Maverick Democratic Sen. John Fetterman dissed members of his own party Thursday for suddenly backing Elon Musk during his feud with President Donald Trump. 

Democrats have found an unlikely ally in Musk this week, given his public rejection of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” and a subsequent call for Trump’s impeachment. 

The president has championed the legislation as fulfilling his key campaign promises, including border security, American energy production and tax cuts. 

The megabill is under consideration by both a Republican-led White House and Congress. But it has faced hiccups in the Senate this week as Republicans, including some who helped pass the bill through the House, have indicated they do not support the bill in its current form. Every House Democrat voted against the bill. 

ELON MUSK WARPATH AGAINST TRUMP’S ‘BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ RATTLES HOUSE GOP

The national debt is at $36,214,501,400,213.64 as of June 5, according to the latest numbers published by the Treasury Department.

GOP SENATORS EXPRESS ‘CONCERNS,’ ‘SKEPTICISM’ OVER TRUMP’S SPENDING BILL AFTER MUSK RANT

Amid the setbacks, Musk has thrown a wrench into the Republican’s reconciliation process through a series of fiery posts on X, the platform he bought in 2022. And Democrats were quick to coalesce behind Musk’s rejection of the bill, seizing on the GOP’s intraparty conflict despite their outright rejection of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) this year. 

In the first of several posts targeting the bill, and then Trump directly, Musk said, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

Fetterman, who has built a reputation for bucking his own party on issues like immigration and support for Israel, was quick to call out the inconsistency of his fellow Democrats Thursday. 

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., talks with a reporter after a Senate luncheon at the U.S. Capitol March 11, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“The Dems, we’ve been dumping all over Musk and vandalizing Teslas or whatever, and now, suddenly, we might be more back into him,” Fetterman said. 

Democrats began staging protests at Tesla dealerships early into Trump’s second term. Tesla vehicles and dealerships have also been targeted this year in a string of violent attacks against the company, another business owned by Musk. Trump’s Justice Department labeled the attacks “domestic terrorism.”

And while the Pennsylvania Democrat said Musk is right for rejecting Trump’s megabill, Fetterman said Thursday Democrats have to decide what they think of Musk and stick with it. 

Elon Musk holds the key to the White House, a gift he received from President Donald Trump, at a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., May 30, 2025.  (Reuters/Nathan Howard)

“It wasn’t that long ago that Tesla was like the virtue-signaling kind of accessory for Dems,” Fetterman said. “I would never want to vandalize Teslas, and the ‘big, beautiful bill’ is wrong for America. So, from my perspective, I’ve just tried to be consistent through that.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., was one Democrat who acknowledged this week that Democrats should work with Musk on their shared objective to stop Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

And GOP Rep. Tim Burchett piled on the criticism of Democrats’ inconsistencies, telling Fox News Digital, “It’s kind of ironic to me that, a week ago, the Democrats hated Elon Musk’s guts … and now they’re basing everything they have on him.”

Fox News Channel’s Chad Pergram and Fox News Media’s Dan Scully contributed to this report. 

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the nation’s anti-discrimination laws apply equally to all employees, regardless of whether those complaining of bias are white or Black, gay or straight.

In a short and unanimous opinion, the justices rejected as outdated and mistaken the view that “members of a majority group” must show more evidence of discrimination before they can sue and win.

Instead, the justices said the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has always prohibited workplace discrimination against “any individual” who suffers discrimination because of race, color, religion, national origin and sex, including sexual orientation.

The law “draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said.

The ruling revives a discrimination lawsuit brought by Marlean Ames, an Ohio woman who said she was demoted and discriminated against by a lesbian who became her supervisor. She was then replaced by a gay man who had less experience.

Ames is a heterosexual woman. She sued her employer, the Ohio Department of Youth Services, and alleged she was discriminated against because of her sexual orientation.

But a federal judge rejected her discrimination claim, and the 6th Circuit Court in Cincinnati affirmed that decision. In doing so, the judges said she could not point to “background circumstances” or statistical evidence suggesting that hers was the “unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”

Law students at the University of Virginia Law School appealed her case to the Supreme Court. They pointed out that the 6th Circuit and several other courts continue to use an outdated, two-track approach to discrimination claims.

This is not the standard in much of the nation, however. For example, they said the 9th Circuit Court based in California does not follow this approach, which would require more proof of discrimination from whites or men or heterosexuals.

But the law students said the court should hear the Ames case and clarify the law nationwide.

Although the case did not directly involve DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion, it gained added attention because of President Trump’s drive to rid the government of DEI policies.

Jackson said the Supreme Court for more than 50 years has steadily rejected the view that discrimination laws apply differently to different groups of people.

In Griggs vs. Duke Power in 1971, “we said that ‘[d]iscriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, is precisely and only what Congress has proscribed.’”

A few years later, the court rejected the two-track approach, she said, “holding that Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act] prohibited racial discrimination against the white petitioners in th[at] case upon the same standards as would be applicable were they Negroes.”

Lawyers for the Biden and Trump administrations had urged the court to overrule the 6th Circuit and make clear there is no double standard for deciding discrimination claims

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas noted the “majority” in the workplace differs by workplace.

“Women make up the majority of employees in certain industries, such as teaching and nursing, but the minority in other industries, such as construction.”

“Defining the ‘majority’ is even more difficult in the context of race,” he wrote. “American families have become increasingly multicultural, and attempts to divide us all up into a handful of groups have become only more incoherent with time.”

The court’s ruling in Ames vs. Ohio Department of Youth Services said the Ohio court should reopen and reconsider Ames’ claim of discrimination.

Experts in discrimination law said the decision will have an effect in some regions but not others.

“As a practical matter, more ‘reverse discrimination’ lawsuits may survive a motion to dismiss,” said Evan Parness, an attorney at the Covington law firm in New York.

Although the decision doesn’t significantly change how federal district courts in California operate, it has implications for some courts in other parts of the country that require the higher burden of proof, said Elizabeth Beske, professor of law at American University in Washington.

The “background circumstances” rule was first applied in D.C. courts, after a white man sued the Baltimore and Ohio railroad company arguing he was discriminated against when jobs were instead given to Black and female applicants. The court held that “it defie[d] common sense to suggest that the promotion of a Black employee justifies an inference of prejudice against white co-workers in our present society.”

Columbia Law professor Olatunde C. Johnson said the “opinion is not surprising. It depends on a straightforward and sensible statutory reading of Title VII. The 6th Circuit’s ‘background circumstances’ approach was not typical, so I don’t expect the case to dramatically change employment discrimination litigation on the ground.”

Brian McGinnis, an attorney with the firm Fox Rothschild, said because the decision was unanimous, which is rare, it shows an uncontroversial and “pretty straightforward” perspective that there is no historical basis in case law for requiring extra proof from white, heterosexual or other majority groups.

And it represents an effort by the court to streamline and eliminate the need for additional steps in litigation, he said.

There is some question as to how the change is applied, but McGinnis doesn’t expect any issues.

“There is some potential for mischief, but I don’t think it will have much change on the day-to-day operations of many employers or courts,” McGinnis said. “The short answer is, it should not change much.”

Savage reported from Washington and Hussain from Los Angeles.

President Trump has targeted the citizens of a dozen countries as part of a new ban on travel to the United States and restricted travel for those from several more countries.

The restrictions touch more parts of the world and could affect more people than similar travel bans that were introduced during the first Trump administration.

All travelers who are citizens of countries in the first tier will be barred entry, while certain types of visas will be suspended for those countries in the second tier.

Shortly after he first took office in 2017, Mr. Trump tried to bar travelers from seven mostly Muslim-majority countries. Five of those countries are on the new list, plus several more countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, as well as Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela.

Mr. Trump’s order says the new travel ban does not apply to people with visas who are already in the United States, and it contains a few other exceptions. For example, Afghans eligible for the Special Immigrant Visa program, which is for those who helped the U.S. government during the war in Afghanistan, are excepted from the ban.

How many people come to the U.S. from these countries?

Last year, the State Department issued about 170,000 total visas to the 12 countries on the ban list. For most countries, the vast majority of those were nonimmigrant visitor visas for tourism, business or study. But for Afghans, Yemenis and Somalians, most were immigrant visas, typically allocated to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or to skilled workers who are sponsored by their employers.

What happened under the previous travel bans?

The introduction of the 2017 travel ban led to immediate chaos and confusion as hundreds of travelers were detained at airports across the country and more than 60,000 visas were provisionally revoked. Federal judges blocked the ban within a week.

Overall, travel from the countries banned in 2017 was relatively low to begin with, though people from Iran and Syria had arrived in the thousands each month. A back-and-forth in the courts delayed implementation, and then the Covid pandemic hit, halting travel globally.

But after January 2021, when President Biden lifted the bans, travel from many of those countries, most notably Iran, more than rebounded.

Mr. Trump ended up issuing four travel bans in his first term, with each version modifying its predecessor in order to pass legal scrutiny. It was almost a year before any ban actually took effect.

Here is a look back at the evolution of the travel bans under the first Trump administration from 2017 through 2020: