The New Hampshire Union Leader is breaking tradition, endorsing Libertarian Gary Johnson over Donald Trump, the first time in more than 100 years the paper, the most influential in the state, is not backing a Republican for president.

The editorial, by publisher Joseph McQuaid, says that while voters "leaning toward Trump are understandably fed up with the status quo, of which [Hillary] Clinton is a prime example," they are kidding themselves "if they think Trump isn't pretty much a part of that status quo as well, or that he is in any way qualified to competently lead this nation." It goes on to call Trump a "liar, a bully, [and] a buffoon" who has "dishonored military veterans and their families, made fun of the physically frail, and changed political views almost as often as he has changed wives." McQuaid didn't spare Clinton either, calling her a "selfish, self-centered, sanctimonious prig."

The records of Johnson and his running mate, Bill Weld, both former Republican governors, "speak well of them," McQuaid concludes, and "in today's dark times, they are a bright light of hope and reason." Catherine Garcia

Just hours after U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson ruled Wednesday in favor of Hawaii's request for a temporary restraining order against President Trump's revised executive order to restrict travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., a second judge, in Maryland, has struck down another provision of the order.

U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang's restraining order is narrower than Watson's, and it targets a portion of Trump's order that prevents citizens of the six majority-Muslim countries from being able to be issued a visa. Like Watson, Chuang claimed that statements made by Trump and his advisers proved "President Trump's animus toward Muslims and intention to impose a ban on Muslims entering the United States."

The ban was slated to go into effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, but the federal judges' rulings block it nationwide.

"Let me tell you something, I think we ought to go back to the first [executive order] and go all the way," Trump told a rally in Nashville on Wednesday. "The danger is clear, the law is clear, the need for my executive order is clear." Jeva Lange

One person was injured on Thursday at the International Monetary Fund in Paris after opening an envelope that contained an explosive substance, The Independent reports. The incident comes just a day after police found a package containing an "explosive mixture" at the German Finance Ministry in Berlin, although it is not immediately clear if the two cases are linked.

The German package was sent via the Greek postal service and Greece's interior minister said it was delivered falsely using the name of a member of the country's center-right New Democracy party.

Counter-terrorism police are on the scene in Paris. Jeva Lange

On Thursday, Queen Elizabeth II gave her royal assent to Prime Minister Theresa May's European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, which cleared Parliament on Monday night, allowing May to invoke Article 50 of the European Union charter and begin negotiating Britain's exit from the EU. The queen's assent was the final hurdle for May, who says she will trigger the Brexit by the end of the month. Peter Weber

Christianity is the world's largest religion, but Islam is growing faster — and, according to Pew Research Center, Muslims will outnumber Christians by 2070.

If Islam brings to mind Syria, Sudan, or the Arabian Peninsula, BBC News reminds everyone that the largest Muslim country is actually Indonesia — though by 2050, India is projected to have that distinction, with 311 million Muslims (and a greater number of Hindus). Similarly, Europe won't be the center of Christianity by 2050 — less than half the populations of France and Britain will be Christian, while 10 percent of Europe will be Muslim, versus 2 percent of the U.S. In fact, 40 percent of the world's Christians will live in sub-Saharan Africa, BBC Monitoring says. For more context, watch the short BBC report below. Peter Weber

NBC's Chuck Todd had Breitbart News editor Joel Pollak on Wednesday's Meet the Press Daily, and they discussed President Trump's victory and why the president is supporting the unpopular House Republican health-care bill — "Trump has allowed Congress just enough rope to hang itself," Pollak theorized. "He kind of, I think, anticipates that this is going to run into problems and that then the stakeholders will come back to him for his own version of the solution."

Near the end of the interview, Todd asked Pollak about the article he wrote at Breitbart that is believed to have inspired Trump to tweet that former President Barack Obama had tapped his Trump Tower phones during the election — tweets that are still causing the White House headaches. "Did you over-write that?" Todd asked.

"The story about how this article was written is very simple," Pollak said: "It was late at night and I was washing dishes, listening to Mark Levin's show from earlier in the day, and I thought, 'Wow, that's amazing.' I had seen all these articles, but nobody had actually put the case together the way Levin had. And so I reported the way he put it together and I added some of the historical events that happened in between, to basically show that the government under the Obama administration had done some surveillance of individuals close to Trump or a computer server in Trump Tower."

Pollak and Todd argued for a bit over whether any of those stories of government surveillance had ever been confirmed, then Todd returned to Trump's reaction. "Should your article have been interpreted by the president as fact-based, or you were basically laying out a potential scenario?" he asked. Pollak replied that it was a scenario. "It's a set of facts lined up to make an argument about what happened, which is how many legal arguments are crafted," he said. "And the sources, in this sense, were unimpeachable because they were from the mainstream media — it wasn't, you know, a conspiracy website here or there." You can watch the discussion about the tweet-sparking article starting at the 7:50 mark. Peter Weber

"Huge news about Donald Trump... almost happened last night," Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show. Trump famously has not released his tax returns — "the only thing he hides more fiercely is the true color of his face," Colbert quipped — and at about 7:30 Tuesday night, "our friend Rachel Maddow unleashed a Force 5 tweeticane" by teasing that she had "Trump tax returns," adding "(Seriously)." But "when 9:00 came, Rachel took us on an emotional roller coaster," Colbert said, "because, like a roller coaster, at the end you're right back where you started and feeling a little queasy."

"Here's the deal: We know he's rich already," Colbert pointed out. "Be sure to tune in to Rachel's next special report, 'Wolf! Wolf! — An Exclusive Look at What the Boy Cried.'" And making Maddow's lame reveal even more underwhelming, the White House confirmed all the relevant numbers before Maddow went on the air, stealing what little thunder she had. "So apparently, I think this proves, if they think you already have the information, Trump's team is more than happy to confirm it," Colbert said. "I guess now is a good time to tell the White House that someone FedEx'd me a urine-soaked videotape — your move, guys."

The investigative reporter who received the two pages of Trump's 2005 1040 form in the mail, David Cay Johnston, suggested that Trump himself leaked the tax returns. "Maybe Trump is his own leaker," Colbert said. "It sounds crazy — I realize that sounds crazy — but it's no crazier than Kellyanne Conway suggesting our microwaves are cameras." He went over to the Late Show microwave camera and laid out various theories on why Trump might have done such a thing. "If you think about it, it makes sense," he said, after making a joke about tinfoil hats in microwaves. "And if you don't think about it, it makes even more sense." He ended with the most convoluted theory of all. Watch below. Peter Weber

On Thursday, President Trump will send his first budget proposal to Congress, and it's a doozy. Trump seeks to raise the budget for the Defense Department by $54 billion and give more modest boosts to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Homeland Security Department — mostly for building Trump's Mexico border wall and hiring more border agents — and cut everything else. The State Department and Environmental Protection Agency would see the steepest cuts (29 percent and 31 percent, respectively), and the budget would eliminate all funding for 19 federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Corporation for Public Broadcasting (PBS and NPR), the Legal Services Corporation, the Chemical Safety Board, and the Appalachian Regional Commission.

The first thing to note is that Congress almost certainly won't enact most of Trump's changes. Congress decides how much the government spends and what it spends it on, and the big hike in defense spending, for example, would require Congress to repeal the 2011 "sequester" cuts, something Democrats won't agree to without an increase in spending on non-defense programs, too. The budget, then, is a blueprint for how Trump wants to change Washington, and The Washington Post has a handy graph showing the outlines of those priorities.

The entire budget for discretionary spending is $1.1 trillion. To pay for a bigger military and Mexico border wall, Trump would not only eliminate the roughly $300 million the U.S. spends on the arts but also federal subsidies for Amtrak's long-distance routes, the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program — used to finance programs like Meals on Wheels and housing assistance — the Energy Star program, and subsidies for rural airports. Trump also proposes privatizing the U.S. air traffic control system.

"There aren't a lot of examples of presidents coming in and saying, ‘I’m going to eliminate this program and that program and cut a whole bunch of programs back anywhere from 10 to 30 percent,'" Robert Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, tells The Washington Post. "This is quite unusual." Peter Weber