Trump to visit a Ford factory and promote manufacturing in Detroit

President Donald Trump travels to Michigan on Tuesday to promote his efforts to boost U.S. manufacturing. The day trip will include a tour of a Ford factory in Dearborn that makes best-selling F-150 pickups, and an address to the Detroit Economic Club.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network.

The BBC is seeking to dismiss Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit over the way the BBC edited his speech on Jan. 6, 2021. The broadcaster has apologized to Trump over the edit, but rejects claims it defamed him.

And Trump is weighing whether to order a U.S. military action as the Iranian government continues a violent crackdown on protests.

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Trump will visit a Ford factory and promote manufacturing in Detroit

Trump will travel to Michigan on Tuesday to promote his efforts to boost U.S. manufacturing and tout economic gains which some economist say point to a booming economy.

The day trip will include a tour of a Ford factory in Dearborn that makes F-150 pickups, the bestselling domestic vehicle in the U.S. The Republican president is also set to address the Detroit Economic Club at the MotorCity Casino.

November’s off-year elections are radidly approaching and  public concerns about kitchen table issues persist. In their wake, the White House said Trump would put a greater emphasis on talking directly to the public about his economic policies after doing relatively few events around the country earlier in his term.

Trump’s Michigan swing follows economy-focused speeches he gave last month in Pennsylvania  and North Carolina.

Inflation cooled slightly in December

Inflation declined a bit last month as prices for gas and used cars fell, a sign that cost pressures are slowly easing.

Consumer prices rose 0.3% in December from the prior month, the Labor Department said Tuesday, the same as in November. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 0.2%, also matching November’s figure.

Even as inflation has eased, the large price increases for necessities such as groceries, rent, and health care have left many American households feeling squeezed.

US labels 3 Muslim Brotherhood branches as terror organizations

Trump’s administration has made good on its pledge to label the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations, imposing sanctions on them and their members. The decision could please the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, but complicate U.S. relations with allies Qatar and Turkey.

The State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization, the most severe of the labels, which makes it a criminal offense to provide material support to the group. Treasury listed the Jordanian and Egyptian branches as specially designated global terrorists for providing support to Hamas.

Nathan Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said the sanctions may impact visa and asylum claims for people entering not just the U.S. but also Western European countries and Canada.

Supreme Court takes up culture war battle over transgender athletes in school sports

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Tuesday over state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams. Lower courts ruled for the transgender athletes in Idaho and West Virginia who challenged the state bans, but the conservative-dominated Supreme Court might not follow suit.

In just the past year, the justices ruled in favor of state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youths and allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced.

Pentagon embraces Musk’s Grok AI as chatbot draws global outcry

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network, as part of a broader push to feed as much of the military’s data as possible into the developing technology.

“Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said in a speech at Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX, in South Texas.

The announcement comes just days after Grok — which is embedded into X, the social media network owned by Musk — drew global outcry and scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.

Trump holds off on military action against Iran messages

Trump has arrived at a delicate moment as he weighs whether to order a U.S. military response against the Iranian government as it continues a violent crackdown on protests.

He has repeatedly threatened Tehran with military action if his administration found the Islamic Republic was using deadly force against antigovernment protesters. It’s a red line that Trump has said he believes Iran is “starting to cross” and has left him and his national security team weighing “very strong options.”

But the U.S. military — which Trump has warned Tehran is “locked and loaded” — appears, at least for the moment, to have been placed on standby mode as Trump ponders next steps, saying that Iranian officials want to have talks with the White House.

Trump announced Monday on social media that he would slap 25% tariffs on countries doing business with Tehran “effective immediately” — his first action aimed at penalizing Iran for the protest crackdown, and his latest example of using tariffs as a tool to force friends and foes on the global stage to bend to his will.

The BBC seeks to dismiss Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit

The BBC plans to ask a court to throw out U.S. President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the British broadcaster, court papers show.

Trump filed a lawsuit in December over the way the BBC edited a speech he gave on Jan. 6, 2021. The claim, filed in a Florida federal court, seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.

The broadcaster has apologized to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejects claims it defamed him. The furor triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.

Papers filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Miami say the BBC will file a motion to dismiss the case on March 17 on the basis that the court lacks jurisdiction and Trump failed to state a claim.

The broadcaster’s lawyers will argue that the BBC did not create, produce or broadcast the documentary in Florida and that Trump’s claim the documentary was available in the U.S. on streaming service BritBox is not true.

PHOTO- A visitor stops to look at a photograph of President Donald Trump and a short plaque next to it are on display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery’s “American Presidents” exhibit on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)