US politics live: Donald Trump offers top-end jets, trade deal to India in meeting with Narendra Modi

Donald Trump has rekindled relations with one of the most powerful nations on planet Earth after a tense period of tariff threats.

Welcome back, friends, to our live coverage of US politics.

It may be Friday here, but the news is not slowing down across the Pacific.

Donald Trump has offered up some strikingly favourable remarks about Vladimir Putin, repeating Putin’s hollow justification for invading Ukraine and insisting that he “trusts” the Russian dictator’s word - at least when it comes to their upcoming peace talks.

“I believe President Putin. When I spoke to him yesterday. I know him very well,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office today.

“I think he wants peace. I think he would tell me if he didn’t.

“I trust him on this subject. I think he’d like to see something happen.”

He also called for Russia to be readmitted into the powerful Group of 7, previously the Group of 8, which currently includes the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Russia was kicked out in 2014 after it illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

“I’d love to have them back. I think it was a mistake to throw them out,” Mr Trump said.

“I said, ‘What are you doing? You guys. All you’re talking about is Russia, and they should be sitting at the table.’ I think Putin would love to be back.”

Donald Trump luuuuuurves him a tariff. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

Elsewhere billionaire Elon Musk, who is of course running the DOGE team responsible for cutting swathes of money from the federal budget, has been complaining about the American court system.

At one point today Mr Musk posted the following on his social media platform: “If ANY judge ANYWHERE can stop EVERY presidential action EVERYWHERE, we do NOT live in a democracy.”

Later he threw a poll at people, asking them to say yes or no to this proposition: “Federal judges who repeatedly abuse their authority to obstruct the will of the people via their elected representatives should be impeached.”

The results were overwhelmingly in favour of the “yes” side, as you’d expect, given we’re talking about Mr Musk’s own followers here.

Mr Musk is clearly frustrated by some of the delays, imposed by federal judges, on his plans with DOGE. But he’s also misguided about the way America’s judicial system works, as we shall explain below.

Read on for the latest updates.