‘They go hard’: Trump and Vance release official portraits

(PORT SAID, Egypt) — The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman collided with a large merchant vessel Wednesday night in the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea.

“The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) was involved in a collision with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M at approximately 11:46 p.m. local time, Feb. 12, while operating in the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea,” a statement from the U.S Navy’s Sixth Fleet said.

The collision involved a rare collision of two large vessels as the 100,000-ton aircraft carrier collided with the 53,000-ton merchant vessel Besiktas-M, a Panamanian-flagged cargo ship.

There are no reports of injuries, nor is there flooding, aboard the carrier, which carries a crew of 5,000 sailors, and the incident is under investigation.

The Truman is powered by two nuclear reactors and four propulsion systems, and the Sixth Fleet’s statement said the ship’s propulsion plants were unaffected and were said to be in “a safe and stable condition.”

The aircraft carrier and its strike group had been operating in the Red Sea since mid-December as part of the mission to thwart Houthi militant attacks launched from Yemen at commercial vessels transiting the vital waterway.

The carrier had arrived at a naval base in Crete earlier in the week, a rare break for the strike group that has been in constant operations, though the pace had ebbed as Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas took effect in mid-January.

The Houthis have claimed their attacks on shipping were being carried out in support of Hamas.

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(WASHINGTON) — When billionaire Elon Musk posted on X last weekend that all federal employees would soon receive an email demanding details of their work from the past week, senior White House officials — who had not been fully briefed on the plan — were initially caught off guard, multiple sources told ABC News.

Musk’s email would then set off widespread confusion across the federal government. It created tension among members of Trump’s Cabinet, as multiple agency heads told their employees to hold off on replying until they themselves were briefed on the situation.

At one point shortly after the Saturday evening email, sources familiar with the discussions said senior White House staff debated issuing guidance to their own employees, informing them that they did not need to reply. Late Monday night, the Office of Personnel Management said that White House staff were exempt from the exercise, citing the Presidential Records Act.

The lack of communication between Musk and President Donald Trump’s top advisers in the White House, who are responsible for executing his second-term agenda, is the latest in a series of controversial moves by the world’s richest man since he arrived in Washington last month that have begun to divide some of those closest to the president.

Musk’s whirlwind approach — marked by rapid gutting of the federal workforce and dominating national headlines — has sparked a rift among some in the White House and Trump’s inner circle, sources told ABC News. Some close to the president have bristled at Musk’s frenetic pace and his apparent disregard for coordinating with senior officials around the president. Others, however, have expressed support for the tactics and embraced Musk’s fast-paced efforts so far, hailing them as a long-overdue shakeup of a stagnant system.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing Tuesday that “the President and Elon, and his entire Cabinet, are working as one unified team, and they are implementing these very common-sense solutions,” adding that more than 1 million federal workers had responded to Musk’s “What did you do last week?” email, including herself. Leavitt said that Musk would attend Trump’s first Cabinet meeting set for Wednesday.

But as Musk has ripped through the federal workforce at a breakneck pace reminiscent of his approach at his own companies, the White House has, at times, first learned of his actions through media reports or his own posts on X instead of through the usual chain of senior staff, sources said, which has ruffled feathers among some top officials who view the billionaire’s methods as increasingly out of control.

But while Musk has some detractors in Trump’s orbit, he has gained support from some of the most powerful voices around the president, including Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and U.S. Homeland Security adviser, and Katie Miller, a senior adviser to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency efforts who is married to Stephen Miller, sources said.

Still, even with some in the White House growing frustrated with aspects of Musk’s first few weeks in Washington, sources said there is hesitancy to intervene, given not only the billionaire’s immense wealth but, perhaps more importantly, his vast influence given his larger-than-ever profile and his ownership of X.

Some concerned with Musk have resigned themselves that the Tesla CEO is unlikely to be reined in anytime soon and are instead focused on managing the situation as best they can until his special government contract comes to an end later this year, though it is not immediately clear if Musk plans to leave Washington then, either.

“Some love it, some can’t wait for [Musk] to leave — bottom line is he’s not going anywhere anytime soon,” a source familiar told ABC News.

In response to this story, a senior White House official told ABC News, “Any insinuation that senior leadership in the Trump White House is not properly being advised on the actions of DOGE is completely false. As an SGE, Elon Musk works directly with the president of the United States and senior members of his team to coordinate the effective and efficient execution of the president’s agenda.”

“The American people widely support the mission of DOGE. Look no further than the Harris poll in which a vast majority of Americans support the mission of DOGE. Anyone who is seen as objecting to this mission in either party is objecting to long overdue change in Washington. If you’re not going to be a part of the solution, you are now a part of the problem,” the official added.

The South African-born businessman spent $270 million to help Trump get reelected. When Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, he empowered Musk to slash federal spending and make key decisions about the future of the U.S. as a lead adviser in the newly created DOGE.

ABC News previously reported that Musk initially wanted an office in the West Wing, but told people he thought what he was given was too small, multiple people familiar with his comments told ABC News, and has since taken up offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where he brought in sleep pods for his young staffers as they worked deep into the night.

Musk has been designated as a special government employee. His companies Tesla and SpaceX have been awarded $18 billion in federal contracts over the last decade. Some of this money has come from agencies the president asked Musk to review, but Musk dismissed the notion that there could be conflicts of interest.

“No, because you have to look at the individual contract and say, first of all, I’m not the one, you know, filing the contract — it’s people at SpaceX,” he told ABC News earlier this month.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has signed an executive order pardoning Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who was sentenced to 14 years in prison before Trump commuted his sentence in 2020.

“It’s my honor to do it,” Trump said during remarks from the Oval Office on Monday. “He was set up.”

Trump called the Democratic former governor a “very fine person” and said he didn’t know him other than that he was on his TV show, “Celebrity Apprentice.”

When asked if Trump would consider Blagojevich as ambassador to Serbia, Trump said “no, but I would,” adding that “if he got a pardon, he’s cleaner than anybody in the room.”

“Let me tell you — from the bottom of my heart — how deep my appreciation and gratitude is for President Trump,” Blagojevich said in a press conference Monday evening reacting to the news.

The past few months, Blagojevich has been active on X, expressing his support for the president and reposting content from Trump’s inner circle, including Elon Musk and Kash Patel, Trump’s choice to be director of the FBI.

“Trump freed me & Obama sold me out so I’m biased, but I believe Trump has done more as President in his whirlwind first 8 days than Obama did in his entire 8 years. What do you think?” Balgojevich wrote on X last month.

Blagojevich, a Democrat and self-proclaimed “Trump-o-crat,” responded to former President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardons in January, telling Piers Morgan Uncensored that he believed such actions were the “wrong things to do.”

“I mean, President Biden weaponized the justice department against Donald Trump. So he just assumed that Trump’s going to do the same thing to his people that he did to Trump and to Trump’s people,” he said, adding that “there’s no evidence that President Trump is going to do anything.”

On his first day back in office, Trump announced sweeping pardons and commutations for nearly all of the rioters charged with the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

“I pardon people that were assaulted themselves. They were assaulted by our government,” Trump said on Sunday in regards to his Jan. 6 pardons.

In 2011, Blagojevich was convicted on 17 counts of corruption, including an attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat that former President Barack Obama vacated after being elected to the White House in 2008.

During his first term, Trump called Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence a “tremendously powerful, ridiculous” sentence, though he had also expressed that he did not know Blagojevich well.

The former governor was expected to be released in 2024, factoring in two years of credit for good behavior. He began serving time in 2012, and Trump commuted his sentence in 2020.

Upon release, Blagojevich expressed his “profound and everlasting gratitude for President Trump,” calling this an “act of kindness” that represented the “beginning of the process to actually turn an injustice into a justice.”

“He didn’t have to do this, he’s a Republican president, I was a Democratic governor,” Blagojevich also said at the time.

In 2009 while appearing on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” Blagojevich can be seen getting “fired” by Trump.

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