US politics live: Trump takes rare swipe at Musk

Donald Trump has taken a rare swipe at Elon Musk in a revelation that unearths a telling change.

US politics on the weekend. What could be more delightful? Welcome to our live coverage.

A New York Times columnist, of all people, has brutally revealed how Donald Trump’s opponents, the Democrats, have screwed up. And he has highlighted the greatest electoral challenge they face: young people.

“One thing you can notice is that among 18-year-olds, women of color are the only of the four that Harris won. Trump narrowly won non-white men,” Ezra Klein noted.

The four critical groups in question here are white men, white women, non-white men and non-white women.

“I find this part of the chart shocking. I sometimes talk about narrative violations, and if we knew anything about Donald Trump eight years ago, it was that young people didn’t like him,” said Mr Klein.

“Republicans had been maybe throwing away young people for generations in order to run up their margins among seniors.

“But if you look at this chart, 75-year-old white men supported Kamala Harris at a significantly higher rate than 20-year-old white men.”

We’ll explore his point further in the posts below.

Meanwhile Donald Trump has claimed he “didn’t sign” a key, controversial executive order invoking one of America’s wartime laws to deport migrants, even though his signature is clearly on it.

That strange development is the latest complication in Mr Trump’s invocation of The Alien Enemies Act, a law from 1798, which has only been used three times before: during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.

The Trump administration is arguing it can use the act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process - in other words, without giving the migrants any chance to contest the accusations against them.

During a brief session with journalists today, Mr Trump was asked about the comments of a federal judge, who wants to know “why the proclamation was signed ‘in the dark’”. At issue is the timeline. The executive order invoking The Alien Enemies Act was signed mere hours before planeloads of migrants were deported to El Salvador, where they remain imprisoned in a notoriously brutal jail.

The federal judge in question issued an injunction, telling the government to turn the planes back pending judicial review - an order with which it failed to comply.

“Because we want to get criminals out of the country, number one,” said Mr Trump said when asked, by Fox News, to justify why migrants were “rushed” out of the country.

“And I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it. Other people handled it. Marco Rubio’s done a great job, and he wanted them out, and we go along with that.”

Slight problem: Mr Trump’s distinctive signature is definitely on the document.

More on that below.

Read on for the latest updates.

Originally published as US politics live: Trump takes rare swipe at Musk