The White House says President Donald Trump will use his State of the Union address to argue he and the Republicans in control of Congress are best suited to continue tackling the public's concerns about the cost of living. Trump plans to announce that tech companies involved in artificial intelligence are agreeing to pay higher electricity rates in areas where their data centers are located. The president also could use the address to proclaim the economy is booming while endorsing increased military spending and tighter voter ID rules leading up to November elections that will determine political control of Congress. Several Democrats in Congress plan to skip Trump’s speech in protest, while Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger.

The U.S. military says it's boarded another sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean. The Pentagon said in a statement Sunday that U.S. forces boarded the Veronica III after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea. Venezuela had faced U.S. sanctions on its oil for several years and relied on a shadow fleet of tankers. President Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to pressure then-President Nicolás Maduro before Maduro was captured in a U.S. military operation. The Defense Department says U.S. forces boarded the Veronica III overnight. The Pentagon’s social media post doesn't say whether the ship was formally seized.

Federal authorities have opened a criminal probe into whether two immigration officers lied under oath about a shooting in Minneapolis last month, as all charges were dropped against two Venezuelan men. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons said Friday that his agency had opened a joint probe with the Justice Department after video evidence revealed “sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements” about the shooting of one of the Venezuelan men. The officers, whose names were not disclosed, are on administrative leave pending the completion of an internal investigation. Lyons added that the U.S. attorney’s office is actively investigating.

President Trump used a Fort Bragg appearance on Friday to praise U.S. Special Forces for last month's raid that removed Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But his visit also felt at times more like a political rally than an official trip to fete the military. Trump said he planned to award the Medal of Honor to one of the raid's participants. But he also called Michael Whatley, a Republican Senate candidate in North Carolina, to the stage. Trump told troops and their families that the operation against Maduro shows America’s military might. The president mentioned sending a second aircraft carrier group to the Middle East amid tensions with Iran and said that the U.S. is “feared” by potential enemies.

The world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, has been ordered to sail from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East. That's according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. It puts more American firepower behind President Donald Trump’s efforts to coerce Iran into a deal over its nuclear program. The move, first reported by The New York Times, will put two carriers and their accompanying warships in the region. Trump warned Iran this week that failure to reach a deal with his administration would be “very traumatic.”