Trump says Musk was at Pentagon for DOGE and divulges Boeing will construct F-47 jets for Air Force: Live updates

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a rare move, is beefing up the Navy warship presence in the Middle East, ordering two aircraft carriers to be there next month as the U.S. increases strikes on the Yemen-based Houthi rebels, according to a U.S. official.

It will be the second time in six months that the U.S. has kept two carrier strike groups in that region, with generally only one there. Prior to that it had been years since the U.S. had committed that much warship power to the Middle East.

According to the official, Hegseth signed orders on Thursday to keep the USS Harry S. Truman in the Middle East for at least an additional month. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing military operations.

The ship has been conducting operations in the Red Sea against the Houthis and was scheduled to begin heading home to Norfolk, Virginia, at the end of March.

And Hegseth has ordered the USS Carl Vinson, which has been operating in the Pacific, to begin steaming toward the Middle East, which will extend its scheduled deployment by three months.

The Vinson is expected to arrive in the region early next month. It had been conducting exercises with Japanese and South Korean forces near the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan and was slated to head home to port in San Diego in three weeks.

The presence of so much U.S. naval power in the region not only gives commanders additional ships to patrol and launch strikes, but it also serves as a clear message of deterrence to Iran, the Houthis’ main benefactor.

A judge has blocked the deportation of a Colorado immigrants’ rights organizer who was arrested Monday.

Here’s the background to the case:

President Donald Trump on Friday said the Pentagon was awarding a contract to Boeing to build and support a sixth-generation fighter jet that will be known as the F-47, calling the new manned warplane “something the likes of which nobody has seen before.”

Speaking in the Oval Office alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and top Air Force leaders, Trump said the planned fighter had “been in the works for a long period of time” and would be built by Boeing after “a rigorous and thorough competition between some of America’s top aerospace companies” for a program that the Defense Department has been calling the “Next Generation Air Dominance” platform.

Andrew Feinberg reports from Washington, D.C.

Judge Ana Reyes is laying into government attorneys who — after asking to block her order that temporarily strikes down the Trump administration’s ban on trans service members in the military — cannot answer her questions about who even came up with the rule.

She has absolutely lost her patience after three hours-long hearings on this and has yelled over a Justice Department attorney several times.

Reyes is asking them for any bit of evidence that a ban on trans service members is addressing any problem in the military or is just being used as a pretext for discrimination. They can’t say.

“Everything in the record is that it’s a pretext. There is nothing in the record that this was a deliberative process,” she said.

“I’m not doing it for sport,” she said. “As of today, you can’t even tell me if Secretary Hegseth looked at this. … You won’t tell me because you don’t know.”

“Elon was over there today to talk about costs” at the Pentagon, President Donald Trump says when asked about The New York Times report that billionaire Elon Musk would be briefed on China policy.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also disputed the reporting.

Trump went further on why he doesn’t want to show Musk war plans for China: “Certainly you wouldn’t to a businessman who is helping us so much … Elon has businesses in China. And he would be susceptible, perhaps, to that.”

Hegseth also said: “Musk is a patriot, an innovator, and provides a lot of capabilities our government and military rely on. I’m grateful for that.”

Further on deportations, President Donald Trump says of his secretary of state: “Marco Rubio has a lot of big decisions to make … he’s got the authority to get bad people out of our country, and you can’t stop that with a judge sitting behind a bench.”

President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter in the Oval Office: “Do you think you have the authority to round up people, deport them, and then you’re under no obligation to a court to show the evidence against them?”

The president responded: “Well, that’s what the law says. And that’s what our country needs.”