At the White House last week, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado gave President Trump her Nobel Peace Prize medal. This week, Trump is expected to speak at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
TUESDAY 1/20/26
Trump World Order – Let’s begin on this first anniversary of President Trump's second inauguration with a report by The Globe and Mail, the Great White North’s New York Times, that Canadian Armed Forces have modeled a hypothetical US military invasion of Canada and the country’s potential response.
This includes “tactics similar to those employed against Russian and later US-led forces in Afghanistan,” two senior government officials told the newspaper. It is believed to be “the first time in a century that the Canadian Armed Forces have created a model of an American assault on Canada,” TGaM continues, stressing that this is a “conceptual and theoretical framework,” not a military plan.
Know Board, know peace? … Canada will join President Trump’s Board of Peace Prime Minister Mark Carney says but will not fork over the $1 billion required to renew membership after three years, according to Politico. End of the free introductory offer coincides with the end of Trump’s current term. The charter for the Board of Peace lists “Donald J. Trump” and not “President Trump” as its chairman.
No word on whether nations like Canada taking advantage of the offer of free membership for the first three years will have to plunk down a credit card for an automatic $1-billion renewal.
Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron has rejected outright France’s participation.
“This is very, very far from the Charter of the United Nations,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said in a speech to French academics in Paris.
The Board of Peace (which doesn’t have Trump’s name on it yet) is to be a key feature of the peace brokered between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, but the US president is now promoting the board as an alterna-UN Security Council (which doesn’t have Trump’s name on it, either). Macron and Barrot are concerned that such an organization as chartered by Trump would have extensive powers beyond leading the transition in Gaza, according to Politico.
“The US out of the UN” is an old right-wing idea preceding the Reagan administration. Staunch American conservatives see the UN as usurping US power and interests, much in the same way the hard right in Great Britain considered the European Union before Brexit.
Who’s game? … Before Canada’s Carney accepted the three-year trial, Argentina’s pro-Trump president, Javier Milei, and Hungary’s pro-Putin, pro-Trump prime minister, Viktor Orbán said they would join, The New York Times reports.
Ukraine also has been invited, Ukrayinska Pravda reports.
Trump also has invited Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Belarus. The presence of Turkey and Qatar on the board’s subcommittee has prompted “immediate outcry” from Israel, according to the NYT. –TL
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MLK Jr. Day 1/19/26
No Peace Prize, No Peace – Norway did not deny President Trump the Nobel Peace Prize he so much covets. Rather, it was the Nobel Committee based in Copenhagen, that instead awarded its Peace Prize to Venezuela opposition leader Marina Corina Machado – who handed her medal over to the US president at the White House last week (pictured above) in exchange for a DJT gift bag. Perhaps most important to Trump, 17 years ago the Nobel Committee handed its Peace Prize to President Obama.
Nevertheless, Trump did warn Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre that he is ready to give up on peace as it relates to Norway, Europe and NATO, over Greenland. PBS first reported this letter from Trump to Støre Monday (per Mediaite):
Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.
Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.
I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT.
Støre told a Norwegian news outlet that Trump’s letter was a reply to a message he earlier sent to the White House.
The EU+UK Eight … Trump’s letter comes a couple of days after the president promised to hit eight European nations with 10% tariffs on February 1 unless they agree to negotiate Greenland’s sale to the United States (per The New York Times). The eight countries are Denmark, of course, and Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Finland.
If these countries don’t give in, the tariff rate would increase to 25% on June 1 “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”
Head start … Meanwhile, as The Guardian reported last week, Friend of Trump and Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder already has “acquired commercial holdings” in Greenland.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer told a Downing Street press conference Trump’s trade war threat is “completely wrong” but indicated the UK will not retaliate, the Daily Mail reports.
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War on Minnesota – Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Service agent shown in numerous smartphone videos firing his gun at Renee Good as she tried to drive away from an ICE blockade on a one-way street in Minneapolis earlier this month, is not being investigated. But Good, who died from gunshot wounds in the shooting, is.
And now on Friday, the Justice Department issued subpoenas for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, both Democrats, in an investigation accusing them of standing in the way of federal law enforcement officers’ abilities to carry out their jobs, The Washington Post reports.
Meanwhile … The Pentagon has placed about 1,500 active duty soldiers from the US Army’s 11th Airborne Division, based in Alaska, on alert for potential deployment over the widespread protests in Minnesota over ICE presence and Good’s fatal shooting, four defense officials have told The Wall Street Journal. –TL
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FRIDAY 1/16/26
Chinese EVs Into Canada – China will import electric vehicles to Canada in exchange for Canadian canola oil at low tariff rates, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Friday. The trade deal eliminates tariffs on a number of other products while sidestepping President Trump’s tough-on-China agenda in which he expects allies to match, for example, the US tariff of 100% on Chinese TVs.
Carney revealed the trade deal after hours of meetings in Beijing Friday with Chinese leader Xi JinPing, The Globe and Mail reports. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has criticized the agreement, however, saying it will harm Canadian workers.
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ACLU Sues ICE, CBP – The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Trump administration alleging constitutional rights violations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on behalf of three community members. One of the plaintiffs, Mubashir Khalif Hussen, 20, says multiple masked ICE agents stopped him in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis last December 10. Hussen repeatedly told them, “I’m a citizen. I’m a citizen,” as the agents refused to acknowledge his identification, according to the ACLU.
‘Travesty’... In the wake of last week’s fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis and the Trump administration’s defense of alleged shooter, ICE agent Jonathan Ross, President Trump has threatened to send the military into Minneapolis where federal agents Thursday shot and wounded a Venezuelan man accused of resisting arrest (per Politico).
Trump Truth Socialed Thursday; “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.”
Gov. Tim Walz (D) responded on social media; “Stop this campaign of retribution. This is not who we are.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) commented on X-Twitter that “Minnesota needs ICE to leave, not an escalation that brings additional federal troops beyond the 3,000 already here” (per The New York Times).
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DHS’ ‘White Nationalist’ Rhetoric – The Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security is dropping in White Nationalist wording into advertisements recruiting new agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to CNN.
ICYMI, as we did, Mediaite reports that CNN’s Dana Bash called out on Inside Politics Thursday “coded language” echoing “neo-Nazi” and “White Nationalist’ rhetoric.”
DHS advertising language has used far-right Replacement Theory language and promotes a form of ethnic cleansing, according to CNN, such as:
•“America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need to get them out.”
•“Will have our home again” … “Join ICE.” • “The stakes have never been higher and the goal has never been more clear, re-immigration now.” –Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa