Trump administration live updates: US is sending an aircraft carrier to Latin America
The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region, the Pentagon announced Friday.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to U.S. Southern Command to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post.
Deploying an aircraft carrier is a major escalation of military power in a region that has already seen an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela.
The U.S. military has conducted its 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, Hegseth said earlier Friday, blaming the Tren de Aragua gang for operating the vessel and leaving six people dead in the Caribbean Sea.
The pace of the strikes has quickened in recent days from one every few weeks when they first began to three this week, killing a total of at least 43 people since September. Two of the most recent strikes were carried out in the eastern Pacific Ocean, expanding the area where the military has launched attacks and shifting to where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled.
Other news we’re following:
- Trump’s favorability has fallen among Hispanics: The October survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 25% of Hispanic adults have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of Trump, down from 44% in an AP-NORC poll conducted just before Trump took office in January. The percentage of Hispanic adults who say the country is going in the wrong direction has also increased slightly over the past few months, from 63% in March to 73% now.
- Trump abruptly ends trade talks with Canada over TV ads: Trump said the television ad opposing U.S. tariffs misstated the facts and called it “egregious behavior” aimed at influencing U.S. court decisions. The post on Trump’s social media site came after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he aims to double his country’s exports to countries outside the U.S. because of the threat posed by Trump’s tariffs.
- Trump won’t immediately send federal agents to San Francisco: Trump says he’s backing off a planned surge of federal agents into San Francisco after speaking to Mayor Daniel Lurie. Lurie said the city was making progress in reducing crime, and Trump agreed to let San Francisco keep trying on its own for now.
