The Illinois governor and Chicago mayor say they won’t stop trying to protect their communities after threats by President Donald Trump to have them jailed for opposing his deployment of National Guard troops to support immigration arrests in nation’s third-largest city. Trump’s social media post is just the latest example of his efforts to punish his political opponents.
The Nobel Peace Prize will soon be announced, just as Trump takes credit for some notable foreign policy interventions. But longtime Nobel watchers say Trump’s prospects remain remote, since the Norwegian Nobel Committee typically focuses on the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals.
The Latest:
Leading GOP Jewish group says rename Nobel prize for Trump
It’s not enough to award President Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize for his administration’s effort to bring about an end to the war in Gaza, according to the nation’s leading Jewish Republican advocacy group.
“President Trump shouldn’t just win the Nobel Prize. It should be renamed after him,” the Republican Jewish Coalition says in a statement.
“After 734 days, this comprehensive agreement ushers in a new dawn for the Middle East, reaffirms the unbreakable alliance between the United States and Israel, and advances trailblazing opportunities for expanding the circle of peace throughout the region.”
Noem says Homeland Security is looking to buy facilities in Chicago and Portland
The Homeland Security secretary said her department is looking to purchase buildings in the Chicago to operate out of despite resistance form local officials.
“We’re gonna not back off. In fact, we’re doubling down,” Noem said.
The mayor of Chicago has signed an order banning federal immigration agents from using city owned property.
Noem said department was also looking at purchasing buildings in Portland.
“If we have to do it the hard way in Portland and Chicago, we will,” she said.
Trump says hostages will be released from Gaza on Monday or Tuesday
The president opened a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House on Thursday by speaking about the ceasefire deal and his plans to travel to the Middle East.
Trump said he will be going to Egypt for a signing ceremony. It was not clear if he would be traveling elsewhere on the trip.
He said it is a complicated process for the hostages to be released from Gaza, but it will be happening Monday or Tuesday. He said there will also be the remains of about 28 hostages to be brought back, but he didn’t offer details or timing on that.
United Nations ambassador is no longer Cabinet-rank
One person who was not present at the president’s Cabinet meeting on Thursday was Mike Waltz, the newly-confirmed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
That’s because the White House has decided that the position will not be Cabinet-rank, according to two congressional officials familiar with the matter.
Whether the ambassador role is in the Cabinet is something that fluctuates between administrations. For former President Joe Biden, he included the position in his Cabinet. Trump, in his first term, downgraded the position to non-Cabinet level in 2018.
When Trump announced his slate of Cabinet picks in January, he had included Elise Stefanik, who eventually withdrew from consideration, on the list.
A race in Trump’s shadow
Republican Winsome Earle-Sears and Democrat Abigail Spanberger will likely blame the other’s party for the chaos in Washington at their gubernatorial debate Thursday night. Virginia is one of two states choosing governors this November, a bellwether for the party in power across the Potomac River ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Washington politics are especially relevant this year in Virginia, as Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce and Congress’ shutdown impasse have an outsize impact in a state filled with federal employees and military personnel.
▶ Read more about what Virginia politics may foretell
Louisiana challenges federal abortion pill rules
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is facing a second lawsuit over whether abortion pills should remain available via telehealth.
Louisiana filed a challenge Monday to regulations of the mifepristone, one of the drugs usually used together for abortion. The state contends that allowing telehealth prescriptions violates the state’s right to enforce its abortion ban — and that it opens the door to women being coerced into abortion.
The suit echoes one from another group of GOP-led states that was recently moved from a judge in Texas to federal court in St. Louis.
Anti-abortion groups have expressed anger over the approval of another generic version of mifepristone. The availability of the pills is a reason abortion numbers haven’t declined despite bans in most GOP-controlled states.
Egypt’s president invites Trump to witness the ceasefire deal signing
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo Thursday.
Witkoff and Kushner arrived from Sharm el Sheikh, where the ceasefire deal was brokered between Israel and Hamas.
In a statement after the meeting, the president’s office welcomed the ceasefire agreement and called for “to be signed as soon as possible.”
All countries want to end the war, the statement said, and Egypt will continue to work with the United States to implement the plan.
El-Sissi also reiterated his invitation for Trump to visit Egypt to “witness the signing of this historic agreement in a ceremony befitting the occasion.”
American pope criticizes wealthy elite’s ‘bubble of comfort and luxury’ while poor suffer
Pope Leo XIV has confirmed he’s in perfect lockstep with his predecessor Pope Francis on matters of social and economic injustice.
His 100-page teaching document released Thursday traces Christianity’s constant concern for poor people, from Biblical citations and the teaching of church fathers to the preaching of recent popes about caring for migrants, prisoners and victims of human trafficking.
“God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest,” Leo writes.
Francis’ criticism of capitalism angered many conservative and wealthy Catholics, especially in the United States.
“The fact that I am American means, among other things, people can’t say, like they did about Francis, ‘he doesn’t understand the United States, he just doesn’t see what’s going on,’” Leo recently told Crux, a Catholic site.
▶ Read more of Leo’s conclusions about what it means to be Christian
Other Democratic-led states join legal challenge of Guard deployment
All 24 other states with a Democratic attorney general or governor have signed on to a court filing supporting California and Oregon’s legal challenge to the Portland deployment.
“By calling forth troops when there is no invasion to repel, no rebellion to suppress, and when state and local law enforcement are fully able to execute the law,” the filing with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says, “the President flouts the vision of our Founders, undermines the rule of law, and sets a chilling precedent that puts the constitutional rights of all Americans at risk.”
Johnson says he’s angry, too
Johnson responded to the military wife by saying he’s sorry to hear about her predicament.
“I am angry because of situations just like yours,” he added, and went on to say that the House voted to pay the troops as part of a stop-gap spending bill that passed three weeks ago but has been held up in the Senate.
The top House Republican also claimed that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer would hold up a separate bill in the Senate to pay the troops, so “it’s not a lawmaking exercise” to hold a vote on that issue in the House.
Military wife pleads with House Speaker to hold vote on troop pay
Republican leader Mike Johnson is taking some tough questions from Americans on C-SPAN, none tougher than from a Virginia woman who pleaded for the House to pass legislation enabling military pay during the shutdown.
The woman, identified as Samantha, said her husband is serving and that if the military doesn’t get paid on Oct. 15th, “my children do not get the medication that’s needed for them to live their life because we live paycheck to paycheck.”
“My kids could die,” she said. “You could stop this.”
She accused Johnson of refusing to call back the House, “just for a show.”
Federal court weighs Trump’s Chicago-area Guard deployment
Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Illinois faces legal scrutiny at a pivotal court hearing with a small number of troops already protecting federal property in the Chicago area.
U.S. District Judge April Perry will hear arguments Thursday over the state’s request to block the deployment. An “element” of the 200 Texas Guard troops sent to Illinois started working in the Chicago area on Wednesday, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Northern Command, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss operational details not made public.
The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, arrived this week at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. All 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days.
▶ Read more about the federal court challenge of deployments in Illinois
— By Sudhin Thanawala and Konstantin Toropin
Frustrated lawmakers say lack of trust makes ending the shutdown harder
A president looking to seize power beyond the executive branch. A Congress controlled by Republicans unwilling to directly defy him. A minority party looking for any way to fight back.
The dynamic has left Washington in a stalemate on Thursday’s the ninth day of the government shutdown, and some lawmakers are venting their frustration as they seek traction without the trust that’s typically the foundation of any bipartisan deal.
Groups of lawmakers — huddled over dinners, on phone calls, and in private meetings — have tried to brainstorm ways out of the standoff that has shuttered government offices and threatened to leave hundreds of thousands of federal employees without a scheduled payday. But relations between the parties are badly broken.
“We’re in an environment where we need more than a handshake,” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat
▶ Read more about lawmakers’ frustrations over the shutdown
Trump was nominated before. Experts say a Nobel Peace Prize win is unlikely this year
Trump’s bid to win the Nobel Peace Prize has drawn added attention to the annual guessing game over who its next laureate will be.
Longtime Nobel watchers say Trump’s prospects remain remote despite a flurry of high-profile nominations and some notable foreign policy interventions for which he has taken personal credit.
Experts say the Norwegian Nobel Committee typically focuses on the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals. Trump’s own record might even work against him, they said, citing his apparent disdain for multilateral institutions and his disregard for global climate change concerns.
Still, the U.S. leader has repeatedly sought the Nobel spotlight since his first term, most recently telling United Nations delegates late last month, “everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.”
A person cannot nominate themselves.
▶ Read more about this year’s prize
Trump has yet to provide Congress hard evidence that targeted boats carried drugs, officials say
The Trump administration has yet to provide underlying evidence to lawmakers proving that alleged drug-smuggling boats targeted by the U.S. military in a series of fatal strikes were in fact carrying narcotics, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
As bipartisan frustration with the strikes mounts, the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday voted down a war powers resolution that would have required the president to seek authorization from Congress before further military strikes on the cartels.
The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly about the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has only pointed to unclassified video clips of the strikes posted on social media by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and has yet to produce “hard evidence” that the vessels were carrying drugs.
The administration has not explained why it has blown up vessels in some cases, while carrying out the typical practice of stopping boats and seizing drugs at other times, one of the officials said.
▶ Read more about the lack of evidence supporting deadly strikes on Caribbean boaters
Trump says Illinois governor and Chicago mayor opposing his deployments should be jailed
Trump on Wednesday said the Illinois governor and Chicago mayor should be jailed as they oppose his deployment of National Guard troops for his immigration and crime crackdown in the nation’s third-largest city. The officials said they would not be deterred.
He made the comment in a social media post, the latest example of his brazen calls for his Democratic opponents to be prosecuted or locked up.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, when asked what crimes the president believed Pritzker and Johnson had committed, failed to identify any, but she said they “have blood on their hands” and pointed to Chicago Police Department reports that at least five people were killed and 25 shot over the weekend.
National Guard troops from Texas are positioned outside Chicago, despite a lawsuit by the state and city to block the deployment.
The troops’ mission is not clear, but the Trump administration has undertaken an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Chicago.
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments
The Associated Press
