US Supreme Court grapples with Trump bid to restrict birthright citizenship

US Supreme Court grapples with Trump bid to restrict birthright citizenship
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People protest in support of birthright citizenship and the immigrant community on May 15, 2025, outside of the Supreme Court in Washington. (AP Photo)
US Supreme Court grapples with Trump bid to restrict birthright citizenship
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Updated 15 May 2025
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US Supreme Court grapples with Trump bid to restrict birthright citizenship

US Supreme Court grapples with Trump bid to restrict birthright citizenship
  • Trump order targeted children of certain immigrants
  • Three judges issued orders blocking policy nationwide

WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court wrestled on Thursday over Donald Trump’s attempt to broadly enforce his executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, a move that would affect thousands of babies born each year as the Republican president seeks a major shift in how the US Constitution has long been understood. The court’s conservative justices, who hold a 6-3 majority, seemed willing to limit the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide, or “universal,” injunctions, as federal judges in Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts did to block Trump’s directive. None of the justices, however, signaled an endorsement of Trump’s order and some of the liberals said it violates the Constitution and the court’s own precedents.
The justices heard more than two hours of arguments in the administration’s emergency request to scale back the injunctions blocking Trump’s directive, which is a key part of his hard-line approach toward immigration. Three judges found that Trump’s order likely violates the Constitution’s 14th Amendment citizenship language. Trump signed his order on January 20, his first day back in office. It directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of US-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also known as a “green card” holder.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she believes Trump’s order violates multiple Supreme Court precedents concerning citizenship. Sotomayor said the court should weigh the order’s legality “if we are worried about those thousands of children who are going to be born without citizenship papers that could render them stateless” and leave them ineligible for government benefits.
More than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship annually if Trump’s order takes effect, according to the plaintiffs who challenged the directive, including the Democratic attorneys general of 22 states as well as immigrant rights advocates and pregnant immigrants.
The case is unusual in that the administration has used it to argue that federal judges lack the authority to issue universal injunctions, and has asked the justices to rule that way and enforce Trump’s directive even without weighing its legal merits. Sauer focused on this issue, calling the increasing use by judges of universal injunctions a “pathology.”
In potentially restricting the ability of lower courts to issue universal injunctions in certain instances, the conservative justices raised the idea of requiring plaintiffs to funnel claims seeking broader relief into class-action lawsuits, which are filed on behalf of a group of people who suffer similar legal injuries.
Some of the conservatives also signaled that at least for the states that sued, relief might properly extend beyond their borders, as a universal injunction does.
Complicating matters, some justices — conservatives and liberals alike — also seemed reticent to rule without further delving into the underlying legal merits of Trump’s directive. It remained uncertain whether the court would order further briefing, which would further delay resolution of the case.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito asked Kelsi Corkran, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs, “Should we decide or make up our minds on the underlying birthright citizenship question without briefing and argument and deliberation?”
Corkran said the justices should take up the case specifically on the merits of Trump’s order, adding, “The government is asking the court to allow it to ignore this court’s precedents ... and to upend 100 years of executive branch practice.”
The plaintiffs argued that Trump’s directive violated the 14th Amendment, which long has been understood to confer citizenship on almost anyone born on US soil. It was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War that ended slavery in the United States.
The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause states that all “persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
The administration contends that this citizenship language does not extend to immigrants in the country illegally or immigrants whose presence is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas.

‘All kinds of abuses’
Without a universal injunction blocking Trump’s order, it could be years before the Supreme Court finally decides its constitutionality, liberal Justice Elena Kagan said.
“There are all kinds of abuses of nationwide injunctions,” Kagan told Sauer. “But I think that the question that this case presents is that if one thinks that it’s quite clear that the (executive order) is illegal, how does one get to that result in what time frame, on your set of rules without the possibility of a nationwide injunction?“
Sauer noted that after the dispute percolates in lower courts, the Supreme Court can ultimately pronounce on the legal merits of the policy, prompting conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett to express skepticism.
“Are you really going to answer Justice Kagan by saying there’s no way to do this expeditiously?” Barrett said.
Sotomayor compared Trump’s directive to a hypothetical action by a president taking away guns from every American who owns one despite the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Sauer said that since Trump returned to the presidency, federal judges have issued 40 universal injunctions against his administration’s policies.
“This is a bipartisan problem that has now spanned the last five presidential administrations,” Sauer said.

Variations by state
The administration is seeking to narrow the injunctions to apply only to the individual plaintiffs and the 22 states, if the justices find the states have the required legal standing to sue. That could allow the policy to take effect in the 28 states that did not sue, aside from any plaintiffs living in those states.
Jeremy Feigenbaum, the lawyer arguing for the states, said states face high and costly hurdles in managing difficulties in distributing government benefits if the order takes effect and citizenship is applied in a patchwork fashion, adding that class-action cases are “not available for state litigation.”
Feigenbaum suggested that the justices could limit universal injunctions to a narrow set of cases, including in this case where alternatives to such broad relief “are not practically or legally workable.” Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, a critic of univeral injunctions, expressed some agreement with Feigenbaum on that point.
Feigenbaum said the legal issue surrounding Trump’s executive order was resolved by the Supreme Court 127 years ago.
An 1898 Supreme Court ruling in a case called United States v. Wong Kim Ark long has been interpreted as guaranteeing that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to American citizenship. The administration has argued that the court’s ruling in that case was narrower, applying only to children whose parents had a “permanent domicile and residence in the United States.”
The 14th Amendment overrode an infamous 1857 Supreme Court decision called Dred Scott v. Sandford that had denied citizenship to enslaved and free Black people and helped fuel the Civil War.
“This order reflects the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed citizenship to the children of former slaves, not illegal aliens or temporary visitors,” Sauer told the justices of Trump’s directive.
The case is the first involving a Trump policy to be argued at the top US judicial body since he returned to office, though the justices have acted on an emergency basis in several other challenges to his policies. Three of the justices were appointed by Trump during his first term as president.

 


UK, France to enable ‘co-ordinated’ nuclear deterrent

UK, France to enable ‘co-ordinated’ nuclear deterrent
Updated 11 sec ago
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UK, France to enable ‘co-ordinated’ nuclear deterrent

UK, France to enable ‘co-ordinated’ nuclear deterrent
  • Western Europe's two nuclear powers agree to “refresh” their defense ties
  • Vow to jointly respond to any “extreme threat to Europe”

LONDON: The UK and France will declare that the two nations’ nuclear deterrents, while independent, can be co-ordinated and that they will jointly respond to any “extreme threat to Europe,” both countries said Wednesday.
The declaration, to be signed Thursday, will state that the respective deterrents of both countries remain under national control “but can be co-ordinated, and that there is no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by both nations,” the UK’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the French presidency said in an overnight statement.
French President Emmanuel Macron will sign the agreement Thursday as he wraps up his three-day state visit to the UK with a bilateral summit, where the allies will “reboot” defense ties with a focus on joint missile development and nuclear co-operation.
France’s leader and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will co-host the London summit, with the two sides also expected to discuss maintaining support for Ukraine and curbing undocumented cross-Channel immigration.
Ahead of the gathering, which follows two days of varied events spanning pomp and politics, trade and culture, France and Britain announced their “defense relationship” will be “refreshed.”
It will see London and Paris order more Storm Shadow cruise missiles — long-range, air-launched weapons jointly developed by the two countries and called SCALP by the French — while stepping up work on a replacement system.
The missiles have been shipped to Ukraine in significant numbers in recent years to help Kyiv in its war with Russia.
The new partnerships herald a new “Entente Industrielle” making “defense an engine for growth,” said the MoD.
“As close partners and NATO allies, the UK and France have a deep history of defense collaboration and today’s agreements take our partnership to the next level,” Starmer said in the statement.
Starmer and Macron will also on Thursday dial into a meeting of the so-called “coalition of the willing” on Ukraine, a group of countries backing the embattled nation.
 


AI giant Nvidia becomes first company to reach $4 tn in value

AI giant Nvidia becomes first company to reach $4 tn in value
Updated 20 min 35 sec ago
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AI giant Nvidia becomes first company to reach $4 tn in value

AI giant Nvidia becomes first company to reach $4 tn in value
  • Nvidia now has a market value greater than the GDP of France, Britain or India
  • The California chip company’s latest surge is helping drive a recovery in the broader stock market

NEW YORK: Nvidia became the first company to touch $4 trillion in market value on Wednesday, a new milestone in Wall Street’s bet that artificial intelligence will transform the economy.
Shortly after the stock market opened, Nvidia vaulted as high as $164.42, giving it a valuation above $4 trillion. The stock subsequently edged lower, ending just under the record threshold.
“The market has an incredible certainty that AI is the future,” said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers. “Nvidia is certainly the company most positioned to benefit from that gold rush.”
Nvidia, led by electrical engineer Jensen Huang, now has a market value greater than the GDP of France, Britain or India, a testament to investor confidence that AI will spur a new era of robotics and automation.
The California chip company’s latest surge is helping drive a recovery in the broader stock market, as Nvidia itself outperforms major indices.
Part of this is due to relief that President Donald Trump has walked back his most draconian tariffs, which pummeled global markets in early April.
Even as Trump announced new tariff actions in recent days, US stocks have stayed at lofty levels, with the tech-centered Nasdaq ending at a fresh record on Wednesday.
“You’ve seen the markets walk us back from a worst-case scenario in terms of tariffs,” said Angelo Zino, technology analyst at CFRA Research.
While Nvidia still faces US export controls to China as well as broader tariff uncertainty, the company’s deal to build AI infrastructure in Saudi Arabia during a Trump state visit in May showed a potential upside in the US president’s trade policy.
“We’ve seen the administration using Nvidia chips as a bargaining chip,” Zino said.

Challenged by DeepSeek

Nvidia’s surge to $4 trillion marks a new benchmark in a fairly consistent rise over the last two years as AI enthusiasm has built.
In 2025 so far, the company’s shares have risen more than 21 percent, whereas the Nasdaq has gained 6.7 percent.
Taiwan-born Huang has wowed investors with a series of advances, including its core product: graphics processing units (GPUs), key to many of the generative AI programs behind autonomous driving, robotics and other cutting-edge domains.
The company has also unveiled its Blackwell next-generation technology allowing more super processing capacity. One of its advances is “real-time digital twins,” significantly speeding production development time in manufacturing, aerospace and myriad other sectors.
However, Nvidia’s winning streak was challenged early in 2025 when China-based DeepSeek shook up the world of generative AI with a low-cost, high-performance model that challenged the hegemony of OpenAI and other big-spending behemoths.
Nvidia’s lost some $600 billion in market valuation in a single session during this period.
Huang has welcomed DeepSeek’s presence, while arguing against US export constraints.

At the forefront of “AI agents”
In the most recent quarter, Nvidia reported earnings of nearly $19 billion despite a $4.5 billion hit from US export controls limiting sales of cutting-edge technology to China.
The first-quarter earnings period also revealed that momentum for AI remained strong. Many of the biggest tech companies — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta — are jostling to come out on top in the multi-billion-dollar AI race.
A recent UBS survey of technology executives showed Nvidia widening its lead over rivals.
Zino said Nvidia’s latest surge reflected a fuller understanding of DeepSeek, which has ultimately stimulated investment in complex reasoning models but not threatened Nvidia’s business.
Nvidia is at the forefront of “AI agents,” the current focus in generative AI in which machines are able to reason and infer more than in the past, he said.
“Overall the demand landscape has improved for 2026 for these more complex reasoning models,” Zino said.
But the speedy growth of AI will also be a source of disruption.
Executives at Ford, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon are among those who have begun to say the “quiet part out loud,” according to a Wall Street Journal report recounting recent public acknowledgment of white-collar job loss due to AI.
Shares of Nvidia closed the day at $162.88, up 1.8 percent, finishing at just under $4 trillion in market value.
 

 

 

 


Trump promises West African leaders a pivot to trade as the region reels from sweeping aid cuts

Trump promises West African leaders a pivot to trade as the region reels from sweeping aid cuts
Updated 10 July 2025
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Trump promises West African leaders a pivot to trade as the region reels from sweeping aid cuts

Trump promises West African leaders a pivot to trade as the region reels from sweeping aid cuts
  • Trump described the nations represented at the meeting as “all very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, and great oil deposits, and wonderful people”
  • West African countries are among the hardest hit by the dissolution of USAID

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump promised West African leaders a pivot from aid to trade during a White House meeting Wednesday as the region reels from the impact of sweeping US aid cuts.
Trump said he sees “great economic potential in Africa” as the leaders of Liberia, Senegal, Gabon, Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau boasted of their countries’ natural resources and heaped praise on the US president, including their thanks for his help in settling a long-running conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Trump described the nations represented at the meeting as “all very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, and great oil deposits, and wonderful people” — a definite shift from his first term, when he used a vulgar term to describe African nations.
The meeting comes amid a shift in US global and domestic priorities under Trump’s leadership. Earlier this month, US authorities dissolved theUS Agency for International Development and said it was no longer following what they called “a charity-based foreign aid model” and instead would focus on partnerships with nations that show “both the ability and willingness to help themselves.”
The five nations whose leaders were meeting Trump represent a small fraction of US-Africa trade, but they possess untapped natural resources. Senegal and Mauritania are important transit and origin countries when it comes to migration and along with Guinea-Bissau are struggling to contain drug trafficking, both issues of concern for the Trump administration.
In their speeches, each African leader adopted a flattering tone to commend Trump for what they described as his peace efforts across the world and tried to outshine one another by listing the untapped natural resources their nations possess.
“We have a great deal of resources,” said Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, president of Mauritania, listing rare earths, as well as manganese, uranium and possibly lithium. “We have a lot of opportunities to offer in terms of investment.”
Last month, the US administration facilitated a peace deal between Rwanda and Congo to help end the decadeslong deadly fighting in eastern Congo, while enabling the US to gain access to critical minerals in the region. But analysts said it won’t end the fighting because the most prominent armed group said it does not apply to it.
During the meeting, Trump described trade as a diplomatic tool. Trade “seems to be a foundation” for him to settle disputes between countries, he said.
“You guys are going to fight, we’re not going to trade,” Trump said. “And we seem to be quite successful in doing that.”
He added, addressing the African leaders: “There is a lot of anger on your continent.”
As he spoke, the US administration continued sending out notifications to developing countries about higher tariff rates effective from August 1. The five Western African nations were not among them.
The portion of the lunch meeting that was open to the press didn’t touch much on the loss of aid, which critics say will result in millions of deaths.
“We have closed the USAID group to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse,” Trump said Wednesday. “And we’re working tirelessly to forge new economic opportunities involving both the United States and many African nations.”
West African countries are among the hardest hit by the dissolution of USAID. The US support in Liberia amounted to 2.6 percent of the country’s gross national income, the highest percentage anywhere in the world, according to the Center for Global Development.
Liberian President Joseph Nyuma Boakai in a statement “expressed optimism about the outcomes of the summit, reaffirming Liberia’s commitment to regional stability, democratic governance and inclusive economic growth.”
During the meeting, Trump reacted with visible surprise to Boakai’s English-speaking skills, which he praised. English is the official language of Liberia, which was established in the early 1800s with the aim of relocating freed African slaves and free-born Black citizens from the United States.
Gabon, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal are among 36 countries that might be included in the possible expansion of Trump’s travel ban.
Experts said that the meeting highlighted the new transactional nature of the relationship between the US and Africa.
“We are likely to see a trend where African countries will seek to leverage resources such as critical minerals, or infrastructure such as ports, to attract US commercial entities in order to maintain favorable relations with the current US administration,” aid Beverly Ochieng, an analyst at Control Risks, a security consulting firm. “Each of the African leaders sought to leverage natural resources in exchange for US financial and security investments, and appeared to view the US intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a model to further cooperation.”


US resumes sending some weapons to Ukraine after Pentagon pause

US resumes sending some weapons to Ukraine after Pentagon pause
Updated 10 July 2025
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US resumes sending some weapons to Ukraine after Pentagon pause

US resumes sending some weapons to Ukraine after Pentagon pause
  • Weapons now moving into Ukraine include 155 mm munitions and precision-guided rockets known as GMLRS
  • Trump has become increasingly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he wasn’t happy with him

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has resumed sending some weapons to Ukraine, a week after the Pentagon had directed that some deliveries be paused, US officials said Wednesday.
The weapons heading into Ukraine include 155 mm munitions and precision-guided rockets known as GMLRS, two officials told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to provide details that had not been announced publicly. It’s unclear exactly when the weapons started moving.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the pause on some shipments last week to allow the Pentagon to assess its weapons stockpiles, in a move that caught the White House by surprise.
Affected was Patriot missiles, the precision-guided GMLRS, Hellfire missiles, Howitzer rounds and more, taking not only Ukrainian officials and other allies by surprise but also US lawmakers and other parts of the Trump administration, including the State Department.
It was not clear if a pause on Patriot missiles would hold. The $4 million munition is in high demand and was key to defending a major US air base in Qatar last month as Iran launched a ballistic missile attack in response to the US targeting its nuclear facilities.

 

President Donald Trump announced Monday that the US would continue to deliver defensive weapons to Ukraine. He has sidestepped questions about who ordered the pause in exchanges with reporters this week.
“I would know if a decision is made. I will know,” Trump said Wednesday. “I will be the first to know. In fact, most likely I’d give the order, but I haven’t done that yet.”
Asked a day earlier who ordered the pause, he said, “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
Trump has privately expressed frustration with Pentagon officials for announcing the pause — a move that he felt wasn’t properly coordinated with the White House, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The Pentagon has denied that Hegseth acted without consulting the president, saying, “Secretary Hegseth provided a framework for the President to evaluate military aid shipments and assess existing stockpiles. This effort was coordinated across government.”
It comes as Russia has fired escalating air attacks on Ukraine, with a barrage that the largest number of drones fired in a single night in the three-year-old war, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday.
Trump has become increasingly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he wasn’t happy with him.
“Putin is not, he’s not treating human beings right,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, explaining the pause’s reversal. “It’s killing too many people. So we’re sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine, and I’ve approved that.”
The 155 mm artillery rounds have become some of the most used munitions of the war. Each round is about 2 feet (60 centimeters) long, weighs about 100 pounds (45 kilograms) and is 155 mm, or 6.1 inches, in diameter. They are used in Howitzer systems, which are towed large guns identified by the range of the angle of fire that their barrels can be set to.
Howitzer fires can strike targets up to 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 kilometers) away, depending on what type of round and firing system is used, which makes them highly valued by ground forces to take out enemy targets from a protected distance.
The US has provided more than 3 million 155 mm rounds to Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. It has sent more than $67 billion in overall weapons and military assistance to Ukraine in that period.

 

 


Nobel: The prize for peace that leaders go to war for

Nobel: The prize for peace that leaders go to war for
Updated 29 min 8 sec ago
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Nobel: The prize for peace that leaders go to war for

Nobel: The prize for peace that leaders go to war for
  • Israeli PM’s nomination of Trump has reopened debate over the Nobel Peace Prize’s meaning and credibility
  • As Gaza burns and indictments loom, a wartime leader endorsing a recipient raises questions, says analyst

LONDON: In what supporters have called a symbol of solidarity and detractors a humiliating act of fealty, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week revealed he had nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize — an award long sought by the US president.

The decision by Netanyahu appears designed to help bolster ties between the two long-term allies and ease reported tensions over Israel’s 21-month-long war in Gaza and its bruising 12-day conflict with Iran last month.

Netanyahu presented the nomination letter to Trump at the White House on Monday, and was met with a look of surprise from the US president.

“It’s nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well deserved, and you should get it,” Netanyahu said.

“Wow, coming from you, in particular, this is very meaningful. Thank you very much, Bibi,” Trump responded.

FASTFACTS:

• The Nobel Peace Prize was founded by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.

• Regret over his invention partly drove Nobel to create the prize to promote peace.

• Carl von Ossietzky, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Liu Xiaobo, were imprisoned when awarded.

• The youngest Nobel Peace laureate is Malala Yousafzai, who received it in 2014 at age 17.

For Dania Koleilat Khatib, a specialist in US-Arab relations, Netanyahu’s decision to nominate the president rests on his desire to “do anything to court Trump.”

She told Arab News that Netanyahu arrived in Washington with a set of demands covering almost every regional file of interest to Israel: Syria, Turkiye, Gaza, the West Bank and Iran.

Netanyahu is also seeking US guarantees relating to arms supplies, especially after Iran’s ballistic missile barrages last month placed substantial pressure on Israeli air defense systems, Khatib said.

“He wants to show Trump that he is the best ally he can have; he also knows that Trump is really looking after getting the Nobel Peace Prize,” she added.

President Donald Trump looks at a document during a meeting with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on July 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP)

Trump has made no secret of his yearning for the prestigious prize, yet the nomination itself is only the first part of an extensive, secret process that winds up in the stately committee room of Oslo’s Nobel Institute.

The distinction and tradition of the Nobel name, however, is arguably a far cry from the reputation of Trump’s nominator.

Netanyahu, alongside former defense minister Yoav Gallant, is the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court over allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to the conduct of Israel’s military in Gaza.

Protesters demonstrate on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC., during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the United States on July 24, 2024, amid Israel's war bombardment of civilian homes in Gaza on July 24, 2024. (AFP/File)

That fact would no doubt weigh on the minds of the five Norwegian Nobel Committee members who deliberate over the prize.

For Khatib, the ICC arrest warrant alone means that Netanyahu’s gesture is “worthless.”

She told Arab News: “I am not sure whether the nomination will be discarded but it is ironic that someone wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes and potentially genocide nominates someone for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

GUIDELINES ON NOBEL NOMINATIONS

• Only nominees put forward by qualified nominators are considered.

• Self-nominations are not accepted.

• The prize may be awarded to individuals or organizations.

Upholding the reputation of the prize is a tall order, in part due to the strictness of its rules. The committee’s choice for the annual award effectively ties the Nobel name to the future reputation of any recipient. The Nobel Foundation’s Statutes also forbid the revocation of any award.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese icon of democracy, fell from grace over her treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority in the decades since she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

Former US President Barack Obama was controversially awarded the prize just nine months into his first term, to the dismay of figures including Trump, who called on the institution to retract the award.

The decision to award Obama for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” soon appeared foolish after it emerged the president had told aides, referring to his use of drone strikes: “Turns out I’m really good at killing people.”

US President Barack Obama delivers a speech after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize at the Oslo City Hall in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, 2009. (AFP)

The Nobel Committee’s then secretary, Geir Lundestad, later expressed regret over the decision. “Even many of Obama’s supporters believed that the prize was a mistake,” he said. “In that sense the committee didn’t achieve what it had hoped for.”

Khatib told Arab News that the most basic requirement of the prize is that the recipient contributes to peace.

“I personally don’t know why Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” she told Arab News. “What was the achievement for which he was awarded the prize?”

The Obama controversy may well have sparked Trump’s desire to win the prize. He has referred to the 2009 award numerous times since, and has regularly expressed frustration over an accomplishment that he feels has eluded him.

This photo taken on December 10, 2009, shows protesters from the group The World Can't Wait during a 'coffin march' against US President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize after his announcement of a troop surge in Afghanistan. (Getty Images via AFP)

Netanyahu’s nomination of Trump, however, is only the most recent that the US leader has received. He was nominated separately by a group of House Republicans in the US and two Norwegian lawmakers for his work to defuse nuclear tensions with North Korea in 2018.

In 2021, Trump was also nominated by one of the two Norwegian lawmakers and a Swedish official for his peace efforts in the Middle East, including the Abraham Accords, which established formal relations between Israel and several Arab states.

Shinzo Abe, the late former prime minister of Japan, also nominated Trump in 2019.

Earlier this year, Pakistan said that it had nominated Trump for the prize in recognition of his work to end the country’s brief conflict with India. New Delhi later denied that Washington played a role in mediation.

WHO CAN NOMINATE

• Members of national assemblies and governments.

• Members of international courts.

• University rectors, professors, and directors of peace research or foreign policy institutes.

• Past laureates and board members of laureate organizations.

* Current and former Norwegian Nobel Committee members and former advisers.

Trump is also working toward a diplomatic solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has so far defied his negotiators.

A day after Monday’s White House meeting, Netanyahu’s office released a copy of the nomination letter — dated July 1 — seen by Trump.

“President Trump has demonstrated steadfast and exceptional dedication to promoting peace, security and stability around the world,” it said.

“In the Middle East, his efforts have brought about dramatic change and created new opportunities to expand the circle of peace and normalization.”

President Donald Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize when Bahrain and the UAE signed the so-called Abraham Accords with  Israel at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 15, 2020. (AFP/file)

The prime minister’s letter singled out the Abraham Accords as Trump’s “foremost achievement” in the region.

“These breakthroughs reshaped the Middle East and marked a historic advance toward peace, security and regional stability,” it said.

The description of the region as having experienced a historic advance toward peace will raise eyebrows in many parts of the Middle East.

IN NUMBERS:

• 142 Individuals and organizations have received the prize since 1901.

• 19 Women have been awarded.

• 28 Organizations received the award.

• 19 Years the prize was not awarded.

(Source: NobelPrize.org)

Yet the strange circumstances of an alleged war criminal acting as a peace prize nominator has parallels with the Nobel name’s own peculiar past.

The prizes were established through the will of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, inventor and industrialist who amassed a fortune after inventing and patenting dynamite. The explosive was rapidly adopted for industrial use but was also soon prized for its utility as a tool of warfare.

The first awards bearing the Nobel name were handed out just after the turn of the century in 1901, five years after the Swedish visionary had died.

Alfred Nobel built an explosives empire and left much of his fortune to fund the Nobel Prizes. (Getty Images)

They cover medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. An economics prize was later established by the Swedish Central Bank in 1968, but it is not considered a Nobel prize in the same manner.

Nobel’s wishes were for the peace prize to go to “the person 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.”

The strict codification of Nobel’s will resulted in the Nobel Statutes, a set of rules followed by the Nobel Foundation, which oversees the secretive process behind the five prizes. Judges are forbidden from discussing their deliberations for half a century after they take place.

The peace committee is the sole Nobel prize body in Norway, and its five members are appointed by the country’s parliament.

Nominations for the revered prize can only be submitted by specific people and organizations, including heads of state, national politicians, academic professors and company directors, among others. It is forbidden for people to nominate themselves.

Prominent Arab politicians have been awarded the peace prize.

Yasser Arafat was given the award in 1994 for his efforts toward reaching a peaceful settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict. In 1978, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat was recognized for signing the Camp David Accords, which were witnessed by Jimmy Carter, the US president at the time, who was later awarded the prize in 2002 for his work to promote human rights after leaving office.

For Trump, however, hopes for his long-desired prize will have to wait until next year; nominations must be submitted before February for the prize to be awarded in the same year.

At the time of publishing, the Nobel Committee had not commented on Netanyahu’s nomination, whether they had any reservations, or whether they would accept it.