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Europe can’t just hope for the best with Trump. Ukraine needs all the arms we can send | Frans Timmermans
After US vice-president JD Vance’s speech in Munich last month, most European leaders came to the conclusion that our world has fundamentally changed. The Pax Americana that long ensured peace, security and freedom in Europe is over. Anyone who still doubted this will hopefully now realise, after the disgraceful treatment Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy endured last Friday at the White House, that we can no longer rely on the Americans for our collective security.We must hope for the best, but hope is not a policy. We – the Netherlands, the EU, and all western countries standing with Ukraine – must prepare for the worst. The question is this: how do we keep Ukraine free and independent, and how do we protect our economy, our freedom and democracy, and our borders?This begins with the awareness that our security is already directly threatened by Russia. Trump wants to do business over our heads with this country. It appears that he and Vladimir Putin have divided Europe into spheres of influence like two mob bosses in a low-budget movie. As the saying goes: if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.The Netherlands is not an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; we are fully exposed when geopolitical and economic storms brew on our continent. It is the Russian aggression in Ukraine that has made our energy prices rocket. We cannot batten down the hatches and wait for the storm to pass. We are a medium-sized country with significant European and international interests. It is high time we acted accordingly.But political divisions at the heart of our government are leaving us exposed. The biggest party in the coalition governing the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, has a history of pro-Kremlin rhetoric. While other parties, such as the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), formerly led by Mark Rutte, are staunch advocates of unwavering support of Ukraine. Combined with an unelected prime minister, Dick Schoof, who serves no specific political party, the coalition government is rudderless and unstable.It is abundantly clear that our national scale is far too small to make a real difference. Today, we need the EU more than ever before. We must also work on closer ties with countries that share our sense of urgency and are not EU members, primarily the UK and Norway, but also Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The EU will also need to take a much firmer stance against member states such as Hungary that spare no effort in promoting Putin’s (and Trump’s) agenda.View image in fullscreenThe most urgent priority now is to support Ukraine. We must fill the gaps that Trump is leaving behind. Financially, this should not be too complicated, but in military terms, this is a different challenge. Russia will now intensify its attacks, so all available military equipment must be sent to Ukraine as quickly as possible. With additional financial support, we can also get the Ukrainian defence industry up and running at full capacity.The Russians are struggling more than it appears at first glance; sanctions are damaging the country, the losses are significant, and the war economy is creating large gaps elsewhere. Sanctions need to be scaled up much further, and all frozen Russian assets in the EU must be transferred to Ukraine immediately.EU member states must wake up and stop squabbling over trivial matters. The same goes for the Schoof cabinet. It is all hands on deck now. This means thinking creatively about European war bonds and finding the fastest possible way to bolster our defence in preparation for a confrontation in which the Americans may leave us to fend for ourselves. This requires investing in areas that the Americans currently cover within Nato. Moreover, it is vital for the overall resilience of Dutch society that defence investments do not come at the expense of our social safety net.In the longer term, we must first establish a partnership that provides the collective security guarantee of Nato without having to rely on the US. Crucial to this is the involvement of Britain and possibly Canada, and European countries that are not members of the EU. Therefore, it should go beyond the EU and perhaps also exclude countries, if these, such as Hungary or the nominally neutral Austria and Ireland, for example, do not want to participate.Second, it is of national security interest to make progress on a genuine energy union. High energy prices constitute the primary economic threat to this continent. This requires much more collective investment in energy networks, renewable energy, and also joint procurement of gas for as long as we need it.The Netherlands can play a leading role in all these areas, but it is not doing so. Because the coalition is deeply divided, the prime minister speaks too hesitantly, too late, and too ambiguously. Because the coalition is not allocating additional funds for Ukraine and is implementing utterly nonsensical cuts to the contributions to the EU, the words of support are literally and figuratively cheap. Because the largest coalition party is at best ambiguous and usually sides with Trump – who is now also siding with Putin – our government is adrift.Fortunately, there is still hope. The rudderless government may be on the brink of despair, but the people are not without hope, and our country is certainly not without prospects. The Dutch people see that the world order is changing. In such extraordinary, dangerous times, they deserve a decisive, united government.
Frans Timmermans is the leader of the leftwing alliance of the Dutch Green party and the Labour party (GroenLinks/PvdA)
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The US embrace of Russia is an existential threat to the EU. Germany must step up to save it | Catherine De Vries
In February 1945, three world leaders – Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and Josef Stalin – met in Crimea for the Yalta conference, to discuss the new world order they would implement after the soon-to-end second world war.Smaller nations were given no say in deciding their fate. The Soviet sphere of influence would infest eastern Europe for decades and US foreign policy dominated the second half of the 20th century. Churchill resisted the end of the UK’s global empire and independence for Britain’s colonies came piecemeal; they were let go with bitterness.Eighty years on, the logic present at Yalta – that large states can impose their will on smaller states – is back. Might is once again right. But history is repeating itself with a striking difference – for this time, there is no European leader at the table. Russian and US delegations have sat down to discuss Ukraine’s future without Ukraine or the EU’s input. Eighty years down the line, Europe is no longer seen as relevant by the great powers.The urgency of Europe’s shifting geopolitical landscape was laid bare last Sunday in London, where European leaders gathered with their counterparts from the UK, Canada, Turkey, the EU and Nato for a high-level defence summit. That meeting came as a result of the very public collapse of White House talks between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump, and Trump’s suspension of military aid to Ukraine.Even if a reported reconciliation between Washington and Kyiv materialises, European officials are still reeling from the rapidity of the transatlantic rupture so early in Trump’s second term. Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, last month warned Europe it could no longer rely on US security guarantees. JD Vance, the US vice-president, went further at the Munich Security Conference, calling Europe – not Russia or China – the primary US threat.Pax Americana – the postwar period of relative peace in the western hemisphere, with the US as the dominant economic, cultural and military world power – is over. Europe will quickly have to adapt to the new reality, with the loss of its primary strategic and military partner. What part now will the EU’s largest member state, Germany, play?Despite large gains by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which doubled its support in the federal election on 23 February, Germany will be led by Friedrich Merz, head of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The chancellor-in-waiting lost no time in declaring that Europe, faced with an increasingly adversarial US, must take its fate into its own hands.“It is my absolute priority to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we can actually become independent from the US step by step,” Merz said, hours after his election victory. Stark words from a politician who as recently as a few months ago was a bona fide Atlanticist.Merz wants to forge greater unity in Europe and establish an independent European defence capability. It remains to be seen how he will go about achieving this, but he clearly aims to put Germany back into the European driving seat.German leadership has been lacking in recent years. While Paris and Warsaw took increasingly assertive positions on European security, Berlin has remained cautious. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, spoke of a Zeitenwende – a turning point in German policy to reflect the new realities of the world. But, in the end, little but hot air was produced.Since the end of the second world war, Germany has invested relatively little in military capacity. Under the Nato umbrella, and with the close partnership with the US, this was not seen as a problem. But the world has fundamentally shifted, and Merz sees that Germany, finally, must change, too.However, an emboldened new Germany, at the head of the EU, faces a harsh world and an even harsher set of realities. The country will not only have to increase its military capacity, bring about bloc-wide military cooperation and perhaps even station troops in Ukraine, but it will also have to pay for all of this.This will require overhauling Germany’s strict ceiling on public borrowing, the so-called Schuldenbremse (debt brake) enshrined in the constitution. Merz has now begun that process; on Tuesday, his party struck agreement with its prospective coalition partners, the SPD, on the creation of a special €500bn (£390bn) fund to boost defence and infrastructure spending that would be exempt from the debt constraint. If approved by the German parliament, this would amount to a dramatic and some critics warn risky loosening of the budgetary straitjacket.Merz will also have to rally the EU (though Trump’s harrying of Europe and Zelenskyy is already pushing European leaders toward his vision), as well as face down Trump-friendly far-right parties, many of them in ascendence across the bloc.At a recent meeting in Madrid of the rightwing radical bloc of the European parliament, the Patriots for Europe, Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV in the Netherlands, praised Trump as a “brother in arms”. Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, expressed his support for Trump’s pro-Russian policy at the rightwing Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland last month. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel has said that “Trump is implementing the policies that the AfD has been demanding for years”.These rightist politicians seem willing to risk Europe’s security and prosperity for political gain. The US turn toward Russia and away from democracy will be an existential test for the European project and Europe’s commitment to law and democracy. The art of European cooperation has long been to achieve the possible in unforeseen circumstances. Germany, under chancellor-elect Merz, has a steep learning curve ahead. But the task of stepping up to save Ukraine – and Europe – falls to Berlin.
Catherine De Vries is professor of political science at Bocconi University in Milan More
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Starmer is at his best right now – but he must accept there is no going back with Trump’s US | Martin Kettle
Keir Starmer, it turns out, is at his best in a crisis. He has faced two since he became prime minister last year, one domestic, the other international. The first came with the riots that followed the Southport killings, when Starmer’s response was impressive and effective. The second is Donald Trump’s attempt to stitch up Ukraine, where Starmer has been surefooted in trying to hold the line against a sellout to Russia. In both cases, he has looked like the right person in the right place at the right time.There was another example of this deftness on Wednesday in the Commons, when Starmer went out of his way to mark the anniversaries of the deaths of UK service personnel in 2007 and 2012. A total of 642 died in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars alongside their US allies. They would not be forgotten, he said. The name of JD Vance was not mentioned. Nor was the US vice-president’s contemptuous “some random country” insult this week. But Starmer’s reprimand was unerring.It is far too soon to say whether Starmer’s response to Trump’s embrace of Russia and to the US administration’s denunciations of Europe will be effective in the long run. What can be said is that, in public and private, the prime minister has so far led with tact and clarity and has scored one or two apparent successes against the run of play. Nevertheless, these are very early days. Trump boasted to Congress on Tuesday night that he was “just getting started”.Starmer’s ability in a crisis is an unexpected contrast with his leadership in the ordinary business of politics. Since July 2024, Starmer’s calm, methodical, long-game approach has succeeded only in squandering much of Labour’s election-winning goodwill, and in making him seem out of his political depth. But his deployment of these same unflashy tactics at moments of acute crisis, as in the case of Ukraine, could be gold dust. It has at least given the prime minister’s ratings a boost. There are echoes here of the rallying around Boris Johnson at the start of Covid. But remember where that ended up.It is useful to note that this low-key approach marks a notable break. Throughout the postwar period, British leaders faced with international crisis modelled themselves on Winston Churchill in 1940. Margaret Thatcher saw herself this way during the Falklands war. Tony Blair echoed it after 9/11 and over Iraq. Johnson pretended he was Churchill when Russia invaded Ukraine. Starmer’s calm approach evokes Clement Attlee more than Churchill. In every way he is unTrump.Yet Starmer has not got much to be calm about. The world of 2024 no longer exists. Trump has triggered a crisis in the North Atlantic alliance. At stake are two epochal things. First, whether Russia’s main western border will henceforward be with Ukraine, with Poland or with Germany. Second, whether the US accepts any role in ensuring future European stability. These are not small questions.There are three levels on which Starmer can try to deal with Trump, both now and for the coming four years. All of them tacitly and sometimes openly recognise the vast seriousness of the moment. All of them are predicated on the undesirability of what Trump is doing and the need to create alternatives. All of them, however, also rest on a determination not to make an enemy of the US.The first is to firefight the immediate problems that Trump creates. This involves constantly engaging with the US administration by whatever means are available to prevent or mitigate crises. It means building up defence spending. It means working with allies and so-called coalitions of the willing. It means using any leverage to earn a hearing. Essentially, it is an attempt to manoeuvre Trump to follow a different or less extreme course, while avoiding confrontation or denunciation. But it is all done under the pretence that nothing fundamental has changed.View image in fullscreenThis is essentially the strategy that Starmer is now pursuing on Ukraine. It is why he keeps talking to Trump – three times in the past week, perhaps contributing to Trump’s relatively polite mention of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the speech to Congress. It is why he deploys King Charles’s soft power. It is why, perhaps, he will soon return to Washington with Zelenskyy and Emmanuel Macron in an overwhelmingly important effort to restore military aid and intelligence support to Ukraine.The second approach is to decide to suck it all up for four years, in the hope that things will then get easier. This means accepting the likelihood, though never saying so publicly, that Trump is always going to be destructive and mean-spirited. At the same time, it means working to keep US links – especially military and intelligence links – strong enough to be revived more effectively after 2028, when Trump is due to step down.For Starmer, this could mean a lot of firefighting over the next four years, without any certainty of a post-Trump dividend or British public approval. Such fires could break out on any number of issues, including not just Ukraine but also the Middle East, bilateral trade, Nato, US-EU relations and, judging by this week’s speech, Canada, Greenland and the Panama canal. Much will depend on Friedrich Merz and on Macron’s 2027 successor, too. Starmer and his national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, are also likely to have an intense under-the-radar interest in the candidates vying to succeed Trump.Which leaves the third strategy. This is to accept that Trump’s approach is now the US’s new normal and that there will be no comforting return to past arrangements. Whoever comes after Trump may be friendlier, more rational and less rude. Either way, US exceptionalism, isolationism and disengagement from Europe are likely to be here to stay. So too are the immensely tough consequences for countries like Britain, which can no longer rely on a US security and intelligence shield against Russia or any other hostile states. Rearmament is back. This will require something close to a war economy, and it cannot be created overnight.At present, Starmer has one foot in the first approach and another in the second. But it is the third approach that will loom largest as an option as the next four years unfold. None of these is a soft option, and all of them overlap. Starmer is right, for example, to oppose false binary choices between Europe and the US.Nevertheless, if Trump’s speech to Congress is to be taken seriously, this is a president who has changed sides in the battle of values between democracy and authoritarianism. Starmer may feel he has to tell Europe that Trump will still “have our backs”. But Trump could just as soon stab Europe in the back too. After all, that’s exactly what he just did.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist More
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Trump administration briefing: president threatens Hamas, leaves Ukraine in the dark and flip flops on tariffs
Donald Trump posted a fresh ultimatum to Hamas, telling the group to “release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you”.“‘Shalom Hamas’ means Hello and Goodbye,” he wrote in a social media post on Wednesday, in an apparent reference to the beginning of direct talks with the group.The post came just hours after the White House confirmed that the US had entered direct negotiations with Hamas, potentially to bypass Israel in securing the release of the remaining US hostages.Trump tells Hamas ‘release all of the hostages now’Trump posted a fresh ultimatum to Hamas and reinforced his support for Israel on Truth Social on Wednesday. He also referred to a recent decision to provide billions more in support for Israeli arms sales.“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say,” Trump wrote.“This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance,” he wrote. “Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!”Read the full storyUS stops sharing intelligence on Russia with UkraineThe US has stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine after Donald Trump’s suspension of military aid on Monday, in another serious blow to Kyiv in the war with Russia. White House officials indicated that both bans could be lifted if progress is made on peace talks.Ukrainian officials suggested the US would no longer provide information about targets inside Russia, hindering Ukraine’s ability to carry out effective long-range drone strikes.Read the full storyTrump exempts carmakers from Canada-Mexico tariffsDonald Trump has temporarily spared carmakers from sweeping US tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, one day after an economic strike on the US’s two biggest trading partners sparked warnings of widespread price increases and disruption. The decision came after companies appealed to the White House.A separate call between Trump and Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, did not lead to any larger breakthrough, however. The tariffs were predicted to raise US prices almost immediately, raising questions about Trump’s promises to “make America affordable again”.Read the full storyAgriculture workers to get jobs backThe US Department of Agriculture has been ordered to temporarily reinstate nearly 6,000 employees who were fired as part of Donald Trump’s efforts to downsize the federal workforce. The probationary employees are to be reinstated for a period of 45 days while a federal board continues to investigate the firings.Read the full storyWhite House rejig of Biden internet plan may benefit MuskThe Trump administration is preparing to overhaul a $42.5bn Biden-era program designed to connect tens of millions of rural Americans to reliable and affordable high-speed internet, in a move that is expected to benefit billionaire Elon Musk.Read the full storyImmigration hearing backfires on RepublicansA congressional hearing designed to criticise sanctuary city policies unexpectedly shifted on Wednesday, as a planned attack by Republican lawmakers instead dissolved into a platform that amplified Democratic mayors’ arguments about immigration and urban safety.The House oversight committee sought to portray sanctuary cities – which protect undocumented migrants – as havens for criminal activity and foreign gangs. But instead of cornering the mayors, Republican lawmakers seemed to inadvertently provide them with a national megaphone to sell their approaches to immigration.Read the full storyGreenland hits back at Trump takeover commentsDonald Trump’s claim in his address to Congress that the US will acquire Greenland “one way or the other” was widely condemned in Nuuk as “disrespectful” and was said to present an “unacceptable view of humanity”.Read the full storyPentagon official condemned over tweet about historical lynching of Jewish man The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has condemned a past social media post by Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson that disputed the innocence of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman whom most historians agree was wrongfully convicted of killing a 13-year-old factory worker and lynched in 1915 during a wave of antisemitism in the US.Read the full storyHundreds of US diplomats decry dismantling of USAid in letter to RubioHundreds of diplomats at the state department and US Agency for International Development (USAid) have written to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, protesting against the dismantling of USAid, saying it undermines US leadership and security and leaves power vacuums for China and Russia to fill.Read the full storyCanada goose fights off bald eagle in rare, symbolism-laden battle on iceFor the second time in weeks, a Canadian icon has emerged as the unlikely victor in an existential battle on the ice.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
Senate Democrats introduced resolutions condemning Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, and daring Republicans to object. A statement from the office of Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said: “The senators’ resolutions are statements of fact and principle, backed by evidence and long-standing American foreign policy.”
Trump’s veterans affairs chief has defended ‘extraordinarily difficult’ plans to cut 80,000 staff. Doug Collins said the cuts were necessary to make the agency more efficient – though they are likely to affect healthcare for veterans – as the largest federal employee union denounced the plan in a stinging rebuke.
The administration is dropping an emergency abortion case in Idaho in one of the administration’s first moves on the issue. The justice department filed a motion to dismiss the Biden administration lawsuit in a reversal that could have national implications for urgent care. The lawsuit had argued that emergency-room doctors treating pregnant women had to provide terminations if needed to save their lives or to avoid serious health consequences in Idaho, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.
The US court of appeals for the District of Columbia sided with the administration on Wednesday, in a ruling that allows the immediate removal of Hampton Dellinger as head of the Office of Special Counsel to proceed while the court battle continues. Dellinger is likely to appeal to the US supreme court.
“I want to believe that the United States will stand by us. But we have to be ready if that is not the case,” French president Emmanuel Macron said in a TV address on the eve of an EU defence summit in Brussels. In a sign of the gravity of the moment, Macron said France was open to discussing extending the protection offered by its nuclear arsenal to its European partners and said European forces could be deployed after a peace deal was agreed. More
- in US Politics
Trump is turning the media into a mouthpiece of the regime | Lawrence Douglas
You know we’re in trouble when Fox News emerges as the great defender of freedom of the press. But such was the case when Jacqui Heinrich, a senior political correspondent at Fox, responded to the news that Trump’s White House would now handpick the reporters who get to cover the president in small settings, with the post: “This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House.” Heinrich was specifically responding to press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s Orwellian claim that letting Donald Trump choose who would cover him was designed to restore power “back to the American people”.The fruits of the new policy were richly on display during the sickening scene that unfolded in the Oval Office last week. If the president and JD Vance’s disgraceful treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn’t bad enough, there was the unprecedented role that the “press” played in the unseemly drama.Here I’m not simply referring to Brian Glenn’s pugnacious demand that the leader of a war-torn nation justify his sartorial decisions – less a question than a provocation that served as a prelude to the pile-on that followed. Trump appeared to wink at Glenn, a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a far-right cable channel freshly included in the press pool, leading to speculation that Glenn’s question had been scripted in advance, a speculation that is both plausible – I mean, why not? – and irrelevant.For whether scripted or not, these are the kinds of questions we should expect when serious journalists are replaced with mouthpieces of the regime, puppets who perform the role of state propagandists in the guise of reportage. Glenn, who dates Majorie Taylor Greene and describes himself as “100% behind President Trump”, claims not to truck in far-right conspiracy theories – while insisting that January 6t was an antifa-instigated inside job and that a vast mechanism of fraud cost Trump the 2020 election.But before Glenn turned on the Ukrainian president, he had directed an earlier question to Trump: “Mr President, [do] you think ultimately your legacy will be the peacemaker and not the president that led this country into another war … ?” This puffball in the guise of a query gave Trump the opportunity to wax poetic: “I hope I’m going to be remembered as a peacemaker … I’m doing this to save lives more than anything else … Thank you, Brian, for that question. It was a nice question.”But we weren’t done with paeans to the great peacemaker. No sooner had Zelenskyy tersely assured Glenn that he would wear a suit once the war had ended, we were greeted with this question: “Keir Starmer … praised your courage and conviction to lead … What gave you the moral courage and conviction to step forward and lead?”In a properly functioning press corps, we might have expected that the question was directed to Zelenskyy, who, with exceptional fortitude and resolve, has led his countryin a war against a ruthless aggressor. But no. The question was directed to Trump, who responded: “Boy, I love this guy. Who are you with?” The answer was One America News, another network that operates to the far right of Fox, trafficking in conspiracy theories and committed to an unwavering support of Maga politics – and also a beneficiary of the White House’s commandeering of its own press pool.Once again, Trump grew almost wistful – “I like the question … it’s a very good question” – before blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel on Joe Biden. From there, as we witnessed, things grew more acrimonious, but lost in the belligerent and belittling treatment of Zelenskyy, particularly at the hands of Vance (“Have you said thank you once, this entire meeting?”) was the Pyongyang-esque quality of Trump’s hand-picked pool reporters using their questions not to challenge or examine, but to burnish and bolster the Great Leader with ever fluffier valentines of adoration.Meanwhile, the Associated Press remained barred from the historic meeting, because it continues to call a body of water that lies almost entirely outside of US jurisdiction by the name it has carried since the 16th century.
Lawrence Douglas is a professor of law at Amherst College in Massachusetts More
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C.I.A. Director Says U.S. Has Paused Intelligence Sharing With Ukraine
The C.I.A. director John Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that intelligence sharing with Ukraine had been paused alongside military aid to pressure its government to cooperate with the Trump administration’s plans to end the country’s war with Russia.Speaking on Fox Business, Mr. Ratcliffe applauded the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement on Tuesday praising President Trump and insisting that he supported peace with Russia. Mr. Ratcliffe said he thought intelligence sharing would resume.“President Zelensky put out a statement that said, ‘I am ready for peace and I want President Donald Trump’s leadership to bring about that peace,’” Mr. Ratcliffe said. “And so I think on the military front and the intelligence front, the pause that allowed that to happen, I think will go away, and I think we’ll work shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine as we have, to push back on the aggression that’s there.”On Tuesday, after Mr. Trump ordered a halt to military assistance, officials differed on whether the United States was continuing to share intelligence. One official said all intelligence that was not directly related to the protection of Ukrainian troops had been put on hold. Another official said that exception covered most intelligence sharing, and information still was flowing to Ukrainian forces.Mr. Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that Mr. Trump asked for a pause on intelligence sharing. And his comments suggest that the C.I.A. put at least some of its intelligence sharing with Ukraine on hold for a short time.Trump administration officials have said the pauses were a warning to the Ukrainians of the consequences if they did not cooperate with Mr. Trump’s peace plan. The details of those plans remain unclear. Mr. Trump has spoken approvingly of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and his aides have endorsed elements of the country’s ideas for ending the war.But European countries are trying to develop their own plan that could win over both Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky. More
- in US Politics
‘Resist’ shirts and ‘a little disturbance’: key takeaways from Trump’s Congress speech
Donald Trump delivered a divisive, falsehood-laden speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, touting the successes of his first weeks back in office even as his tariff policies have rattled global markets and his criticism of Ukraine has stoked backlash among European allies.Addressing lawmakers for roughly an hour and a half in the longest such speech to a joint session, the president’s sweeping proclamations and biting attacks on Joe Biden prompted many Democrats to walk out of the House chamber as Republicans offered Trump one standing ovation after another.Here are the key takeaways from Trump’s address to Congress:1. Democrats voiced their discontent, with one House member even being removed from the chamberAs Trump kicked off his speech, he boasted about his electoral victory over Kamala Harris in November, describing his win as “a mandate like has not been seen in many decades”. Trump won the popular vote by 1.5 points last year, whereas Biden won it by 4.5 points in 2020. Trump’s electoral college vote count of 312 surpassed Biden’s vote count of 306 in 2020, but Barack Obama secured 332 electoral votes in 2012.Trump’s comment struck a nerve with with Representative Al Green, a Democrat of Texas, who began shouting at the president. “You don’t have a mandate,” waving his cane as he spoke.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, then warned Green to “uphold and maintain decorum”. When Green continued shouting, Johnson instructed the sergeant at arms to remove him from the chamber.More Democrats voluntarily walked out of Trump’s speech as it went on, with some of them wearing black shirts bearing the word “resist”. Others displayed panels that read “false” and “save Medicaid” as Trump spoke.2. Trump doubled down on his divisive agenda and mocked BidenEchoing some of his most controversial rhetoric on the campaign trail, Trump warned about the dangers of “transgender ideology” and declared: “Our country will be woke no longer.”Trump repeatedly attacked his predecessor, labeling Joe Biden “the worst president in American history”. When Trump spotted Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat of Massachusetts, in the crowd, he again deployed his derogatory nickname of “Pocahontas” against her.Trump also applauded the work of Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), even as the billionaire’s efforts have sparked protests across the country amid layoffs of federal workers.“He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this,” Trump said of Musk. Pointing to Democrats in the audience, Trump added: “Everybody here, even this side, appreciates it. I believe they just don’t want to admit that.”3. Trump downplayed the risks of his tariffs despite warning signs in the marketsOne of the most noteworthy moments came when the president defended his trade agenda, just hours after Canada and China announced retaliatory measures after Trump moved forward with heightened tariffs against the two countries and Mexico.“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again, and it’s happening, and it will happen rather quickly,” Trump said. “There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that.”Trump’s escalating trade war has already contributed to wiping out all of the gains since election day for the S&P 500, and US retail giants have warned consumers to brace for price hikes because of the tariffs on Mexican imports.4. Trump called for an end to the war in Ukraine after his spat with ZelenskyyJust days after he and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, exchanged heated barbs in the Oval Office, Trump reiterated his desire to bring about an end to the war.Trump said he received a letter from Zelenskyy earlier on Tuesday, which seemed to align with the Ukrainian leader’s public statement that he and his team “stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts”.“I appreciate that he sent this letter,” Trump said. “Simultaneously we’ve had serious discussions with Russia and have received strong signals that they are ready for peace.”5. Trump repeated thoroughly debunked claimsTrump shared claims about the economy, social security and foreign assistance that have already been fact-checked and found to be false.The president claimed to have inherited “an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare” from the Biden administration. When Biden left office in January, inflation had fallen steeply from its peak in June 2022, and real gross domestic product consistently exceeded expectations in 2023 and 2024.Trump also repeated Musk’s incorrect claims that millions of dead Americans continue to receive social security benefits, pointing to the fact that at least one alleged recipient appeared to be 150 years old. But that data point reflects a well known flaw in the social security administration’s system in that it does not accurately track death records. A 2015 report found that only 13 people who had reached the age of 112 were receiving social security payments.6. Trump called for repealing a bipartisan bill signed by BidenRepublicans offered Trump repeated standing ovations throughout his address, even as the president called for repealing a bill that a number of them supported.“Your Chips Act is a horrible, horrible thing,” Trump said. “You should get rid of the Chip[s] Act, and whatever is leftover, Mr Speaker, you should use it to reduce debt or any other reason you want to,” Trump said.Signed into law by Biden in 2022, the Chips and Science Act has spurred investment in new semiconductor manufacturing sites in the US, and the bill was supported by 17 Senate Republicans and 24 House Republicans. And yet, Johnson and fellow Republicans still stood to applaud the suggestion. More
