The Latest: The Pentagon will deploy roughly 1,500 more troops to the southern border

The Pentagon will deploy roughly 1,500 more active duty soldiers to the southern border to support President Trump’s expanding crackdown on immigration, a U.S. official said Friday. That would eventually bring the total to about 3,600 active-duty troops at the border. Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba came to the White House on Friday to meet with Trump and the two held a joint news conference.

Here's the latest:. Alaska Legislature asks Trump to retain Denali’s name instead of change it to Mount McKinley. The Alaska Legislature passed a resolution Friday urging Trump to reverse course and retain the name of North America’s tallest peak as Denali rather than change it to Mount McKinley. Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order calling for the name to revert to Mount McKinley, an identifier inspired by President William McKinley, who was from Ohio and never set foot in Alaska.

He said he planned to “restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs. President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.”. ▶ Read more about the Alaska resolution. Trump’s South Africa order follows complaints by Musk. The order also references South Africa’s role in bringing accusations that Israel sponsored genocide to the International Court of Justice.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law last month allowing expropriations of certain land that isn’t being used, or would be in the public interest if redistributed. The Expropriation Act aims to address some of the wrongs of South Africa’s racist apartheid era, when Black people had their land taken away and were forced to live in areas designated for non-whites. Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa and now runs Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, has called this law a threat to South Africa’s minority white community in recent social media posts.

Trump freezes aid to South Africa, alleging discrimination against the white minority. “The government of South Africa blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority Afrikaners,” the White Houses said in a summary of the executive order Trump signed Friday. Trump also will move to resettle white South African farmers and their families as refugees, the White House said. “As long as South Africa continues to support bad actors on the world stage and allows violent attacks on innocent disfavored minority farmers, the United States will stop aid and assistance to the country,” the summary said.

More US troops deploying to the southern border. The Pentagon will deploy roughly 1,500 more active duty soldiers to the southern border to support Trump’s expanding crackdown on immigration, a U.S. official said Friday. That would eventually bring the total to about 3,600 active duty troops at the border, where they're expected to put up concertina wire barriers and provide transportation, intelligence and other support to the Border Patrol.

The order has been approved, the official said, to send a logistics brigade from the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty in North Carolina. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the deployment hasn't yet been publicly announced. The Pentagon has been scrambling to put in motion Trump’s executive orders. The first 1,600 active duty troops already deployed to the border, and nearly 500 more from the 10th Mountain Division will move in the days ahead.

Some of the 500 Marines told to go to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have already arrived there to prepare for an influx of migrants. ▶Read more about military deployments supporting immigration enforcement. — Lolita C. Baldor. Latino evangelicals who voted for Trump now fear going to church. The National Association of Evangelicals, representing 40 denominations that serve millions of parishioners, says attendance has dropped since Trump’s executive order empowering officers to enter churches to enforce immigration laws.

Bishop Ebli De La Rosa, who oversees Church of God of Prophecy congregations in nine southeastern states, said the order has imperiled 32 of the Latino evangelical denomination’s 70 pastors who are here without legal status and serve vulnerable communities. He’s told each congregation to prepare three laypeople to take over should their pastor be deported, to livestream every service, and to “keep recording even if something happens.”.

Agustin Quiles, a spokesperson for the Florida Fellowship of Hispanic Councils and Evangelical Institutions, said many community members who voted for Trump now feel devastated and abandoned. “The messaging appears to be that anyone who is undocumented is a criminal,” he said. Japan’s prime minister says Trump isn’t as frightening in person as on TV. Shigeru Ishiba said he was excited to meet a television celebrity like Trump.