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WASHINGTON (AP) — A unanimous Supreme Court made it easier Thursday to bring lawsuits over so-called reverse discrimination, siding with an Ohio woman who claims she didn’t get a job and then was demoted because she is straight.

The justices’ decision affects lawsuits in 20 states and the District of Columbia where, until now, courts had set a higher bar when members of a majority group, including those who are white and heterosexual, sue for discrimination under federal law.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court that federal civil rights law draws no distinction between members of majority and minority groups.

“By establishing the same protections for every ‘individual’ — without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group — Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,” Jackson wrote.

The court ruled in an appeal from Marlean Ames, who has worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services for more than 20 years.

Though he joined Jackson’s opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a separate opinion that some of the country’s “largest and most prestigious employers have overtly discriminated against those they deem members of so-called majority groups.”

Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, cited a brief filed by America First Legal, a conservative group founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller, to assert that “American employers have long been ‘obsessed’ with ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives and affirmative action plans.”

Two years ago, the court’s conservative majority outlawed consideration of race in university admissions. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has ordered an end to DEI policies in the federal government and has sought to end government support for DEI programs elsewhere. Some of the new administration’s anti-DEI initiatives have been temporarily blocked in federal court.

Jackson’s opinion makes no mention of DEI. Instead, she focused on Ames’ contention that she was passed over for a promotion and then demoted because she is heterosexual. Both the job she sought and the one she had held were given to LGBTQ people.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars sex discrimination in the workplace. A trial court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Ames.

The 6th circuit is among the courts that had required an additional requirement for people like Ames, showing “background circumstances” that might include that LGBTQ people made the decisions affecting Ames or statistical evidence of a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group.

The appeals court noted that Ames didn’t provide any such circumstances.

But Jackson wrote that “this additional ‘background circumstances’ requirement is not consistent with Title VII’s text or our case law construing the statute.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump threatened to cut Elon Musk’s government contracts as their fractured alliance rapidly escalated into a public feud Thursday.

Hours after Trump lamented his breakup with Musk and said he was “disappointed” in his former backer and adviser and Musk responded on social media, Trump escalated the feud by threatening to use the U.S. government to hurt Musk’s bottom line.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote on his social media network. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The breakup between the president of the United States and the world’s richest man is unfurling much like their relationship started — rapidly, intensely and very publicly.

As President Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office on Thursday with Germany’s leader, he lamented his soured relationship with Elon Musk, his adviser-turned-social media antagonist. Trump said he was “very disappointed” with Musk after the billionaire former backer lambasted the president’s signature bill of tax cuts and spending plans.

“Whatever,” Musk wrote on his social media platform while responding to Trump in real time.

Musk later offered up an especially stinging insult to a president sensitive about his standing among voters: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” Musk retorted. “Such ingratitude,” Musk said in a follow-up post.

Politicians and their donor patrons rarely see eye to eye. But the magnitude of Musk’s support for Trump, spending at least $250 million backing his campaign, and the scope of free reign the president gave him to slash and delve into the government with the Department of Government Efficiency is eclipsed only by the speed of their falling out.

Musk announced his support for Trump shortly after the then-candidate was nearly assassinated on stage at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally last July. News of Musk’s political action committee in support of Trump’s election came days later.

Musk soon became a close adviser and frequent companion, memorably leaping in the air behind Trump on stage at a rally in October. Once Trump was elected, the tech billionaire stood behind him as he took the oath of office, flew with him on Air Force One for weekend stays at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, slept in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom at the president’s invitation and joined his Cabinet meetings wearing a MAGA hat (sometimes more than one).

“I’ll be honest, I think he missed the place,” Trump said Thursday. “He got out there, and all of a sudden he wasn’t in this beautiful Oval Office.”

Musk bid farewell to Trump last week in a subdued news conference in the Oval Office, where he sported a black eye that he said came from his young son but that seemed to be a metaphor for his messy time in government service.

Trump, who rarely misses an opportunity to zing his critics on appearance, brought it up Thursday.

“I said, ‘Do you want a little makeup? We’ll get you a little makeup.’ Which is interesting,” Trump said.

The Republican president’s comments came as Musk has stewed for days on social media about Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” warning that it will increase the federal deficit. Musk has called the bill a “disgusting abomination.”

“He hasn’t said bad about me personally, but I’m sure that will be next,” Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office. “But I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot.”

Observers had long wondered if the friendship between the two brash billionaires known for lobbing insults online would flame out in spectacular fashion. It did, in less than a year.

“Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said.

The president said some people who leave his administration “miss it so badly” and “actually become hostile.”

“It’s sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it,” he said.

He brushed aside the billionaire’s efforts to get him elected last year, including a $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes in Pennsylvania. The surge of cash Musk showed he was willing to spend seemed to set him up as a highly coveted ally for Republicans going forward, but his split with Trump, the party’s leader, raises questions about whether they or any others will see such a campaign windfall in the future.

Trump said Musk, the CEO and founder of Tesla, “only developed a problem” with the bill because it rolls back tax credits for electric vehicles.

“False,” Musk fired back on his social media platform as the president continued speaking. “This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!”

In another post, he said Trump could keep the spending cuts but “ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.”

The bill would unleash trillions of dollars in tax cuts and slash spending but also spike deficits by $2.4 trillion over a decade and leave some 10.9 million more people without health insurance, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, which for decades has served as the official scorekeeper of legislation in Congress.

Besides Musk being “disturbed” by the electric vehicle tax credits, Trump said another point of contention was Musk’s promotion of Jared Isaacman to run NASA.

Trump withdrew Isaacman’s nomination over the weekend, days after Musk left his government role.

“I didn’t think it was appropriate,” Trump said, calling Isaacman “totally a Democrat.”

Musk, reverting to his main form of political activity before he joined forces with Trump, continued slinging his responses on social media.

He shared some posts Trump made over a decade ago criticizing Republicans for their spending, musings made when he, too, was just a billionaire lobbing his thoughts on social media.

“Where is the man who wrote these words?” Musk wrote. “Was he replaced by a body double!?”

Shares of Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker fell sharply Thursday as investors feared his dispute with President Donald Trump will hurt the company.

Tesla plunged closed down more than 14% as a disagreement over the U.S. president’s budget bill turned nasty. After Musk said that Trump wouldn’t haven’t gotten elected without his help, Trump implied that he may turn the federal government against his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote on his social messaging service Truth Social. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

The drop on Thursday wiped out nearly $150 billion from Tesla’s market value, partially reversing a big runup in the eight weeks since Musk confirmed that Tesla would testing an autonomous, driverless “robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas, this month.

Investors fear Trump might not be in such a rush to usher in a future of self-driving cars in the U.S., and that could slam Tesla because so much of its future business depends on that.

“There is a fear that Trump is not going to play Mr. Nice Guy when in come to autonomous,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives. “The whole goal of robotaxis is to have them 20 or 25 cities next year. If you start to heighten the regulatory environment, that could delay that path.”

Trump’s threat to cut government contracts seem targeted more to another of Musk’s businesses, SpaceX, his privately held rocket company that received billions of dollars to send astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, provide launches and do other work for NASA. The company is currently racing to develop a mega rocket for the space agency to sent astronauts to moon next year.

A subsidiary of SpaceX, the satellite internet company Starlink, appears to also have benefited from Musk’s once-close relationship with the president.

On a trip with Trump to the Middle East last month, Musk announced that Saudi Arabia had approved his satellite service for aviation and maritime use. Though its not clear how much politics has played a role, a string of other recent deals for the company in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and elsewhere has come as Trump has threatened tariffs and sent diplomats scrambling to please the president.

One measure of SpaceX’s success: A private financing round followed by a private sale of shares recently reportedly valued it at $350 billion, up from an estimated $210 billion just a year ago. Tesla shares initially got a lift from his support of Trump. In the weeks after Trump was elected, Tesla shares soared, hitting an all-time high on Dec. 17. But they gave back those gains during Musk’s time as head of a government cost-cutting group as Tesla’s reputation took a hit. They’ve recently popped higher again after Musk vowed to focus much more on Tesla and its upcoming launch of driverless taxis.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting on Wednesday following some potentially discouraging updates on the U.S. economy.

The S&P 500 was edging up by 0.2% in afternoon trading, as momentum slowed following a big rally that had brought it back within 2.8% of its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 26 points, or 0.1%, as of 2:45 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher.

The action was stronger in the bond market, where Treasury yields fell following a pair of weaker-than-expected reports on the economy. One said that activity contracted for U.S. retailers, finance companies and other businesses in the services industries last month, when economists were expecting to see growth. Businesses told the Institute for Supply Management in its survey that all the uncertainty created by tariffs is making it difficult for them to forecast and plan.

A second report suggested U.S. employers outside of the government hired far fewer workers last month than economists expected. The report from ADP said private employers hired just 37,000 more workers than they fired, down from the prior month’s 60,000.

That could bode ill for Friday’s more comprehensive jobs report coming from the U.S. Labor Department, which is one of Wall Street’s most anticipated data releases each month. So far, the U.S. job market has remained remarkably resilient despite years of high inflation and now the threat of President Donald Trump’s high tariffs. But weakness there could undermine the rest of the economy.

To be sure, ADP’s report historically has not been a perfect predictor of what the U.S. Labor Department’s report will say.

“Whether this report is accurate or not, traders and investors will read today’s number as a dark result for trading today,” according to Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. “This may be the tip of an iceberg, but it also could be a false start.”

Following the reports, traders built up expectations that the Federal Reserve will need to cut interest rates later this year in order to prop up the economy, which in turn caused the fall for Treasury yields. The weaker-than-expected ADP report also pushed Trump to call on Fed Chair Jerome Powell to deliver cuts to rates more quickly.

“‘Too Late’ Powell must now LOWER THE RATE,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “He is unbelievable!!! Europe has lowered NINE TIMES!”

The Fed has yet to cut interest rates this year after slashing them through the end of last year. Part of the reason is that the Fed wants to see how much Trump’s tariffs will hurt the economy and raise inflation. While lower interest rates could boost the economy, they could also give inflation more fuel.

Longer-term Treasury yields have also been rising in recent weeks because of reasons outside the Fed’s control. Investors have been demanding the U.S. government pay more in interest to borrow because of worries about whether it’s set to add trillions of dollars to its debt through tax cuts under discussion on Capitol Hill.

On Wall Street, Hewlett Packard Enterprise rose 1.5% after delivering a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Wells Fargo rose 0.8% after the Federal Reserve on Tuesday lifted restrictions placed on the bank in 2018 for having a toxic sales and banking culture. Wells Fargo has spent the better part of a decade trying to restore its image with the public and convince policymakers that it had changed its ways.

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that Delta Air Lines has sued for a technology outage last summer, fell 5.1% despite reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its revenue fell just short of Wall Street’s target, as did its forecast for revenue in the current quarter.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia as the wait continued for more updates on trade talks that could convince Trump to lower his tariffs. Hopes for such deals have been a big reason U.S. stocks have roared back after falling roughly 20% below their record two months ago.

But nothing is assured, and Trump early Wednesday said of China’s leader Xi Jinping, “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!”

The European Union’s top trade negotiator, Maroš Šefčovič, met Wednesday with his American counterpart, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.37% from 4.46% late Tuesday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks traders’ expectations for what the Fed will do with overnight interest rates, eased to 3.88% from 3.96%.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

Social media platform Reddit has sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, alleging that it is illegally “scraping” the comments of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude.

Reddit claims that Anthropic has used automated bots to access Reddit’s content despite being asked not to do so, and “intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent.”

Anthropic didn’t immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. Reddit filed the lawsuit Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Francisco, where both companies are based.

“AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data,” said Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, in a statement Wednesday.

Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies to enable them to train their AI systems on Reddit commentary.

Those agreements “enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content,” Lee said.

Anthropic was formed by former OpenAI executives in 2021 and its flagship Claude chatbot remains a key competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Much like other AI companies, it’s relied heavily on websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit that are full of rich sources of written materials to teach an AI assistant the patterns of human language

In a 2021 paper co-authored by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — cited in the lawsuit — researchers at the company identified the subreddits, or subject-matter forums, that contained the highest quality data, such as those focused on gardening, history or thoughts people have in the shower.

Anthropic in 2023 argued in a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office that the “way Claude was trained qualifies as a quintessentially lawful use of materials,” by making copies of information to perform a statistical analysis of a large body of data.

But Reddit’s lawsuit is different from others brought against AI companies because it doesn’t allege copyright infringement. Instead, it focuses on the alleged breach of Reddit’s terms of use, and the unfair competition, it says, was created.

U.S. agriculture officials are warning that ground beef sold at Whole Foods markets nationwide may be contaminated with potentially dangerous E. coli bacteria.

Officials on Tuesday issued a public health alert for 1-pound, vacuum-packed packages of Organic Rancher beef, produced on May 22 and May 23, by NPC Processing Inc., of Shelburne, Vermont. The products have use-by dates of June 19 and June 20.

The U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service did not request a recall because the products are no longer available for purchase. However, they may still be in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers.

The meat was produced in Australia or Uruguay and processed in the U.S. It was sent to distributors in Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois and Maryland and then to Whole Foods stores nationwide. The problem was discovered when company officials notified FSIS that they had shipped beef products that tested positive for E. coli O157:H7, a type of bacteria that can cause serious illness.

To date, no illnesses linked to the product have been reported, officials said. Consumers who have the product should throw it away or return it to the store.

E. coli bacteria can cause infections with symptoms that include dehydration, diarrhea and cramps. Most people recover within a week, but some people can become severely ill and develop a dangerous kidney condition. Children under age 5 and older adults are most at risk.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.