The Latest: Trump to visit a Ford factory and promote manufacturing in Detroit
Jan 13, 2026, 5:34 AM | Updated: 11:04 pm
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.)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
(AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
President Donald Trump travels to Michigan on Tuesday to promote his efforts to boost U.S. manufacturing, trying to counter fears about a weakening job market and worries that still-rising prices are taking a toll on Americans’ pocketbooks. 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 announcement comes just days after Grok drew global outcry and scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.
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.
The Latest:
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.
Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked Grok, while the U.K.’s independent online safety watchdog announced an investigation Monday. Grok has limited image generation and editing to paying users.
Hegseth said Grok will go live inside the Defense Department later this month and announced that he would “make all appropriate data” from the military’s IT systems available for “AI exploitation.” He also said data from intelligence databases would be fed into AI systems.
▶ Read more about Grok’s new role in the Defense Department
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.
▶ Read more about Trump and Iran
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.
▶ Read more about the lawsuit
Trump will travel to Michigan on Tuesday to promote his efforts to boost U.S. manufacturing, trying to counter fears about a weakening job market and worries that still-rising prices are taking a toll on Americans’ pocketbooks.
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 showed a shift away from Republicans as 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 — where his gripes about immigrants arriving to the U.S. from “filthy” countries got more attention than his pledges to fight inflation — and North Carolina, where he insisted his tariffs have spurred the economy, despite residents noting the squeeze of higher prices.
▶ Read more about Trump’s trip to Michigan
