The Latest: 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, 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.

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. Trump has been targeting transgender Americans, including the ouster of transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

And Trump is weighing whether to order a U.S. military action as the Iranian government continues a violent crackdown on protests. Activists said the death toll spiked Tuesday to at least 2,000 people killed.

The Latest:

Microsoft pushes Big Tech to ‘pay our way' for AI data centers amid rising opposition

It won't be easy for Big Tech companies to win the hearts and minds of Americans who are angry about massive artificial intelligence data centers sprouting up in their neighborhoods, straining electricity grids and drawing on local reservoirs.

Microsoft is trying anyway. The software giant's president, Brad Smith, is meeting with federal lawmakers Tuesday, pushing for the industry, not taxpayers, to pay the full costs of the vast network of computing warehouses needed to power AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Microsoft's own Copilot. Trump gave the effort a nod with a Truth Social post saying he doesn't want Americans to ''pick up the tab'' for data centers and pay higher utility costs.

▶ Read more from the AP's interview with Microsoft's president

Central bankers back US Fed Chair Jerome Powell in clash with Trump

Central bankers from around the world said Tuesday they ''stand in full solidarity'' with U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, after Trump dramatically escalated his confrontation with the Fed with the Justice Department investigating and threatening criminal charges.

Powell ''has served with integrity, focused on his mandate and an unwavering commitment to the public interest,'' read the statement signed by nine national central bank heads including European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey.

They added that ''the independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability.''

Inflation cooled slightly in December though remains above Fed's target

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, turning ''affordability'' issues into high-profile political concerns.

▶ Read more about the latest data on U.S. consumer prices

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.

▶ Read more about the terrorist designations

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

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.

The legal fight is playing out amid a broad effort by Trump to target transgender Americans, beginning on the first day of his second term and including the ouster of transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 visit a Ford factory and promote manufacturing in Detroit

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.