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Trump Administration Live Updates: President Announces Plans for New ‘Trump Class’ Battleships
Where Things Stand
New battleships: President Trump announced on Monday that the Navy would build two new “Trump Class” battleships, with the eventual goal of acquiring 25. The announcement by Mr. Trump was the latest example of the president rebranding an aspect of the federal government in his image. The Navy secretary, John Phelan, called the vessels “just one piece of the president’s golden fleet that we’re going to build.”
Venezuela: Mr. Trump ratcheted up his threats against Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, as the United States aims to intercept tankers that serve the country’s oil industry. “If he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’s ever able to play tough,” Mr. Trump said. Asked if the goal of his military pressure on Venezuela was to force out Mr. Maduro, Mr. Trump said he thought it would be “smart” for Mr. Maduro to leave power.
Greenland: Mr. Trump renewed his call for the United States to take over the semiautonomous Danish territory of Greenland, saying it was necessary for national security. “We have to have it,” he said. Earlier Monday, Denmark’s foreign minister criticized Mr. Trump’s decision to appoint a special envoy to Greenland.
Right before ending his appearance, Trump said that, instead of supporting an extension of subsidies for Obamacare, he will be meeting with the heads of insurance companies early in the new year in Washington, where they will present an alternative “proposal that will satisfy me.” Health insurance rates for those buying under Obamacare will begin increasing substantially on Jan. 1, when subsidies for the program expire.
Trump hedges when asked if the goal of his military pressure on Venezuela is to force him from power. “I think it probably would,” Trump said. “I can’t tell that — that’s up to him, what he wants to do. I think it would be smart for him to do that. But again, we’re going to find out.”
After naming Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana special envoy to Greenland, Trump reiterates his call to take over the semiautonomous Danish territory. “We need it for national security. We have to have it and he wanted to lead the charge,” Trump said.
“He’s got to watch his ass,” Trump says of Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro. Trump has accused Petro of not doing enough to crack down on cocaine production in his country. Petro has criticized the U.S. strikes against vessels in the Caribbean.
In his first remarks on Jeffrey Epstein since the release of more files last week, Trump again dismissed public scrutiny of the disgraced financier’s sex trafficking case as “a way of trying to deflect from the tremendous success that the Republican Party has.” Trump, who had extensive ties to Epstein, has had a history of deflecting attention on the issue and has often attacked reporters who ask about it.
“He can do whatever he wants,” Trump says when asked why President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela should take his threats of potential land strikes seriously. “If he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’s ever able to play tough.”
The Navy secretary John Phelan says the Trump-class battleships will be equipped with the “nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.” “This is just one piece of the president’s golden fleet that we’re going to build,” Phelan said.
President Trump signals that the new ships with be designed with artificial intelligence capabilities, saying A.I. will be a “big factor” when it comes to these ships.
President Trump is emphasizing that he wants these ships constructed quickly. He said he will meet with defense contractors next week in Florida to talk about accelerating production schedules “because they’re too slow,” Trump said. “They don’t produce them fast enough,” Trump said, adding his is prepared to penalize companies who “aren’t doing a good job.” He also said the administration plans on “fixing up” the Navy’s headquarters.
In a statement criticizing the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files, a spokesman for former President Bill Clinton accused federal officials of “using selective releases to imply wrongdoing” and called on the department to “immediately release any remaining materials” from the Epstein files that refer to, mention or picture Clinton.
The first batch of documents released by the Justice Department on Friday, a congressionally mandated deadline, appeared to focus heavily on material connected to Clinton, whose ties to Jeffrey Epstein have long been known. Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection to Epstein.
Clinton’s spokesman, Angel Ureña, criticized the Justice Department for failing to release all of its files on Friday and instead releasing material in batches, echoing a line of criticism from many Democrats and a few Republicans. “Someone or something is being protected,” Ureña wrote. But Clinton, he added, needed “no such protection.”
President Trump will announce a new type of ship for the Navy’s fleet this afternoon, according to a Pentagon official who requested anonymity to preview the plan. The official said the Navy was expected to call the new vessels Trump-class battleships. Trump, who is scheduled to appear later today with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the secretary of the Navy, has previously criticized the appearance of Navy warships.
Lawyers for the Trump administration met in federal court in Maryland on Monday with lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, to discuss the government’s request to dissolve a court order protecting him from being re-detained by ICE. Abrego Garcia, whose case has received national attention, was released from immigration custody earlier this month.
The government said on Monday that it had not decided whether to arrest him again, but Judge Paula Xinis sounded skeptical. “Why should I lift it — so he can get arrested in the middle of the night?” Xinis asked, referring to the court order.
She set a deadline of Friday for the government to decide if it would arrest him and, if so, provide a lawful reason. She extended the order protecting Abrego Garcia from being detained again until that deadline.
Reporting from Toronto
Mark Wiseman, a high-profile financier who rose through Canada’s pension-fund world to the top of major U.S. financial institutions, has been named Canada’s new ambassador to the United States at a watershed moment in the relationship between the two countries.
On Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said Mr. Wiseman would start his job in mid-February.
The union that represents foreign service officers at the State Department said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had abruptly ordered a number of ambassadors appointed during the Biden administration to leave their posts by mid-January.
The union, the American Foreign Service Association, said in a statement that it had begun hearing of the recalls from diplomats abroad over the weekend, but that it did not have an accurate count of the ambassadors affected, and that the ones being recalled were career diplomats.
The union said also the process was abnormal; there is usually a gradual process for having a career diplomat move on from a chief-of-mission post. In late January, political appointees serving as ambassadors after being nominated and posted overseas under the presidency of Joseph R. Biden Jr. had their resignations accepted by President Trump, which is typical. The union said that no explanation was given for the current round of recalls.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine just said that he was expecting an update from his negotiating team on Tuesday morning about recent talks in Miami on ending the war with Russia, adding, “The core of all documents is ready.”
“There are certain things we are not prepared to accept,” he wrote on social media. “And there are things — of that I am sure — that the Russians are not prepared to accept either.” He said that U.S. officials were continuing their talks with Russian representatives and that Ukraine would await feedback on those discussions.
Reporting from Washington
The Agriculture Department lost nearly one-fifth of its work force in the first half of this year, according to a watchdog report that offers a snapshot of the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal bureaucracy.
From January to June, more than 20,000 employees left the agency out of more than 110,000, including 15,114 who accepted a voluntary resignation program, according to the report, which was compiled by the agency’s Office of the Inspector General.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, will introduce a resolution to direct the Senate to take legal action against the Justice Department over its release of the Epstein files. In a statement, Schumer criticized the extent of the redactions in the files and argued that the department’s plan to release the files in batches violated a law that required their release by last Friday.
“The Trump Department of Justice dumped redactions and withheld the evidence — that breaks the law,” Schumer said in his statement.
Schumer’s effort would require support from Republicans to succeed, but he said he would force consideration of the measure when the Senate returned next month.
Stephen Miran, who was tapped by Trump to join the Federal Reserve’s board of governors earlier this year, said he would likely remain at the central bank until the president nominated another official. That means he expects to remain in his post beyond the scheduled end of his term at the end of next month.
“If nobody is confirmed in my seat by Jan. 31, I assume that I will stay,” Miran said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
Miran joined the Fed in September, taking only a temporary leave of absence from his job as chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers. The seat he filled had been unexpectedly vacated by Adriana Kugler, a Fed governor who was later found to have violated the central bank’s trading rules.
At the Fed, Miran has pushed for substantially lower interest rates, in alignment with the president’s repeated calls for easing. He has voted against the central bank’s quarter-point cuts since September in favor of half-point reductions.
The Trump administration on Monday said it would pause leases for five wind farms under construction off the east coast, essentially gutting the country’s nascent offshore wind industry in a sharp escalation of President Trump’s crusade against the renewable energy source.
The decision injected uncertainty into $25 billion worth of projects that were expected to power more than 2.5 million homes and businesses across the Eastern United States, according to Turn Forward, an offshore wind advocacy group. The five wind farms were projected together to create together about 10,000 jobs.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said Monday that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would be briefed by his special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, about the talks that Dmitriev took part in over the weekend in Florida, as the United States continued to press for an end to the war in Ukraine.
American and Ukrainian officials had described the meetings as “productive and constructive.” But on Sunday, the Kremlin’s top foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, said that most of the proposals discussed during negotiations with the United States had been put forth by Ukrainian and European representatives and were “rather unconstructive.”
Amelia NierenbergJeffrey Gettleman and Maya Tekeli
Amelia Nierenberg and Jeffrey Gettleman reported from London, and Maya Tekeli from Copenhagen.
Officials in Denmark and Greenland were furious on Monday that President Trump had appointed a special envoy to Greenland, part of his efforts to take over the semiautonomous Danish territory.
Mr. Trump announced on social media late on Sunday that he was appointing Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, a political ally, to the position. Denmark’s foreign minister quickly criticized the move as “totally unacceptable” and said he would summon the American ambassador in Copenhagen for an explanation.
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