Trump meanders through foreign policy ahead of Davos speech to global leaders

“I think NATO is an important strategic alliance, and I don’t want to see any sacrifice of NATO whatsoever,” said Rep. Brian Mast, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “They’re important allies, and we want to see that to continue.”

But while Mast, a close Trump ally, said the U.S. and its European allies were having a “hard conversation” that he expected would ultimately bring the longtime allies closer, he did not rule out the Trump administration using military force to take over Greenland, provided it was legally within Trump’s constitutional powers.

“I’m willing to accept any action that takes place based upon the authorities that the administration has,” Mast said. “There’s not going to be any option that’s taken off the table.”

Under the Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war and the duty to fund the military, while the president serves as head of the armed forces.

Air Force One just left Joint Base Andrews late on Tuesday night, carrying Trump in a red-eye flight to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.

The plane is expected to land in Zurich, with Trump then helicoptering to Davos, the mountain town hosting the annual gathering of billionaires.

“This will be an interesting trip,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House. “I have no idea what’s going to happen, but you are well represented.”

Vice President JD Vance is expected to travel Thursday to Minneapolis, where the Trump administration has deployed federal officials to enforce an immigration crackdown.

The visit will include remarks and a roundtable with local leaders and community members, according to a source familiar with his plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the trip has not yet been officially announced.

Lindsey Halligan, who as a top Justice Department prosecutor pursued indictments against a pair of President Trump’s adversaries, is leaving her position, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday night.

Halligan’s departure comes as her 120-day tenure as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia had expired and as judges were raising questions about the legitimacy of her appointment.

Two judges in Virginia rejected Trump administration arguments that the White House loyalist can continue serving as a top federal prosecutor in the state, with one on Tuesday soliciting applicants for a replacement and the other prohibiting Halligan from continuing to represent herself in his court as a United States attorney.

The dual orders from separate judges marked a dramatic new front in an ongoing clash between the Trump administration and the federal court over the legitimacy of Halligan’s appointment. A White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, Halligan was picked for the role by Trump in September only to have a judge two months later rule that the appointment was illegal.

TRUMP: “You have to understand, I settled eight wars.”

THE FACTS: This statistic, which Trump frequently cites as one of his accomplishments, is highly exaggerated. Although he has helped mediate relations among many nations, his impact isn’t as clear-cut as he makes it seem.

The conflicts Trump counts among those that he has solved are between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, Rwanda and Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Cambodia and Thailand.

There is far more work that remains before any declaration of an end to the war in Gaza, and although Trump is credited with ending the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, this can be seen as a temporary respite from an ongoing cold war. Fresh fighting broke out last month between Cambodia and Thailand, and between Congolese forces and Rwanda-backed rebels.

▶ Read more about where the conflicts Trump references currently stand

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado spoke briefly on Capitol Hill as she met with lawmakers and works to shore up U.S. support for her bid to lead the country after Trump ousted the former president, Nicolas Maduro.

“My main objective is to return to Venezuela as soon as possible,” Machado said.

She visited with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and others, her second trip to Congress since meeting last week with Trump at the White House. There she presented the president with her Nobel Peace Prize.

Asked about Venezuelans in the U.S. whose temporary legal status has been terminated, she said she is working to ensure they are protected until they, too, can return home.

“I want to insist on this: We want the Venezuelan people that were forced to leave to come back home,” she said. “And that’s going to happen once we have democracy in Venezuela.”

“I have very firm instructions — anything happens, they’re going to wipe them off the face of this earth,” Trump said in an interview on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight.”

Iran on Tuesday warned Trump not to take any action against the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, days after the U.S. president called for an end to Khamenei’s nearly 40-year reign.

“Trump knows that if any hand of aggression is extended toward our leader, we not only cut that hand but also we will set fire to their world,” said Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, a spokesperson for Iran’s armed forces.

Trump has previously said he’s given his advisers instructions to obliterate Iran if the country is behind an assassination of him.

It’s a boy, Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, said Tuesday while announcing they’re expecting their fourth child in July.

The couple’s growing family already includes three young kids: Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.

Vance, 41, and his wife, 40, said they were excited to share the news and that both mother and baby were doing well.

It’s exceptionally rare for the occupants of the highest leadership roles in the U.S. to have children while in office. One well-documented exception was President Grover Cleveland, whose wife, Frances Cleveland, gave birth to their second child in 1893 during his second term in office.

Lawyers for the California Republican Party filed an emergency application asking Justice Elena Kagan to temporarily reinstate the previous district lines while the party appeals a court decision that greenlighted the new map for this year’s elections, when control of Congress will be on the line.

In a divided decision last week, a federal three-judge panel in Sacramento turned away a complaint that accused California of violating the Constitution by using race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters when drawing the new district lines, which voters approved in November.

Republicans currently hold nine of California’s 52 congressional seats.

The Supreme Court last month opened the way for Texas to use congressional district boundaries favorable to the GOP that were pushed by Trump. California’s revamped maps were a response to Trump’s maneuvers in Texas.

Student are protesting Monday against immigration enforcement in Minnesota in multiple locations.

Hundreds gathered Monday at Kennesaw State University in suburban Atlanta in a demonstration organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Organizers oppose immigration enforcement, the U.S. removal of Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela in an early January military raid and President Donald Trump’s push for the U.S. to take control of Greenland from Denmark.

“We’re here as part of a nationwide shutdown to demand that ICE stop terrorizing our communities. We demand justice for Renee Nicole Goode, as well as saying no war in Venezuela,” said Stephan Sellers, a senior at 51,000-student Kennesaw State and organizer with Students for Socialism and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

“Us students, working class people of this country, can’t even afford housing or education,” Sellers said “And so we say that we should fund our people’s needs, not war, not racist deportation.”

U.S. military forces boarded and took control of a seventh oil tanker connected with Venezuela on Tuesday as the Trump administration continues its efforts to take control of the oil in the South American country.

U.S. Southern Command said in a social media post that U.S. forces apprehended the Motor Vessel Sagitta “without incident” and that the tanker was “operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean.”

The military command did not say whether the U.S. Coast Guard took control of the tanker as has been the case in prior seizures.

▶ Read more about seized oil tanker

Rep. James Comer is rejecting an offer from former President Bill Clinton to have him and the committee’s top Democrat interview Clinton in New York about his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Comer is threatening to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings against both Bill and Hillary Clinton on Wednesday following months of clashes over having them deposed as part of the committee’s investigation into Epstein.

Comer said that Clinton’s offer would not allow for an official transcript of the interview and that it is “an indefensible demand that is insulting to the American people who demand answers about Epstein’s crimes.”

He is also insisting that Hillary Clinton appear for a sworn testimony before the committee.

Stocks sank on Wall Street after President Donald Trump threatened to hit eight European countries with new tariffs as tensions escalate over his attempts to assert American control over Greenland.

The S&P 500 fell 2.1% Tuesday, its biggest drop since October. Technology stocks were the biggest weights. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.8%. The Nasdaq composite slumped 2.4%. T

rump said Saturday that he would charge a 10% import tax starting in February on goods from the eight European nations. European markets also fell, while gold prices surged. Long-term Treasury yields rose in the bond market.

▶ Read more about S&P 500 drop

Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev met with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in Davos on Tuesday and told reporters afterwards that the meetings were going “constructively” and that “more and more people realize the correctness of Russia’s position.”

He didn’t elaborate and didn’t offer any details about what was discussed. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier on Tuesday told reporters that Dmitriev had plans to meet with unspecified U.S. delegates in Davos.

Asked about Dmitriev’s agenda, Peskov said that the envoy’s main focus is “trade, economic, and investment cooperation,” but “at the same time, Kirill Dmitriev is transmitting information to and from both sides regarding the peace process in Ukraine.”

Trump in his inaugural address last year and during the transition spoke of retaking the Panama Canal.

But Trump in recent months has been relatively quiet about the issue after claiming that China was “operating the Panama Canal” and “we’re taking back.”

Trump’s complaint is that the United States, the shipping lane’s biggest user, was “being severely overcharged and not treated fairly.”

Asked if the U.S. reclaiming the canal was still on the table, Trump demurred.
“I don’t want to tell you that,” the president responded.

Trump’s at-times rambling briefing included a split second of religious reflection.

A reporter asked Trump if he believed God was proud of him, after the president had last year said he believed he got into office because God put him there to save the world.

“I think God is very proud of the job I’ve done, and that includes for religion,” Trump replied. “We’re protecting a lot of people that are being killed. Christians, Jewish people, lots of people are being protected by me that wouldn’t be protected by another type of president.”

“I think that we will work something out where NATO is going to be very happy and where we’re going to be very happy,” Trump responded, when asked near the end of his press conference about whether splintering was worth his pursuit of the Arctic territory that belongs to Denmark.

That was a notable shift from the text message from Trump to Norwegian prime minister on Monday that he no longer felt “an obligation to think purely of peace.”

Trump repeated his position that the U.S. needs to take control of the territory for the sake of U.S. national security.

The president left the briefing room after speaking and answering questions for nearly two hours.

French President Emmanuel Macron this week called for an emergency meeting in Paris with European leaders to address tensions with the U.S. over the Trump’s pursuit to acquire Greenland as well as tariffs.

Trump told reporters that he would not attend the meeting, in part because Macron would not be leading his country for much longer.

Earlier this week Trump shared private texts from Macron and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on social media.

The president will use a key address in Davos on Wednesday to highlight his administration’s accomplishments, he told reporters.

“I think more than anything else, what I’m going to be speaking about is the tremendous success that we’ve had in one year,” he said. “I didn’t think we could do it this fast.”

The White House had previously said the remarks, in a room likely to be occupied with global elites and billionaires, would focus on Trump’s affordability agenda, particularly on housing.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Trump said he thought other countries needed to hear advice from him on energy and immigration.

Trump repeated his criticism of plans by Britain to lease a military base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago.

He said that he favored Britain ownership of the island, saying it’s in a “reasonably important area of the globe” though not in as critical a spot as Greenland.

“I think they should keep it,” Trump said of British ownership of the base, suggesting that maybe the United Kingdom needed the money.

“It might,” Trump said when asked about a reporter his envisioned Board of Peace should replace the United Nations. “The U.N. just hasn’t been very helpful. I’m a big fan of the potential, but it has never lived up to its potential.”

But Trump added, “I believe you got to let the U.N. continue, because the potential is so great.”

Trump said he likes French President Emmanuel Macron and United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, even as both have had some negative feedback for him lately over his ratcheting up of aggression toward Greenland.

Asked about his relationship with the foreign leaders, Trump said they “get a little bit rough” when he’s not around but “when I’m around they treat me very nicely.”

While he called Macron “a friend of mine,” he also said both left-leaning leaders have “got to straighten out their countries.”

“I wish we didn’t need a Board of Peace,” Trump said. “You know, with all the wars I settled, the United Nations never helped me on one war.”

Trump’s Board of Peace was originally envisioned as a small group of world leaders overseeing the Gaza ceasefire plan. But the Trump administration’s ambitions have ballooned into a more sprawling concept, with Trump extending invitations to dozens of nations and hinting it will soon broker global conflicts, like a pseudo-U.N. Security Council.

Trump often tells the same stories many times over, but on Tuesday he added a new one, as he talked about signing an executive order to bring back mental institutions and insane asylums.

Amid listing off what he sees are his top accomplishments over the past year, Trump waxed nostalgic as he told a story of walking to Little League practice with his mother, reminding reporters he was “quite the baseball player.”

Querying his mother on bars over windows on a psychiatric hospital in Queens, which he said “loomed over the block,” Trump says she told him that “very sick” people lived there.

Creedmor Psychiatric Center is still operational but the property has fulfilled various roles through the decades.

A migrant shelter was operational there until last year, and in November, New York officials approved a development plan to include residences.

“It’s a joke,” Trump fumed about the prize to reporters. “They’ve lost such prestige.”

Trump in a message to European officials made public this week linked his aggressive stance on Greenland to last year’s decision not to award him the Nobel Peace Prize, telling Norway’s prime minister that he no longer felt “an obligation to think purely of Peace.”

Trump also waved aside comments from Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who issued a statement on Monday noting that the Norwegian government holds no sway over who is receives the Peace Prize.

“And don’t let anyone tell you that Norway doesn’t control the shots. OK?” Trump said. “It’s in Norway.”

Trump has spent a full hour at the briefing room podium with no signs of stopping.

First, he brandished photographs of people allegedly arrested in Minnesota. Later, he began rattling off his administration’s “wins” from a prepared packet. Throughout, it’s been a speech full of variety and plenty of tangents.

The president shared a laundry list of accomplishments, including executive orders he’s signed and his administration’s move to increase law enforcement in the nation’s capital.

He’s been especially focused on immigration and deporting alleged criminals. Foreign policy talk has been scarce so far, even as tensions with Europe have escalated over his aggression toward Greenland.

Federal prosecutors served six grand jury subpoenas Tuesday to Minnesota officials as part of an investigation into whether they obstructed or impeded federal law enforcement during a sweeping immigration operation in Minneapolis-St. Paul area, a person familiar with the matter said.

The subpoenas, which seek records, were sent to the offices of Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and officials in Ramsey and Hennepin counties, the person said.

The person was not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The subpoenas are related to an investigation into whether Minnesota officials obstructed federal immigration enforcement through public statements they made, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday. They said then it was focused on the potential violation of a conspiracy statute.

▶ Read more about Justice Department subpoenas

The president claimed that the immigrants his administration has removed from the U.S. make the Hells Angels “look like the sweetest people on Earth,” only to then pause for an aside during Tuesday’s news briefing and compliment the infamous motorcycle gang.

“I like the Hells Angels,” Trump said. “They voted for me. They protected me, actually.”

A former leader of the Hells Angels, Chuck Zito, did join with Trump at a Manhattan courthouse last year. The president likes to discuss his general love of bikers. But it was unclear whether the outlaw motorcycle gang has ever been contracted to provide security for Trump.

The Hells Angels infamously provided security at a 1969 concert at the Altamont Speedway in California, an event that broke out in violence and led to multiple deaths.

“We slashed tremendous numbers from federal payroll,” Trump said during the press briefing, adding that millions of federal workers were terminated by the Trump administration.

Scott Kupor, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, said last September that there would be roughly 300,000 fewer federal workers on the payroll nationwide by the end of 2025. The government employs roughly 2.5 million workers, including military members.

Trump said the fired workers are “getting much better jobs and much higher pay.”

From the start of Trump’s second term one year ago, the Department of Government Efficiency, led by his then-adviser Elon Musk, instigated purges of federal agencies with the expressed mission of rooting out fraud, waste and abuse.

Thirty minutes into his time in the White House briefing room, Trump has yet to mention the foreign policy issues dominating much of the conversation around his recent moves including Venezuela, Iran or Greenland.

He’s been recently criticized by some of his base supporters for focusing too much on foreign issues and not enough on domestic matters, like food prices.

Later Tuesday, Trump heads to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum in Davos. The European leaders already in place have made it clear Trump’s assertions about taking over Greenland are tops on their agenda.

Trump used the podium to draw a line on deportations — saying his administration is focused on criminals, not others living in the U.S. illegally.

“We have a lot of heart for people, they came in illegally but they’re good people and they’re working now in farms and they’re working in luncheonettes and hotels,” the president said. “We’re looking to get the criminals out right now, the criminals.”

His comments come as immigration agents in Minnesota have been accused of searching and detaining multiple people who don’t fit that description.

Over the weekend, in one such incident, a U.S. citizen without a criminal record was detained at gunpoint without a warrant, his family told the AP. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security described the operation as a “targeted operation” seeking two convicted sex offenders.

The U.S. president gave a somewhat meandering defense of his declaration of an economic emergency to impose tariffs, saying the law is clear to him but he doesn’t know how the Supreme Court will rule in a pending case challenging the legality.

Trump said at a news briefing that the government can restrict trade by requiring licenses and that tariffs could be less severe. But Trump stressed, “I don’t know what the Supreme Court’s going to do.”

“If we lose that case, it’s possible we’re going to have to do the best we can in paying it back,” Trump said. “I don’t know how that’s going to be done very easily without hurting a lot of people.”

The president used emergency tariffs to negotiate trade frameworks and on Saturday threatened tariffs on eight European nations in hopes of forcing those countries to back U.S. ownership of Greenland.

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President Donald Trump speaks as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt listens in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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Documents lie on the briefing room floor as President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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There was a thud in the briefing room as Trump tossed the thick stack of papers he said contained the accomplishments of his first year back in the White House onto the floor.

Printed sheets spread out on the carpeting near reporters’ seats, after which Trump turned toward talking about inflation and shifting toward criticism of the Biden administration’s economic policies.

Just before Trump dropped the files onto the floor, there was the snap of a binder clip, which he said didn’t hurt him, but that he wouldn’t have shown if it had.

“I would have acted like nothing happened as my finger fell off,” Trump said.

The president is meandering through the first minutes of his press briefing with reporters. It’s been a low-energy speech so far.

Trump spent several minutes leafing through photographs and descriptions of people allegedly arrested in Minnesota, asking reporters at one point, “You’re not getting bored with this, right?”

He also referred to the packet of “wins” from his administration but didn’t immediately get into it, saying instead, “I could stand here and read it for a week and we wouldn’t be finished.”

As he continued to show mugshots of those he described as “rough” people arrested during federal agents immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, Trump also linked the fraud allegations in the state to its Somali community, which he has also done in the past.

“I’m going through this because I think we have plenty of time,” Trump said, alternating between discussing Minnesota and other issues, including his impending trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Trump’s administration has urged a judge to reject efforts by Minnesota and its largest cities to stop the surge, calling the lawsuit — filed soon after the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an immigration officer — “legally frivolous.”

Entering the briefing room with a thick stack of papers, Trump said that he had in his first year back in the White House had “done more than any other administration has done by far.”

“It’s been an amazing period of time,” Trump said, thumbing through the pages.

Trump addressed reporters alone at the podium, with Leavitt standing off to his right. He quickly launched into holding up photographs of people arrested Minnesota, with each saying “Minnesota worst of the worst.”

The president has entered the room to kick off a scheduled White House press briefing.

He’s expected to highlight his administration’s accomplishments on the anniversary of his 2025 inauguration. Journalists in the room were given a 31-page handout on that topic, listing what it said were “365 WINS IN 365 DAYS.”

Rep Robin Kelly, D-Illinois, last week introduced an impeachment resolution against Noem.

The effort is backed entirely by Democrats and represents nearly half of the party’s caucus in the House of Representatives.

“Our communities have seen ICE’s Gestapo-like tactics firsthand,” said Kelly in a statement. The Illinois Democrat argued that ICE had engaged in “Gestapo-like tactics” and that the department continued to “lie, obstruct Congress, and violate people’s civil rights.”

The resolution contends that Noem “violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and due process rights of American citizens by directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” among other grievances.

Former British lawmaker Rory Stewart says President Trump is “behaving like someone in celebrity wrestling” and engaged in “performative cruelty” in his efforts to strong-arm Denmark and European allies over Greenland.

Asked about the top theme of Davos this year, the Yale university academic said: “The central thing — which has cut like a knife through everything — is Trump’s threats against Greenland, because in a single moment he’s inverted everything. He’s broken rules on state sovereignty, he’s broken domestic law, but most importantly he’s gone after a NATO ally.”

“And he’s then responded to America’s closest allies in the world by threatening them with tariffs,” Stewart added. “He just says, I want it, and if you don’t give it to me, I’m going to punch you. And the problem for Europe is that we now face the classic problem of appeasement.”

President Donald Trump’s pledges to provoke a sweeping tariff fight with Europe to get his way in taking control of Greenland has left many of America’s closest allies warning of a rupture with Washington that would shatter the NATO alliance that had once seemed unshakable.

The European Union’s top official on Tuesday called Trump’s planned new tariffs over Greenland a “mistake” and questioned Trump’s trustworthiness. French President Emmanuel Macron said the EU could retaliate against its long-standing ally by deploying one of its most powerful economic tools, known colloquially as a trade “bazooka.”

Trump prides himself on ratcheting up major maximum pressure to try and negotiate through a position of strength. He is slated to leave on Tuesday — the anniversary of his inauguration — for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a venue that could give him the chance to defuse tensions as quickly as he has sought to stir them up.

But European leaders — digging in and vowing to defend Denmark and its semiautonomous control over Greenland — may be seeking just as hard to meet an extraordinary moment with their own demonstration of fierce resolve.

▶ Read more about Greenland

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and three accompanying destroyers have left the South China Sea and are heading west, a Navy official said.

The ships recently crossed through the Strait of Malacca, a key waterway connecting the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail ship movements.

While Navy and other defense officials stopped short of saying the carrier strike group was headed to the Middle East, its current heading and location in the Indian Ocean means its only days away from moving into the region.

It comes as tensions remain high between the United States and Iran over the crackdown on protests. President Donald Trump drew two red lines for the Islamic Republic — the killing of peaceful protesters and Tehran conducting mass executions in the wake of the demonstrations.

This would not be first time in recent years that a carrier strike group deployed to the Pacific only to be moved to the Middle East to address instability in the region. The Abraham Lincoln previous deployment in 2024 also saw the carrier rerouted to the Middle East. In June, the USS Nimitz strike group also was ordered to the region.