A look at Trump's Board of Peace and who has been invited

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Board of Peace led by U.S. President Donald Trump was originally envisioned as a small group of world leaders overseeing the Gaza ceasefire plan. 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.

More details are expected when Trump participates in an announcement about the Board of Peace on Thursday at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

The board's charter has not yet been made public, but a draft version obtained by The Associated Press indicates much of the power will be concentrated Trump's hands. A $1 billion contribution secures permanent membership, the draft says.

Here’s what to know:

The Trump administration now seems to envision the Board of Peace with a far broader scope beyond Gaza.

When asked by a reporter Tuesday if the board should replace the U.N., Trump said, “It might.” He asserted that the world body “hasn’t been very helpful" and “has never lived up to its potential” but also said the U.N. should continue ”because the potential is so great.”

In letters sent Friday to various world leaders inviting them to the board, Trump said it would “embark on a bold new approach to resolving global conflict," suggesting it could act as a rival to the U.N. Security Council, the most powerful body of the global organization created in the wake of World War II.

A draft charter for the board, obtained from a European diplomat and confirmed by a U.S. official as accurate as of Monday, uses expansive language to describe its ambitions.

It emphasizes “the need for a more nimble and effective international peace-building body” and says “durable peace” requires “the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed.” It adds an aim to “secure peace in places where it has for too long proven elusive.”

Under the charter, the chairman — which Trump says will be him — has the power to invite member states, break any ties in a vote, decide how frequently it meets, and create or dissolve subsidiary entities.

The expenses of the Board of Peace will be funded by contributions from member states, which serve three-year terms. Members who pay “more than one billion United States dollars in cash” during their first year can have a permanent place on the board, the draft says.

The draft is under constant revision, is not finalized and may undergo significant changes, according to the U.S. official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

So far, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Argentina and Belarus have agreed to take part.

Invitation letters from Trump also have been sent to Paraguay’s leader Santiago Peña, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Plus, Russia, Israel, India, Slovenia, Thailand and the European Union’s executive arm have said they received invitations.

The Kremlin is now “studying the details” and will seek clarity of “all the nuances” in contacts with the U.S., Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Trump confirmed Monday night that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been invited.

Israel has been asked to join, though it’s not known whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted the offer, said an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a behind-the-scenes diplomatic matter.

Netanyahu’s office earlier said the makeup of the board — including Turkey, a key regional rival — wasn’t coordinated with the Israeli government and “is contrary to its policy,” without clarifying its objections. Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has criticized the board and called for Israel to take unilateral responsibility for Gaza's future.

It was not immediately clear how many or which other leaders would receive invitations.

France — which is at odds with the Trump administration over its desire to take over Greenland, a self-governing territory overseen by NATO ally Denmark — does not plan to join the Board of Peace so far.

“Yes to implementing the peace plan presented by the president of the United States, which we wholeheartedly support, but no to creating an organization as it has been presented, which would replace the United Nations,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Tuesday.

Told late Monday that French President Emmanuel Macron was unlikely to join, Trump said, “Well, nobody wants him because he’s going to be out of office very soon.”

A day later, Trump called Macron “a friend of mine” but reiterated that the French leader is “not going to be there very much longer.”

The White House said an executive board will work to carry out the vision of the Board of Peace.

The executive board’s members include U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, World Bank President Ajay Banga, and Trump’s deputy national security adviser Robert Gabriel.

The White House also announced the members of another board, the Gaza Executive Board, which, according to the ceasefire, will be in charge of implementing the tough second phase of the agreement. That includes deploying an international security force, disarming Hamas and rebuilding the war-devastated territory.

Nickolay Mladenov, a former Bulgarian politician and U.N. Mideast envoy, is to serve as the Gaza executive board’s representative overseeing day-to-day matters. Additional members include: Witkoff, Kushner, Blair, Rowan, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan; Qatari diplomat Ali Al-Thawadi; Hassan Rashad, director of Egypt’s General Intelligence Agency; Emirati minister Reem Al-Hashimy; Israeli businessman Yakir Gabay; and Sigrid Kaag, the Netherlands’ former deputy prime minister and a Mideast expert.

The board also will supervise a newly appointed committee of Palestinian technocrats who will be running Gaza’s day-to-day affairs.

Associated Press writers Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel, Matthew Lee and Aamer Madhani in Washington and Catherine Gaschka in Paris contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

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

ATLANTA (AP) — With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures in the nation’s northern tier, a new storm is set to emerge this weekend that could coat roads, trees and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the South.

The storm arriving late this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be a “widespread potentially catastrophic event from Texas to the Carolinas,” said Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“I don’t know how people are going to deal with it,” he said.

Forecasters on Tuesday warned that the ice could weigh down trees and power lines, triggering widespread outages.

“If you get a half of an inch of ice — or heaven forbid an inch of ice — that could be catastrophic,” said Keith Avery, CEO of the Newberry Electric Cooperative in South Carolina.

Here's what to know:

The National Weather Service warned of "great swaths of heavy snow, sleet, and treacherous freezing rain” starting Friday in much of the nation’s midsection and then shifting toward the East Coast through Sunday.

Temperatures will be slow to warm in many areas, meaning ice that forms on roads and sidewalks might stick around, forecasters say.

The exact timing of the approaching storm — and where it is headed — remained uncertain on Tuesday. Forecasters say it can be challenging to predict precisely which areas could see rain and which ones could be punished with ice.

An extremely cold arctic air mass is set to dive south from Canada, setting up a clash with the cold temperatures and rain that will be streaming eastward across the southern U.S.

“This is extreme, even for this being the peak of winter,” National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Jackson said of the cold temperatures.

When the cold air meets the rain, the likely result will be “a major winter storm with very impactful weather, with all the moisture coming up from the Gulf and encountering all this particularly cold air that’s spilling in,” Jackson said.

An atmospheric river of moisture could be in place by the weekend, pulling precipitation across Texas and other states along the Gulf Coast and continuing across Georgia and the Carolinas, forecasters said.

“Global models are painting a concerning picture of what this weekend could look like, with an increasingly strong signal for ice storm potential across North Georgia and portions of central Georgia,” according to the National Weather Service's Atlanta office.

If significant accumulations of ice strike metro Atlanta, it could be a problem through the weekend since low temperatures early Monday are expected to be around 22 degrees (minus 5.6 Celsius) in Atlanta. The city's high temperature on Monday is forecast to be around 35 degrees (1.7 Celsius).

Travel is a major concern, as southern states have less equipment to remove snow and ice from roads, and extremely cold temperatures expected after the storm could prevent ice from melting for several days. In Michigan, more than 100 vehicles crashed into each other or slid off an interstate southwest of Grand Rapids on Monday.

The storm is also expected to impact many of the nation’s major hub airports, including those in Dallas; Atlanta; Memphis, Tennessee; and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Unusually cold temperatures are already in place across much of the northern tier of the U.S., but the blast of arctic air expected later this week “will be the coldest yet,” Jackson said.

“There’s a large sprawling vortex of low pressure centered over Hudson Bay,” Jackson said of the sea in northern Canada that’s connected to the Arctic Ocean. “And this is dominating the weather over all of North America.”

Some of the storm’s earliest impacts could be in Texas on Friday, as the arctic air mass slides south through much of the state, National Weather Service forecaster Sam Shamburger said in a briefing on the storm.

“At the same time, we’re expecting rain to move into much of the state,” Shamburger said.

Low temperatures could fall into the 20s or even the teens in parts of Texas by Saturday, with the potential for a wintery mix of weather in the northern part of the state.

Forecasters cautioned that significant uncertainty remains, particularly over how much ice or snow could fall across north and central Texas.

“It’s going to be a very difficult forecast,” Shamburger said.

In Little Rock, Arkansas, a steady stream of customers on Tuesday were stocking up on supplies at Fuller and Son Hardware.

“Right now parents of young children are getting sleds,” said James Carter, the company’s director of operations.

People were also getting shovels, ice-melting products and covers for outside faucets to keep them from freezing, since low temperatures in the Little Rock area are forecast to fall into the teens, he said.

Panjwani reported from Washington. Associated Press Writers Seth Borenstein in Washington and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed.

A protective coating of ice clings to a strawberry flower in sub-freezing temperatures at a field Friday, Jan. 16, 2026, in Plant City, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

A person clears snow from their driveway during a winter storm warning in Walker, Mich. on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)

Vehicles are driven through whiteout conditions along Lake Michigan Drive during a winter storm warning in Ottawa County, Mich. on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)