“President Donald Trump’s plans to request an increase in the US military budget is giving a fresh boost to defense stocks around the world, with those in Europe having a particularly strong start to a year that looks set to be dominated by geopolitics,” Bloomberg reports.

President Trump said he “will not permit” defense companies to issue dividends or stock buybacks until those firms address his complaints about the industry, CNBC reports.

Trump also took aim at defense contractors’ executive pay packages.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military has censured Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and began the process of reducing his rank, in response to statements made by the retired Navy captain about ignoring illegal orders.

New York Times: “A plutonium-packed generator disappeared on one of the world’s highest mountains in a hush-hush mission the U.S. still won’t talk about.”

Mark Cancian: “On December 22, President Trump announced a new class of ‘battleships’ that will be 100 times more powerful than previous battleships and larger than any other surface combatant on the oceans. The ship’s purported characteristics are so extraordinary that the announcement will surely spark immense discussion.”

“However, there is little need for said discussion because this ship will never sail. It will take years to design, cost $9 billion each to build, and contravene the Navy’s new concept of operations, which envisions distributed firepower. A future administration will cancel the program before the first ship hits the water.”

Tom Nichols: “Imagine the CEO of a car company telling his engineers and designers that he wants them to make a new line of automobiles. He knows nothing about cars and has no interest in how they’re produced, but he knows one thing for certain: The line will be named after himself. Everyone claps—because of course they do—but no one really knows what comes next, except that the line needs to look sexy and sporty.”

“That’s pretty much what the president did today when he announced that a new class of ship named after one Donald J. Trump would be added to the ‘Golden Fleet,’ his name for a renewed U.S. Navy.”

President Trump will announce Monday that the Navy is to build a new “Trump-class” battleship, which will become the centerpiece of the president’s vision for a new “Golden Fleet,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Trump has for years advocated for revamping America’s fleet of warships, which he has said are ‘terrible-looking’ and covered in rust. In his first term, he called for a return to steam-powered catapults to launch jets from aircraft carriers, in a move that wasn’t successful, and complained about the aesthetics of the Navy’s destroyers. He has been personally involved in crafting plans for the Golden Fleet.”

President Trump will announce a new fleet of large warships he is calling “battleships,” marking a step toward achieving the president’s vision for a new “Golden Fleet,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday deleted language from its new workplace harassment policy that had downgraded the definition of swastikas and nooses from overt hate symbols to ‘potentially divisive,’ an abrupt turnaround after the more lenient interpretation of those items was allowed to take effect this week despite objections from Congress,” the Washington Post reports.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters the Pentagon will not release the full video of the second strike on a boat in the Caribean which killed two survivors.

Said Hegseth: “Of course we’re not going to release a top secret full unedited of that to the general public.”

“Senior Pentagon officials are preparing a plan to downgrade several of the U.S. military’s major headquarters and shift the balance of power among its top generals, in a major consolidation sought by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,” the Washington Post reports.

“If adopted, the plan would usher in some of the most significant changes at the military’s highest ranks in decades, in part following through on Hegseth’s promise to break the status quo and slash the number of four-star generals in the military.”

“The Pentagon was in a bind. The military had plucked two survivors from the Caribbean Sea in mid-October after striking a boat that U.S. officials said was carrying drugs, and it needed to figure out what to do with them,” the New York Times reports.

“On a call with counterparts at the State Department, Pentagon lawyers floated an idea. They asked whether the two survivors could be put into a notorious prison in El Salvador to which the Trump administration had sent hundreds of Venezuelan deportees.”

“The State Department lawyers were stunned and rejected the idea.”

“The annual defense policy bill on track to clear Congress in the coming days would compel the Pentagon to provide lawmakers with the specific orders behind the strikes that the United States military is taking on boats in international waters, as well with unedited video of the attacks,” the New York Times reports.

“The inclusion of the provisions, tucked into must-pass legislation that sets defense policy and provides a pay raise for U.S. troops, signals bipartisan frustration on Capitol Hill that members of Congress are being kept in the dark about crucial aspects of the operation.”

Washington Post: Trump says Hegseth will decide whether to release boat strike video.

“Congress is using its marquee defense bill to force the Pentagon into turning over videos of strikes against suspected drug-smuggling boats off the coast of Latin America,” Politico reports.

“Lawmakers plan to withhold a quarter of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget until the Pentagon provides them with the videos.”

Heather Cox Richardson argues that the Trump administration’s vision behind the National Security Strategy is to achieve a “white supremacist country” and, to this end, they reject immigration and call for the U.S. to “help Europe correct its current trajectory” by “restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”

She notes observers referred to the document as National Security Council Report 88 and noted that it could have been written in just 14 words. White supremacists use 88 to refer to Adolf Hitler and “fourteen words” to refer to a popular white supremacist slogan.