Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, Elon Musk and Donald Trump bid farewell from the Oval Office on live TV. Meanwhile, Kristen Welker digs into Trump’s latest social media salvos at Vladimir Putin and what they could mean for the Russia-Ukraine war. And senior Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley answers a reader question about a notable provision tucked into the House budget bill that passed recently.
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— Scott Bland
Elon Musk’s missed opportunity
By Jonathan Allen
Elon Musk stood next to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Friday, but the physical proximity belied a growing philosophical divide between two of the world’s most powerful men, resulting in the tech mogul’s abrupt announcement that he is departing Washington — without having achieved his goal of decimating the federal government.
“He came, he saw, he folded,” Steve Bannon, a senior White House adviser during Trump’s first term who is influential with the working-class wing of Trump’s MAGA base, said in a text exchange with NBC News.
Musk, who stood with his arms folded across his chest as he and Trump took questions, sported a bruise near his right eye — an unmistakable metaphor for his tumultuous government service — that he said was incurred while playing with his 5-year-old son X.
Trump took a more charitable view of Musk’s tenure during a sprawling news conference in which he also declined to rule out pardoning Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is standing trial on charges of sex trafficking and other alleged crimes; said he dislikes “the concept” of former first lady Jill Biden being forced to testify before Congress about her husband’s mental fitness; and predicted again that Iran is on the cusp of making a deal that would suspend its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
“He had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame because he’s an incredible patriot,” Trump said of Musk.
Trump and Musk both contended that DOGE will continue to wring out savings by rooting out waste and fraud without Musk as its face.
“This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,” Musk said, vowing to reach the trillion-dollar mark in cuts by the middle of next year. At the same time he spoke of cutting government spending, Musk lauded Trump’s remodeling of the Oval Office.
“I love the gold on the ceiling,” he said.
Musk has argued that inertia throttled his efforts to reduce government spending — a conclusion that raises questions about whether he was naive about the challenge of the mission he undertook.
“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he told The Washington Post this week. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”
The next steps as Trump vents fury at Putin
By Kristen Welker
President Donald Trump has ramped up the rhetoric attacking Russian President Vladimir Putin, but so far there’s no teeth behind it.
After months of cutting Putin slack on the world stage and clashing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump has undergone a stark rhetorical shift in recent days.
He’s taken to social media to blast Putin for having gone “absolutely crazy” and for “needlessly killing a lot of people” including Ukrainian citizens “for no reason whatsoever.” He has warned that “what Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”
Trump appears to now be warming to the belief many Western leaders have held for years — that Putin isn’t seriously pushing for peace, outside of total Russian victory. In recent weeks, we’ve seen some of the biggest bombardments of the entire war, including a massive drone attack in Kyiv that came in the shadow of a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine.
None of this means Trump is buddy-buddy with Zelenskyy now, and he criticized the Ukrainian as “stubborn” during Friday remarks in the Oval Office, even as he underscored his disappointment with Putin.
Meanwhile, the issue of sanctioning Russia and sending aid to Ukraine obviously splits the GOP, and it doesn’t necessarily sit well with the “America First” wing of the GOP that Trump commands. But if Trump wants to act, as former Vice President Mike Pence told me he recommended during our conversation earlier this month, he has arrows in his quiver.
Earlier this week on “Meet the Press Now,” former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul told us that the only way to convince Putin to come to the negotiating table is to convince him he can’t advance on the battlefield. While one might think the West is tapped out when it comes to sanctions, McFaul said there’s a lot more on the table, including seizing more assets or banning Russia’s “shadow fleet” that ships oil from docking at Western ports.
And just a few days ago, Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, an elder statesman in the Senate, called on Trump to be as “decisive” in new sanctions against Russia as he’s been in his push against Harvard University.
So if Putin has run out of leash with Trump, then what’s the president waiting for?
Join us Sunday when we talk about this and a flurry of other important domestic and international issues with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
✉️ Mailbag: Congress and the courts
Thanks to everyone who emailed us! This week’s reader question is on an under-the-radar provision in Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill.”
“I heard that the bill contains language that takes away a judge’s authority to hold someone in contempt when they don’t comply with the court’s orders. Is that true? I’ve seen a lot about the financial implications but nothing on this.”
To answer this, we turned to senior Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley. Here’s his response:
The House bill does indeed include a provision that would limit the ability of federal judges to hold people in contempt for violating court orders. (Read it here.)
The Republican-backed measure comes amid considerable pushback on the right against a number of judges who have not only blocked Trump administration policies but have also questioned whether the administration is complying with rulings and at least considered contempt proceedings.
The provision in question would seek to limit the ability of judges to pursue contempt findings by withholding federal funds that could be used to enforce such a ruling unless the plaintiff posted a bond when seeking a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction.
But there is no guarantee the Senate will include the language in its version of the bill, in part because it may fall foul of rules intended to ensure budget bill provisions have a direct link to federal revenues.
🗞️ Today’s other top stories
- 👩⚖️ A temporary win on temporary status: The Supreme Court said it would continue to let the administration revoke the temporary legal status of more than 500,000 immigrants from four countries as litigation continues. Read more →
- 🦷 Speaking of having teeth: A new study warns that a 50-state ban on fluoride in water could lead to 1 in every 3 children in America developing cavities in the next five years. Read more →
- 📉 A roller coaster: Trump’s tweet accusing China of flouting a deal on tariffs sent stocks sliding amid the uncertainty related to the trade war between the two countries. Read more →
- ☔ The fate of FEMA: While the Department of Homeland Security is publicly saying it will get rid of FEMA, it’s quietly moving to keep some key pieces in place ahead of hurricane season. Read more →
- 🚙 Getting out of dodge: A growing number of lawmakers are looking to ditch Washington for the governor’s mansions, leaving a job without a term limit for a chance to move back home. Read more →
- ➡️ Inflation rate: Inflation didn’t change much in April, according to new data released by the Commerce Department. Read more →
- 📱 Poke: The Trump administration wants more social media vetting of Harvard’s visa applicants. Read more →
- ◼️ Bernie Kerik has died: The former New York City police commissioner who later spent three years in jail on tax and false statement charges before being pardoned has died at the age of 69. Read more →
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Scott Bland and Ben Kamisar.
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