Trump rescinds Canada’s invite to join his Board of Peace amid feud with Carney
Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, after speaking in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (Renaud Philippe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump rescinded an invitation for Canada to join his newly-formed “Board of Peace” amid his escalating feud with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The move, which Trump announced late Thursday in a social media post, came after Carney’s headline-making speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which he warned the rules-based international order largely steered by American hegemony was in the midst of a “rupture.”
“Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time,” Trump posted online as he returned to Washington from Switzerland.
Trump hosted a signing ceremony for his Board of Peace on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum earlier this week. More than two dozen countries have signed on so far, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, though notably none of the U.S.’s major European allies have done so. France, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom have either declined the invitation or expressed significant reservations about the board. The Vatican said Pope Leo, the first American pope, has been asked to join the board and is evaluating the invitation.
Carney, in his address to the gathering of government officials and business leaders, called on middle powers to come together to avoid falling victim to coercion from larger and more powerful nations.
“Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Carney said.
Carney added, “We shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong, if we choose to wield them together.”
The Canadian leader, without explicitly mentioning Trump by name, also directly criticized the U.S. threat of tariffs for U.S. allies that opposed Trump’s aim to acquire Greenland and made clear Canada’s support for the Danish territory’s sovereignty.
President Trump, the next day, swiped at Carney’s remarks and said the U.S.’s northern neighbor should be “grateful.”
“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us. By the way, they should be grateful also, but they’re not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful. They should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements,” Trump said in his WEF speech.
Carney pushed back on Trump in remarks delivered in Quebec City on Thursday.
“Canada and the United States have built a remarkable partnership in the economy, in security, and in rich cultural exchange,” Carney said. “But Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian.”
Tensions have flared between Trump and Carney for months over tariffs and over Trump’s repeated calls since his return to office to have Canada become the 51st state of the U.S.
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media traveling on Air Force One while heading to Miami on March 7, 2026. President Trump and other members of the government attended the dignified transfer of six soldiers from the 103rd Sustainment Command who were killed in action by an Iranian drone strike on March 1 in Port of Shuaiba, Kuwait, during Operation Epic Fury. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Ten days into the U.S. war with Iran, Americans are starting to feel the economic fallout as oil and gas prices soar.
Gas prices skyrocketed to a national average of $3.47 on Monday, up nearly 50 cents from last week, according to data from AAA. Plus, oil prices on Monday surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 before falling lower later in the day.
President Donald Trump has dismissed the higher cost, telling ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce it’s “a little glitch.”
“I think it’s fine. It’s a little glitch. We had to take this detour,” Trump told ABC’s Bruce in an interview on Sunday before going on to tout the U.S. military campaign against Tehran.
In a social media post on Sunday night, Trump argued: “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace.”
Yet the cost of living remains one of the biggest issues heading into the 2026 midterms, where Trump and Republicans are seeking to maintain narrow majorities in Congress.
A poll released by NBC News on Sunday found Trump received his lowest ratings in the poll on his handling of inflation and the cost of living as 36% of registered voters approve and 62% disapprove.
On Iran, the NBC poll found a majority of registered voters (54%) disapproved of Trump’s handling of the matter.
Trump, on the 2024 campaign trail, vowed to bring gas down below $2 a gallon. During the first year of his second term, Trump routinely pointed to the drop in prices at the pump, including in his State of the Union address last month.
“Gasoline, which reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor and was, quite honestly, a disaster, is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places $1.99 a gallon,” Trump said in his speech on Feb. 24.
Now, gas prices are closing in on $3.50 a gallon and are expected to continue to keep rising the longer the Middle East conflict lasts.
Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, told ABC News Live that Americans are currently experiencing “sticker shock.”
“Gas stations are seeing their costs go up in real time again today, as oil markets are jumping, and that’s going to be in another round of price increases over the course of this week, prices could jump another 15 to 35 cents a gallon for gasoline over the next three days, as long as nothing changes,” De Haan said. “And it’s going to be worse for the price of diesel, which could jump 35 to 50 cents a gallon, that would put it close to nearly a $5 a gallon national average.”
Some Democrats are seizing on the price jump to criticize Trump and the administration for the handling of the war.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has called for President Trump to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to alleviate the financial burden for Americans.
“American families are suffering from higher prices as the effects of Trump’s reckless war become pain at the gas pump and beyond as high gas prices trickle down making everything more expensive,” Schumer said in a statement on Sunday. “They cannot afford to simply wait and hope prices come down. The President has a solution right here at home, and he should use it.”
“Trump promised a Golden Age in America. Meanwhile. Republicans are crashing the economy, gas prices are out of control and the extremists are spending billions dropping bombs in the Middle East. You deserve better,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also a New York Democrat, wrote on X on Monday.
Trump was asked over the weekend if he would use the SPR to bring some relief, but declined to say, instead criticizing former President Joe Biden’s use of the reserve. Biden released oil from the SPR several times over the course of 2022 as prices increased due to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“I filled it up and he brought it down to the lowest level it’s ever been. We will start at the appropriate time, which is basically a gut instinct, we will start filling up,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday.
“Biden used them so that he could get some extra votes in the election,” Trump added.
Analysts previously told ABC News that the SPR is a “valuable resource” for the administration to bring some relief to Americans and assuage market fears, but likely wouldn’t be enough oil in the long term to make up for the 20 million barrels of oil currently being prevented from passing through the Strait of Hormuz every day.
Trump told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade in an interview on Sunday night that ships holding at the Strait of Hormuz need to “show some guts” and push through the channel.
Several war-risk insurers have canceled their coverage for vessels amid the widening conflict. Trump said the U.S. government was going to provide some risk insurance and guarantees, and if necessary the U.S. Navy would escort tankers through the strait.
Like Trump, several Republicans are contending that higher gas prices will be temporary.
“The prices will come back down as soon as we get out of Iran, as soon as we finish turning them into fish food, which will be pretty soon,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy said on Fox News on Sunday.
How long the Iran war will last remains an open question. President Trump initially estimated four to five weeks for the U.S., though he later said the timeline would be whatever it takes.
On Sunday, Trump told ABC’s Bruce: “I don’t know. I never predict. All I can say is we are ahead of schedule both in terms of lethality and in terms of time.”
GasBuddy’s De Haan told ABC News Live that the longer the conflict lasts, the more time it will take to see oil and gas prices to get back to their previous levels
“Every day the situation continues, it could add another several weeks to the recovery time,” De Haan said.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray, Nicholas Kerr, Soo Youn and Max Zahn contributed to this report.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi delivers remarks on an arrest connected to the 2012 U.S. Embassy attack in Benghazi, at the Department of Justice on February 6, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing a grilling Wednesday as she testifies before the House Judiciary Committee amid multiple controversies.
She will likely be questioned about her handling of the Epstein files, the Justice Department’s targeting of President Donald Trump’s political foes, and the FBI raid seizing 2020 ballots in Georgia amid the president’s baseless claims of election fraud.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been sharply critical of the Department’s incomplete release of the Epstein files and extensive DOJ redactions after some viewed unredacted files at the agency beginning Monday.
Tensions are expected to be strong as a group of Epstein survivors are seated behind Bondi. The group spoke out about the federal investigation into the convicted sex offender earlier Wednesday.
She could also be grilled about her efforts to revive cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York’s Democratic Attorney General Tish James after indictments against them were tossed.
Bondi is also set to face questions about the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — something administration officials have said was a law enforcement operation. Given that, questions have been raised about why the attorney general was not present to discuss the matter at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago news conference announcing the raid.
The attorney general has testified on Capitol Hill only a handful of times.
In her most recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she appeared to use prepared lines of attack against Democratic lawmakers who demanded she answer their tough questions.
Ghislaine Maxwell October 18, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, invoked the Fifth Amendment during the closed-door virtual deposition before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, according to Chairman James Comer.
It was expected that Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison in Texas, would refuse to answer questions from lawmakers and committee staffers as part of the panel’s investigation into the late financier and his ties to some of the world’s most powerful figures in politics, business and entertainment. Epstein, a convicted sex offender, died by suicide in 2019 while at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
Maxwell has a petition pending in federal court in New York which seeks to overturn her conviction or reduce her sentence.
Some committee lawmakers were expected to attend the closed deposition.
The deposition was more than six months in the making, and was first requested last July, when Comer formally issued a subpoena for a deposition with Maxwell to occur at Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee on Aug. 11.
Comer agreed to delay the deposition as Maxwell awaited a Supreme Court ruling on her appeal, which she ultimately lost.
During that interview, Maxwell told Blanche that she never witnessed nor heard of any criminal or inappropriate activity by President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, nor any of the well-known men who associated with Epstein, according to the sources.
The closed deposition with Maxwell comes on the same day that members of Congress can go to the Department of Justice to view unredacted versions of the Epstein files that the department has withheld from public disclosure.
