecting Medicaid, promoting affordable housing, and defending southern Arizona’s economy against the Trump administration. She has highlighted her father’s legacy of championing environmental justice and her advocacy for public education while serving on the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board as issues she will continue to fight for in Congress.
“I’m not running on my last name, it just is my last name. So my dad left really big shoes to fill, but I stand on my own two feet in my more than two decades of public service to Arizona, and I’m proud to be supported by leaders and organizations that are leading the progressive movement,” she told ABC News.
“I think Adelita’s record, energy and commitment to fight for working class people speaks for itself,” Joe Dinkin, the deputy director of the Working Families Party, told ABC News. “We were supportive of her father, too, but our support for Adelita has nothing to do with that. It has to do with her.”
Foxx, who worked on Kamala Harris’ presidential primary campaign in 2020, says she is the only “change candidate” in the race and the sole “break from the status quo” that could help push Democrats into favorable approval ratings.
With 250,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 400,000 on TikTok, Foxx has utilized social media to promote herself as a young, working class candidate, highlighting her own experience relying on programs like SNAP, Section 8 housing, and Medicaid and her advocacy for reproductive rights.
“It seems obvious to someone like me that as the Democratic Party faces approval ratings in the 20 percents that they should be embracing new messengers,” Foxx told ABC News.
Thom Reilly, a professor of public affairs at Arizona State University, says there’s little policy daylight between Grijalva and Foxx.
“I also think the national dialogue has kind of factored into this race,” Reilly explained. He pointed to the deaths of three Democratic lawmakers, including Grijalva, while in office this year and the recent win by Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral primary as sparking renewed debates over age in party leadership.
While the Gen-Z and progressive flanks of the party came together in support of Mamdani last month, fissures within the cohort have emerged in Arizona. Foxx is backed by Leaders We Deserve, a political action committee that boosts young progressive candidates whose co-founder David Hogg clashed with Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin earlier this year over the group’s support of primarying “asleep at the wheel” incumbents. Hogg was a DNC vice chair, but left his post last month in the midst of turmoil over leadership elections.
Foxx has also been endorsed by the progressive advocacy group Gen-Z for Change. The organization’s Executive Director Cheyenne Hunt, who ran in a primary for a House seat in California last year, emphasized that the Arizona race was a key opportunity to uplift young leaders in the party.
“When we don’t have a Gen Z woman in Congress yet, that’s a fundamental problem,” she said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hesitated to endorse presumptive Democratic New York City mayor nominee Zohran Mamdani but praised his “successful” campaign and messaging.
“I have not,” Jeffries said when asked by “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl about if he had endorsed the self-proclaimed democratic socialist candidate.
Jeffries said he spoke to Mamdani on Wednesday and plans to meet in person soon in Central Brooklyn.
“I congratulated him on the campaign that he ran, a campaign that clearly was relentlessly focused on the high cost of living in New York City and the economy. He outworked, he out-communicated, and he out-organized the opposition, and that’s clearly why he was successful,” he added.
Pressed on why he was holding back from endorsing Mamdani, Jeffries said “We don’t really know each other well.”
“Well, our districts don’t overlap. I have never had a substantive conversation with him. And so that’s the next step in terms of this process … to discuss his vision for moving the city forward and addressing the issues that are important to the communities that I represent,” he said.
Jeffries brushed off a question about how Mamdani’s win relates to the future of the Democratic Party.
“I think it will continue to be important for all of us on the Democratic side to address relentlessly the issue of the lack of affordability in this country. Donald Trump promised to lower costs on Day 1. Costs haven’t gone down, they’re going up,” he said.
On Mamdani and antisemitism charges
Jeffries said Mamdani will need to “clarify” his position on Israel and antisemitism.
“Globalizing the Intifada, by way of example, is not an acceptable phrasing,” he said. “He’s going to have to clarify his position on that as he moves forward. With respect to the Jewish communities that I represent, I think our nominee is going to have to convince folks that he is prepared to aggressively address the rise in antisemitism in the city of New York, which has been an unacceptable development.”
On House briefing on US strikes on Iran
Pressed on Friday’s classified briefing in the House on the U.S. strikes on Iran, Jeffries was skeptical of the information provided by the Trump administration.
“Why did they not seek the congressional authorization required by the Constitution for this type of preemptive strike?” he asked. “I still haven’t seen facts presented to us as a Congress to justify that step, and I certainly haven’t seen facts to justify the statement that Donald Trump made that Iran’s nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated.”
On the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling
On Friday, the Supreme Court granted a partial stay of nationwide injunctions against President Donald Trump’s executive order to effectively end birthright citizenship. Jeffries called the decision “unfortunate” and “reckless.”
“If there is any instance where nationwide injunctions are appropriate, it would be in a manner like what we’ve just experienced in terms of birthright citizenship, which is clearly a part of the Constitution. If you are born as a child in the United States of America, you are a citizen. So, it was a procedural setback that was quite unfortunate, and it was a reckless decision, in my view,” he said.
He said Democrats will need to “intensify our efforts” in district courts or work on a class action suit on behalf of individuals “adversely impacted.”
Pablo Alcala/Lexington Herald-Leader/Tribune News Service via Getty Image
(WASHINGTON) — Ten years after the Supreme Court extended marriage rights to same-sex couples nationwide, the justices this fall will consider for the first time whether to take up a case that explicitly asks them to overturn that decision.
Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for six days in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple on religious grounds, is appealing a $100,000 jury verdict for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys fees.
In a petition for writ of certiorari filed last month, Davis argues First Amendment protection for free exercise of religion immunizes her from personal liability for the denial of marriage licenses.
More fundamentally, she claims the high court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges — extending marriage rights for same-sex couples under the 14th Amendment’s due process protections — was “egregiously wrong.”
“The mistake must be corrected,” wrote Davis’ attorney Mathew Staver in the petition. He calls Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell “legal fiction.”
The petition appears to mark the first time since 2015 that the court has been formally asked to overturn the landmark marriage decision. Davis is seen as one of the only Americans currently with legal standing to bring a challenge to the precedent.
“If there ever was a case of exceptional importance,” Staver wrote, “the first individual in the Republic’s history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it.”
Lower courts have dismissed Davis’ claims and most legal experts consider her bid a long shot. A federal appeals court panel concluded earlier this year that the former clerk “cannot raise the First Amendment as a defense because she is being held liable for state action, which the First Amendment does not protect.”
Davis, as the Rowan County Clerk in 2015, was the sole authority tasked with issuing marriage licenses on behalf of the government under state law.
“Not a single judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals showed any interest in Davis’s rehearing petition, and we are confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis’s arguments do not merit further attention,” said William Powell, attorney for David Ermold and David Moore, the now-married Kentucky couple that sued Davis for damages, in a statement to ABC News.
A renewed campaign to reverse legal precedent Davis’ appeal to the Supreme Court comes as conservative opponents of marriage rights for same-sex couples pursue a renewed campaign to reverse legal precedent and allow each state to set its own policy.
At the time Obergefell was decided in 2015, 35 states had statutory or constitutional bans on same-sex marriages, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Only eight states had enacted laws explicitly allowing the unions.
So far in 2025, at least nine states have either introduced legislation aimed at blocking new marriage licenses for LGBTQ people or passed resolutions urging the Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell at the earliest opportunity, according to the advocacy group Lambda Legal.
In June, the Southern Baptist Convention — the nation’s largest Protestant Christian denomination — overwhelmingly voted to make “overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family” a top priority.
Support for equal marriage rights softening While a strong majority of Americans favor equal marriage rights, support appears to have softened in recent years, according to Gallup — 60% of Americans supported same-sex marriages in 2015, rising to 70% support in 2025, but that level has plateaued since 2020.
Among Republicans, support has notably dipped over the past decade, down from 55% in 2021 to 41% this year, Gallup found.
Davis’ petition argues the issue of marriage should be treated the same way the court handled the issue of abortion in its 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade. She zeroes in on Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurrence in that case, in which he explicitly called for revisiting Obergefell.
The justices “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote at the time, referring to the landmark decisions dealing with a fundamental right to privacy, due process and equal protection rights.
“It is hard to say where things will go, but this will be a long slog considering how popular same-sex marriage is now,” said Josh Blackman, a prominent conservative constitutional scholar and professor at South Texas College of Law.
Blackman predicts many members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority would want prospective challenges to Obergefell to percolate in lower courts before revisiting the debate.
The court is expected to formally consider Davis’ petition this fall during a private conference when the justices discuss which cases to add to their docket. If the case is accepted, it would likely be scheduled for oral argument next spring and decided by the end of June 2026. The court could also decline the case, allowing a lower court ruling to stand and avoid entirely the request to revisit Obergefell.
“Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett seem wildly uninterested. Maybe Justice Neil Gorsuch, too,” said Sarah Isgur, an ABC News legal analyst and host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions.
“There is no world in which the court takes the case as a straight gay marriage case,” Isgur added. “It would have to come up as a lower court holding that Obergefell binds judges to accept some other kind of non-traditional marital arrangement.”
Ruling wouldn’t invalidate existing marriages If the ruling were to be overturned at some point in the future, it would not invalidate marriages already performed, legal experts have pointed out. The 2022 Respect for Marriage Act requires the federal government and all states to recognize legal marriages of same-sex and interracial couples performed in any state — even if there is a future change in the law.
Davis first appealed the Supreme Court in 2019 seeking to have the damages suit against her tossed out, but her petition was rejected. Conservative Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito concurred with the decision at the time.
“This petition implicates important questions about the scope of our decision in Obergefell, but it does not cleanly present them,” Thomas wrote in a statement.
Many LGBTQ advocates say they are apprehensive about the shifting legal and political landscape around marriage rights.
There are an estimated 823,000 married same-sex couples in the U.S., including 591,000 that wed after the Supreme Court decision in June 2015, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School. Nearly one in five of those married couples is parenting a child under 18.
Since the Obergefell decision, the makeup of the Supreme Court has shifted rightward, now including three appointees of President Donald Trump and a 6-justice conservative supermajority.
Chief Justice John Roberts, among the current members of the court who dissented in Obergefell a decade ago, sharply criticized the ruling at the time as “an act of will, not legal judgment” with “no basis in the Constitution.” He also warned then that it “creates serious questions about religious liberty.”
Davis invoked Roberts’ words in her petition to the high court, hopeful that at least four justices will vote to accept her case and hear arguments next year.
