June 5, 2025: Donald Trump presidency news

Our live coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency has ended for the day. Follow the latest updates or read through the posts below.

Rep. Tim Burchett speaks with CNN on Thursday.

GOP Rep. Tim Burchett said he is on President Donald Trump’s side amid his feud with Elon Musk.

“America is more worried about paying more taxes right now if we don’t pass the ‘big, beautiful bill,’” Burchett said.

Democratic Sen. Andy Kim also argued that the focus should be on the bill, pointing to the proposed benefits cuts that are included in the text.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat from Texas, also criticized the bill, similarly pointing to cuts to Medicaid and food stamps.

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance greet visitors during the Memorial Day wreath-laying ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery on May 26.

Vice President JD Vance said tonight that he is “proud to stand beside” President Donald Trump.

The vice president’s post did not mention Elon Musk, but his comment comes after Trump and the tech billionaire publicly feuded today.

Musk said he supported calls for Trump to be impeached and succeeded by Vance.

Elon Musk said he would no longer decommission vital SpaceX program Dragon, in a social media post tonight.

Ending the program could have had a devastating effect on the International Space Station and NASA.

Musk had moved to decommission the program earlier today as his public feud with President Donald Trump escalated, with both men calling each other out in multiple posts on social media. The tech billionaire had announced that SpaceX would shut down the Dragon spacecraft immediately “in light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts.”

Some background: According to SpaceX, the Dragon spacecraft is “the only spacecraft currently flying that is capable of returning significant amounts of cargo to Earth” in addition to being able to fit seven passengers. It is considered crucial for transporting cargo and people to the International Space Station. It was a SpaceX Dragon capsule that helped return the two NASA astronauts who had been stuck on the International Space Station for nine months when a Boeing vehicle experienced issues.

Musk also later wrote “You’re not wrong” in response to a post from billionaire Bill Ackman urging Musk and Trump to bury the hatchet.

The late-night Musk posts were an abrupt change in tone after a flurry of X missives today complaining about Trump’s tax bill and claiming credit for Trump’s election victory in November.

Multiple allies caught in the middle of the implosion between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk were delicately attempting to broker peace between the two men today when their quiet conversations were disrupted by a post on X.

Several people familiar with what was happening behind the scenes — who were desperately making phone calls to one another and trying to tamp down the escalating feud — described that as the tipping point, fearing that there was no going back after Musk’s loaded accusation about the president regarding the so-called Epstein files.

While Trump and Musk had largely argued over policy, it had now turned personal.

Officials in the West Wing spent most today glued to their phones as they watched the battle between the two play out on X and Truth Social. Several aides were sending the updates in group chats, likening it to a divorce and commenting that they expected this would happen, just not this soon.

“I thought maybe August,” one noted to CNN.

The Justice Department launched an investigation into Rhode Island today over the state’s diversity in hiring policies.

The DOJ in a news release accused the Democratic-led state of potentially violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which protects against employment discrimination.

The Justice Department launched similar probes last month into the Democratic-led city of Chicago for allegedly making “hiring decisions solely on the basis of race” and into Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools over the use of race in admissions to its top-ranked high school.

These investigations come as the administration has aggressively cracked down on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Last week, the administration issued new guidelines that barred federal agencies from considering race or gender in the hiring process.

Rep. Troy Nehls talks with members of the media on Thursday.

House Republicans expressed uneasiness with the escalating feud between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk and called for cooler heads to prevail.

Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas demanded Musk stop attacking Trump and said “this tit-for-tat going back and forth, isn’t helping.” While he praised Musk as “very gifted and talented,” Nehls said, “But to start making statements like that, I think, are irresponsible and certainly not healthy. So stop. You’ve lost your mind.”

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who voted against the bill last month, warned that the legislation is on “life support” and that the Senate could be “endangering” it.

Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee appeared to suggest that the feud between Trump and Musk was inevitable. Asked how much Musk’s criticism will hurt Republicans, Burchett said, “At some point it falls on deaf ears, I think. It’s just eventually, people are tired of hearing it.”

Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio is hoping to play peacemaker — inviting Trump, Musk, Speaker Mike Johnson, Vice President JD Vance and Massie to a private dinner “to mend all these fences.” He declined to go into details about who he’s heard from in response to his invitation.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio told CNN that the bill will pass and “we’ll be just fine” despite Musk’s relentless bashing of the bill.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a hardline conservative who’s objected to parts of the bill, told CNN flatly “no” when asked if he was concerned about Trump and Musk’s public breakup. “I think maybe they should count to 10” Roy said when asked about Musk’s supporting calls for Trump to be impeached.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt described Elon Musk’s claim that President Donald Trump is “in the Epstein files” an “unfortunate episode” in a new statement tonight.

Musk has not detailed how he would have gained access to unreleased files and has not provided any evidence of where his information was coming from.

In response to the Musk’s claims, a source familiar pointed to the president’s previous comments that he banned disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The source also pointed to the initial tranche of files that Attorney General Pam Bondi released in February that included the president’s name in Epstein’s flight logs. Names being mentioned in the records are not necessarily a claim of wrongdoing.

Trump’s proximity to Epstein in the past is not exactly news; he’s been photographed with Epstein. But Musk’s accusation feeds into concern in some right-wing circles about the lack of transparency about Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

President Joe Biden speaks with White House Physician Kevin O'Connor at the White House in Washington, DC, on August 28, 2023.

House Oversight chair James Comer has subpoenaed former President Joe Biden’s White House physician to appear for a deposition later this month, according to a copy of the subpoena letter shared with CNN.

The subpoena to Dr. Kevin O’Connor marks an escalation of the Republican chairman’s probe into Biden’s mental fitness and decline.

In the subpoena letter, Comer said O’Connor was not complying with the committee’s initial voluntary request for a transcribed interview.

The letter from Comer states that counsel for O’Connor responded to the committee’s request for testimony, saying that the physician can’t appear for the requested interview, citing legal and ethical obligations as well as “physician-patient privilege.” The letter from Comer says that “these arguments lack merit.”

The subpoena comes as President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into Biden’s actions and autopen use in a memorandum yesterday that cites his predecessor’s “cognitive decline.”

Comer has ramped up his investigation into Biden’s mental fitness in recent days, requesting interviews with nearly a dozen former key aides.

Elon Musk’s posts are costing him a lot.

The world’s richest person lost $34 billion from his personal net worth at the end of the day, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

That would make it the second-largest loss ever in the index’s history, according to Bloomberg, second only to Musk’s bigger dive in November 2021.

The loss is a drop in the bucket for the Tesla and SpaceX chief. As of June 5, he was still the richest person in the world, with a net worth of around $334 billion.

Tesla shares fell 14% on Thursday, wiping off more than $150 billion off electric vehicle company’s market value. It was the biggest single-day drop in market value of all time, according to FactSet.

The head of the Inter-American Foundation can remain in her post while a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s attempt to fire her plays out, a federal appeals court said today.

The unsigned order from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest court set back for President Donald Trump in his efforts to dismantle the agency, which was created in 1969 to support economic development in Latin America and throughout the Carribean.

The DC Circuit’s decision could have an impact on separate cases challenging the administration’s attempts to overhaul the leadership at other independent agencies. Though the Inter-American Foundation is a little-known agency, the case is among those testing Trump’s push to expand presidential power in his second term.

Appeals court Judge Gregory Katsas, who was appointed by Trump, wrote in a concurrence that the president “could not unilaterally appoint” Peter Marocco to the agency’s board and that it is “unlikely that either the President or Marocco permissibly removed” Sara Aviel, who had been serving as the agency’s CEO until her dismissal earlier this year.

Appeals court Judge Nina Pillard signed on to Katsas’ concurrence, while Judge Neomi Rao, also a Trump appointee, dissented from the court’s decision.

The court’s ruling keeps in effect a ruling issued in April by US District Judge Loren AliKhan in favor of Aviel that had voided any decisions taken by Marocco while he was overseeing the agency.

Marocco had sought to reduce the agency to the minimum statutory requirements, including by firing the vast majority of its workforce and cancelling all but one of its grants.

In a post on X, Speaker Mike Johnson hit back at Elon Musk’s attacks on President Donald Trump’s domestic policy bill, as the feud escalated between the tech billionaire and top Republicans.

Musk had posted on X asking, “where is the Mike Johnson of 2023!?” citing an older tweet where Johnson rails against the climbing national debt.

Johnson wrote back in response: “The Mike Johnson of 2023 is the SAME Mike Johnson who has always been a lifelong fiscal hawk - who now serves as Speaker and is implementing a multi-stage plan to get our country back to fiscal responsibility and extraordinary economic growth.”

“It begins with the critically important One Big Beautiful Bill that includes the LARGEST mandatory spending cut to the federal government in history (by almost 400%), the LARGEST tax cut in history, the LARGEST investment in border security in a GENERATION, along with arguably the STRONGEST collection of pro-growth provisions EVER passed,” Johnson continued.

He concluded, “The same CONSISTENT Mike Johnson who has ALWAYS supported the America First Agenda.”

Johnson also told CNN that Musk’s attacks and feud with Trump are “not helpful.”

Leaving the House floor later, Johnson acknowledged that “it clearly is personal” between Musk and Trump.

CNN’s Morgan Rimmer, Manu Raju and Aileen Graef contributed to this post, which was updated with more reaction from Speaker Johnson.

Elon Musk added to his barrage of tweets against President Donald Trump today, saying on his platform X that “The Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year.”

His post quoted somebody else on X who declared “can i finally say that trump’s tariffs are super stupid.”

JPMorgan economists lowered the risk of the US economy entering a recession to below 50% from 60% previously after the United States and China reached a trade breakthrough in Geneva last month.

Musk has been record saying he hopes for a “zero-tariff situation” between US and EU. In April, he called Trump’s senior trade adviser Peter Navarro a “moron” on social media, escalating the billionaire’s breakup from the administration on its economic policies.

The relationship between Trump and Musk imploded in spectacular fashion today, with each posting on their respective social media platforms increasingly acrimonious messages.

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

A public feud exploded today between President Donald Trump and his one-time ally, the tech billionaire Elon Musk.

It began this morning during a media event at the White House where Trump said he was “very disappointed” in the tech billionaire after Musk repeatedly blasted the president’s sweeping domestic agenda bill in recent days.

“Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump told reporters, less than one week after the two exchanged effusive praise on Musk’s last day in the administration in which he was granted special government employee status to lead the Department of Government Efficiency.

Here’s how it all happened:

Musk steps back:

Criticized bill:

Trump’s response:

Musk hits back:

Elon Musk is calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment as the two men’s breakup reaches new heights.

“Yes,” Musk posted on his social media platform X in response to another user who wrote “President vs Elon. Who wins? My money’s on Elon. Trump should be impeached and JD Vance should replace him.”

In another post, Musk said: “In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” Musk wrote.

Such a move could have a devastating effect on the International Space Station and NASA.

According to SpaceX, the Dragon spacecraft is “the only spacecraft currently flying that is capable of returning significant amounts of cargo to Earth” in addition to being able to fit seven passengers. It is considered crucial for transporting cargo and people to the International Space Station. It was a SpaceX Dragon capsule that helped return the two NASA astronauts who got stuck on the International Space Station for nine months when a Boeing vehicle had issues.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk claimed that President Donald Trump is “in the Epstein files” and that is the “real reason” those records have not been publicly released, without providing any evidence of where his information was coming from.

He added in a subsequent post: “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”

Musk did not detail how he would have gained access to unreleased files. CNN has reached out to the White House for a response.

Context on Epstein files: Myriad right-wing media figures have, for years, suggested that the government is hiding secrets relating to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. Many versions of the conspiracy theory have asserted that the government is covering up a list of powerful men who also committed heinous crimes.

This theory has often been shorthanded as an Epstein “client list,” even though the best-sourced reporter on this beat, Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald, said “those who have worked with the FBI on the case for decades say there is no evidence Epstein kept a ledger or a list of clients who were involved with his sex trafficking operation.” The inclusion of a person’s name in files related to the case does not by itself indicate they have been accused of any wrongdoing.

Nevertheless, Trump – who was friends with Epstein decades ago – talked during the 2024 presidential campaign about potentially releasing more governmental files about the disgraced financier.

And that’s what attorney general Pam Bondi sought to do earlier this month, saying Trump directed her to review government files about Epstein and provide transparency to the public. She released an initial tranche of files in February that largely duplicated information that had already been made public.

With previous reporting from CNN’s Brian Stelter.

A Cybertruck is viewed inside a Tesla showroom at The Florida Mall on May 13, in Orlando, Florida.

Tesla shares plummeted 15% this afternoon as Elon Musk’s battle with President Donald Trump intensified.

Trump threatened in a social media post to target Musk’s business empire.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The Tesla selloff has wiped off more than $150 billion off the market value of Telsa, which started the day worth nearly $1.1 trillion.

It has also erased a chunk off the net worth of Musk, the world’s richest person.

A program designed to flag travelers for potential extra screening and monitoring at airports and on airplanes will be discontinued, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced today.

Being on the list does not mean an individual is suspected or accused of wrongdoing.

“It is clear that the Quiet Skies program was used as a political rolodex of the Biden Administration — weaponized against its political foes and exploited to benefit their well-heeled friends,” Noem said in her statement. “I am calling for a Congressional investigation to unearth further corruption at the expense of the American people and the undermining of US national security.”

The program was only one part of airport security and other screening lists still exist inside of the department.

“TSA will continue performing important vetting functions tied to legitimate commercial aviation security threats to both ensure the safety of the American traveler and uphold its statutory obligations,” the department said.

President Donald Trump floated terminating Elon Musk’s companies’ government subsidies and contracts as a way of saving money, intensifying the two billionaires’ feud on Thursday.

“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,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

Musk then commented on a tweet about how that could end the International Space Station, writing, “This just gets better and better,” adding, “Go ahead, make my day …”

Minutes earlier, Trump wrote that he’d asked Musk to leave the White House, and claimed the Tesla CEO “just went CRAZY!”

“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,” the president said. (There has never been a federal mandate that prohibited Americans from buying gasoline-powered cars.)

The president’s social media posts come as he said in the Oval Office earlier Thursday that he was “very disappointed” with Musk as he continues to blast the president’s massive tax and spending cuts package. Trump said he and Musk “had a great relationship,” but “I don’t know if we will anymore.”

Republican senators want to keep the boiling public feud between President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk at arm’s length — at least for now.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma: “I’m not standing in the middle of that fight. I’m focused on getting a bill, and I don’t want to be distracted by what’s happened online,” the staunch Trump ally said.

Sen. Todd Young of Indiana: “I know this is your beat and it’s informative and entertaining to a lot of people, I don’t talk a lot about this kind of inside baseball stuff.”

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin: “I’m not getting involved in that whatsoever.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune declined to weigh in on the feud. “I don’t have an observation on that,” he told CNN as he walked on the floor.

This post was updated with Thune’s reaction.