U.S. President Donald Trump has been nominated again for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Trump on Monday that he recommended him for the prestigious award, handing the American leader the letter he said he sent the Nobel committee.

Trump has been nominated several times by people within the U.S. as well as politicians abroad — but that’s only one small step in the secretive process.

Trump’s previous nominations

Trump’s nominators have included a group of U.S. House Republicans and two Norwegian lawmakers. The groups separately nominated him in 2018 for his work to ease nuclear tensions with North Korea. One of the Norwegians nominated him again for the 2021 prize for his efforts in the Middle East, as did a Swedish lawmaker.

Not all of the nominations have been valid: The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects the prize winners, said in 2018 that someone using a stolen identity had nominated Trump at least twice.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, from left, President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, obstructed, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee listen during a meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Blue Room of the White House, Monday, July 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Nominations can be made by a select group of people and organizations, including heads of state or politicians serving at a national level, university professors, directors of foreign policy institutes, past Nobel Prize recipients and members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee itself.

Secret process

Once all nominations have come in, the committee — made up of five members appointed by the Norwegian parliament — sifts through them and ensures they were made by an eligible nominator.

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A person cannot nominate themselves, according to the committee.

The nominations aren’t announced by the committee, and the Nobel statutes prohibit the judges from discussing their deliberations for 50 years. But those doing the nominating may choose to make their recommendations public.

Nominations must be submitted before Feb. 1 each year — meaning any recent Netanyahu nomination would be for the 2026 prize. The winners are announced every October, with award ceremonies taking place on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.

The prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace were established by the will of Alfred Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. An economics prize was later established by Sweden’s central bank and is presented at the same time.

How to win the peace prize

According to Nobel’s wishes, the peace prize should 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 peace prize committee is the only one that regularly rewards achievements made in the previous year — and the prize is the only one awarded in Oslo, Norway. For the science-related prizes, scientists often have to wait decades to have their work recognized by the Nobel judges, who want to make sure that any breakthrough stands the test of time, in Stockholm.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama won the peace prize in 2009, barely nine months into his first term. It was met with fierce criticism in the U.S., where many argued Obama had not been in office long enough to have an impact worthy of the Nobel.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for work he did after leaving the White House.

By TERESA CEROJANO and MATT OTT, Associated Press

Wall Street was mixed in quiet trading early Tuesday as markets appeared to shrug off new tariff deadlines for U.S. trading partners.

Futures for the S&P 500 added 0.1% before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.1%. Nasdaq futures rose 0.2%.

Markets tumbled Monday after President Donald Trump set a 25% tax on goods imported from Japan and South Korea and new tariff rates on a dozen other nations scheduled to go into effect on Aug. 1.

The S&P slid 0.8% on Monday to its biggest one-day decline since June, but remains near record levels. The Dow and Nasdaq fared about the same, but the wild, tariff-induced swings of the spring seem to have tempered.

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Trump provided notice by posting letters on Truth Social that were addressed to the leaders of the various countries. The letters warned them to not retaliate by increasing their own import taxes, or else the Trump administration would further increase tariffs.

“Financial markets have reacted to news of higher U.S. tariffs in sanguine fashion,” wrote Chris Turner, ING’s global head of markets. “Presumably, the view is now that there are more deals to be done before the (Aug. 1) deadline.”

Just before hefty U.S. tariffs on goods imported from nearly every country around the globe were to take effect in April, Trump postponed the levies for 90 days in hopes that foreign governments would be more willing to strike new trade deals. That 90-day negotiating period was set to expire before Wednesday.

Amazon shares rose less than 1% before the bell on Tuesday as the online retail behemoth kicked off Prime Day, which beginning this year, lasts four days. Amazon launched the membership sales event in 2015 and expanded it to two days in 2019.

At midday in Europe, Germany’s DAX rose 0.4%, while Britain’s FTSE 100 edged 0.2% higher. France’s CAC 40 shed 0.1%.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 0.3% to 39,688.81 while South Korea’s Kospi surged 1.8% to 3,114.95.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index climbed 1.1% to 24,140.13 while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.7% to 3,497.48. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.1% lower to 8,590.70.

U.S. crude oil lost 17 cents to $67.76 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 6 cents to $69.52.

The dollar was trading at 146.37 to the Japanese yen, up from 146.01 yen. The euro rose to $1.1734 from $1.1714.

Aside from hype artists and White House spokespeople, it’s hard to find true enthusiasm for the sweeping new policy law, even among Republicans who voted for its passage. But because almost all Republicans did vote for it, with even the supposed deficit hard-liners mostly falling into line, the strongest remaining critiques are coming from the center and the left, with a special focus on the legislation’s cuts to Medicaid.

Given President Donald Trump’s promises to protect that program and the importance of Medicaid for many voters in his coalition, that’s the place of greatest political vulnerability and the likeliest source of short-term blowback.

But to highlight the law’s failure to address some of America’s most important problems, I want to imagine a different set of critiques, more associated with forms of conservatism than with liberalism or the left.

First (in the voice of a defense hawk), the law doesn’t do nearly enough for defense.

Defense

The United States is facing the most difficult geopolitical environment since the end of the Cold War, with multiple hot zones where our weaponry is needed and the threat of a rival superpower girding for potential war. Yet our defense budget is puttering along somewhere between 3% and 4% of gross domestic product, well below what we spent in the Reagan era and the war on terrorism years, let alone the early Cold War.

The new law does increase military spending, but as a one-time boost, not a sustained strategic commitment. That’s an insufficient response to our challenges in the Middle East, Ukraine and Asia, and a larger failure of vision in a multipolar age.

Family and fertility

Second (in the voice of a social conservative), the law doesn’t do enough for family and fertility.

No problem shadows the world right now like demographic collapse, and while the United States is better off than many countries, the birthrate has fallen well below replacement levels here as well. Family policy can’t reverse these trends, but public support for parents can make an important difference. Yet the law’s extension of the child tax credit leaves it below the inflation-adjusted level established in Trump’s first term.

This is especially egregious when you factor in the post-Roe v. Wade context, in which anti-abortion states have taken policy steps to support expectant mothers, but no national effort has emerged to match. Leaving abortion regulation to the states makes sense as a provisional political settlement, but leaving pro-family policy to the states (when anti-abortion states are poorer than average and harder-pressed to offer support) is a dereliction.

Entitlement programs

Finally (in the voice of Paul Ryan), the law doesn’t touch the entitlement programs that are actually bankrupting America.

If it’s reasonable to look for budgetary savings in Medicaid, it’s essential to look for savings in Medicare and Social Security. The future of American dynamism depends on preventing our commitments to retirees from crushing youthful entrepreneurship and family formation. But the new legislation goes in the opposite direction. Instead of means-testing entitlements, it offers temporary tax deductions to seniors, pandering to gerontocracy rather than resisting it.

In a healthier conservatism, all these critiques would have played a larger role in the megabill’s debate. And the American policy environment depends on conservatives engaging in these arguments, because they reflect a set of concerns that are more natural to the right than to the left.

Never raising taxes on the rich

But they are all connected to an issue where what comes naturally to conservatism is part of the problem, not the solution — the issue of taxation, and the absolute priority that the Republican Party still gives to never raising taxes on the affluent and rich.

That absolutism was tempered somewhat in Trump’s first term by the sensible cap on the state and local tax deduction. But the new legislation raises that cap and offers a larger tax break for heirs and heiresses in addition to extending the first term’s tax rates — and the law’s tax-revenue raisers are picayune by comparison.

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Just about the only notable right-wing media figure to question these priorities was Steve Bannon, and he was absolutely right. It is a policy impossibility, under inflationary conditions, to combine the existing commitments of Trumpism with the need to address national security threats and demographic decline if you rule out any tax increase.

It is a political impossibility to push through the entitlement reforms that the wisest Republicans would support, which would necessarily reduce benefits for some middle-class retirees, without asking affluent taxpayers to share some of the pain.

And it is coalition-shrinking folly for the GOP to persistently cut programs that benefit its own voters while always lightening burdens on wealthier voters who are trending toward the Democrats.

But it’s also clearly just Republican bedrock, enduring even through all the wild gyrations of the Trump era, awaiting some larger political or fiscal earthquake before it finally gives way.

Today is Tuesday, July 8, the 189th day of 2024. There are 176 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On July 8, 2018, divers rescued four of the 12 boys who’d been trapped in a flooded cave in northern Thailand with their soccer coach for more than two weeks. (The remaining eight boys and their coach were rescued over the next two days.)

Also on this date:

In 1776, Col. John Nixon gave the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, outside the State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia.

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In 1853, an expedition led by Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo Bay, Japan, on a mission to seek diplomatic and trade relations with the Japanese.

In 1889, the first issue of The Wall Street Journal was published.

In 1947, a New Mexico newspaper, the Roswell Daily Record, quoted officials at Roswell Army Air Field as saying they had recovered a “flying saucer” that crashed onto a ranch; officials then said it was actually a weather balloon.

In 1950, President Harry S. Truman named Gen. Douglas MacArthur commander-in-chief of United Nations forces in Korea. (Truman would fire MacArthur for insubordination nine months later.)

In 1972, the Nixon administration announced a deal to sell $750 million in grain to the Soviet Union. (However, the Soviets were also engaged in secretly buying subsidized American grain, resulting in what critics dubbed “The Great Grain Robbery.”)

In 1994, Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s communist leader since 1948, died at age 82.

In 2000, Venus Williams beat Lindsay Davenport for her first Grand Slam title, becoming the first Black female champion at Wimbledon since Althea Gibson in 1958.

In 2010, the largest spy swap between the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War unfolded as 10 people accused of spying in suburban America pleaded guilty to conspiracy and were ordered deported to Russia in exchange for the release of four prisoners accused of spying for the West.

In 2011, the 135th and final space shuttle mission began when space shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center.

In 2021, President Joe Biden said the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan would end on Aug. 31; in a speech in the White House East Room, Biden made an impassioned argument for exiting the nearly 20-year war without sacrificing more America lives, but acknowledged that there would be no “mission accomplished” moment to celebrate.

In 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated on a street in western Japan by a gunman who opened fire on him from behind as he delivered a campaign speech.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor Jeffrey Tambor is 81.
Drummer Jaimoe Johanson (The Allman Brothers Band) is 81.
Actor Kim Darby is 78. Children’s musician Raffi is 77.
Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck is 76.
Actor Anjelica Huston is 74.
Writer Anna Quindlen is 73.
Author and politician Marianne Williamson is 73.
Pro Football Hall of Famer Jack Lambert is 73.
Actor Kevin Bacon is 67.
Singer Joan Osborne is 63.
Actor Lee Tergesen (TV: “Oz”) is 60.
Actor Billy Crudup is 57.
Actor Michael Weatherly (TV: “NCIS”) is 57.
Musician Beck is 55.
Actor Kathleen Robertson is 52.
Christian rock musician Stephen Mason (Jars of Clay) is 50.
Actor Milo Ventimiglia (MEE’-loh vehn-tih-MEEL’-yuh) is 48.
Actor Lance Gross (TV: “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne”) is 44.
Actor Sophia Bush is 43.
Actor Maya Hawke is 27.
Actor Jaden Smith is 27.