Trump

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Friday that he’s placing an additional 100% tax on Chinese imports starting on Nov. 1 or sooner, potentially escalating tariff rates close to levels that in April fanned fears of a steep recession and financial market chaos.

The president said on his social media site that he is imposing these new tariffs because of export controls placed on rare earth elements by China. The new tariffs built on an earlier post Friday on Truth Social in which Trump said that “there seems to be no reason” to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as part of an upcoming trip to South Korea.

Trump said that “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.”

The announcement after financial markets closed on Friday risked throwing the global economy into turmoil. Not only would the global trade war instigated by Trump be rekindled at dangerous levels, but import taxes being heaped on top of the 30% already being levied on Chinese goods could, by the administration’s past statements, cause trade to break down between the U.S. and China.

While Trump’s wording was definitive, he is also famously known for backing down from threats, such that some investors began engaging in what The Financial Times called the “TACO” trade, which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” The prospect of tariffs this large could compound the president’s own political worries inside the U.S., potentially pushing up inflation at a moment when the job market appears fragile and the drags from a government shutdown are starting to compound into layoffs of federal workers.

The president also said that the U.S. government would respond to China by putting its own export controls “on any and all critical software” from American firms.

It’s possible that this could amount to either posturing by the United States for eventual negotiations or a retaliatory step that could foster new fears about the stability of the global economy.

The United States and China have been jostling for advantage in trade talks, after the import taxes announced earlier this year triggered a trade war between the world’s two largest economies. Both nations agreed to ratchet down tariffs after negotiations in Switzerland and the United Kingdom, yet tensions remain as China has continued to restrict America’s access to the difficult-to-mine rare earths needed for a wide array of U.S. technologies.

Trump did not formally cancel the meeting with Xi, so much as indicating that it might not happen as part of a trip at the end of the month in Asia. The trip was scheduled to include a stop in Malaysia, which is hosting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit; a stop in Japan; and a visit to South Korea, where he was slated to meet with Xi ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

“I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” Trump posted.

Trump’s threat shattered a monthslong calm on Wall Street, and the S&P 500 tumbled 2.7% on worries about the rising tensions between the world’s largest economies. It was the market’s worst day since April when the president last bandied about import taxes this high. Still, the stock market closed before the president spelled out the terms of his threat.

China’s new restrictions

On Thursday, the Chinese government restricted access to the rare earths ahead of the scheduled Trump-Xi meeting. Beijing would require foreign companies to get special approval for shipping the metallic elements abroad. It also announced permitting requirements on exports of technologies used in the mining, smelting and recycling of rare earths, adding that any export requests for products used in military goods would be rejected.

Trump said that China is “becoming very hostile” and that it’s holding the world “captive” by restricting access to the metals and magnets used in electronics, computer chips, lasers, jet engines and other technologies.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, said Beijing reacted to U.S. sanctions of Chinese companies this week and the upcoming port fees targeting China-related vessels but said there’s room for deescalation to keep the leaders’ meeting alive. “It is a disproportional reaction,” Sun said. “Beijing feels that deescalation will have to be mutual as well. There is room for maneuver, especially on the implementation.”

The U.S. president said the move on rare earths was “especially inappropriate” given the announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza so that the remaining hostages from Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack can be released. He raised the possibility without evidence that China was trying to steal the moment from him for his role in the ceasefire, saying on social media, “I wonder if that timing was coincidental?”

There is already a backlog of export license applications from Beijing’s previous round of export controls on rare earth elements, and the latest announcements “add further complexity to the global supply chain of rare earth elements,” the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said in a statement.

Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., said China signaled it is open to negotiations, but it also holds leverage because to dominates the market for rare earths with 70% of the mining and 93% of the production of permanent magnets made from them that are crucial to high-tech products and the military.

“These restrictions undermine our ability to develop our industrial base at a time when we need to. And then second, it’s a powerful negotiating tool,” she said. And these restrictions can hurt efforts to strengthen the U.S. military in the midst of global tensions because rare earths are needed.

Trump’s trade war

The outbreak of a tariff-fueled trade war between the U.S. and China initially caused the world economy to shudder over the possibility of global commerce collapsing. Trump imposed tariffs totaling 145% on Chinese goods, with China responding with import taxes of 125% on American products.

The taxes were so high as to effectively be a blockade on trade between the countries. That led to negotiations that reduced the tariff charged by the U.S. government to 30% and the rate imposed by China to 10% so that further talks could take place. The relief those lower rates provided could now disappear with the new import taxes Trump threatened, likely raising the stakes not only of whether Trump and Xi meet but how any disputes are resolved.

Differences continue over America’s access to rare earths from China, U.S. restrictions on China’s ability to import advanced computer chips, sales of American-grown soybeans and a series of tit-for-tat port fees being levied by both countries starting on Tuesday.

Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon said “China has not been a fair-trade partner for years,” but the Trump administration should have anticipated China’s restrictions on rare earths and refusal to buy American soybeans in response to the tariffs.

How analysts see moves by U.S. and China

Wendy Cutler, senior vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, said Trump’s post shows the fragility of the détente between the two countries and it’s unclear whether the two sides are willing to de-escalate to save the bilateral meeting.

Cole McFaul, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said that Trump appeared in his post to be readying for talks on the possibility that China had overplayed its hand. By contrast, China sees itself as having come out ahead when the two countries have engaged in talks.

“From Beijing’s point of view, they’re in a moment where they’re feeling a lot of confidence about their ability to handle the Trump administration,” McFaul said. “Their impression is they’ve come to the negotiating table and extracted key concessions.”

Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank, said Trump’s post could “mark the beginning of the end of the tariff truce” that had lowered the tax rates charged by both countries.

It’s still unclear how Trump intends to follow through on his threats and how China plans to respond.

“But the risk is clear: Mutually assured disruption between the two sides is no longer a metaphor,” Singleton said. “Both sides are reaching for their economic weapons at the same time, and neither seems willing to back down.”

Boak and Tang write for the Associated Press. AP writers Stan Choe in New York and Josh Funk in Omaha, Neb., contributed to the report.

DONALD Trump has declared the Gaza ceasefire “the most important deal ever made” — even as he was snubbed for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

The US President, who brokered the landmark truce to end two years of bloodshed between Israel and Hamas, spoke just hours after the award went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.

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He insisted the breakthrough was “signed, sealed and already started” — and hailed it as the crowning achievement of a presidency he says has stopped eight wars.

“It’s certainly, I think, to the mind of most, the most important deal ever made in terms of peace,” Trump said on Friday.

The president said the ceasefire marked “a great deal for Israel, but it’s a great deal for everybody — for Arabs, for Muslims, for the world,” and confirmed that the release of hostages would begin on Monday.

“We’re getting them now. They’re gathering them from some pretty rough places on earth,” he said.

The decision to snub Trump came the day after Israel and Hamas signed a peace deal that he engineered to end the war and return the hostages.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was instead awarded to María Corina Machado – a Venezuelan politician and activist – for her “tireless work” organising the democratic opposition to dictatorship in Venezuela.

Trump has also announced 100 per cent tariffs on China in response to Beijing’s sweeping rare earth export controls – a major escalation in the fierce trade war between Washington and Beijing.

The US President accused China of taking an “extraordinarily aggressive position” on trade, slamming what he called an “extremely hostile letter to the world” that outlined measures to control “virtually every product they make”.

Posting on Truth Social, Trump vowed to hit back hard, saying he would also impose US export controls on any critical software heading to China.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan politician Machado dedicated the Nobel Prize to the US President.

She wrote on X: “This recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans is a boost to conclude our task: to conquer Freedom.

“We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy.

“I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!”

Her post comes amidst heightened tensions between the two countries after Trump cut all diplomatic contacts with Venezuela during the US’s crackdown on drug cartels.

The Nobel Committee paid tribute to Machado’s “struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”.

It said the award was in recognition of her “tireless work” to protect rights and fight for a transition to democracy in Venezuela.

Announcing the winner, Jørgen Watne Frydnes lauded her as “a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness”.

He said: “When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist.”

He later explained why the US president was not given the award.

He said: “I think this committee has seen [every] type of campaign [and] media attention. We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people saying what, for them, leads to peace.”

“But this committee sits in a room with the portraits of all laureates and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So, we base only our decision on the work and will of Alfred Nobel.”

Machado has been living in hiding for the past year, after her fearless work incited “serious threats against her life”.

Troubled Venezuela is currently ruled by Nicolás Maduro, who is widely recognised as a dictator.

His government has routinely targeted its real or perceived opponents.

Machado, who turned 58 this week, was set to run against Maduro in last year’s presidential election, but the government disqualified her.

The election results announced by the Electoral Council sparked protests across the country to which the government responded with force that ended with more than 20 people dead.

Machado went into hiding and has not been seen in public since January.

Trump, who is in his second term as America’s president, has long wished for a Nobel Peace Prize.

He claims to have stopped seven conflicts in the world since his time in the office – and has made no secret of the fact that he believes he is worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Last week, he teased the possibility of ending an eighth war if Israel and Hamas agree to his peace plan aimed at concluding the nearly two-year war in Gaza.

And just hours before the Nobel Peace Prize results were set to be announced, Don revealed to the world that the two warring factions had signed a peace deal – one that he engineered.

It is indeed a massive breakthrough that is set to reshape the face of the Middle East – and the world is praising the US leaders’ effort to broker the deal.

However, the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prestigious peace prize, held its final meeting on Monday, the Nobel Institute said.

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This means that the decision to give the award to Machado was made before the conclusion of an agreement between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday night.

Historian Asle Sveen, a specialist in the Nobel Prize, said he was “one hundred per cent certain” that Trump will not win this year’s Nobel Prize.

He emphasised that the US president had long “given free rein” to Netanyahu to bomb Gaza and had provided significant military aid to Israel – something that the prize committee must have taken into account.

A global ‘peacemaker’

All eyes were on his nomination this year after the self-proclaimed peacemaker launched a campaign in a bid to win the award.

He has repeatedly asserted since his return to the White House in January that he deserves the nod, adding it would be “a big insult” to the United States if he were not given the prize.

In February this year, during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, he said: “They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me.”

Even during his speech at the 80th UN General Assembly in New York, Trump said that “everyone” says he should get it.

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He said: “Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements, but for me, the real prize will be the sons and daughters who live to grow up with their mothers and fathers, because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless and unglorious wars. 

“What I care about is not winning prizes as much as saving lives.”

Numerous world leaders endorsed him for the honour, including Netanyahu, who posted an AI-generated image of him awarding Trump the Nobel Prize.

Hun Manet, the prime minister of Cambodia, nominated Trump after a deal was struck for a ceasefire following the clashes at the Cambodia-Thailand border.

Olivier Nduhungirehe, the Rwandan foreign minister, credited Trump for how he helped end the 30-year conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Pakistan also endorsed Trump for the prize this year. Though the Islamic Republic slammed him for bombing Iran in less than 24 hours.

Even Vladimir Putin backed Trump to win.

Putin said Russia supported Trump’s nomination as long as Washington did not supply long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.

Experts say the Nobel Prize committee may take Trump’s efforts to bring peace in Gaza – if it lasts – into consideration for next year’s award.

WASHINGTON — The White House budget office said Friday that mass firings of federal workers have started in an attempt to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers in the ongoing government shutdown.

Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on the social media site X that the “RIFs have begun,” referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government.

A spokesperson for the budget office said the reductions are “substantial” but did not offer more immediate details.

The Education Department is among the agencies hit by new layoffs, a department spokesperson said Friday without providing more details. The department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office in January, but its workforce was nearly halved amid mass layoffs in the Republican administration’s first months. At the start of the shutdown, it had about 2,500 employees.

The White House previewed that it would pursue the aggressive layoff tactic shortly before the government shutdown began on Oct. 1, telling all federal agencies to submit their reduction-in-force plans to the budget office for its review. It said reduction-in-force plans could apply for federal programs whose funding would lapse in a government shutdown, are otherwise not funded and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”

This goes far beyond what usually happens in a government shutdown, which is that federal workers are furloughed but restored to their jobs once the shutdown ends.

Democrats have tried to call the administration’s bluff, arguing the firings could be illegal, and seemed bolstered by the fact the White House had yet to carry out the firings.

But President Trump had said earlier this week that he would soon have more information about how many federal jobs would be eliminated.

“I’ll be able to tell you that in four or five days if this keeps going on,” he said Tuesday in the Oval Office as he met with Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney. “If this keeps going on, it’ll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back.”

Meanwhile, the halls of the Capitol were quiet on Friday, then 10th day of the shutdown, with both the House and the Senate out of Washington and both sides digging in for a protracted shutdown fight. Senate Republicans have tried repeatedly to cajole Democratic holdouts to vote for a stopgap bill to reopen the government, but Democrats have refused as they hold out for a firm commitment to extend health care benefits.

There was no sign that the top Democratic and Republican Senate leaders were even talking about a way to solve the impasse. Instead, Senate Majority Leader John Thune continued to try to peel away centrist Democrats who may be willing to cross party lines as the shutdown pain dragged on.

“It’s time for them to get a backbone,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said during a news conference.

Kim and Groves write for the Associated Press. AP writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

The US president’s announcement comes after China pledged to impose restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals.

United States President Donald Trump has suggested he may scrap a planned meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping this month over questions of technology and trade.

Trump and Xi had been expected to meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit at the end of this month, in an attempt to lower economic tensions.

But in a social media post on Friday, Trump criticised China over the new controls it announced on the export of rare earth metals. The US president also threatened China with the possibility of steep tariffs.

“I have not spoken to President Xi because there was no reason to do so. This was a real surprise, not only to me, but to all the Leaders of the Free World,” Trump said. “I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so.”

The relationship between Trump and his Chinese counterpart has been rocky, and both have imposed new measures aimed at countering each other in areas where they are competing for influence, such as technological development.

Rare earth metals are vital for such development, and China leads the world in refining the metals for use in devices like computers, smart phones and military weaponry.

On Thursday, China unveiled a suite of new restrictions on the exports of those products. Out of the 17 elements considered rare earth metals, China will now require export licences for 12 of them.

Technologies involved in the processing of the metals will also face new licensing requirements. Among the measures is also a special approval process for foreign companies shipping metallic elements abroad.

China described the new rules as necessary to protect its national security interests. But in his lengthy post to Truth Social, Trump slammed the country for seeking to corner the rare-earths industry.

“They are becoming very hostile, and sending letters to Countries throughout the World, that they want to impose Export Controls on each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths, and virtually anything else they can think of, even if it’s not manufactured in China,” Trump wrote.

The Republican president warned he would counter with protectionist moves and seek to restrict China from accessing industries the US holds sway over.

“There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the World ‘captive,’ but that seems to have been their plan for quite some time, starting with the “Magnets” and, other Elements that they have quietly amassed into somewhat of a Monopoly position,” Trump said.

“But the U.S. has Monopoly positions also, much stronger and more far reaching than China’s. I have just not chosen to use them, there was never a reason for me to do so — UNTIL NOW!”

The Trump administration had previously imposed massive tariffs on China, one of the US’s largest trading partners.

But those tariffs were eventually eased after the two countries came to an agreement for a 90-day pause that is set to expire around November 9.

The US has previously taken aggressive steps aimed at hobbling China’s tech sector, which it views as a key competitor to its own.

“Our relationship with China over the past six months has been a very good one, thereby making this move on Trade an even more surprising one,” Trump said. “I have always felt that they’ve been lying in wait, and now, as usual, I have been proven right!”

WASHINGTON — President Trump is undergoing what he has described as a “semiannual physical” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday.

The visit, which the White House announced earlier this week, comes as Trump is preparing to travel to the Middle East on the heels of a ceasefire deal in the Israel-Hamas war. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described it as a “routine yearly checkup,” although Trump had his annual physical in April.

The White House declined to explain why Trump was getting a yearly checkup six months after his annual exam. But in an exchange with reporters Thursday, he said it was a “semiannual physical.”

“I’m meeting with the troops, and I’m also going to do a, sort of, semiannual physical, which I do,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I think I’m in great shape, but I’ll let you know.”

The president is scheduled to return to the White House after his visit to Walter Reed, which is located in Bethesda, Maryland.

Trump’s April physical found that he was “fully fit” to serve as commander in chief. The three-page summary of the exam done by his doctor, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, said he had lost 20 pounds (9 kilograms) since a medical exam in June 2020 and said he has an “active lifestyle” that “continues to contribute significantly” to the well-being of the president, who’s 79.

In July, the White House announced that Trump recently had had a medical checkup after noticing “mild swelling” in his lower legs and was found to have a condition common in older adults that causes blood to pool in his veins. Tests by the White House medical unit showed that Trump has chronic venous insufficiency, which occurs when little valves inside the veins that normally help move blood against gravity gradually lose the ability to work properly.

At the April physical, Trump also passed a short screening test to assess different brain functions.

Kim writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday despite jockeying from his fellow Republicans, various world leaders and — most vocally — himself.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it was honoring Machado “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Machado, however, said she wanted to dedicate the win to Trump, along with the people of her country, as she praised the president for support of her cause.

The White House responded bitterly to the news of the award Friday, with communications director Steven Cheung saying members of “the Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace” because they didn’t recognize Trump, especially after the Gaza ceasefire deal his administration helped strike this week.

“He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” Cheung wrote on social media.

The White House did not comment on Machado’s recognition, but Trump on social media shared Machado’s post praising him.

Her opposition to President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela aligns with the Trump administration’s own stance on Venezuela, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously praised her as “the personification of resilience, tenacity, and patriotism.”

Trump, who has long coveted the prestigious prize, has been outspoken about his desire for the honor during both of his presidential terms, particularly lately as he takes credit for ending conflicts around the world. The Republican president had expressed doubts that the Nobel committee would ever grant him the award.

“They’ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I saved a lot of lives,” Trump said Thursday.

Although Trump received nominations for the prize, many of them occurred after the Feb. 1 deadline for the 2025 award, which fell just a week and a half into his second term. His name was, however, put forward in December by Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York, her office said in a statement, for his brokering of the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states in 2020.

A long history of lobbying for the prize

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said the committee has seen various campaigns in its long history of awarding the peace prize.

“We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what for them leads to peace,” he said. “This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates, and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”

The peace prize, first awarded in 1901, was created partly to encourage ongoing peace efforts. Alfred Nobel stipulated in his will that the prize should go to someone “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Three sitting U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and Barack Obama in 2009. Jimmy Carter won the prize in 2002, a full two decades after leaving office. Former Vice President Al Gore received the prize in 2007.

Obama, a Democrat who was a focus of Trump’s attacks well before the Republican was elected, won the prize early in his tenure as president.

“They gave it to Obama for doing absolutely nothing but destroying our country,” Trump said Thursday.

Wars in Gaza and elsewhere

As one of his reasons for deserving the award, Trump often says he has ended seven wars, though some of the conflicts the president claims to have resolved were merely tensions and his role in easing them is disputed.

But while there is hope for the end to Israel and Hamas’ war, with Israel saying a ceasefire agreement with Hamas came into effect Friday, much remains uncertain about the aspects of the broader plan, including whether and how Hamas will disarm and who will govern Gaza. And little progress seems to have been made in the Russia-Ukraine war, a conflict Trump claimed during the 2024 campaign that he could end in one day.

As Trump pushes for peaceful resolutions to conflicts abroad, the country he governs remains deeply divided and politically fraught. Trump has kicked off what he hopes to be the largest deportation program in American history to remove immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. He is using the levers of government, including the Justice Department, to go after his perceived political enemies. He has sent the military into U.S. cities over local opposition to stop crime and crack down on immigration enforcement.

He withdrew the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, dealing a blow to worldwide efforts to combat global warming. He touched off global trade wars with his on-again, off-again tariffs, which he wields as a threat to bend other countries and companies to his will. He asserted presidential war powers by declaring cartels to be unlawful combatants and launching lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean that he alleged were carrying drugs.

The full list of people nominated is secret, but anyone who submits a nomination is free to talk about it. Trump’s detractors say supporters, foreign leaders and others are submitting Trump’s name for nomination for the prize — and announcing it publicly — not because he deserves it but because they see it as a way to manipulate him and stay in his good graces.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who this summer said he was nominating Trump for the prize, on Friday reposted Cheung’s response with the comment: “The Nobel Committee talks about peace. President @realDonaldTrump makes it happen.”

“The facts speak for themselves,” Netanyahu’s office said on X. “President #Trump deserves it.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sent troops to Ukraine in 2022 and has sought to show alignment with Trump, told reporters in Taijikistan on Friday that it’s not up to him to judge whether Trump should have received the prize, but he praised the ceasefire deal for Gaza.

He also criticized the Nobel Committee’s prior decisions, saying it has in the past awarded the prize to those who have done little to advance global peace.

Putin’s remarks nearly echoed the comments Trump made about Obama, and the U.S. leader responded to his Russian counterpart’s praise by posting on social media: “Thank you to President Putin!”

Others who formally submitted a nomination for Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize — but after this year’s deadline — include Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Pakistan’s government, all citing his work in helping end conflicts in their regions.

Pesoli and Price write for the Associated Press. AP writers Chris Megerian in Washington, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

Donald Trump heading to Israel and Egypt on Sunday after Nobel Committee’s decision not to hand him Peace Prize after Gaza deal.

United States President Donald Trump is heading to the Middle East on Sunday as he looks to assert his perceived role as a peacemaker in the region after the Gaza ceasefire deal.

The visit would come days after the Nobel Peace Prize committee overlooked Trump’s public campaigning for the award and handed it to right-wing Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.

The White House has bemoaned the snub, accusing the Norwegian Nobel Committee of putting “place politics over peace”.

But in the Middle East, Trump is likely to be showered with praise from his hosts and credited with securing an end to the war in Gaza and the release of Israeli captives in the territory.

The White House said on Friday that Trump will depart for the Middle East on Sunday night, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher. The US president will first arrive in Israel, where he will make an address on Monday, before continuing on to Egypt, Fisher reported from Washington DC.

Israel and Hamas have already lauded Trump’s role in the negotiations.

But analysts stress that for the deal to turn into long-term peace in Gaza, rather than another brief truce, the US president must pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against restarting the bombardment after the Israeli captives are released.

“I think that Donald Trump wants to oversee this very closely, and I think he wants to continue to send the message to Netanyahu that this is it. At least, that’s what I’m hoping,” said Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

“I assume he’s going to go and say very nice things about Benjamin Netanyahu; that’s what he always does publicly. But let’s hope, let’s hope, that he’s going to apply pressure.”

While Trump is taking much of the credit for the deal, experts say other factors pushed the truce over the line, more than two years into the brutal Israeli assault that United Nations investigators have concluded is a genocide.

Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel programme at the Arab Center Washington DC, said after destroying more than 80 percent of the buildings in Gaza while failing to free the captives, Israel was getting “diminishing returns” from its campaign in the territory.

“Israel is facing growing isolation and costs for continuing down this road. And I think there are also Israeli domestic political factors that influenced the timing of this as well,” Munayyer told Al Jazeera.

Similar proposals to the Trump plan have been on the table for the past two years, but Netanyahu has insisted on continuing the war.

However, the latest ceasefire comes at a time when countries across the world, including some of Israel’s Western allies, are condemning its blockade on Gaza and belligerence across the region, including its attack on Qatar last month.

Despite the international outrage, Israel has continued to receive military and diplomatic support from the US.

Not only did the Trump administration fail to denounce Israel’s policy of imposed starvation in Gaza, it also backed the GHF aid scheme to militarise humanitarian assistance, which killed hundreds of aid seekers.

As Trump celebrates his version of peace in the Middle East, rights advocates say there can be no true stability in the region without ending the occupation and ensuring accountability for the genocide in Gaza.

Nancy Okail, head of the Center for International Policy (CIP) think tank, warned that normalising the horrific abuses in Gaza could lead to the collapse of international institutions.

“If there’s no accountability for what happened in Gaza, it’s a licence for others to do similar things, and that weakens and puts everyone in jeopardy,” she told Al Jazeera.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — National Guard troops were seen patrolling in Memphis for the first time on Friday, as part of President Trump’s federal task force, which faces multiple legal challenges.

At least nine National Guard troops began their patrol at the Bass Pro Shops located at the Pyramid, an iconic landmark in Memphis. They were being escorted by a Memphis police officer and posed for photos with visitors who were standing outside.

It was unclear how many Guard members were on the ground or were expected to arrive later.

During an NAACP Memphis forum on Wednesday, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said she hoped Guard personnel would help direct traffic and have a presence in “retail corridors,” but not be used to operate checkpoints or anything similar.

“From a public safety standpoint, we’re trying to utilize Guard personnel in non-enforcement types of capacities, so it does not feel like there is this over-militarization in our communities, in our neighborhoods, and that’s not where we’re directing those resources, either,” she said.

Memphis Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat, said he never requested that the Guard come to Memphis. But after Trump made the Sept. 15 announcement and Republican Gov. Bill Lee agreed, Young and other officials said they wanted the task force to focus on targeting violent offenders rather than use their presence to scare, harass or intimidate the general public.

For years, Memphis has dealt with high violent crime, including assaults, carjackings and homicides. While this year’s statistics show improvement in several categories, including murders, many acknowledge that violence remains a problem.

Federal officials say hundreds of arrests and more than 2,800 traffic citations have been made since the task force began operating in Memphis on Sept. 29. Arrest categories include active warrants, drugs, firearms and sex offenses, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Four arrests have been made on homicide charges, the Marshals Service said.

An ongoing legal battle

Friday’s development comes day after a federal judge in Illinois blocked the deployment of troops in the Chicago area for at least two weeks.

The on-again, off-again deployments stem from a political and legal battle over President Donald Trump’s push to send the National Guard to several U.S. cities. His administration claims crime is rampant in those cities, despite statistics not always backing that up.

If a president invokes the Insurrection Act, they can dispatch active duty military in states that fail to put down an insurrection or defy federal law, but the judge in Chicago said Thursday she found no substantial evidence that a “danger of rebellion” is brewing in Illinois during Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The ruling offered a victory for Democratic officials who lead the state and city.

“The court confirmed what we all know: There is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the National Guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.

The order in Illinois is set to expire Oct. 23 at 11:59 p.m. U.S. District Judge April Perry set an Oct. 22 hearing to determine if it should be extended for another 14 days.

In her ruling, she said the administration violated the 10th Amendment, which grants certain powers to states, and the 14th Amendment, which assures due process and equal protection.

It wasn’t clear what the 500 Guard members from Texas and Illinois would do next. They were mostly stationed at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. A small number on Thursday were outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Broadview, which for weeks has been home to occasional clashes between protesters and federal agents.

Officials at U.S. Northern Command directed questions to the Department of Defense, which cited its policy of not commenting on ongoing litigation. The troops are under the U.S. Northern Command and had been activated for 60 days.

U.S. Justice Department lawyer Eric Hamilton said Thursday that the Guard’s mission would be to protect federal properties and government law enforcers in the field, not “solving all of crime in Chicago.”

The city and state have called the deployments unnecessary and illegal.

Deployment in Portland remains on hold

A federal appeals court heard arguments on Thursday over whether Trump had the authority to take control of 200 Oregon National Guard troops. The president had planned to deploy them in Portland, where there have been mostly small nightly protests outside an ICE building.

A judge last Sunday granted a temporary restraining order blocking the move. Trump had mobilized California troops for Portland just hours after the judge first blocked him from using Oregon’s Guard.

Two dozen other states with a Democratic attorney general or governor signed a court filing in support of the legal challenge by California and Oregon. Twenty others, led by Iowa, backed the Trump administration.

The president previously sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington.

In a California case, a judge in September said the deployment was illegal. By that point, just 300 of the thousands of troops sent there remained and the judge did not order them to leave.

Sainz writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Ed White in Detroit, Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia, Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tenn., and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump announced that the United States, working with Egypt, Turkiye and Qatar, had finally reached a ceasefire deal for Gaza. For a moment, it seemed as if Gaza’s long nightmare was coming to an end.

But the ceasefire didn’t bring peace; it only shifted the suffering into a quieter, more insidious form, where the real damage from the rubble began to settle into Gaza’s weary soul. Years of relentless shelling had built up fear and heartbreak that no outsider could erase.

During those two brutal years of bombing and near-total destruction, everyone in Gaza was focused on one thing: Staying alive. We were fighting for every minute, trying not to break down, starve, or get killed. Life became an endless loop of terror and waiting for the next strike. No one had the luxury to dream about tomorrow or even to mourn the people we’d lost. If there was any kind of shelter, and that was a big if, the goal was simply to move from one shattered refuge to another, holding on by a thread. That constant awareness that death could come at any moment turned every day into an act of survival.

Then, when the explosions finally eased, a quieter kind of pain crept in: All the grief we had buried to get through the chaos. Almost everyone had someone torn away, and those pushed-aside memories came rushing back with a force that took the breath out of us. As soon as the rockets fell quiet, another fight began inside people’s chests, one full of mourning, flashbacks and relentless mental anguish. On the surface, it looked like the war was over, but it wasn’t. It was far messier than that. Even when the shelling eased, the emotional wounds kept bleeding.

When the noise finally faded, people began to ask the questions they had forced themselves to ignore. They already knew the answers – who was gone, who would not be coming back – but saying the words out loud made it real. The silence that followed was heavier than any explosion they had survived. That silence made the truth impossible to avoid. It revealed the permanence of loss and the scale of what had vanished. There were holes everywhere, in homes, in streets, in hearts, and there was no way to fill them.

People in Gaza breathed a fragile sigh of relief when the news of a ceasefire arrived, but they knew the days ahead could hurt even more than the fighting itself. After 733 days of feeling erased from the map, the tears locked behind their eyes finally began to fall, carrying with them every ounce of buried pain. Each tear was proof of what they had endured. It was a reminder that a ceasefire does not end suffering; it only opens the door to a different kind of torment.
As the guns fell quiet, people in Gaza were left to confront the full scale of the devastation. You could see it in their faces – the shock, the fury, the grief – the weight of years under fire.

Roads that once hummed with life had fallen silent. Homes that had sheltered families were reduced to dust, and children wandered through the ruins, trying to recognise the streets they had grown up on. The whole place felt like a void that seemed to swallow everything, as bottled-up grief burst open and left everyone floundering in powerlessness. During the onslaught, the occupiers had made sure Palestinians could not even stop to mourn. But with the ceasefire came the unbearable realisation of how much had truly been lost, how ordinary life had been erased. Coming face to face with the absence of loved ones left scars that would not fade, and the tears finally came. Those tears ran down exhausted faces and broken hearts, carrying the full weight of everything remembered.

It was not only the mind that suffered. The physical and social world of Palestinians lay in ruins. When the bombing eased, people crawled out of their makeshift tents to find their homes and towns reduced to rubble. Places that had once meant comfort were gone, and streets that had once been full of life were now heaps of debris.

Families dug desperately through the rubble for traces of their old lives, for roads and signs that had vanished, for relatives still trapped beneath the debris. Amid the wreckage, the questions came: How do we rebuild from this? Where can we find any spark of hope? When an entire world has been destroyed, where does one even begin? Israel’s strategy was clear, and its results unmistakable. This was not chaos; it was a deliberate effort to turn Gaza into a wasteland. By striking hospitals, schools and water systems – the foundations of survival – the aim was to shatter what makes life itself possible. Those strikes sowed a despair that seeps into everything, fraying the bonds of community, eroding trust and forcing families to wonder whether they can endure a system built to erase them.

The destruction went deeper than bricks and bodies. The constant shadow of death, the bombs that could fall anywhere, and the psychological toll made fear feel ordinary, hope seem foolish, and society begin to unravel. Children stopped learning, money disappeared, health collapsed, and the fragile glue holding communities together came undone. Palestinians were not only struggling to survive each day; they were also fighting the slow decay of their future, a damage etched into minds and spirits that will last for generations.

When the fighting subsided, new forms of pain emerged. Surrounded by ruins and with no clear path forward, people in Gaza faced an impossible choice: Leave their homeland and risk never returning, or stay in a place without roads, schools, doctors or roofs. Either choice ensured the same outcome – the continuation of suffering by making Gaza unlivable. Endless negotiations and bureaucratic deadlocks only deepened the despair, allowing the wounds to fester even as the world spoke of “peace”.

The ceasefire may have stopped the shooting, but it ignited new battles: Restoring power and water, reopening schools, rebuilding healthcare, and trying to reclaim a sense of dignity. Yet the larger question remains: Will the world settle for symbolic aid and empty speeches, or finally commit to helping Palestinians rebuild their lives? Wars carve deep wounds, and healing them takes more than talk. It demands sustained, tangible support.

After two years under siege, Gaza is crying out for more than quiet guns. It needs courage, vision and real action to restore dignity and a sense of future. The ceasefire is not a finish line. It marks the start of a harder struggle against heartbreak, memory and pain that refuses to fade. If the world does not act decisively, Palestinian life itself could collapse. Rebuilding communities, routines and a measure of normalcy will be slow and difficult, but it has to happen if Gaza is to keep going. Outwardly, the war may have paused, but here it has only changed shape. What comes next will demand everything we have left: Endurance, stubborn hope, the will to stay standing.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

WASHINGTON — It has been four months since Elon Musk, President Trump’s bureaucratic demolition man, abandoned Washington in a flurry of recriminations and chaos.

But the Trump administration’s crusade to dismantle much of the federal government never ended. It’s merely under new management: the less colorful but more methodical Russell Vought, director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.

Vought has become the backroom architect of Trump’s aggressive strategy — slashing the federal workforce, freezing billions in congressionally approved spending in actions his critics often call illegal.

Now Vought has proposed using the current government shutdown as an opportunity to fire thousands of bureaucrats permanently instead of merely furloughing them temporarily. If any do return to work, he has suggested that the government need not give them back pay — contrary to a law Trump signed in 2019.

Those threats may prove merely to be pressure tactics as Trump tries to persuade Democrats to accept spending cuts on Medicaid, Obamacare and other programs.

But the shutdown battle is the current phase of a much larger one. Vought’s long-term goals, he says, are to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and “deconstruct the administrative state.”

He’s still only partway done.

“I’d estimate that Vought has implemented maybe 10% or 15% of his program,” said Donald F. Kettl, former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland. “There may be as much as 90% to go. If this were a baseball game, we’d be in the top of the second inning.”

Along the way, Vought (pronounced “vote”) has chipped relentlessly at Congress’ ability to control the use of federal funds, massively expanding the power of the president.

“He has waged the most serious attack on separation of powers in American history,” said Elaine Kamarck, an expert on federal management at the Brookings Institution.

He’s done that mainly by using OMB, the White House office that oversees spending, to control the day-to-day purse strings of federal agencies — and deliberately keeping Congress in the dark along the way.

“If Congress has given us authority that is too broad, then we’re going to use that authority aggressively,” Vought said last month.

Federal judges have ruled some of the administration’s actions illegal, but they have allowed others to stand. Vought’s proposal to use the shutdown to fire thousands of bureaucrats hasn’t been tested in court.

Vought developed his aggressive approach during two decades as a conservative budget expert, culminating in his appointment as director of OMB in Trump’s first term.

In 2019, he stretched the limits of presidential power by helping Trump get around a congressional ban on funding for a border wall, by declaring an emergency and transferring military funds. He froze congressionally mandated aid for Ukraine, the action that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Even so, Vought complained that Trump had been needlessly restrained by cautious first-term aides.

“The lawyers come in and say, ‘It’s not legal. You can’t do that,’” he said in 2023. “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office over whether something is legal.”

Vought is a proponent of the “unitary executive” theory, the argument that the president should have unfettered control over every tentacle of the executive branch, including independent agencies such as the Federal Reserve.

When Congress designates money for federal programs, he has argued, “It’s a ceiling. It is not a floor. It’s not the notion that you have to spend every dollar.”

Most legal experts disagree; a 1974 law prohibits the president from unilaterally withholding money Congress has appropriated.

Vought told conservative activists in 2023 that if Trump returned to power, he would deliberately seek to inflict “trauma” on federal employees.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”

When Vought returned to OMB for Trump’s second term, he appeared to be in Musk’s shadow. But once the flamboyant Tesla chief executive flamed out, the OMB director got to work to make DOGE’s work the foundation for lasting changes.

He extended many of DOGE’s funding cuts by slowing down OMB’s approval of disbursements — turning them into de facto freezes.

He helped persuade Republicans in Congress to cancel $9 billion in previously approved foreign aid and public broadcasting support, a process known as “rescission.”

To cancel an additional $4.9 billion, he revived a rarely used gambit called a “pocket rescission,” freezing the funds until they expired.

Along the way, he quietly stopped providing Congress with information on spending, leaving legislators in the dark on whether programs were being axed.

DOGE and OMB eliminated jobs so quickly that the federal government stopped publishing its ongoing tally of federal employees. (Any number would only be approximate; some layoffs are tied up in court, and thousands of employees who opted for voluntary retirement are technically still on the payroll.)

The result was a significant erosion of Congress’ “power of the purse,” which has historically included not only approving money but also monitoring how it was spent.

Even some Republican members of Congress seethed. “They would like a blank check … and I don’t think that’s appropriate,” said former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

But the GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, pleased to see spending cut by any means, let Vought have his way. Even McConnell voted to approve the $9-billion rescission request.

Vought’s newest innovation, the mid-shutdown layoffs, would be another big step toward reducing Congress’ role.

“The result would be a dramatic, instantaneous shift in the separation of powers,” Kettl said. “The Trump team could kill programs unilaterally without the inconvenience of going to Congress.”

Some of the consequences could be catastrophic, Kettl and other scholars warned. Kamarck calls them “time bombs.”

“One or more of these decisions is going to blow up in Trump’s face,” she said.

“FEMA won’t be capable of reacting to the next hurricane. The National Weather Service won’t have the forecasters it needs to analyze the data from weather balloons.”

Even before the government shutdown, she noted, the FAA was grappling with a shortage of air traffic controllers. This week the FAA slowed takeoffs at several airports in response to growing shortages, including at air traffic control centers in Atlanta, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In theory, a future Congress could undo many of Vought’s actions, especially if Democrats win control of the House or, less likely, the Senate.

But rebuilding agencies that have been radically shrunken would take much longer than cutting them down, the scholars said.

“Much of this will be difficult to reverse when Democrats come back into fashion,” Kamarck said.

Indeed, that’s part of Vought’s plan.

“We want to make sure that the bureaucracy can’t reconstitute itself later in future administrations,” he said in April in a podcast with Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was slain on Sept. 10.

He’s pleased with the progress he’s made, he told reporters in July.

“We’re having fun,” he said.

As California voters receive mail ballots for the November special election, which could upend the state’s congressional boundaries and determine control of the House, billionaire hedge-fund founder Tom Steyer said Thursday he will spend $12 million to back Democrats’ efforts to redraw districts to boost their party’s ranks in the legislative body.

The ballot measure was proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democrats after President Trump urged Texas leaders to redraw their congressional districts before next year’s midterm election. Buttressing GOP numbers in Congress could help Trump continue enacting his agenda during his final two years in office.

“We must stop Trump’s election-rigging power grab,” Steyer said in a statement. “The defining fight through Nov. 4 is passing Proposition 50. In order to compete and win, Democrats can’t keep playing by the same old rules. This is how we fight back, and stick it to Trump.”

Steyer’s announcement makes him the biggest funder of pro-Proposition 50 efforts, surpassing billionaire financier George Soros, who has contributed $10 million to the effort.

Steyer founded a hedge fund whose investments included massive fossil fuel projects, but after he learned of the environmental consequences of these financial decisions, he divested and has worked to fight climate change. Steyer has spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting Democratic candidates and causes and more than $300 million on his unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign.

Steyer plans to launch a scathing ad Thursday night that imagines Trump watching election returns on Nov. 4 and furiously throwing fast food at a television when he sees Proposition 50 succeeding.

“Why did you do this to Trump?” the president asks. The ad then shows a fictional TV anchor saying that the ballot measure’s success makes it more likely that Trump will be investigated for corruption and that the records of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein will be released. “I hate California,” Trump responds.

The advertisement is scheduled to start airing Thursday night during “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The late-night show was in the spotlight after it was briefly suspended by Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC last month under pressure from the Trump administration because of a comment Kimmel made about the slaying of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The esoteric process of redistricting typically occurs once every decade after the U.S. Census to account for population shifts. The maps, historically drawn in smoke-filled backrooms, protected incumbents and created bizarrely shaped districts, such as the “ribbon of shame” along the California coast.

In recent decades, good-government advocates have fought to create districts that are logical and geographically compact and do not disenfranchise minority voters. At the forefront of the effort, California voters passed a 2010 ballot measure to create an independent commission to draw the state’s congressional boundaries.

But this year, Trump and his allies urged leaders of GOP-led states to redraw their congressional districts to boost Republicans’ prospects in next year’s midterm election. The House is closely divided, and retaining Republican control is crucial to Trump’s ability to enact his agenda.

California Democrats, led by Newson, responded in kind. The state Legislature voted in August to call a special election in November to decide on redrawn districts that could give their party five more seats in the state’s 52-member congressional delegation, the largest in the nation.

Supporters of Proposition 50 have vastly outraised the committees opposing the measure. Steyer’s announcement came one day after Charles Munger Jr., the largest donor to the opposition, spoke out publicly for the first time about why he had contributed $32 million to the effort.

“I’m fighting for the ordinary voter to have an effective say in their own government,” Munger told reporters. “I don’t want Californians ignored by the national government because all the districts are fortresses for one party or the other.”

A longtime opponent of gerrymandering, the bow-tie-wearing Palo Alto physicist bankrolled the 2010 ballot measure that created the independent commission to draw California’s congressional districts.

Munger, the son of a billionaire who was the right-hand man of investor Warren Buffett, declined to comment about whether he planned to give additional funds.

“I neither confirm nor deny rumors that involve the tactics of the campaign,” Munger told reporters. “Talk to me after the election is over.”

WASHINGTON — Sidelined by political appointees, targeted over deep state conspiracies and derided by the president, career public servants have grown used to life in Washington under a constant state of assault.

But President Trump’s latest threat, to withhold back pay due to workers furloughed by an ongoing government shutdown, is adding fresh uncertainty to the beleaguered workforce.

Whether federal workers will ultimately receive retroactive paychecks after the government reopens, Trump told reporters on Tuesday, “really depends on who you’re talking about.” The law requires federal employees receive their expected compensation in the event of a shutdown.

“For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people,” the president said, while adding: “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

It is yet another peril facing public servants, who, according to Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, Russ Vought, may also be the target of mass layoffs if the shutdown continues.

The government has been shut since Oct. 1, when Republican and Democratic lawmakers came to an impasse over whether to extend government funding at existing levels, or account for a significant increase in healthcare premiums facing millions of Americans at the start of next year.

White House officials say that, on the one hand, Democrats are to blame for extending a shutdown that will give the administration no other choice but to initiate firings of agency employees working on “nonessential” projects. On the other hand, the president has referred to the moment as an opportunity to root out Democrats working in career roles throughout the federal system.

Legal scholars and public policy experts have roundly dismissed Trump’s latest efforts — both to use the shutdown as a predicate to cut the workforce, and to withhold back pay — as plainly illegal.

And Democrats in Congress, who continue to vote against reopening the government, are counting on them being right, hoping that courts will reject the administration’s moves while they attempt to secure an extension of healthcare tax credits in the shutdown negotiations.

If the experts are wrong, thousands of government workers could face a profound cost.

“Senior leaders of the Trump administration promised to put federal employees in trauma, and they certainly seem intent on keeping that promise,” said Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.

“According to a law that Trump himself has signed, furloughed employees are entitled to back pay,” Moynihan said. “There is no real ambiguity about this, and the idea only some employees in agencies that Trump likes would receive back pay is an illegal abuse of presidential power.”

A day after the shutdown began, Trump wrote on social media that he planned on meeting with Vought, “of Project 2025 fame,” to discuss what he called the “unprecedented opportunity” of making “permanent” cuts to agencies during the ongoing funding lapse.

A lawsuit brought in California against Vought and the OMB, by a coalition of labor unions representing over 2 million federal workers, is challenging the premise of that claim, arguing the government is “deviating from historic practice and violating applicable laws” by using government employees “as a pawn in congressional deliberations.” But whether courts can or will stop the effort is unclear.

Sen. John Thune, the majority leader and a Republican from South Dakota, said last week that Democrats should have known the risk they were running by “shutting down the government and handing the keys to Russ Vought.”

“We don’t control what he’s going to do,” he told Politico.

The White House has sent mixed messages on its willingness to negotiate with Democrats since the shutdown began. Within a matter of hours earlier this week, the president’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that there was nothing to negotiate, before Trump said that dialogue had opened with Democratic leadership over a potential agreement on healthcare.

Donald Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, taught and trained prospective public servants for 45 years.

“What is happening is profoundly discouraging for young students seeking careers in the federal public service,” he said. “Many of the students are going to state and local governments, nonprofits, and think tanks, but increasingly don’t see the federal government as a place where they can make a difference or make a career.”

“All of us depend on the government, and the government depends on a pipeline of skilled workers,” Kettl added. “The administration’s efforts have blown up the pipeline, and the costs will continue for years — probably decades — to come.”

Israel’s government has approved “phase one” of the agreement, which will see captives exchanged and Israel withdraw from parts of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked President Trump and US officials for their role in ceasefire negotiations to end the war on Gaza.

Illinois urged a judge Thursday to order the National Guard to stand down in the Chicago area, calling the deployment a constitutional crisis and suggesting the Trump administration gave no heed to the pending legal challenge when it sent troops overnight to an immigration enforcement building.

The government “plowed ahead anyway,” attorney Christopher Wells of the state attorney general office said. “Now, troops are here.”

Wells’ arguments opened an extraordinary hearing in federal court in Chicago. The city and the state, run by Democratic elected leaders, say President Trump has vastly exceeded his authority and ignored their pleas to keep the Guard off the streets.

Heavy public turnout at the downtown courthouse caused officials to open an overflow room with a video feed of the hearing. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson got a seat in a corner of the courtroom.

Feds say Guard won’t solve all crime

U.S. Justice Department lawyer Eric Hamilton said the Chicago area was rife with “tragic lawlessness.” He pointed to an incident last weekend in which a Border Patrol vehicle was boxed in and an agent shot a woman in response.

“Chicago is seeing a brazen new form of hostility from rioters targeting federal law enforcement,” Hamilton said. “They’re not protesters. There is enough that there is a danger of a rebellion here, which there is.”

He said some people were wearing gas masks, a suggestion they were poised for a fight, but U.S. District Judge April Perry countered it might be justified to avoid tear gas at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Broadview, outside Chicago.

“I, too, would wear a gas mask,” the judge said, “not because I’m trying to be violent but because I’m trying to protect myself.”

Hamilton also tried to narrow the issues. He said the Guard’s mission would be to protect federal properties and government law enforcers in the field — not “solving all of crime in Chicago.”

Guard on the ground at ICE site

Guard members from Texas and Illinois arrived this week at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. All 500 are under the U.S. Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days.

Some Guard troops could be seen behind portable fences at the Broadview ICE building. It has been the site of occasional clashes between protesters and federal agents, but the scene was peaceful, with few people present.

Wells, the lawyer for Illinois, described the impact of Trump’s immigration crackdown in Chicago, noting that U.S. citizens have been temporarily detained. He acknowledged the “president does have the power, and he’s using that power.”

“But that power is not unlimited,” Wells added, referring to the Guard deployment. “And this court can check that power.”

Perry told the parties to return to court late Thursday afternoon.

Guard on court docket elsewhere

Also Thursday, a federal appeals court heard arguments over whether Trump had the authority to take control of 200 Oregon National Guard troops. The president had planned to deploy them in Portland, where there have been mostly small nightly protests outside an ICE building.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut on Sunday granted a temporary restraining order blocking the move. Trump had mobilized California troops for Portland just hours after the judge first blocked him from using Oregon’s Guard.

Two dozen other states with a Democratic attorney general or governor signed a court filing in support of the legal challenge by California and Oregon. Twenty others, led by Iowa, backed the Trump administration.

The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.

Troops used in other states

Trump previously sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington. In Memphis, Tenn., Mayor Paul Young said troops would begin patrolling Friday. Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee supports the role.

Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said she hoped the Guard would be used to direct traffic and have a presence in retail corridors, but not used for checkpoints or similar activities.

Davis said she doesn’t want Memphis to “feel like there is this over-militarization in our communities.”

The Trump administration’s aggressive use of the Guard was challenged this summer in California, which won and lost a series of court decisions while opposing the policy of putting troops in Los Angeles, where they protected federal buildings and immigration agents.

A judge in September said the deployment was illegal. By that point, just 300 of the thousands of troops sent there remained on the ground. The judge did not order them to leave. The government later took steps to send them to Oregon.

Fernando and Thanawala write for the Associated Press. AP writers Ed White in Detroit, Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tenn., contributed to this report.

Congratulations are in order for President Trump. He said he would bring home Israel’s hostages and end the horrific fighting in Gaza, and that appears to be exactly what he is doing with this week’s deal. While many of the ideas that went into Trump’s 20-point peace plan predated his reelection, he and his team deserve a standing ovation for translating those ideas into a practical proposal, defining a first phase that was both big and digestible and putting together all the pieces that made its agreement possible.

Success, however, does have its downsides. Remember the Pottery Barn rule of foreign policy, made famous during the Iraq war? “You break it, you own it.” We now have the Trump corollary: “You patch it, you own it.”

Despite coming to office eager to shed America’s Middle East commitments, Trump just took on a huge one: responsibility for a peace plan that will forever bear his name. On Oct. 6, 2023, the day before Hamas’ assault, Arab-Israeli relations were poised for the historic breakthrough of Saudi-Israel normalization; two years later, Arab-Israeli relations — including Trump’s first-term Middle East peacemaking achievement of the Abraham Accords — are hanging on by a thread. By offering a plan that promises not just an end to fighting in Gaza but building a full and enduring regional peace, the president has taken on the task of repairing the damage wrought by Hamas’ unholy war. In other words: fixing the Middle East.

How Trump fulfills this not inconsequential responsibility has major consequences for America’s role in the region and in the world. The Chinese are watching whether, when the going gets rough, he will have the mettle to maintain a broad alliance. The Russians are watching whether the president will strictly enforce the letter of the deal or let certain unpleasant aspects slip. The Iranians will be watching whether Trump will find himself so drowning in the details of Gaza reconstruction that he won’t be able to stitch together a repeat of the highly successful Arab-Israeli coalition that protected Israel a year ago from Iran’s barrages of ballistic missiles and drones. And all these adversaries — and others — will wonder whether the intense U.S. focus needed to ensure implementation of this deal will distract the president from their own areas of mischief.

Those are some of the international stakes. There’s a difficult road ahead in achieving the deal itself. Some of the most vexing challenges will include:

• Implementing a highly complex Gaza peace plan that, in its requirements for disarmament, envisions Hamas to be fully complicit in its organizational suicide — or at least its institutional castration;
• Having the U.S. military orchestrate the recruitment, deployment and management of multinational forces to police the territory just as the Israel Defense Forces are withdrawing from it, a tricky maneuver fraught with risk;
• Creating and supervising a transitional administration that will oversee everything from humanitarian relief to rubble and ordnance removal to massive reconstruction projects, all the while preventing what’s left of Hamas from stealing goods to divert to underground weapons factories, an art that it perfected after previous ceasefires;
• Securing buy-in from the United Nations and its specialized agencies, which need to play an essential role in delivering food and medical services, without buckling under pressure to rehabilitate the deeply flawed U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, an organization that bears special responsibility for keeping the Palestinian-Israeli conflict alive for decades;
• Preventing Qatar and Turkey — longtime friends of Hamas who have emerged in recent weeks as diplomatic Good Samaritans — from translating their current status into a malign influence over the direction of Palestinian politics, which can only be worrisome to Israel and the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority and a long-term detriment to the cause of peace;
• And dealing every step of the way with an Israeli prime minister of a rightist coalition who will likely view every decision, great and small, through the lens of a fateful election he is expected to call very soon that will show whether the Israeli people want to punish him for the terrible errors that left Israel unprepared for Hamas’ 2023 attack or reward him for the impressive victories Israel’s military achieved across the region in the two years that followed.

Getting this far was a huge achievement. Ensuring effective execution — never a strong suit for a “big idea guy” like Trump — is a thousand times more difficult. This can’t be done with a small team of White House officials chatting on Signal. It will require an army of — please excuse the term — experts: experts in military command and control, experts in ordnance removal and disposal, experts in civilian rehabilitation and reconstruction, experts in communication and community engagement. Corporate subcontracting can address some of this, as can the impressive talents of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but don’t be fooled into thinking that a consulting company or a former foreign official can pick up the slack of the entire U.S. government. This plan, after all, has Trump’s name on it, not Deloitte’s or Blair’s.

The president has at least one more vital task in this matter. He must explain to the American people why we are doing this. For nearly 20 years, American presidents of both parties have said they wanted to pivot away from the Middle East, but they continually find themselves entangled in the region’s often byzantine conflicts and politics. Americans deserve to know why the “America First” president has decided that American interests are intimately bound up in the success of this peace plan. Our domestic divisions notwithstanding, fair-minded people on both sides of the aisle will be rooting for Trump’s success in this peace deal.

For now, sure, the president should enjoy the accolades and celebrate the coming release of Hamas’ hostages. The morning after will come soon enough.

Robert Satloff is executive director of the Washington Institute.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals appears poised to recognize President Trump’s authority to send soldiers to Portland, Ore., with members of the court signaling receptiveness to an expansive new read of the president’s power to put boots on the ground in American cities.

A three-judge panel from the appellate court — including two members appointed by Trump during his first term — heard oral arguments Thursday after Oregon challenged the legality of the president’s order to deploy hundreds of soldiers to Portland. The administration claims the city has become lawless; Oregon officials argue Trump is manufacturing a crisis to justify calling in the National Guard.

While the court has not issued a decision, a ruling in Trump’s favor would mark a sharp rightward turn for the once-liberal circuit — and probably set up a Supreme Court showdown over why and how the U.S. military can be used domestically.

“I’m sort of trying to figure out how a district court of any nature is supposed to get in and question whether the president’s assessment of ‘executing the laws’ is right or wrong,” said Judge Ryan D. Nelson of Idaho Falls, Idaho, one of the two Trump appointees hearing the arguments.

“That’s an internal decision making, and whether there’s a ton of protests or low protests, they can still have an impact on his ability to execute the laws,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland, another Trump appointee, previously called the president’s justification for federalizing Oregon troops “simply untethered to the facts” in her temporary restraining on Oct. 4.

The facts about the situation on the ground in Portland were not in dispute at the hearing on Thursday. The city has remained mostly calm in recent months, with protesters occasionally engaging in brief skirmishes with authorities stationed outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.

Instead, Nelson and Judge Bridget S. Bade of Phoenix, whom Trump once floated as a possible Supreme Court nominee, questioned how much the facts mattered.

“The president gets to direct his resources as he deems fit, and it seems a little counterintuitive to me that the city of Portland can come and say, ‘No you need to do it differently,’” Nelson said.

He also appeared to endorse the Department of Justice’s claim that “penalizing” the president for waiting until protests had calmed to deploy soldiers to quell them created a perverse incentive to act first and ask questions later.

“It just seems like such a tortured reading of the statute,” the judge said. He then referenced the first battle of the U.S. Civil War in 1861, saying, “I’m not sure even President Lincoln would be able to bring in forces when he did, because if he didn’t do it immediately after Fort Sumter, [Oregon’s] argument would be, ‘Oh, things are OK now.’”

Trump’s efforts to use troops to quell protests and support federal immigration operations have led to a growing tangle of legal challenges. The Portland deployment was halted by Immergut, who blocked Trump from federalizing Oregon troops. (A ruling from the same case issued the next day prevents already federalized troops from being deployed.)

In June, a different 9th Circuit panel also made up of two Trump appointees ruled that the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — discretion to determine whether facts on the ground met the threshold for military response in Los Angeles. Thousands of federalized National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines were deployed over the summer amid widespread protests over immigration enforcement.

The June decision set precedent for how any future deployment in the circuit’s vast territory can be reviewed. It also sparked outrage, both among those who oppose armed soldiers patrolling American streets and those who support them.

Opponents argue repeated domestic deployments shred America’s social fabric and trample protest rights protected by the 1st Amendment. With soldiers called into action so far in Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago, many charge the administration is using the military for political purposes.

“The military should not be acting as a domestic police force in this country except in the most extreme circumstances,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “That set of circumstances is not present right now anywhere in the country, so this is an abuse of power — and a very dangerous one because of the precedent it sets.”

Supporters say the president has sole authority to determine the facts on the ground and if they warrant military intervention. They argue any check by the judicial branch is an illegal power grab, aimed at thwarting response to a legitimate and growing “invasion from within.”

“What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump said in an address to military top brass last week. “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”

The 9th Circuit agreed to rehear the Los Angeles case with an 11-member “en banc” panel in Pasadena on Oct. 22, signaling a schism among Trump’s own judges over the boundaries of the president’s power.

Still, Trump’s authority to call soldiers into American cities is only the first piece in a larger legal puzzle spread before the 9th Circuit, experts said.

What federalized troops are allowed to do once deployed is the subject of another court decision now under review. That case could determine whether soldiers are barred from assisting immigration raids, controlling crowds of protesters or any other form of civilian law enforcement.

Trump officials have maintained the president can wield the military as he sees fit — and that cities such as Portland and L.A. would be in danger if soldiers can’t come to the rescue.

“These are violent people, and if at any point we let down our guard, there is a serious risk of ongoing violence,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Eric McArthur said. “The president is entitled to say enough is enough and bring in the National Guard.”