As NATO member states struggle to meet their defense spending goals and war rages on Europe’s eastern front, officials are struggling to agree on a plan to shore up hundreds of billions of dollars to bolster defenses. 

Eight NATO countries did not meet their 2% target for defense spending in 2024. And as many member states struggle with chronically stressed budgets, calls to meet those goals are not being heeded quickly. 

The European Commission estimates about 500 billion euros, the equivalent of $524 billion in investments, are needed in the coming decade to defend Europe against evolving threats. 

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The EU’s budget cannot be used to fund defense directly, and some European officials and NATO experts are proposing a global defense bank to dole out funds for military modernization. 

A defense, security and resilience (DSR) bank would issue bonds backed by AAA ratings for financially strapped countries to upgrade their defenses and would provide guarantees for commercial banks to offer credit to defense suppliers. 

“This is not a substitute to raising defense spending in each of these countries. I think it should be a supplemental tool,” Giedrimas Jeglinskas, chairman of the national security committee in the Lithuanian parliament and a former NATO official, told Fox News Digital. 

His remarks echo those of incoming President Trump, who has long threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO due to the number of nations missing the mark on the 2% goal for defense spending. 

“I think we have to look at it also as an opportunity for the U.S. as well,” Jeglinskas added. “I understand the skepticism by Donald Trump of the World Bank and then the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and IFC [International Finance Corporation] and other institutions. I think there’s been a lot of capital deployed and a lot of investments that these banks or institutions do. The real impact is, at best, questionable. So, I think we have to have very clear KPIs [key performance indicators]. We need to build defense.” 

The United States’ $824 billion defense budget in 2023 equaled half of total defense spending by all NATO member states combined at $1.47 trillion.

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The return of Trump to the White House, coupled with a U.S. push to refocus on China, has left Europeans wondering whether the U.S. will have less of an appetite to defend Europe in years to come. 

More EU defense chiefs and foreign ministers have pitched the idea of issuing joint debt through bonds to finance military projects. 

But some countries like Germany have voiced concerns about maintaining their own sovereignty and a disproportionate financial burden on some countries. 

The DSR bank idea is explained at length in a new Atlantic Council report by defense fellow Rob Murray.

The EU’s budget cannot be used to fund defense directly. (Ukrainian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

“For allies across both the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions, the bank could go beyond offering low-interest loans for defense modernization to facilitating equipment leasing, currency hedging, and supporting critical infrastructure and rebuilding efforts in conflict zones like Ukraine,” Murray wrote. 

“An additional critical function of the DSR bank would be to underwrite the risk for commercial banks, enabling them to extend financing to defense companies across the supply chain.”

The goal would be to offer financing to small and medium-sized defense companies that often struggle with access to funds. 

“By providing loans with extended maturities, the bank would offer predictable and sustainable funding for defence modernisation. Its governance structures would align funding with collective security goals, such as upgrading arsenals and investing in emerging technologies,” Jeglinskas wrote in a recent op-ed for the Financial Times.

A defense, security and resilience (DSR) bank would issue bonds backed by AAA ratings for financially strapped countries to upgrade their defenses. (Alexandra Beier/Getty Images)

Asked how the DSR bank would get countries to agree on defense funding priorities, Jeglinskas likened the idea to the U.K.-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a military alliance that includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Jeglinskas noted the 33 trillion euros in European assets under management across the continent. 

“There’s really no political will, no risk appetite to move them anywhere besides the kind of bond markets where they rest now,” he said. “But several nations need to build that initial capital, and then, by using the sovereign rating to get to hopefully AAA in capital markets, raise that money from bond markets and to start funding defense programs.”

The European Investment Bank has doled out long-term loans and guarantees to European nations’ projects that align with EU policy goals. 

“But even they are struggling with kind of shifting their mandate towards more dual-use technologies is still not allowed in their funding package,” said Jeglinskas. 

“Of course, every other bank in Europe is looking at EIB for their signals. That signaling hasn’t been there yet. So, that’s the point. We need to create some sort of mechanism, and that kind of global defense bank would be one of the tools that we could use to rally the capital and really direct it toward defense. So, it’s really creating another multilateral lending institution.”

An Orange County judge on Tuesday barred a former boyfriend of U.S. Rep. Katie Porter from contacting her or her children for the next five years and said he had committed domestic abuse by sending the congresswoman hundreds of threatening and harassing messages.

Superior Court Judge Elia Naqvi said her restraining order will bar 55-year-old Julian Willis from contacting Porter or her family. The order will also prohibit Willis from discussing Porter with nine of her current and former colleagues, including employees in her congressional office.

Porter, an Irvine Democrat who is leaving Congress next month, obtained a temporary restraining order against Willis last month.

She said in court filings that Willis, her former boyfriend of a decade, began bombarding her and her loved ones with messages that constituted “persistent abuse and harassment” after she asked him to move out of her Irvine home in August.

Porter said Willis sent more than 1,000 text messages and emails, including texting her 82 times in one 24-hour period in September, and 55 times on Nov. 12 before she blocked his number. The messages arrived so frequently that Porter said she feared for her safety and her emotional well-being.

Porter said Willis had been hospitalized twice since late 2022 on involuntary psychiatric holds and had a history of abusing prescription painkillers and other drugs.

On Tuesday, Porter waited in an Orange courtroom for nearly three hours as the judge worked through a docket of more than a dozen domestic violence cases.

When Porter’s case was called, the courtroom was empty except for two reporters. Porter sat next to her attorney with her hands folded in her lap, speaking only when the judge asked her a direct question.

Porter said that she and Willis had dated for a decade and that he had never physically abused her.

Porter also said Willis had repeatedly violated the November restraining order by continuing to email her and her colleagues and staff.

Porter’s attorney, Gerald Singleton, read a portion of an email that he received from Willis that said: “Please inform the court that I violated the terms of your partially approved, out-of-state restraining order.”

Singleton said it was a “great concern” that Willis had told Porter and law enforcement in New Jersey, where he is now living, that the restraining order didn’t apply to him.

Restraining orders can last up to five years in California. Naqvi said a five-year order was justified because the couple had been together for a decade and because it was “very concerning” that Willis had repeatedly violated the court order.

Porter declined to comment after the hearing.

Porter is leaving the House of Representatives in January after losing in California’s U.S. Senate primary in March. She has been discussed as a front-runner in the 2026 governor’s race in California after Gov. Gavin Newsom is forced out by term limits, but has not said whether she will run.

Willis did not appear in court Tuesday and has not submitted a formal response to Porter’s allegations. He did not respond to a request seeking comment Tuesday.

He previously told The Times that he did not have a lawyer and that the “universe will deliver me the right attorney when it’s time.”

Porter’s court filings included 22 pages of emails, text messages and other communications among Porter, family members and colleagues who had received messages from Willis.

The filing also included messages between Porter and Willis’ siblings as they discussed trying to help him during his psychiatric holds and while he was staying in a sober-living facility.

In one email that Willis sent to Singleton in late November, Willis said he had visited Porter’s oldest son at college out of state and told him that he would “bring the hammer down on Katie and smash her and her life into a million pieces.”

He told Porter’s attorney: “That’s what I am doing — and now you are next on my list, you piece of garbage.”

In another email in the filing, Willis told Singleton he would file a complaint with child protective services about Porter, who has a 12-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old son.

Willis previously made the news in 2021, when he was arrested after a fight that broke out during a Porter town hall meeting at a park in Irvine.

The Republican attorneys general of Virginia and Montana recently filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to require TikTok to sever its ties with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the fate of the social media platform in the U.S. remains uncertain.

The amicus brief, filed Friday, came the same day President-elect Trump filed an amicus brief of his own, asking the Supreme Court to pause the TikTok ban and allow him to make executive decisions about TikTok once he is inaugurated.

In an announcement, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said he, along with Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and other state legal officials, had recently petitioned the Supreme Court to uphold the divest-or-ban law against TikTok.

The social media company has been intensely scrutinized over its parent company, ByteDance, which is connected to the CCP. In his brief, Miyares argued whistleblower reports prove ByteDance has shared sensitive information with the CCP, including Americans’ browsing habits and facial recognition data.

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“Allowing TikTok to operate in the United States without severing its ties to the Chinese Communist Party exposes Americans to the undeniable risks of having their data accessed and exploited by the Chinese Communist Party,” Miyares said in a statement. “Virginians deserve a government that stands firm in protecting their privacy and security.

“The Supreme Court now has the chance to affirm Congress’s authority to protect Americans from foreign threats while ensuring that the First Amendment doesn’t become a tool to defend foreign adversaries’ exploitative practices.”

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President-elect Trump smiles during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center Dec. 22 in Phoenix.  (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

Trump’s brief said it was “supporting neither party” and argued the future president has the right to make decisions about TikTok’s fate. Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesman and the incoming White House communications director, told Fox News Digital Trump’s decision-making would “preserve American national security.”

“[The brief asked] the court to extend the deadline that would cause TikTok’s imminent shutdown and allow President Trump the opportunity to resolve the issue in a way that saves TikTok and preserves American national security once he resumes office as president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2025,” Cheung said.

Trump’s brief notes he “has a unique interest in the First Amendment issues raised in this case” and that the case “presents an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national-security concerns on the other.”

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TikTok Inc. offices in Culver City, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

“As the incoming Chief Executive, President Trump has a particularly powerful interest in and responsibility for those national-security and foreign-policy questions, and he is the right constitutional actor to resolve the dispute through political means,” Trump’s brief said.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report.