Peace, for Sale

Trump’s first year back in power and the global recoil it triggered

Good morning. Roday marks one full year since Donald Trump took power, and the picture that’s emerged is not subtle, not reassuring, and no longer deniable.

One year into his presidency, Donald Trump is no longer just attacking the postwar international order; he’s trying to replace it with something he owns. According to reporting from Bloomberg and the Associated Press, the Trump administration is moving forward with plans to create a brand-new global body called the “Board of Peace,” an entity Trump envisions as an alternative, and explicit rival, to the United Nations.

Trump’s own language leaves little ambiguity. In invitation letters to world leaders, he described the Board of Peace as “the most impressive and consequential board ever assembled,” promising it would usher in a “bold new approach to resolving global conflict.” At the heart of that approach is a governance structure that looks less like multilateral diplomacy and a lot like a hostile takeover.

Draft charters show that countries seeking permanent membership would be required to pony up at least $1 billion in cash. Those who don’t pay are offered temporary, revocable seats, subject to the chairman’s discretion. The chairman, of course, would be Donald J. Trump himself, with the unilateral power to set the agenda, control all funds, approve or veto every decision, expel member states, and even appoint his own successor. Votes may be taken, but nothing happens without Trump’s sign-off. The thing reads like a timeshare pitch with nukes in the background.

Originally framed as a mechanism to oversee a Gaza ceasefire, the Board of Peace is now being pitched as a standing international organization with ambitions far beyond Gaza, one Trump believes could rival or “galvanize” the United Nations. Critics warn it would sidestep sovereignty norms, marginalize smaller nations, and replace international law with transactional dealmaking. As one expert put it bluntly, it’s a U.S. shortcut that trades rules for leverage.

The cast of characters reinforces the point. The White House has already named a governing executive board stacked almost entirely with Trump loyalists and dealmakers, including Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and longtime Middle East fixer; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Trump envoy Steve Witkoff; billionaire financier Marc Rowan; and former UK prime minister Tony Blair. In other words, peace talks as curated by the family business, Wall Street, and a handful of politically convenient elders.

Trump insists he doesn’t care about accolades, even as he regularly complains about being denied the Nobel Peace Prize, but the structure he’s proposing makes the real goal clear. This is about control, branding, and monetizing legitimacy itself. Peace is available, terms, conditions, and billion-dollar buy-ins apply.

That this is being rolled out at Davos, the annual World Economic Forum in Switzerland where heads of state, central bankers, corporate executives, and global power brokers gather to set economic and geopolitical priorities, on the one-year anniversary of Trump’s presidency is a veritable thesis statement. Davos isn’t a rally or a press gaggle; it’s where elites signal direction, test ideas, and make deals that shape the global order. Once you see the thesis, the rest of the year snaps into focus.

Consider Minnesota, where the federal government has decided to turn immigration enforcement into a live-action stress test for the Constitution. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, of all days, ICE agents broke into the home of ChongLy “Scott” Thao, a 56-year-old Hmong American citizen who has lived in the United States since childhood and became a citizen in 1991. They entered without a warrant, pointed guns at his family, handcuffed him in front of his five-year-old grandson, and dragged him outside into 14-degree weather wearing only boxer shorts and Crocs. He was denied the chance to dress. He wrapped himself in his grandson’s blanket while neighbors watched in horror.

After an hour of questioning, fingerprinting, and humiliation, ICE confirmed what basic paperwork would have revealed immediately: Thao is a U.S. citizen with no criminal record. He was dropped back home without apology, or explanation. Just the quiet administrative shrug of a government that believes accountability is for pussies.

It gets worse. The Hmong community didn’t “wander” into America, they were recruited by the CIA to fight alongside U.S. forces in Laos during the Vietnam War’s so-called “Secret War.” Tens of thousands were killed. Those who survived were resettled here after facing retribution for serving U.S. interests. Watching federal agents terrorize an elderly Hmong American on MLK Day is not just cruel, but a betrayal layered atop an unpaid moral debt.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem first denied ICE used pepper spray on protesters in Minneapolis, despite a federal judge ruling that agents deployed chemical irritants against peaceful demonstrators exercising First Amendment rights. When shown video evidence, Noem promptly backtracked and blamed the protesters. The Pentagon has since ordered 1,500 active-duty troops to prepare for possible deployment. Lawyers report being blocked from seeing detained clients. Youth sports have been canceled out of fear. St. Paul’s mayor, Kaohly Her, says she’s been advised to carry her passport because she might be targeted based on her appearance.

The White House spent most of MLK Day promoting immigration enforcement and college football. Only after public criticism did Trump issue a Martin Luther King Jr. Day proclamation late Monday evening, a reactive press release that praised “law and order,” bragged about declassifying assassination files King’s family opposed, and somehow managed not to mention the very state-sanctioned violence unfolding in real time. Bernice King offered a better definition of remembrance, urging Americans to oppose violence against Black and brown immigrants. The contrast was not subtle.

Economically, the administration is behaving the same way it governs: by bypassing guardrails and daring anyone to stop it. Axios reports Trump is increasingly raiding obscure corners of the federal balance sheet tapping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Treasury funds, and other pools of capital, to advance his agenda without congressional approval and without increasing the deficit in ways that would require honesty. Analysts warn this is autocrat-adjacent behavior: centralized control, improvisational rulemaking, and contempt for oversight. The “ultimate win,” one strategist noted, would be tapping the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet outright. Trump, incidentally, says he already knows who he wants to appoint to the Fed.

The courts may intervene, briefly. The Supreme Court could rule as early as today on whether Trump exceeded his authority by imposing sweeping global tariffs using emergency powers. Two lower courts already said he did. If the tariffs fall, importers could be owed billions in refunds. The White House’s response? The trade representative openly admitted they’ll just replace them the next day using different authorities. Limits are merely suggestions.

Abroad, the unraveling is no longer theoretical. Trump’s fixation on Greenland has escalated from bluster to open diplomatic rupture. He’s threatened tariffs against Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, and the UK for objecting to his designs. He’s posted doctored images of himself planting an American flag over Greenland and looming over Europe from behind the Resolute Desk. At Davos, the EU’s foreign policy chief felt compelled to say out loud: no country has the right to take over the territory of another, not in Ukraine, not in Greenland, not anywhere. Greenland’s prime minister has now publicly acknowledged that while a U.S. military attack is “not likely,” it cannot be ruled out, because “the other party has made that clear.” A NATO ally is openly discussing the possibility of U.S. aggression. Sit with that.

Amid the menace, Europe has found a coping mechanism: humor sharpened into protest. Across Denmark, red baseball caps reading “Make America Go Away”, a parody of MAGA, have gone viral. Created by a Copenhagen shop owner whose early batches flopped, demand exploded once Trump’s Greenland rhetoric turned serious. Protesters waved Danish and Greenlandic flags, carrying signs that read “No Means No” and “Make America Smart Again.” There is something profoundly telling about Trump’s most recognizable symbol being repurposed abroad as shorthand for get lost! Love you, Denmark!

If you’re wondering how history might grade this first year, someone already ran the experiment. A YouTube channel, I Ask AI, asked multiple AI systems, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, to rate Trump’s first year in office. Most landed around a 2 or 3 out of 10. Then they asked Truth Social’s AI. It gave him a 9 out of 10. When the sources were checked, the model turned out to be fed largely on Fox News content. The AI performed exactly as designed. Closed system, closed loop, closed reality.

That may be the cleanest metaphor for Year One. Outside the bubble: ICE raids horrifying the world, courts pushing back, allies invoking international law against the United States, and a president trying to monetize peace itself. Inside the bubble: the “hottest country in the world,” eight wars magically stopped, Greenland as a real estate opportunity, and a Nobel Prize cruelly withheld.

So that’s where we are, one year in, staring straight at a governing philosophy that treats power as property, institutions as obstacles, and human beings as collateral. None of this stops unless pressure is applied, publicly, relentlessly, and without letting Republicans pretend this is normal or inevitable. The GOP still has the ability to draw a line. They are choosing, every day, not to. Make that choice cost them. Call. Write. Organize. Speak. Refuse the shrug. History is very clear about how this part works.

As for me, Marz and I will keep our nightly moonbeam vigils. We step outside after dark, away from the noise, often to music, sometimes in silence, always paying attention. Last night I hoped for a glimpse of the northern lights, but instead got a clear, star-filled sky, no aurora, just depth and distance and a quiet reminder that beauty persists even when it doesn’t arrive in the form you expected. Still beautiful, steady, and there.

Hold fast to what grounds you. Protect what’s fragile. And don’t let anyone tell you this madness can’t be stopped, it can, but only if enough of us decide to stop waiting for permission.