Matthew Chapman

President Donald Trump's second-in-command at the Justice Department, Todd Blanche, had to intervene behind the scenes to stop one of Trump's most zealous attack dogs from seeking revenge on behalf of far-right InfoWars webcaster and conspiracy theorist king Alex Jones, according to a new report by The New York Times.

The controversy stemmed from Ed Martin, Trump's former acting U.S. attorney in charge of Washington, D.C., who was moved aside into a different job at the Justice Department after his partisan antics turned a number of Senate Republicans off from confirming him for the role permanently.

In September, Martin raised eyebrows by sending a threatening letter to a former FBI agent who testified against Jones in his civil lawsuits for orchestrating a harassment campaign against the families of children murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. Jones repeatedly told his audience with no evidence that this mass shooting was staged by the government with child actors, and turned his fans loose on bereaved parents, causing hundreds of millions in legal judgments that may ultimately lead to his site's liquidation.

Just one day after Martin's letter, however, the Justice Department retracted it — and according to The Times' report, that was a result of Blanche stepping in.

"A ticked-off Mr. Blanche asked Mr. Martin: Why pick a pointless fight that would embarrass the administration on behalf of a fringe activist? He demanded that Mr. Martin rescind the letter, according to three people briefed on a phone call between the two men," reported Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer. "Mr. Martin, who had used his brief tenure as the top federal prosecutor in Washington to purge government lawyers who charged Jan. 6 rioters, complied."

While Blanche has largely worked to execute Trump's will, this is not the only time he put his foot down on MAGA operatives' most egregious ideas.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Blanche also stopped a convoluted plan to get a notorious Colorado election conspiracy theorist transferred from state prison to a low-security federal facility, through false claims she was needed as a witness in a federal case. This has triggered a revolt of some MAGA activists against Blanche, with some calling him a traitor and demanding his removal from the DOJ.

President Donald Trump's administration is moving forward with a $20 billion bailout of Argentina, which critics contend is a bid to rescue the flagging political ambitions of one of his closest allies on the world stage, libertarian-leaning President Javier Milei.

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board is sympathetic to this goal, but wrote over the weekend that Trump's approach to how to fix Argentina's economy is all wrong.

"The 'acute illiquidity' problem is really a lack of confidence in Argentine monetary management," wrote the board. "Mr. Milei’s brave reforms have done much good on stabilizing the federal budget, ending the Peronist war on business, and welcoming investment. But no one is sure how long this reform era will last. Inflation remains a problem at more than 30%, and investors are worried that opposition parties will win big in this month’s legislative elections. Mr. Milei’s term doesn’t end until 2027, but the fear is that he’ll be neutered before then."

The real answer isn't a bailout, argued the board, but for Argentina to transition its economy to the U.S. dollar — something some other Latin American countries have done to stop their own inflation issues, like Ecuador in 2000.

"Mr. Milei’s opposition to dollarization is hard to understand since he campaigned on eliminating the central bank. We hear Economic Minister Luis Caputo is opposed, and so are some hedge funds that profit from a currency carry-trade that goes away with dollarization. The International Monetary Fund is also playing in the country’s rescue, and its default remedy is always devaluation," wrote the board.

Moreover, Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who should know better, has even less excuse for not pushing this as the proper solution, the board said.

"After the elections, Mr. Bessent will be wasting dollar assets on this bailout if he doesn’t press Mr. Milei to restore sound money with dollarization," the board concluded.

Former President Barack Obama has a few choice words for businesses and institutions that caved to President Donald Trump's "deals" to end administration harassment, The Daily Beast reported on Monday.

Since taking office, Trump has made a variety of agreements and legal settlements with various entities that were subject to his wrath, as a condition of avoiding certain kinds of persecution from the administration.

He persuaded a number of law firms who represented clients who were against him to stop certain diversity hiring practices and contribute pro bono work to causes he supports; got universities where students protested against certain causes to agree to change academic policies; and strong-armed a number of media companies into exorbitant settlements of his frivolous lawsuits to grease the wheels of mergers.

Speaking to Marc Maron on the final episode of his podcast, released on Monday, Obama had a simple message for these institutions and businesses: stop caving, and start standing up for your principles.

“If you’re a university president, say, ‘Well, you know what, this’ll hurt if we lose some grant money from the federal government, but that’s what endowments are for. Let’s see if we can ride this out,’” said Obama.

“Because what we’re not going to do is compromise our basic academic independence. If you’re a business, you say, ‘You know what? We think it’s important, because of what this country stands for, to hire people from different backgrounds. We’re not going to be bullied into saying that we can only hire or promote people based on some criteria that’s been cooked up by Steve Miller.’”

Miller, one of Trump's most prominent advisers and a frequent purveyor of Nazi rhetoric, has been the architect of much of the administration's crusade against diversity programs.

Already, some of Trump's "deals" appear to be falling apart. For example, a number of law firms that signed agreements with Trump have come around to believing the deals are unenforceable and have not taken any steps to do what Trump demanded of them.

President Donald Trump has been employing a certain political two-step incessantly for years, conservative analyst David French wrote for the New York Times on Monday — and, ironically, it took a judge he appointed himself to stand up and unmask it.

"For a very long time, Trump and his supporters have gotten away with a double game. First, they’ll cheer anything and everything that makes him a thoroughly unconventional president — from his bizarre social media posts to his extreme use of executive power — as necessary, absolutely necessary, to save the country and drain the swamp," wrote French.

"But when Trump’s unprecedented behavior meets with an unprecedented response, MAGA is aggrieved. How dare you treat him differently from other presidents, they say."

In other words, said French, the pattern goes: "When Trump is on offense, he’s celebrated as a president like no other. But when he has to answer for his actions in court, he demands that he be treated as a president like any other."

This was most clear when Trump and his followers declared war on former special counsel Jack Smith following his indictment of Trump in two federal cases, involving the conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, and hoarding classified documents. But it's also evident in his deployment of troops to keep order in progressive cities, French wrote.

The president, French continued, is "posting wildly false statements about American cities online, and then he’s directing that soldiers be sent to cities governed by officials he sees as his political enemies, even though none of the historic circumstances that have justified military deployments in the past — like widespread unrest — are present. The level of violence in Portland is a far cry from the multiple urban riots of the 1960s or the Los Angeles riots of 1992 — much less the riots that spread across American cities after George Floyd’s murder in 2020."

Enter U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, one of Trump's own appointees, who issued a ruling bluntly slapping Trump down and telling him he could not deploy troops to Portland.

"Judge Immergut is supposed to give the president 'a great level of deference'" as to what constitutes a "rebellion" for the purposes of calling in the Guard, French wrote.

"But how much deference should you give a president who constantly lies?" noted French. "The right answer is that a president can forfeit judicial deference through his own conduct. In Newsom v. Trump, the Ninth Circuit also said that the president’s determinations must be made in 'good faith.' If there’s no good faith, there should be no deference."

Immergut noted that Trump kept lying that Portland was "war-ravaged" over a handful of minor, peaceful protests at an ICE facility. “The president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” she wrote.

This sort of refusal to play Trump's game, wrote French, is a model for how courts should respond to the new wave of Trump-directed prosecutions against his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

At the end of the day, "the best way to evaluate the reasoning behind Trump’s actions is to examine Trump’s words, and Trump’s words reveal a man who isn’t just 'untethered to the facts'; he’s also untethered to the law," French concluded. "Dishonest presidents should be entitled to no deference at all."

President Donald Trump's physical results were released on Friday night, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt boasting that he is in excellent health and his heart is functionally 14 years younger than his biological age.

But the report also said Trump received a COVID booster vaccine — a detail not lost on people furious at Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an infamous anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, who moved to restrict the categories of people for whom COVID vaccines are recommended.

Commenters on social media quickly pointed out the irony, with many making fun of it and others simply outraged.

"Hey MAGA anti-vaxxers, Trump got a COVID booster shot," wrote the Blue Georgia account.

"Dear MAGA — guess who just got both the updated COVID vaccine and flu shots today? Your dear Leader Trump," wrote health analyst Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding. "Maybe you should get them too. Sincerely, An Epidemiologist Who Told You Trump Would Get COVID Booster."

"So Trump’s doctor says that Trump got the updated Covid vaccine and a flu vaccine shot," wrote political scientist Norm Ornstein. "Even as he says nothing while his secretary of HHS conducts a war against these vaccines. What a disgrace."

President Donald Trump's newly released physical results from the White House sing the praises of his health and physical fitness, and claim that he, in fact, has the heart of a man in his mid-60s, rather than late 70s.

"President Donald J. Trump successfully completed a scheduled follow-up evaluation today at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center," stated White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in the release. "The visit was part of his ongoing health maintenance plan and included advanced imaging, laboratory testing, and preventive health assessments conducted by a multidisciplinary team of specialists. These evaluations were performed in coordination with leading academic and medical consultants to ensure optimal cardiovascular health and continued wellness."

"President Trump continues to demonstrate excellent overall health," Leavitt continued. "His cardiac age — a validated measure of cardiovascular vitality via ECG — was found to be approximately 14 years younger than his chronological age. He continues to maintain a demanding daily schedule without restriction."

Leavitt also noted that Trump received a COVID-19 booster, even as his own Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., seeks to restrict the groups the booster is recommended for.

The Trump administration's latest move to re-deport Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia has failed once again.

According to Politico, U.S. officials have tried to remove him to Africa, but so far have found no country willing to take him: "A senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official testified that efforts to get the African countries of Uganda and Eswatini to accept the high-profile deportee have foundered in recent days. Another potential destination, Ghana, also seemed to fizzle Friday as that country’s foreign minister said unequivocally on X that Ghana would not agree to receive Abrego."

The Trump administration previously deported Abrego, a family man living in Maryland, to El Salvador, where he was locked up for weeks in the infamous CECOT megaprison, despite a judicial order prohibiting his deportation to that specific country.

Homeland Security officials initially tried to claim they had no jurisdiction to push the government of El Salvador to return him, but after his case became a national story and generated mounting political pressure, they finally repatriated him to the United States.

Almost as soon as they had done so, federal officials charged Abrego with gang activities, in a case that legal experts have said is deeply defective and based on unreliable testimony. They also began proceedings to deport him again, this time looking for any country other than El Salvador that might accept him.

According to the report, Abrego has actually offered the administration a solution — but they rejected it.

"Abrego told the administration in August that he would accept deportation to Costa Rica," said the report. However, "One of his lawyers, Andrew Rossman, said Friday that the administration’s scattershot attempts to identify African countries instead show that the administration is intent on refusing the Costa Rica offer," telling U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, “We now know they are 0 for 3. Three strikes and you’re out. They have spun the globe and picked various places … to fail on purpose by selecting places that would be completely unpalatable for Mr. Abrego."

"What we’ve been getting in this courtroom is a lot of run-around,” Rossman added.

Border Patrol agents in Chicago triggered outrage on Friday after they wrestled WGN News video producer Debbie Brockman to the ground and arrested her, for what appeared to be no reason other than filming federal agents carrying out another arrest.

The video, which has made the rounds on social media, including Facebook and X, was met with widespread legal criticism, with some experts pointing out that it appeared to be in direct violation of a court order limiting arrests of nonviolent protesters and reporters, and could lead to a contempt of court finding against agents.

According to Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin, there was a good reason for the arrest, and it wasn't just because Brockman was filming agents.

"She was arrested for throwing objects at law enforcement," McLaughlin posted to X.

But that explanation had a massive hole in it, Lawfare's Anna Bower quickly pointed out in a reply.

"The woman’s employer [WGN News] reports that she was released without being charged with a crime," wrote Bower. "If she threw objects at federal officers, as you claim she did, why wasn’t she charged?"

This new incident comes as President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement policies have faced mounting criticism for both their perceived brutality and lack of proper legal process.

Another Chicago incident earlier this year, which resulted in Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shooting 38-year-old family man Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, was justified by DHS, claiming the suspect drove his car at officers, seriously injuring one. Body camera footage contradicted that description of events.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board shredded President Donald Trump on Friday over his administration's move to bring criminal charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump's newly-appointed Eastern Virginia prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, is charging James with bank fraud, over highly partisan allegations by Trump's housing finance chief, Bill Pulte, that James defrauded mortgage lenders by declaring multiple primary residences. James has denied these allegations, and a review of records shows evidence that she, in fact, told her lender that one residence would not be primary. Meanwhile, the case was advanced so abruptly that even Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly wasn't aware it was happening.

The WSJ board, conservative by nature and no fan of Democrats, went out of its way to also criticize James' civil fraud judgment won against Trump's family and business during his period out of office, which is speculated to be what Trump is seeking revenge for.

But that doesn't excuse this case, they argued.

"Other prosecutors in Ms. Halligan’s office, including her predecessor Erik Siebert, apparently didn’t think the feds had a case against Ms. James. Yet the President urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after her in a public internet post," wrote the board.

Meanwhile, they noted, James could also argue "that Ms. Halligan is acting without constitutional authority, because she was improperly appointed. Federal law lets the President fill a U.S. Attorney vacancy by naming an 'interim' prosecutor for 120 days. Mr. Trump put Mr. Siebert in that role, before ousting him after he didn’t charge Ms. James and Mr. Comey."

Some of Trump's other prosecutors appointed this way have been thwarted with this argument.

"None of this, on either side, is healthy for the republic," wrote the board. "Ms. James accused Mr. Trump of civil fraud, while giving no evidence that his sophisticated lenders suffered any losses." Similarly, "This week’s indictment of Ms. James gives no indication that anyone lost money. Federal housing regulator Bill Pulte seems to believe his job is to dig through filing cabinets for dirt on Mr. Trump’s enemies, even as news reports suggest flyspecking mortgages to this degree could fill America’s jails in about five minutes, including with Republicans."

"Worried about Mr. Trump’s promises of retribution, President Biden issued blanket pardons on his way out the door. After taking his revenge, will Mr. Trump have to do the same on Jan. 20, 2029? This is madness," the board concluded. Instead, they argued, it would be healthier "for both parties to conclude that the lawfare of recent years has been a historic mistake, and that nobody benefits from becoming a banana republic. Mutual assured legal destruction is no way to run a great nation."

Maine Gov. Janet Mills' Democratic campaign for Senate appeared to get off to a rocky start Friday afternoon.

A video dropped on X of Mills' campaign announcement, proclaiming she would be a vote for a Democratic majority, harshly criticizing Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, and asking people to donate to her ActBlue page.

But shortly after it appeared, it all vanished.

As NOTUS' Reese Gorman noted, the video was abruptly deleted, an ActBlue donation link was taken down, and the fledgling Senate campaign was erased as quickly as it was announced.

An internal document obtained by Axios earlier in the day appears to suggest the campaign launch was actually scheduled for Tuesday of next week.

Mills, a two-term governor who has spent much of the last year clashing with President Donald Trump's efforts to strongarm Maine's civil rights policy under threat of stripping the state's federal grants, has been aggressively courted for a Senate run for months by Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Kirsten Gillibrand. Party leaders hope she can mount a strong challenge to Collins, who has beaten back previous Democratic attempts to oust her.

But there are some key obstacles to Mills' candidacy, including the fact that she is 77 years old, igniting another front of debate within the Democratic Party about whether their House and Senate caucuses are doing enough to recruit fresh blood.

The Democratic primary field in Maine has been relatively sparse so far as potential candidates waited for Mills to make her decision. However, there are already some candidates in the race, including former congressional staffer Jordan Wood, brewery owner Dan Kleban, and former environmental policy official Dan Costello.

One of the biggest upstarts in the race in terms of coverage and fundraising has been Graham Platner, a veteran, harbormaster, and oyster farmer who has gone viral with his message as a progressive outsider who isn't afraid to speak plainly with Trump voters.

President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social account on Friday evening to vent fury over China's trade practices — and announce a retaliatory tariff that markets have feared.

This follows a previous rant earlier in the day on the same topic, as China condemns retaliatory port fees for U.S. ships.

"It has just been learned that China has taken an extraordinarily aggressive position on Trade in sending an extremely hostile letter to the World, stating that they were going to, effective November 1st, 2025, impose large scale Export Controls on virtually every product they make, and some not even made by them," wrote Trump. "This affects ALL Countries, without exception, and was obviously a plan devised by them years ago. It is absolutely unheard of in International Trade, and a moral disgrace in dealing with other Nations."

"Based on the fact that China has taken this unprecedented position, and speaking only for the U.S.A., and not other Nations who were similarly threatened, starting November 1st, 2025 (or sooner, depending on any further actions or changes taken by China), the United States of America will impose a Tariff of 100% on China, over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying," Trump continued. "Also on November 1st, we will impose Export Controls on any and all critical software."

"It is impossible to believe that China would have taken such an action, but they have, and the rest is History," the president concluded. "Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

The stock market responded to today's tariff threats with a precipitous drop, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing nearly 900 points lower than the day's trading.

Longtime GOP strategist Frank Luntz had a harsh warning for Capitol Hill on CNN Friday afternoon as the government shutdown drags on into its second week: don't let the two most electorally important groups become a casualty of the standoff, or they will blitz the ballot box with a vengeance.

There currently appears to be no end in sight to the impasse, with Democrats demanding an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies for millions of people whose premiums are set to go up, and Republicans refusing to discuss the matter until a clean bill is passed reopening federal agencies. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is seizing on the chaos to lay off thousands more federal workers.

"I've been critical of both sides and how they've communicated, because there doesn't seem to be the desire to end this," said Luntz. "Instead, there's the desire to pin the tail on the donkey, and in the end, that won't be good enough. In the end, the public expects something better from their elected officials."

"We see your Go Army spirit finger over your right shoulder there, and you can't ignore, Frank, military families are getting hosed in this, right?" said anchor Brianna Keilar. "We're expecting they're going to miss a paycheck next week, another one, if this goes on. How much does that factor into the politics of this?"

"Significantly," said Luntz.

"There are two things that you do not do in the shutdown," he continued. You do not punish social security recipients because hell hath no fury like a senior who's been denied their benefits even for a few days. And the other group that you do not punish are people are men and women in uniform. Both of those will be significant players."

"And if that should happen in the end, there will be hell to pay at the ballot box," Luntz added. "People do forgive. Issues happen, crises happen, and moods change. But if you deny our people in uniform their salaries, their benefits, you're going to have a problem months or even on election day a year from now."

- YouTube youtu.be

A firm that cut millions of dollars in donations to President Donald Trump's plan for a massive new ballroom wing of the White House has suddenly found one of its flagship energy projects canceled by the Bureau of Land Management with no explanation.

According to The New York Times, "The project, known as Esmeralda 7, would have comprised a sprawling network of solar panels and batteries across 118,000 acres of federally owned land in the Nevada desert northwest of Las Vegas. It was expected to produce up to 6.2 gigawatts of energy, enough to power nearly two million homes." It would have been one of the largest solar installations anywhere in the world.

A developer leading the project was NextEra Energy, one of the biggest utility firms in the United States.

"NextEra was among the companies that donated at least $5 million to fund the construction of Mr. Trump’s $200 million ballroom in the East Wing of the White House, CBS News reported."

Trump's ballroom project, which the administration says is financed entirely by private donations, has drawn massive criticism, as the planned expansion would be larger than the entire square footage of the current White House.

The exact reason for Esmeralda 7 being canceled is unclear. However, the report noted, "The Interior Department is now requiring dozens of formerly routine approvals for wind and solar projects to undergo new layers of political review by the interior secretary’s office, a policy that is causing significant permitting delays. The agency is also opening investigations into bird deaths caused by wind farms and withdrawing millions of acres of federal waters previously available for leasing by offshore wind companies."

This decision comes despite the fact that Nevada's Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, has raised alarms with the administration that energy permitting isn't going fast enough to keep pace with his state's power demands for mining and AI data centers.

Trump has repeatedly attacked solar and wind power projects, and has reportedly hated green energy development ever since a wind farm altered the view from one of his golf courses in Scotland.

In another recent controversial move, the Trump administration moved to pull approval from an 80 percent complete offshore wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut, but a federal judge stepped in and allowed work to resume.

The Supreme Court is hearing a number of high-profile cases this term, including one critical to the future of congressional representation. But they're also taking on a much lesser-known case, about postal service misconduct, that should not fall off anyone's radar, legal analyst Elie Mystal wrote for The Nation — because it could be "sneakily crucial" to democracy.

On the surface of it, wrote Mystal, U.S. Postal Service v. Konan, argued on Wednesday, isn't really about elections or voting rights at all. Rather, it's about just how much legal liability the U.S. Postal Service has if mail is intentionally withheld from recipients.

This case focuses on the plight of Lebene Konan, a landlord in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex who alleges local postal workers deliberately refused to deliver mail to her property for two years because they didn't like the idea of a Black landlord overseeing white tenants. Konan says she lost tenants over the issue, who weren't getting bills and medicine — and she filed dozens of complaints with USPS before resorting to a lawsuit.

"It would seem obvious that people should be able to sue if the Postal Service refuses to deliver, or destroys, their mail," wrote Mystal. "Considering how much shopping is done online these days, nondelivery isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s literal theft. But as a legal proposition, it’s tricky. The Postal Service enjoys an exception from the normal operation of law — 'the postal exception' — which makes it impossible for people to sue the Post Office for claims 'arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.' The facial issue in front of the court is whether intentional nondelivery is mere loss, miscarriage, or 'negligence' — or whether it’s something more significant."

The alleged discrimination against Konan is bad enough, Mystal wrote, but "what will be even worse is when the Trump Postal Service refuses to deliver mail-in ballots in Texas, or anywhere else. Intentional nondelivery of mail in a world where mail-in voting is a thing is a crisis for democracy." That's what could happen if the Supreme Court rules USPS cannot be sued even for deliberate nondelivery.

Justice Samuel Alito seemed to think none of this is a big deal, Mystal added, saying during arguments that nondelivery of mail is too trivial an issue for people to sue over.

"What’s particularly galling about Alito’s argument is that we know exactly why he’s making it: He hates mail-in voting," Mystal wrote. "Earlier in the week, during arguments in Bost v. Illinois Board of Elections (the case I mentioned earlier about whether a Republican candidate can sue over Illinois’s mail-in ballot procedure), Alito made the wild, incorrect, and unsupported accusation that Bost has standing to sue because mail-in voting helps Democrats. This is flatly not true. But even it were, the fact that one party prefers one method of voting over another should have no bearing on the legal availability of that method of voting."

President Donald Trump has repeatedly and publicly demanded to be given a Nobel Peace Prize — and the government of Norway is starting to prepare for the risk he could exact revenge on their country if it doesn't happen.

According to The Guardian, "The Norwegian Nobel Committee pointedly said on Thursday that it had reached a decision about who would be named 2025 peace prize laureate on Monday," which would mean they did not take into consideration the ceasefire agreement from Israel and Hamas that, while still in tentative preliminary phases, Trump had a hand in brokering.

While Trump did also have varying degrees of involvement in other peace agreements around the world, often highly exaggerating his role in them, it is widely expected that the committee will not choose Trump, and that has politicians in Norway scrambling to plan for what he might do.

“Donald Trump is taking the US in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything,” said Kirsti Bergstø, who heads up the Socialist Left Party of Norway, a minor party in a power agreement with the Labor government. “The Nobel Committee is an independent body and the Norwegian government has no involvement in determining the prizes. But I’m not sure Trump knows that. We have to be prepared for anything from him.”

Among the risks newspaper columnist Harald Stranghelle warns Norway to prepare for is that Trump imposes new punitive tariffs on Norway, demands more contributions to the NATO defense budget, or even declares Norway to be an enemy of the United States.

“While [Trump] clearly deserves credit for his efforts to end the war in Gaza, it is still too early to tell whether the peace proposal will be implemented and lead to lasting peace,” Nina Græger of the Peace Research Institute Oslo told The Guardian, saying the most likely recipients of the Peace Prize this year are either Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, the Committee to Protect Journalists, or the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.