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      Geography has given the US unrivaled security. Trump is destroying it | Gil Barndollar and Rajan Menon

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      The secret to American power and pre-eminence was best summed up more than a century ago.America, observed Jean Jules Jusserand, France’s ambassador to the United States during the first world war, “is blessed among the nations”. To the north and south were friendly and militarily weak neighbors; “on the east, fish, and the west, fish”. The United States was and is both a continental power and, in strategic terms, an island – with all the security those gifts of geography provide. No world power has ever been as fortunate. This unique physical security is the real American exceptionalism.Americans take this providential geography for granted: their country’s wars are always away games, and their neighbors are trading partners and weekend getaway destinations, not rivals or enemies. The ability of the United States to project power around the globe depends on technology and logistics, but it rests ultimately on the foundation of secure borders and friendly neighbors. But that may not be the case much longer. In threatening war with both Canada and Mexico, Donald Trump is obliterating America’s greatest strategic advantage.In normal times, one would be hard-pressed to find a pair of friendlier nations than the United States and Canada. Canadians and Americans share a common language (aside from the Québécois), sports leagues, $683bn in trade, and the world’s longest undefended border, more than 5,000 miles (8,000km) long. Americans and Canadians have fought side by side in both world wars, as well as in Korea and Afghanistan.Trump’s coveting of Canada is easy to mock and dismiss. Since returning to office in January, he has said repeatedly that he wants to make Canada the 51st state and taken to calling former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau “Governor Trudeau.” In what could be a satire of the post-9/11 ambitions of some American neoconservatives, Trump called the border with Canada “an artificial line” that “makes no sense”.But Canadians aren’t laughing. Living next door to a superpower that has fought multiple wars over the last 20 years and now practices a post-truth politics, they are angry and rattled.Liquor stores in Canada have pulled American-made alcohol from their shelves. The singing of the Star-Spangled Banner during hockey and basketball games has provoked boos from the stands. Airline travel from Canada to the United States has cratered, with ticket sales dropping 70%. Trudeau, not knowing he was on a hot mic, told his ministerial colleagues that Trump’s territorial avarice was “a real thing” and that they should not dismiss it as typical Trumpian bluster. Mark Carney, Trudeau’s successor, warned Canadians that the longtime partnership with the US, “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over”.Earlier this year, Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative party’s candidate in Canada’s national elections, enjoyed a huge lead in the polls and seemed destined to become the next prime minister. But Canadians’ dislike of Trump apparently helped Carney, a political newcomer and the Liberal party’s candidate (despite Trump’s criticism of Poilievre in a Fox News interview, perhaps because Poilievre, reacting to his falling poll numbers, pivoted to criticizing the American president). Carney’s poll numbers surged, Poilievre’s plunged, and this week, Carney won the election – but he’s not about to preside over Canada’s annexation. By Carney’s account, in conversations, Trump has brought up his vision of Canada as the United States’ 51st state, something Carney has dismissed outright.Americans are apt to find the idea of a security threat from Canada ridiculous. Some of Trump’s antipathy to Canada rests on its paltry defense spending, less than 1.5% of GDP, making Canada one of Nato’s laggards. But Canadian capabilities are critical for the defense of the American homeland. Canadian long- and short-range radars provide the bulk of the North Warning System (NWS), which guards against airplanes and missiles entering North America via the North Pole. A Canadian withdrawal from the jointly run NWS would diminish the United States’ capacity for strategic defense and deterrence. While such a move by Canada would normally be unthinkable, if it fears invasion, as it has reason to do now, it may take steps that have hitherto been beyond the realm of possibility.If Trump’s actions against Canada boggle the mind, his stance toward Mexico is more explicable, albeit far more dangerous. Trump came down that golden escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 and announced his first presidential bid with a diatribe against Mexican immigrants. In the decade since, the Republican party has come to view Mexican drug cartels, if not the Mexican state itself, as a major threat to the United States, even as Mexico has displaced China to become the US’s largest trading partner.With Trump back in power, the reality is starting to match the rhetoric. Active-duty US troops are now on the southern border and Mexican drug cartels have been officially labeled as foreign terrorist groups, providing the legal pretext for the president to order US soldiers to enter Mexican territory and destroy them. US surveillance drones are monitoring fentanyl labs in Mexico – by mutual agreement – but the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has ruled out their being used to strike drug cartels, something US officials have reportedly discussed.Although Trump issued an executive order on the first day of his second term, declaring an emergency on the US-Mexican border, the active duty troops he has deployed there aren’t currently engaged in law enforcement, which US law prohibits, only providing logistical support to Customs and Border Protection. But were Trump to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act at some point, that could change and the military could begin apprehending and detaining Mexican migrants.Any unilateral US military intervention in Mexico would be reckless. With some of the US’s largest cities just a few hours from the border, the cartels would have ample opportunities for retaliation, which in turn would provoke American escalation. Civilian deaths caused by US military strikes could unleash major domestic strife in Mexico, a country of 130 million people, to the point of creating a tidal wave of refugees. US geography shielded it from most of the consequences of its disastrous post-9/11 wars in the greater Middle East. But US luck would finally run out if Trump tried to rerun a version of the “war on terror” across the southern border.With wars raging in Europe and the Middle East and Trump toying with unprecedented tariffs on many US partners and allies, the fallout from Trump’s “America first” policies seem to be primarily in Europe and Asia. But the most gratuitous and serious threats to American security and prosperity lie closer to home.Barely three months into his second term, Donald Trump has damaged, perhaps even irrevocably, relationships with his country’s two neighbors and largest trading partners. Few US presidents have committed greater strategic malpractice. None have done it with such speed. If the president wants to identify something he has achieved that none of his modern-day predecessors have, this feat would certainly qualify.

      Gil Barndollar is a non-resident fellow at the Defense Priorities Foundation. Rajan Menon is Spitzer professor emeritus of international relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and a senior research scholar at the Saltzman Institute at Columbia University. More

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      Germany hits back at Marco Rubio after he panned labeling of AfD as ‘extremist’

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      Germany’s foreign ministry has hit back at the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, following his criticism of Germany’s decision to label the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party as a “confirmed rightwing extremist group”.On Thursday, Rubio took to X and wrote: “Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise. What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD – which took second in the recent election – but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes.”Rubio went on to say: “Germany should reverse course.”In a response on X, the German foreign ministry pushed back against the US secretary of state, saying: “This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law. It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped.”Germany’s response to Rubio comes after its domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), designated the AfD as a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force on Friday.The BfV’s decision marks a step up from its previous designation of the country’s anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin and largest opposition party as a “suspected” threat to Germany’s democratic order. According to the BfV, the AfD’s xenophobic stances based on an “ethnic-ancestry-based understanding” of German identity are “incompatible with the free democratic basic order” as indicated by the country’s constitution.The spy agency added that the AfD “aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, to subject them to unconstitutional unequal treatment and thus to assign them a legally devalued status”.It also said: “This exclusionary understanding of the people is the starting point and ideological basis for ongoing agitation against certain individuals or groups of people, through which they are defamed and despised indiscriminately and irrational fears and rejection are stirred up.”During February’s general election in Germany which was rocked by extensive US interference including public votes of confidence by staunch AfD supporters such as Elon Musk and JD Vance, the AfD amassed approximately 21% of the vote, finishing second.The far-right party’s rise to popularity in Germany has come as a result of a broader wave of growing rightwing extremism across Europe.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt the same time, public figures in the US have openly made remarks or gestures that are sympathetic to nazism, despite the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on antisemitism across the country – a move which has been called into question by higher education institutions and Jewish senators who accuse Trump of targeting free speech.Musk, who had been given the designation of a “special government employee” by the Trump administration, made back-to-back apparent fascist salutes during the president’s inauguration rally earlier this year.Last month, during a Capitol Hill hearing that sought to explore supposed government censorship under Joe Biden, Republican representative Keith Self quoted Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister under Adolf Hitler.“A direct quote from Joseph Goebbels: ‘It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion,’ and I think that may be what we’re discussing here,” he said. More

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      This hockey town in Michigan has deep ties to Canada. Then came Trump’s tariffs

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      There are few entities that embody the close, fraternal ties between the US and Canada quite like the Saginaw Spirit junior ice hockey team.In a place whose fortunes have been more down than up in recent decades, the Dow Event Center hockey arena in Saginaw, Michigan, comes alive with more than 5,000 fans once these young stars take to the ice. A huge banner depicting the players adorns the main street into the city.Nearly all the players, aged 16 to 20, come from Canada, and stay with local Saginaw families during the regular playing season, which runs from September to April.“They are family, almost literally,” says Jimmy Greene, the Spirit’s vice-president of marketing and community relations, “because players come over here and stay with American families. It’s more than just sport.”One of the top prospects of this year’s National Hockey League entry draft is forward Michael Misa, the Spirit’s 18-year-old Canadian captain. Last year, the Saginaw Spirit won the Memorial Cup of the Ontario Hockey League for the first time. In the season that recently finished, the Spirit played 28 times on Canadian soil.So the fallout from Donald Trump’s tariffs regime on Canadian goods has been felt more keenly in Saginaw than most other communities – as has the fight over the Canadian election, with the US president’s jibes over Canada becoming the US’s 51st state looming over the contest amid a fierce backlash against such comments.“We’ve had this relationship for decades and all of a sudden, in the last couple of months, it’s been uprooted,” says Greene.“Of course, you’re going to be concerned because you just don’t know [what will happen next]. At some point, it’s going to end up costing us. I just don’t know what extent and by how much.”As the largest city in the northern half of Michigan located within a short drive of three Canadian border crossings, Saginaw has closer ties to Canada than perhaps any other community of its size. Canadian companies own close to 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of farmland in the county, and last year, Saginaw established its first sister-city ties with a Canadian counterpart.What’s more, it is a key political bellwether and manufacturing county that helped push Donald Trump over the line in last November’s presidential election, but today the community faces uncertainty around the trade war with Canada.Michigan, with its vast automotive manufacturing industry, is set to be affected by Trump’s trade battle with Canada more than perhaps any other US state.After Trump announced 25% tariffs on Canadian vehicles and parts – with some exemptions – Ottawa responded with its own 25% tariff on certain US automotive products. Canada says the tariffs are unjustified, but on 23 April Trump warned that the tariff figures could go up.While Trump has claimed the US doesn’t need goods produced by its northern neighbor, Canada buys more American products than any other country, at $356bn worth of purchases. Nearly 40% of Michigan’s exported goods go to Canada. In 2023, $1.7bn worth of goods made in the Saginaw metropolitan area were exported, one of the highest amounts for any Michigan city, with much of that sent to Canada.Nexteer Automotive employs around 5,000 people in Saginaw while Means Industries, an automotive parts company headquartered in the city, also has a base in London, Ontario. Repeated calls and emails sent by the Guardian to Saginaw’s chamber of commerce seeking information on specific local industries potentially affected by the tariffs were not responded to.‘Sport right now triumphs over politics’Saginaw is no stranger to economic ups and downs.On a recent Friday afternoon, the downtown area is almost dead. Despite the recent success of the hockey team, there isn’t a sports bar for blocks in any direction as most of Saginaw’s commercial activity is now concentrated around miles of strip malls north of downtown.For Brad Pyscher, an officer at a correctional facility and former union president who, on a recent Saturday afternoon, is manning the Saginaw county Republican party office in one of these strip malls, the tariffs on Canada were something of a shock.“People are concerned, and they hope this works itself out,” he says. “The shock and awe [of the tariffs] really took everyone by surprise.”The 54-year-old says he had voted independent all his life before backing Democrat Barack Obama, and then Trump for president in 2016.“The thing with Trump, whether you like him or don’t like him, there’s transparency,” he says. “I’m drawn to him because he is not a politician.”But Pyscher concedes that Trump could have negotiated with Canada before “hitting them with that shock and awe. I think it’s on purpose, to let the world know he can do it,” he says.“[With] Canada, it should have been negotiated a bit better, a lot better. I’m expecting the deals with Canada to come soon, and we can all put this behind us.”Trump has said one of his main motivations for issuing tariffs on Canada was to stop the flow of illicit drugs into the US. However, reports indicate the opposite may be happening. Last month, $11m worth of cocaine was seized at the Port Huron border crossing, 80 miles (130km) east of Saginaw – on its way into Canada. In December, around 1,000lb (450kg) of cocaine were also seized in a semi-truck attempting to enter Ontario from the same border crossing.Back in the world of ice hockey, Greene of Saginaw Spirit says he feels most people he interacts with have been able to park their political feelings, starting with the organization’s Canadian players, who have been essential to the team’s recent success.“I think we all made a concerted effort, while not to keep [the players] dumb and naive, we did enough to make them feel comfortable in our environment and away from the political stuff. We kept them in a mindset of sport,” he says.But Greene also realizes the strained ties with Canada fueled by the White House’s policies are a very real dynamic.“I’m not immune to the idea that at some point Canada had some hostile feelings towards us, but people have, until this point, been able to park the politics away from sport. I think sport right now triumphs over politics,” he says.“Because we play in Canada, and [because of] the tariffs. I’m more concerned about how they feel about us. Our feelings towards Canada have been and always will be favorable and friendly. I’m concerned not just because of the economic tariffs, but because of the emotions that come from that. I’d be foolish to pretend otherwise.”Saginaw residents are hoping the kind of fraternal ties that were on display across the city last May, when hundreds of Canadian hockey fans from as far away as Saskatchewan descended on the region for the Memorial Cup, won’t become a thing of the past.“Everybody’s been super friendly. You guys have been incredible hosts,” one Canadian hockey fan who drove 11 hours from Quebec for the tournament told local media. More

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      Rubio comes a long way to become most dominant US diplomat since Kissinger

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      Marco Rubio, you have come a long way.From being ridiculed as “Little Marco” by Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries, the former Florida senator now stands – on paper, at least – as the US’s most powerful diplomat since Henry Kissinger half a century ago after his former nemesis appointed him acting national security adviser to replace the departing Mike Waltz.The appointment means Rubio, the child of undocumented Cuban immigrants, will be the first person since Kissinger to hold the national security adviser and secretary of state positions at the same time.Kissinger – who himself arrived on America’s shores as an immigrant – achieved that feat in September 1973 after being tapped to take over the state department following four tumultuous and high-profile years as Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, during which he helped pave a historic opening to communist China and was – contentiously – awarded the Nobel peace prize for ending US involvement in the Vietnam war.The backdrop then was Watergate, a scandal just gaining momentum at the time but which was ultimately destined to consume Nixon’s presidency. But it left Kissinger free to conduct American foreign policy virtually single-handed, at least until Nixon was forced from office.Today’s context is different, though hardly less turbulent.Trump has just completed perhaps the most extreme first 100 days of US presidential history, producing a sea of uncertainty, upending the country’s international alliances, shattering democratic and legal norms at home, and leaving even its future status as the world’s leading democracy unsure.This unpredictable landscape is what confronts Rubio in his new position.An orthodox Republican in foreign policy matters, Rubio, 53, has frequently appeared uncomfortable – occasionally miserable, even – during the first three months at the state department under Trump, never more so than during the disastrous clash with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February, when the Ukrainian president subjected to a public browbeating by the president and JD Vance in the Oval Office.In the Senate, he had been one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters against Russia’s invasion. He then saw that principled position so openly and brutally overturned and was forced to justify the volte face in public as Trump has conspicuously sympathised with Vladimir Putin.Equally galling has been Elon Musk’s gleeful gutting of USAID, America’s main foreign assistance agency – which Rubio has previously championed and which fell within his purview as secretary of state – under the auspices of the tech billionaire’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” project, also known as Doge.The tensions led to a shouting match between the two men in front of Trump, with Rubio reportedly responding aggressively to Musk’s accusation that he had failed in the mission of firing enough state department staff.Despite that unpromising background, Rubio – who was once tipped as a future president – now suddenly finds himself, in addition to being in charge of a still mighty department, having direct access to the inner workings of the White House and to the president himself.Even if it has come about thanks to the default of the less-than-surefooted Waltz – whose credibility never recovered from inadvertently inviting one of Trump’s least favourite journalists on to to a Signal chat about strikes on Yemeni Houthis – it is quite the turnaround.It puts Rubio in the same vantage point from which Kissinger, the renowned exponent of realpolitik and great power balances, carved out a role as arguably the US’s most influential – if highly controversial – foreign policy strategist of the 20th century.With Trump just as consumed with domestic political enemies as Nixon ever was, it raises the unexpected question of whether Rubio can achieve the same level of prominence.It seems unlikely. Yet even two months ago, who would have guessed that the once-derided “Little Marco” would hold the levers of power of two separate institutions in his hands? More

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      I live in the US and have a green card. If I leave the country, will I be allowed back in? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Let me start with a message to my wife. SORRY!!! I apologise in advance for everything you are about to read.My more sensible half, you see, is a US citizen, who keeps telling me (a green card holder) that I should stop making jokes about getting sent to a detention centre or deported.Not only are my jokes inappropriate; my wife seems to think they’re suspicious. “I think you secretly want to get deported so you can take a break from childcare and have a lie-in,” she said the other day. I can’t remember what prompted this allegation – perhaps a dire knock-knock joke about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials – but it’s obviously nonsense. I read that Guardian article about the British artist who was detained by US authorities because of a visa mix-up and she was woken up every day at 5:30am and given an Ice-cold potato. There are no lie-ins at Club Fed!Look, it should go without saying that nothing that is happening in the US at the moment is remotely funny. The fact that Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil was robbed of seeing his first child being born because he’s locked in a cell for protesting against a genocide is not funny. The fact that a judge has said that the Trump administration just deported a two-year-old US citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process” is not funny. The fact that Trump is disappearing people to a prison in El Salvador – and threatening to send “homegrown” Americans there next – is not funny.But while the US’s slide into authoritarianism is no laughing matter, I’m afraid I can’t stop making jokes. It is a compulsion, a sickness. It is simply how I cope with terrible situations. Although, honestly, I’m not coping particularly well. It feels as if everything has been unrelentingly bleak for a very long time now. It’s been over 18 months of watching helplessly as starving kids get slaughtered in Gaza, 100 days of Trump inflicting chaos and cruelty in the US. My nerves are shot.In an attempt to brighten things up, my wife and I have been thinking about where we might take our four-year-old this summer. But even a summer holiday isn’t straightforward any more. First, there’s the question of whether it’s too much of a risk to even leave the country as a green-card holder. I reached out to a few contacts who work in immigration law and civil liberties, expecting them to tell me not to be so dramatic and I’d be fine. But they all sort of went: “Ehhh, deportation is definitely a possibility under this unpredictable and lawless regime! You should be prepared! Even flying domestically carries risks!” So now, even though I am in the US perfectly legally, even though I have done nothing wrong (apart from the crime of being Palestinian), summer holiday planning involves extensive risk assessment – tickets, money, passports, a lawyer’s number in case things go south.Across the US, millions of people are making calculations like mine. Should I leave the country or not? Should I go to a protest or not? Should I delete my mean tweets about Trump in case a guard looks through my phone at the border? Should I carry a burner phone when re-entering the US – something foreign journalists are now being advised to do? You can see, amid all these individual calculations, amid all the self-censorship and self-policing, how easy it is for fear to spread and authoritarianism to take hold.While I may sound cavalier about all this, I am taking my situation seriously. I am lining up possible lawyers in case the worst happens. And I’m coming up with a comms plan. By which I mean I have picked out a cute picture of my dog for my wife to give to the press if I do get detained, in order to foster public sympathy. My dog is a scruffy little 8lb mongrel called Rascal who has lost a few teeth in his old age and whose tongue lolls out of his mouth. He has a face that would melt even the Trumpiest heart and he is my secret weapon. It’s very hard to get many Americans to give a damn about Arabs, but dogs are a different story. People will always go to battle for a dog.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump 100 days: ‘unpredictable’ US alienates allies and disrupts global trade

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      For US foreign policy, Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office were the weeks when decades happened.In just over three months, the US president has frayed alliances that stood since the second world war and alienated the US’s closest friends, cut off aid to Ukrainians on the frontlines against Vladimir Putin, emboldened US rivals around the world, brokered and then lost a crucial ceasefire in Gaza, launched strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and seesawed on key foreign policy and economic questions to the point where the US has been termed the “unpredictable ally”.The tariffs Trump has unleashed will, if effected, disrupt global trade and lead to supply chain shocks in the United States, with China’s Xi Jinping seeking to recruit US trade allies in the region.The pace of the developments in the past 100 days makes them difficult to list. Operating mainly through executive action, the Trump administration has affected nearly all facets of US foreign policy: from military might to soft power, from trade to immigration, reimagining the US’s place in the world according to an isolationist America First program.“The shake-up has been revolutionary, extraordinary. It’s upended 80-some years of American foreign policy,” said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former ambassador to Nato.The Trump presidency has ended the relative peace in the western hemisphere since the end of the second world war underwritten by US economic, military and diplomatic influence, Daalder said.“The foundation of the Pax Americana was trust, and once you break trust, it’s extraordinarily difficult to restore,” he said. “And restoring trust – trust in America, trust in American institutions, trust in American voters – it takes a long time to rebuild.”The US’s key foreign policy and national security making institutions are in crisis. The Pentagon is mid-meltdown under the leadership of Pete Hegseth, whose erratic and unsteady leadership has been reflected in score-settling among his senior staff, while a leaked Signal chat embroiled the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and others in scandal. The state department under Marco Rubio is undergoing a vast shake-up, and the US’s diplomats are being sidelined in favour of envoys such as Steve Witkoff with little background in foreign policy. Critics say the gutting of USAID will cut back on US soft power for generations.“There’s no better way to get us into a war, perhaps a catastrophic war, than essentially poking out your eyes and numbing your brain, and you’re left with Donald Trump and a few people sitting in the White House winging it, and they’re not competent to wing it,” said Steven Cash, a former intelligence officer for the CIA and Department of Homeland Security, and the executive director of the Steady State, an advocacy group of former national security professionals. “And so we’ve seen that with the tariffs. We’ve seen that with Nato. We’ve seen that with Ukraine, and we’re gonna see a lot more of it.”After assuming office in 2021, Joe Biden declared: “America is back.”“The world now knows America is not back,” Daalder said. “America is gone again.”In a recent interview with the Zeit newspaper, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, expressed similar sentiments, saying: “The west as we knew it no longer exists.”View image in fullscreenIn Munich, JD Vance delivered a landmark speech openly pandering to Europe’s far right, accusing European leaders of “running from their own voters” and saying: “America can do nothing to help you.”A backlash has begun. Last month the EU presented an €800bn ($913bn) plan on the future of European defense, a putative step in what would be a herculean task to overcome internal divisions and onshore European defense manufacturing. The UK and other US allies have considered other efforts, such as limiting intelligence-sharing with the US. “We still need America now, but there is a vision [of a time] when we won’t any more,” said one European diplomat.Meanwhile, the Trump effect is beginning to sway elections as well – though not as he might hope.In the western hemisphere, Trump has terrorised US neighbours and tacitly declared what some have compared to a new Monroe doctrine, saying the White House planned to “take back” the Panama canal and annex Greenland, while regularly calling Canada the future 51st state.In an extraordinary bit of election-day meddling, Trump wrote a social media post suggesting that he was on the ballot in Canada’s vote, repeating that Canada should become the 51st state in order to avoid tariffs and reap economic awards.Canadians responded by duly electing the liberal candidate Mark Carney, completing a 30% swing in polling that has largely been explained by opposition to Trump’s tariff war and territorial menaces.In Europe, populist parties seen as Trump’s ideological allies are also on the defensive. While Trump was popular in terms of his ideological and anti-woke agenda, the trade war has made him “quite toxic, just in the last month or two, with a lot of the populist voting bases”, said Jeremy Shapiro, the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former special adviser to the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.Nowhere has the shift in US foreign policy been felt more acutely than in Ukraine, where the sudden cutoff in US military and intelligence sharing confirmed the Trump administration’s goals of pressuring Ukraine to accept a deal with the Kremlin, rather than the other way around. Those frustrations boiled over into an Oval Office meltdown fueled by Vice-President JD Vance that one former US official close to the talks called “disgraceful”.Trump has swung wildly on the war, on certain days targeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and then quickly pivoting to call out Putin for continuing to rain down missiles on Ukrainian cities. His theatrics have produced symbolic moments, including a sudden recognition that “maybe [Putin] doesn’t want to stop the war” after speaking with Zelenskyy this weekend in the baptistry of St Peter’s Basilica. But in terms of hard results, Trump has not fulfilled a promise to end the war within 24 hours or produced a clear path to peace many months later.View image in fullscreenThe Russians have said they largely tune out what he says in public.“We hear many things coming from President Trump,” said Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, during a television appearance this weekend. “We concentrate, as I said, on the real negotiations which President Trump supports and instructed his people to continue to engage in these negotiations.”Key among those people is Witkoff, a neophyte diplomat who has spent hours in conversation with Putin, often with no other adviser present. One person close to the Kremlin said that Witkoff was viewed as a reliable negotiator in Moscow with “a chance to make an agreement”, but added: “There is a chance it will pass by.”Much of the burden of international diplomacy now rests on Witkoff, who is also running point on other key negotiations. Trump has tasked him with reaching a deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, in effect renegotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that he scuttled in 2018. Both the US and Iran have played up the talks, although “differences still exist both on major issues and on the details”, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told state television this week.And then there is the Middle East, where the Trump administration scored its greatest early success by negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza but then failed to prevent its collapse, with Israel cutting off new aid to Gaza as the fighting continues.“There now seems to be less focus on ending the devastating conflict,” wrote Stefanie Hausheer Ali, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs. “Trump’s threat in February to Hamas to release the hostages or ‘all hell is going to break out’ has, in practice, meant Israel restarting the war and blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Without an alternative to Hamas rule, the militant group may hang on and continue to fight as an insurgency, replenishing its ranks by recruiting desperate people.”Trump’s most extreme remarks have turned out to be bluster: he stunned the world when he claimed that he would turn the Gaza Strip into beachfront condos and said that the local Palestinian population would be forcibly removed. Months later, the initiative is largely forgotten.While attempting to close three landmark negotiations at once, the Trump administration has also launched a trade war with the entire world, establishing sweeping tariffs on all foreign imports before abruptly reversing course and cutting tariffs to 10% save for those against China.With so many major efforts ongoing, observers say that the government is largely paralysed to deal with smaller but still crucial issues in foreign policy and national security. As part of a blanket ban on refugees, tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted US troops against the Taliban are left waiting for relocation to the United States, a promise that was extended by previous administrations.“The lack of clarity and the chaos are the things that are causing so much pain,” said Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of #AfghanEvac, a group that works with the state department to help resettle Afghans.He said he was critical of both the Biden and Trump administrations for failing to relocate the tens of thousands of Afghans who were far enough along in the vetting program to be relocated before Trump came into office.“The truth is, is that when America makes a promise, you should be able to trust our word,” he said. “If our flag waving over an embassy in Tunisia or Baghdad or Kabul, or Kyiv doesn’t mean this is the place where there’s truth, where there’s justice … well, then what are we even doing here?” More

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      Trump 100 days: Trump’s whirlwind start to his second presidency

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      Law-abiding migrants sent to foreign prisons. Sweeping tariffs disrupting global markets. Students detained for protest. Violent insurrectionists pardoned. Tens of thousands of federal workers fired. The supreme court ignored.The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term have shocked the United States and the world. On the eve of his inauguration, Trump promised the “most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in American history”, and what followed has been a whirlwind pace of extreme policies and actions that have reshaped the federal government and the US’s role in the world.Let’s look at what he has achieved and destroyed.Shattering alliancesView image in fullscreenThe end of the postwar orderTrump’s first 100 days has been marked by arguably the biggest shake-up in US foreign policy since 1945. He has feuded with Nato and turned on Ukraine, slapped tariffs on US allies around the globe, ignored international institutions and publicly admired dictators from Vladimir Putin to El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.‘The EU was invented to screw us over’Trump has called European allies “freeloaders” who have relied on the US to pay for their defense and said he would not defend allies who didn’t meet a spending threshold of 2% of GDP. He has accused European allies of conspiring to “screw over” the US by forming the European Union. “The west as we knew it no longer exists,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said.Video-2: To view this video please download this article it in our appA new Monroe doctrine?As Trump has retreated from Europe, he has increasingly thrown the US’s weight around the western hemisphere. He said Canada should become the 51st state, threatened to annex Greenland, and proposed in his inaugural speech that the US “take back” the Panama canal. Some have compared his foreign policy to that of James Monroe, the former president who in 1823 declared a US sphere of influence in North and South America.View image in fullscreenTariffs and ChinaTrump’s haphazard imposition of tariffs has angered US allies from Europe to Asia, where longtime trade partners such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have scrambled to try to negotiate new deals to protect their economies from severe shocks. China’s Xi Jinping has toured south-east Asia, seeking to promote Beijing as the world’s protector of rules-based trade and calling on countries to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying”.View image in fullscreenJD Vance, Elon Musk and the court of TrumpIf Trump has seemed transactional toward Europe, then his top advisers have appeared downright hostile. JD Vance made waves in Munich when he portrayed European leaders as ideological tyrants and accused them of “running in fear of your own voters”. Musk has backed far-right movements from the UK’s Reform to Germany’s AfD.Attacking rule of lawPardoning January 6 protestersTrump issued more than 1,500 pardons or commutations to people convicted in connection to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.View image in fullscreen‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’– Trump in a February post on X, underscoring that he believes he can justify breaking the lawView image in fullscreenDefying court ordersIn March, the Trump administration ignored an order from the US district judge James Boasberg to turn around a plane headed to El Salvador containing people alleged to be gang members. It was a staggering act of defiance.View image in fullscreenThreatening judgesTrump and allies have threatened judges who have ruled against them. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!,” Trump said in an 18 March post on Truth Social. Elon Musk, a top Trump adviser, has also called for impeaching judges and supported Republicans who champion doing so.View image in fullscreenAttacking lawyersTrump has used executive orders to punish law firms connected to rivals or that have taken on causes averse to his administration. Several firms have settled with Trump to avoid being punished. Others have successfully sued the administration.Trade
      warsView image in fullscreenThreatsTrump did not wait to return to the White House before threatening China, Canada and Mexico with sweeping tariffs. These would be implemented on the first day of his second term, he declared. This was the first of many times Trump would attempt to use the threat of an economic assault to force countries to bend to his will.View image in fullscreenDelaysFor Canada and Mexico, the supposed deadline for threatened tariffs shifted from January, to February, to March. When tariffs were imposed, it was barely 48 hours before all goods covered by a previous trilateral trade deal were spared. Companies caught in the crossfire struggled to keep up.Video-4: To view this video please download this article it in our app‘Liberation’Trump and his aides sought to bill 2 April 2025 – the day he presented sweeping tariffs on much of the world, including China – as “liberation day”. The plan lasted all of a week before it was watered down. All of the countries in the administration’s sights except China now face a blanket tariff of 10%, rather than the higher rates, after a global market sell-off and warnings of recession.Markets crashingView image in fullscreenTrade warWhile Trump has repeatedly pulled back from the brink of all-out economic war with most countries, China is the exception. When Beijing retaliated against US tariffs, Trump hiked them further – leaving the world’s two largest economies spiraling into a tit-for-tat dispute. US tariffs on Chinese goods stand at 145%.View image in fullscreenConfusion ​Amid mounting concern over the impact of Trump’s volatile trade strategy on the economy, and the risk of recession, businesses of all sizes are attempting to grab a moving target. “Nobody knows what’s coming next,” John Cochrane, an economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, observed recently.Government ‘efficiency’View image in fullscreenMusk ushered into governmentOn day one, Trump signed an executive order creating the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – a novel initiative chaired by Elon Musk. In the weeks that followed, Doge staff, many of whom are former employees at Musk’s companies and lack government experience, embedded themselves in federal agencies large and small, directing sudden and disruptive cuts to programs and payrolls.View image in fullscreenFederal workers targetedThe Trump administration moved to dramatically shrink the federal workforce, first by proposing buyouts. About 75,000 employees opted to leave, as did thousands more in the weeks that followed. But the numbers were fewer than the White House hoped, so cabinet secretaries fired tens of thousands more, while Trump approved the termination of about 25,000 employees on their probationary periods. The supreme court refused to hear a challenge to the latter firings in April.View image in fullscreenAgencies shuttered, perhaps illegallyTrump moved to dismantle USAID, which has administered Washington’s foreign aid agenda for more than six decades, and fold it into the state department. He also directed the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to oversee the closure of her department. The offensives against these and other agencies quickly wound up in the courts.View image in fullscreenDoge rattles Trump’s cabinetDoge has left few corners of the federal government untouched. But reports have emerged that Musk’s initiative is grating some of Trump’s newly confirmed cabinet secretaries, who see him as unhelpfully disrupting their departments. In March, Trump reportedly stopped Musk from seeing the defense department’s secret plans for a potential war with China during his visit to the Pentagon, noting that the Tesla boss had extensive business interests in China.Musk takes a stand in Wisconsin – and losesMusk was a major financial supporter of Trump’s campaign to return to the presidency. But his foray into the race for a Wisconsin supreme court seat in April was not as successful. Although he spent about $20m supporting the former Republican attorney general Brad Schimel, voters instead choose the Democratic-backed Susan Crawford, preserving the 4-3 liberal majority on the state’s highest court.Information warView image in fullscreenFlooding the zoneTrump has been everywhere all the time, dominating the “attention economy” like no other public figure. He takes questions from reporters far more often than his predecessor Joe Biden. He posts frequently on his Truth Social platform. He has attended the Super Bowl, Ultimate Fighting Championship and other sporting events.View image in fullscreenSidelining the ‘lamestream’ mediaThe White House banned the Associated Press from events in the Oval Office and Air Force One over the news agency’s refusal to obey Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The AP sued over access to presidential events and won a court ruling, though it was unclear if and when the White House would put it into effect.View image in fullscreenPlatforming Maga mediaThe White House took over deciding which outlets are allowed to take part in the press pool, a group that acts as the eyes and ears of the media covering the president up close, and included more fringe outlets. Rightwing journalists also became more prominent at press briefings.View image in fullscreenChallenging state fundingMore than 1,300 Voice of America journalists, producers and assistants were placed on leave, crippling a broadcaster that was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operates in almost 50 languages. Grants to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia were terminated. A judge recently ordered the restoration of Voice of America’s operations, but the administration is likely to appeal.Executive ordersTrump increasingly relies on executive ordersTrump has signed 140 executive orders in his first 100 days, including 36 in his first week in office. His use of the presidential pen is unprecedented in modern US history. Below are the number of executive orders presidents signed in their first 100 days.View image in fullscreen‘Invasion’ at the borderTrump’s day one border emergency declaration deployed 1,500 active-duty troops alongside 2,500 national guard members to the southern border. Framing migration as an “invasion”, the order militarized immigration enforcement and redirected defense resources to border control, raising serious legal and humanitarian concerns about the use of the military for domestic enforcement.View image in fullscreen‘Deep state’ purgeThe reinstated “Schedule F” executive order has stripped tens of thousands of federal employees of civil service protections, allowing the administration to fire career officials deemed disloyal.View image in fullscreenPro-Palestinian targetsA week after the Columbia graduate and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was detained in March, Trump signed an order called “Securing American Values” to target visa holders who have participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The order directs immigration agencies to authorize visa revocations of demonstrators linked to organizations accused of hate speech, and detain and expedite deportations for those involved in activity the administration deems antisemitic.View image in fullscreenBirthright citizenship attackTrump’s unconstitutional day one executive order aimed to end automatic citizenship for babies born on US soil to undocumented immigrants or those on temporary visas – directly challenging the 14th amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens. The order remains blocked by courts pending litigation.View image in fullscreenGlobal aid freezeThe administration’s foreign aid freeze has halted thousands of humanitarian and development programs worldwide. The executive order targeting USAID has disrupted even life-saving health initiatives like HIV treatment in Africa, even though the administration says they have not been affected.Fortress AmericaVideo-1: To view this video please download this article in our appRefugee admission suspendedTrump has suspended all refugee resettlement into the United States, leaving tens of thousands of people in an overseas limbo. The indefinite pause on the resettlement program has made it nearly impossible for refugees fleeing war and violence to seek safe haven in the US. The order is subject to ongoing legal action.Arrests ramp upUS Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) arrests in February outstripped not just the same period under Biden but even the figures from Trump’s first term.View image in fullscreenAlien Enemies ActThe Trump administration used an 18th-century wartime law to deport scores of Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they are being held in a draconian mega-prison known as Cecot. Trump’s use of the law faces legal challenges. Onboard one of the deportation flights was a Maryland father with protected legal status mistakenly deported in what the administration called an “administrative error”. The supreme court has ordered the US to “facilitate” his return.View image in fullscreenFree speech crackdownIn an extraordinary crackdown on free speech, the Trump administration has tracked down and detained international students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, among them Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and lawful permanent resident.View image in fullscreenSchools and churches no longer out of boundsThe Trump administration now allows immigration authorities to make arrests in schools, healthcare facilities and places of worship. But on 7 April, federal agents were denied entry to two Los Angeles area elementary schools after they alleged the children entered the US without documentation.Opposition and protestView image in fullscreenProtesters take to the streetsAfter a slower start than Trump’s first term, protests have erupted across the country, including in small towns in Republican areas, standing up against his overreach. Established groups have joined together with a decentralized protest movement around broad messages against oligarchy and dismantling democracy.View image in fullscreenMusk is targetedElon Musk proved a potent target for the opposition, given his prominent role leading Doge as it slashed through the federal government. As Doge cut through agency after agency, people turned up outside federal offices in opposition. “Tesla Takedown” protests at local dealerships went after his publicly traded company, tanking the stock.View image in fullscreenDemocrats take a standAfter a bruising electoral loss, Democratic officials struggled to find their voices as an effective resistance to an emboldened Trump, but some have found a footing. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched an anti-oligarchy tour, drawing huge crowds. Some Democrats, including Congressman Al Green, disrupted a joint session of Congress. Cory Booker gave a record-breaking 25-hour speech on the Senate floor. Meanwhile, the party announced a new effort to funnel money into critical state races.Video-3: To view this video please download this article in our appLawsuits put brake on Trump agendaA strategy that worked well in the first Trump term remained a major plank of the opposition: endless lawsuits. A coalition of Democratic attorneys general have brought handfuls of suits, often successful, to stop his actions. Outside groups have filed lawsuits over his unconstitutional plans. But his administration is defying court orders in some instances, a sign that the courts alone won’t be enough to stop him.Trump’s approval flippedNet approval ratingTrump’s first 100 days were largely designed to make a statement, and they achieved that goal. But it’s clear that within this time period there have been consequences to the executive orders, policy making and budget cuts that could continue to spiral out of the president’s control. The impacts will crystallize in the lives of the American public, and abroad, in the more than 1,300 days to come. More

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      Trump promised peace but brings rapid increase in civilian casualties to Yemen | Dan Sabbagh

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      “I am the candidate of peace,” Donald Trump declared on the campaign trail last November. Three months into his presidency, not only is the war in Ukraine continuing and the war in Gaza restarted, but in Yemen, the number of civilian casualties caused by US bombing is rapidly and deliberately escalating.Sixty-eight were killed overnight, the Houthis said, when the US military bombed a detention centre holding African migrants in Saada, north-west Yemen, as part of a campaign against the rebel group. In the words of the US Central Command (Centcom), its purpose is to “restore freedom of navigation” in the Red Sea and, most significantly, “American deterrence”.A month ago, when US bombing against the Houthis restarted, the peace-promising Trump pledged that “the Houthi barbarians” would eventually be “completely annihilated”. It is a highly destructive target, in line perhaps with the commitments made by Israeli leaders to “eliminate” Hamas after 7 October, and certainly in keeping with statements from Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, that the US military must focus on “lethality, lethality, lethality”.Photographs from Almasirah, a Houthi media organisation, showed a shattered building with bodies inside the wreckage. TV footage showed one victim calling out for his mother in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. It is not immediately obvious they were material to the Houthi war effort, in which the group has attacked merchant shipping in the Red Sea and tried to strike targets in Israel.That the Houthis have sought to fight on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza is not in dispute but what has changed is that the US military response – joint US and UK airstrikes when Joe Biden was in the White House – has escalated. The data clearly suggests that previous restraints on causing civilian casualties have been relaxed.Approximately 80 Yemeni civilians were estimated killed and 150 injured in a bombing raid on Ras Isa port on 18 April, according to the Yemen Data Project, a conflict monitor. The aim, Centcom said, was to destroy the port’s ability to accept fuel, whose receipt it said was controlled by the Houthis, and, the US military added, “not intended to harm the people of Yemen” – though the country is already devastated by 11 years of civil war. Half its 35 million people face severe food insecurity.So far, the Trump administration bombing campaign, Operation Rough Rider, is estimated to have caused more than 500 civilian casualties, of whom at least 158 were killed. Compare that with the previous campaign, Operation Poseidon Archer, which ran under Biden from January 2024 to January 2025: the Yemen Data Project counted 85 casualties, a smaller number over a longer period.Parties in war are supposed to follow international humanitarian law, following the principle of distinction between military and civilian targets, and respecting the principle of proportionality, where attacks that cause excessive civilian casualties relative to any military advantage gained are, in theory, a war crime.The clear signs from the US campaign in Yemen are that it is following a looser approach, mirroring the unprecedented level of civilian casualties in the Israel-Gaza war. It is hardly surprising, given that Hegseth has already closed the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation office, which handled policy in the area, and the related Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, responsible for training.That could make it difficult for traditional allies to assist. Whereas the UK participated in Poseidon Archer, British involvement in the latest operation has gone from minimal to nonexistent. No air-to-air refuelling was provided in the most recent attacks, the UK Ministry of Defence said, unlike in March.In justification, Centcom says that after striking 800 targets, Houthi ballistic missile launches are down 69% since 15 March. But one figure it does not cite is that transits of cargo ships in the Red Sea during March remain at half pre-October 2023 levels, according to Lloyd’s List. A broader peace in the region may prove more effective in restoring trade than an increase in demonstrative violence. More