The Trump administration’s decision to impose a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications stems from legitimate concerns about wage suppression and job displacement.

Critics have long argued that some companies abuse the program by using it to replace U.S. workers with cheaper foreign labor. These concerns have merit. Studies have documented consulting and other firms paying foreign H-1B workers less than their U.S. peers in similar roles and even engaging in wage theft.

Yet the U.S. government’s sledgehammer approach to these real problems will likely produce consequences far worse than the abuses it seeks to address. Rather than encouraging companies to hire more Americans, the dramatic fee increase—from roughly $1,000 to $100,000—will drive high-skilled work overseas and accelerate the decline of U.S. technological leadership. In addition to the fee, Washington will replace the current H-1B lottery with a new system that strongly benefits the largest employers instead of favoring startups and universities, where foreign workers would contribute more to innovation and future job growth.

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The administration couched the removals as consistent with the presidential prerogative to choose its military advisors. Previous presidents did have this power, and every administration has fired a few military leaders, made some surprise appointments, or exercised close presidential scrutiny of the selection of personnel to a few of the seniormost positions. None has relieved so many, nor shaped the appointments so forcefully, this early in the president’s tenure. No previous administration exercised its power in this dramatic fashion for fear that doing so would effectively treat the senior officer corps as akin to partisan political appointees whose professional ethos is to come and go with changes of administration, rather than career public servants whose professional ethos is to serve regardless of changes in political leadership.

These personnel moves have been poorly explained to both the public and the individuals relieved, but one thing was made clear: None of the officers had committed a grave fault—insubordination or dereliction—that would have made their removal obvious and noncontroversial. To relieve so many senior officers so soon in an administration amounted to a dramatic break with past precedent, raising two obvious questions: What are historical norms and best practices around relieving senior military leaders, and how should senior officers still serving function in the present moment?

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On Sept. 25, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that he says will allow TikTok to continue operating in the country while complying with national security concerns. After a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Sept. 19, Trump said he had reached an agreement for a U.S. investor group led by Oracle to take control of 80 percent of TikTok’s U.S. operations. But as details have come to light, serious questions are surfacing.

For one, the national security concerns that led Congress to pass a law banning TikTok in the first place are left unresolved. TikTok’s algorithm—its “secret sauce” governing what users see on the app and possibly serving as a key weapon for Chinese influence operations—will remain in ByteDance’s hands. Under the deal, a copy of will be licensed to the U.S. investor group, which will then retrain it using data from users based in the United States.

But that still leaves a big loophole. What happens, for example, when ByteDance releases updates to its algorithm? Will the U.S. version continue to be updated to operate in parallel with the Bytedance version of the app? Rather than cutting ties with China, the deal allows Beijing to retain considerable influence.

Trump’s administration is expected to collect billions in fees from the transaction. As Trump has described it, “The United States is getting a tremendous fee-plus—I call it a fee-plus—just for making the deal, and I don’t want to throw that out the window.”

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In President Donald Trump’s America First approach to foreign policy, Israel can seem like an exception, a country that gets support even when its policies stray from U.S. interests—or the personal preferences of the president himself. Israeli leaders like to talk about the values that the two countries share, which is certainly part of the explanation. But there are other reasons as well.

Israel has many supporters within Trump’s inner circle, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, as well as many important pro-Israel donors. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proved adept at flattering Trump, with Israel naming settlements after the president, lauding his accomplishments, and otherwise playing on his vanity. Netanyahu also has strong support among Republicans in Congress and with pro-Trump media, such as Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax. This mix of media support, congressional backing, and flattery seemed to work for Israel at a key moment, when Trump decided to join Israel in its attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in June.

Yet it is not difficult to imagine scenarios where Trump would turn his back on Israel. The president is mercurial, and he has turned on friends again and again. Canada, Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom are only a few of the very close U.S. allies that have felt his sting. After many years of praising Russia and President Vladimir Putin, Trump is now even criticizing them, deriding Russian military prowess and calling for Ukraine to take back all of its territory

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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva feels comfortable at the United Nations. He has plenty of experience speaking before the body, having governed Latin America’s largest nation from 2003 to 2011 and again since 2023. He is also an advocate for multilateral governance, valuing the U.N. as a platform that allows so-called developing countries to exert influence and participate meaningfully in shaping global decisions.

“Let my first words before this World Parliament be of confidence in the human capacity to overcome challenges and to move toward higher forms of partnership, both within and among nations,” Lula declared at the outset of his first address to the annual U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) more than 20 years ago.

But if Lula has one thing in common with the world body’s most vocal critics—chief among them U.S. President Donald Trump—it’s that he doesn’t believe the U.N. is meeting this tumultuous historical moment. The two leaders ran into each other backstage this week at UNGA and had a brief, unplanned exchange that could pave the way for a thaw in U.S.-Brazil relations.

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I am in New York this week for the U.N. General Assembly. At various events over the last few days, I’ve already had the opportunity to chat with former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak; Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares; and Trump’s designee for undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment, Jacob Helberg, among many others.

Of course, a main topic of discussion was U.S. President Donald Trump’s nearly hourlong U.N. speech on Tuesday morning. Some media outlets have tried to fact-check the speech, but this misses the point. Whether or not climate activists want to “kill all the cows,” for example, was not central to Trump’s message.

The serious argument that resonated most with me was Trump’s claim that the United Nations is not living up to its founding purpose to resolve global conflicts. It may have been impolitic to deliver that message directly to the UNGA, but that does not make it untrue.

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During his first campaign for the presidency, in 2015, now-President Donald Trump rose to become a dominant figure in U.S. politics by turning repeatedly to a jeremiad against migration.

The people he had in mind, though, were not generic migrants. They were predominantly brown-skinned people from Latin America whom he often portrayed as patients from “insane asylums” or rapists and other dangerous convicts who were loosed on the world by their governments and would spread violent crime in the United States.

But if this attempt to curdle the blood of U.S. voters was the primary tactic behind Trump’s brand of xenophobic populism, it was far from the only fear that the campaign that carried him to election the next year would invoke. A close second behind the theme of crime was the idea that these mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants who were willing to do low- and semi-skilled work for modest wages were taking jobs away from honest Americans, blighting people’s lives.

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Has U.S. President Donald Trump finally seen the light? In a post on his Truth Social network on Sept. 23, he wrote: “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.” He mocked Russia, which he called a “paper tiger.” The same day, reporters in New York City asked him if NATO should shoot down Russian aircraft that enter its airspace. “Yes, I do,” he answered. Observers were suitably shocked.

Perhaps Trump really has had a change of heart. But as always, it’s worth taking a look at the fine print. His Truth Social post, for example, ended with this passage: “We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!” The language here is quite striking: Trump refers to NATO as if it were an unrelated third party—a customer that you supply with products, rather than a military alliance in which the United States is supposed to take an active and leading role. And the closing sentence can be read as a farewell: Take care and have a nice war.

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Hippopotamuses are baffling. At first glance, these creatures look calm, slow, and placid as they wallow lazily in muddy pools. Looks, however, can be deceiving. Survivors of hippo encounters tell of the unpredictable, ferocious charges that make hippopotamuses the deadliest wild mammal on earth, killing around 500 people each year. (That’s 23 times more than lions.) Humans have few good options to defend against 6,000 pounds of erratically charging hippo. Negotiation is not much of an option—it is hard to stop a hippo with offers of food. Experts advise that the best strategy is to avoid hippos altogether. If all else fails, then playing dead can be a reasonable Plan B.

Since the return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White House in January, European leaders have been confronting a charging hippo situation. U.S. policies are unpredictable, fast-changing, and often baffling. No one knows whether Trump is about to charge or let go. Negotiation rarely works, not least because it is hard to find out what he ultimately wants.

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“They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me,” Donald Trump lamented mere weeks into his second presidential term. Since then, several members of Congress and foreign officials have echoed the proposition that his name be added to the next group of laureates. But what does the record show? Does Trump deserve to be honored with a place in history alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela?

Trump has repeatedly complained about not receiving credit for peace deals reached under his watch, citing the resolving of conflicts in Armenia-Azerbaijan, Congo-Rwanda, India-Pakistan, Serbia-Kosovo, and ongoing efforts in Ukraine and Gaza as top achievements. Disturbingly, some of these so-called deals include provisions that directly benefit the private sector, reducing U.S. diplomacy to a mercantilist collection of false wins that do little to advance peace. Meanwhile, deadly wars continue to ravage Ukraine and Gaza. “Everyone says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements,” he said at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

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U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to issue an about-face on Washington’s Ukraine policy, posting to Truth Social on Tuesday that “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.” This refutes past U.S. claims that Kyiv must be prepared to concede some of its Russian-occupied territory to Moscow in order to secure an eventual peace deal.

Trump’s statement comes roughly a month after hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and seven other European leaders at the White House, during which Trump suggested that Kyiv give up Crimea and several other regions that Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded. Moscow currently controls roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Read Trump’s full statement below:

“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form. With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger.’ When the people living in Moscow, and all of the Great Cities, Towns, and Districts all throughout Russia, find out what is really going on with this War, the fact that it’s almost impossible for them to get Gasoline through the long lines that are being formed, and all of the other things that are taking place in their War Economy, where most of their money is being spent on fighting Ukraine, which has Great Spirit, and only getting better, Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that! Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act. In any event, I wish both Countries well. We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!”

U.S. President Donald Trump has concentrated government power in his hands since the start of his second term. Much has been written about his one-man rule by executive order, his appointments based on personal loyalty, and his outrage at judges who defy him. But the American public should be equally alarmed by Trump’s personalization of international treaties.

Significant foreign treaties are normally ratified following either a two-thirds majority vote in the U.S. Senate or a majority vote in both houses of Congress. When a president acts alone, those treaties typically involve minor matters and are called “sole executive agreements.” Historically, all major treaties—such as those that created the United Nations, the World Bank, and NATO, but also treaties that lowered tariffs, secured human rights, and allowed the extradition of dangerous criminals—had some form of congressional consent. Congress has also famously refused consent for treaties it found wanting, such as the Treaty of Versailles, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Today, we are witnessing the death of this entire U.S. treaty system. Trump has not been shy about doing deals with foreign nations, but he has not submitted any treaties to the Senate or Congress for approval. Instead, he has acted as if treaties were solely the prerogative of the executive branch, personally taking center stage in concluding agreements, like the one with Ukraine on critical mineral resources. He authorized more than a dozen international agreements in his first six months, most notably his so-called trade deals, and is pursuing dozens more. Some of these are not binding at all, like the political arrangement on strategic civil nuclear cooperation with El Salvador. It is generally uncontroversial for the president to conclude non-binding agreements without congressional approval. But the rest of Trump’s agreements appear to rely on extreme claims of presidential authority to qualify them as sole executive agreements.

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When it comes to international conflict, U.S. President Donald Trump learns everything the hard way. On issue after issue—North Korea, Venezuela, Ukraine, Gaza, and more—Trump begins by bucking conventional wisdom and insisting that a bold new approach will yield breakthroughs. Implied, and often said outright, is that past officials who worked on the matter were feeble, inept, and craven. Trump insists that his determination and powers of persuasion will force seismic change—cowing enemies, bridging schisms, and achieving diplomatic masterstrokes.

Yet time and again, after gambles and gambits, Trump comes to the same conclusion: While he might not admit it, his approach reverts to something much closer to what policy wonks and advisors urged on him at the outset. Trump’s overconfidence and distrust of expertise drive time-consuming, costly, and sometimes embarrassing detours up clearly marked dead ends—which we may see again at his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. By recognizing this flash-to-fizzle arc, advocates, policymakers, and U.S. allies can work more effectively to exert their influence on the administration and push Trump more quickly up his learning curve.

This pattern has been evident since Trump’s first term. In 2017, he threatened “fire and fury” in response to North Korea’s escalating missile tests. He toughened sanctions on Pyongyang, pressed Beijing to use its leverage, and sought a face-to-face meeting with Kim Jong Un, preconditions be damned. Trump’s Singapore summit with Kim in June 2018 culminated in an airy declaration on denuclearization and peace. Yet a second summit the following year ended in deadlock, and a follow-up at the Korean Demilitarized Zone yielded nothing. Trump then defaulted to the grinding approach long advocated by experts: deterrence, isolation through sanctions, and reliance on pressure from regional allies. Bold talk of denuclearization faded.

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Welcome, America, to the age of data theater.

If U.S. President Donald Trump’s disdain for truth once played out on Truth Social or via his press secretary, the past month’s actions show that his administration is no longer content just to dispute official numbers. Instead, it is now engaging in what we term data theater. Data theater does more than present false information. Its goal is to hollow out the impartial production of knowledge by gutting the machinery that policymakers, markets, and the public rely on to know what’s real.

History is replete with examples that demonstrate the catastrophic ramifications of this strategy. Statistical manipulation has fueled debt crises, endangered citizens’ health, and threatened the global economy.

The administration’s recent actions show how reality is being rewritten on demand. When the U.S. attorney for D.C. claimed there was an (actually nonexistent) crime wave, she subsequently asserted that crime data challenging that reality was faked by the city’s police department. After the administration claimed that left-leaning domestic violence was deadlier than right-wing violence, a National Institute of Justice report showing the opposite conveniently disappeared from the site.

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Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Tim Kaine have introduced a joint resolution under the War Powers Act to block the U.S. military from engaging in hostilities with certain nonstate actors without congressional authorization. The move is in response to recent U.S. strikes on vessels off the coast of Venezuela. The strikes, which the Trump administration has said targeted “narcoterrorists” transporting illegal drugs to the United States, have raised alarm bells in Washington and beyond—with many questioning the justifications for and legality of the actions.

At least 14 people were killed by U.S. strikes on alleged drug cartel boats on Sept. 2 and 15. U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday also suggested that a third boat had been targeted, but he didn’t provide specific details.

Trump has characterized the strikes as necessary to protect national security. “These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital U.S. Interests,” Trump said in a recent post on his Truth Social platform.

But critics have said the strikes were illegal under both U.S. and international law, rejecting the notion that drug traffickers qualify as combatants.

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In their first phone call since June, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping haggled on Friday over the final details of a long-anticipated TikTok deal. Although the Chinese ambassador to the United States framed the conversation as “pragmatic, positive and constructive,” neither side walked away with a clear breakthrough.

Neither Beijing nor Washington has released further details on the proposed deal. But according to the Wall Street Journal, the arrangement under discussion would see Chinese company ByteDance divest control of TikTok to a new U.S. entity created to operate the app. This consortium of new investors and existing backers would own around 80 percent of the platform, with ByteDance ownership falling below 20 percent to comply with U.S. law. People familiar with the talks told the Journal that it could take weeks for legal concerns to be addressed.

Such a TikTok deal would mark a win for China hawks in the U.S. Congress and the Trump administration, who have expressed fear that the app’s user data could be accessed by the Chinese government, allowing Beijing to monitor Americans’ activity and conduct influence operations. Where Trump himself stands on the issue is more complicated, as he initially pushed to ban the app in the United States, only to then use the app to connect with younger voters during his reelection campaign.

Beijing has also tried to frame the TikTok deal as a win for Xi. Even though China would be losing control over TikTok, experts suggest that Xi would be gaining leverage for future deals with Washington, specifically over Trump’s tariff war and Chinese tech ambitions; China and the United States are negotiating a broader trade agreement focused on curbing fentanyl production and reducing high levies.

Read more in today’s World Brief: Trump, Xi Inch Closer to a TikTok Deal.

When U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in January and began to pull the United States out of United Nations agreements such as the Paris climate pact, some senior U.N. officials predicted that he might quit the U.N. altogether. Eight months later, Trump is set to speak to the General Assembly for the first time since 2020. While it is unlikely that he will announce that he is ripping up the U.N. Charter, diplomats and international officials expect him to continue limiting diplomatic and financial support to the world organization. Nobody is sure how the U.N. will evolve if the United States keeps it arm’s length.

While Washington has frequently had a troubled relationship with the U.N., it has always acted as the organization’s political and financial underwriter. U.S. leadership has been central to many of the U.N.’s flagship successes, from putting together the coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 to negotiating the 2015 Paris climate agreement. By contrast, the U.N.’s most difficult periods have often involved friction with Washington, as in the disputes with the George W. Bush administration over the 2003 Iraq War.

But these periods of tensions have tended to end with the U.N. and the United States making up. Two years after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein, Bush joined other leaders in New York at the 2005 World Summit, a meeting at which leaders signed off on significant institutional reforms such as the creation of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council. This time around, reconciliation appears very far off.

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After a day of royal pomp and pageantry, U.S. President Donald Trump shifted to politics alongside an unlikely ally: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who heads the Labour Party. The two leaders met at Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence, on Thursday to signal the importance of the two countries’ “special relationship” while dodging tough questions about some of their domestic and foreign policies.

For Starmer, the two-day state visit is part of Downing Street’s ongoing strategy to woo Trump as London seeks to strengthen its economy and ease U.S. tariffs. Inviting Trump for a day of royal treatment—complete with horse-drawn carriages, a military flyover, and an opulent state banquet at Windsor Castle—was only step one of the plan, though. Step two entails a $338 billion bilateral investment package.

Dubbed the Technology Prosperity Deal, major U.S. companies such as Blackstone, Microsoft, and OpenAI will invest more than $200 billion in Britain over the next decade. In exchange, several British corporations, including pharmaceuticals giant GSK, will invest in the United States. The deal also pledges greater bilateral cooperation in artificial intelligence, nuclear energy, and quantum computing.

During the meeting, Trump and Starmer also two glossed over key differences—such as on Israel’s war in Gaza and the importance of wind power—to focus on where they find common ground. They both agreed that extra pressure must be placed on Russia to force President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, though they remain at odds on how best to do that. And they pivoted away from questions about Starmer’s plan to recognize an independent Palestinian state, which Trump disagrees with.

Read more in today’s World Brief: Trump, Starmer Seek Common Ground in State Visit.

In a saner America, Viktor Murikhanov would have been welcomed as a hero. That isn’t how it has worked out.

Soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Murikhanov—a Russian citizen living in Irkutsk, 2,600 miles east of Moscow—took part in anti-war protests and posted a video criticizing the invasion. He knew that his actions would come at a cost, and he also knew that they were unlikely to receive much publicity. But he did what he did because he knew it was right. In an interview, he told me: “I just can’t accept it. Peaceful people are being killed, cities are being destroyed, millions of refugees are fleeing. And Russia is the aggressor.”

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The first time that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration carried out a deadly aerial strike against a high-speed boat allegedly crewed by a drug cartel as it headed north into international waters from Venezuela, one could still speak of the operation as an isolated incident.

Critics, including some in the U.S. Congress, denounced the attack as an extralegal execution. Others complained that neither the White House nor the Defense Department had bothered to brief members of the House or Senate intelligence committees or provide any evidence that the victims were ferrying narcotics to the United States, let alone that they were terrorists or enemies of the country in any conventional military sense.

With a fresh second attack on a boat out of Venezuela this week, though, the Trump administration showed not only that it was unbothered by this brief flurry of objections, but also that these strikes were not mere incidents at all. Taken together with other disturbing developments in U.S. relations with Latin America, what we are seeing instead is confirmation that Trump is ushering in a dramatic new era in the geopolitics of the Western Hemisphere.

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Just days before his death, Charlie Kirk was on a speaking tour in Asia—stopping in South Korea and Japan. At Build Up Korea 2025 in Seoul, under elaborate pyrotechnics, he told a crowd of mostly Christian youth that a conservative wave among young men was rising worldwide. He boasted that he had “brought Trump to victory,” tying U.S. right-wing triumphs to a global phenomenon.

In Tokyo, Kirk appeared at a symposium hosted by Japan’s nationalist Sanseito party, which has gained support with anti-immigration and “Japanese first” messaging. He warned of a “silent invasion,” urged resistance to the “globalist menace,” and praised Japan’s social order. Sanseito’s leader later mourned Kirk as a “comrade committed to building the future with us.”

These visits were not routine speaking gigs. They were symbolic acts of alignment between American and Asian far-right forces. When Kirk was killed soon after returning home, the trip took on a near-mythical significance: proof that the movement he embodied was already globalizing. But it also raised questions about this outreach, including: Why would Kirk’s white grievance politics resonate so strongly with nonwhites abroad—masses of people far removed from the culture wars of the United States?

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The killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah last Wednesday sent shockwaves across the United States and is already having rippling consequences amid a historically divisive period. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on Friday said Kirk’s killing was a “watershed in American history” that could mark “the end of a dark chapter in our history or the beginning of a darker chapter.”

In the wake of Kirk’s killing, experts on political violence warn that the United States has entered a dangerous new era akin to what the country experienced in the 1960s—a decade in which a number of U.S. political leaders were assassinated—and they’re urging political and community leaders to take steps to reduce tensions.

Robert Pape, a political scientist and the founding director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), told Foreign Policy that he’s concerned about “rising support for political violence across the political spectrum” in the United States.

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The European Union-United States trade deal, announced to fanfare this summer, is already showing signs of unravelling. The most surprising aspect may be that this is hardly a surprise.

The EU signed the “Framework on an Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade” in late July in the hopes it would substantially assuage fears among European businesses about an all-out trade war with the United States. But this month, U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to revoke that understanding as he threatened to impose more tariffs on Europe if Brussels doesn’t loosen its rules and regulations that police online disinformation, election interference, and hate speech.

“We cannot let this happen to brilliant and unprecedented American Ingenuity,” he wrote on Truth Social after the EU fined Google nearly 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) for violating anti-monopoly laws. EU spokespeople played down the turbulence—but they may be trying to wish away a major problem.

An even bigger challenge confronting the deal is Trump’s expectation of billions of dollars’ worth of energy purchases from Europe. The EU has said it “intends to procure US liquified natural gas, oil, and nuclear energy products with an expected offtake valued at $750 billion,” during Trump’s remaining term in office. But the White House seems to see it as a commitment—a done deal.

This mismatch in intentions and expectations could derail the deal.

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U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has inflicted immense damage on the United States’ vaccination program. Although Kennedy, a well-known critic of vaccinations, had promised Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican physician, that he would not undercut public confidence in vaccines during his confirmation hearings, the Trump administration has undertaken a fierce campaign to dismantle key pillars of the nation’s public health program.

Kennedy refused to strongly endorse vaccines when Texas faced an outbreak of measles shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated. He has sharply curtailed funding for vital research programs, including the development of mNRA vaccines. Soon after Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine expert, resigned in March to protest Kennedy spreading misinformation, the agency informed the public that COVID-19 vaccines would only be approved for Americans categorized as high-risk and for those over the age of 65.

Kennedy fired every member of the 17-person Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which is the panel of experts in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that has been the scientific gold standard for information about vaccine guidelines. Kennedy will soon replace them with questionable figures who have been staunch vaccine skeptics. He also fired Susan Monarez, the CDC director who Trump appointed. She claims she was relieved of her job for refusing Kennedy’s directive to “preapprove the recommendations” of the vaccine advisory panel that he put together.

What is taking place is nothing less than a full-scale war on public health.

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Likewise, Trump scolds and praises Russian President Vladimir Putin for “killing a lot of people” while dropping the demand for a cease-fire and spewing happy-talk about business deals with Russia. Trump publicly rebuked Putin for Russia’s increasingly deadly barrages on Ukrainian cities—writing in April on Truth Social: “Vladimir, STOP!”—and subsequently imposed 50 percent tariffs on India (but not Russia or China, its main backer) partly over its Russian oil imports. Such chaotic vacillations have muddied the outlook and slowed progress to the end goal. Trump variously raises and lowers expectations about which side needs to make the most concessions, which makes diplomacy a guessing game and increases the risk that Washington simply walks away.

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Israel’s Sept. 9 strike on Hamas’s leadership team in Doha, Qatar, apparently an attempt to kill chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya among others, underscores the degree to which its war aims have shifted. Israel has abandoned negotiation and embraced the uncompromising destruction of Hamas, regardless of the diplomatic or humanitarian costs.

The attack jeopardizes the prospects of a mediated settlement and the chances of recovering hostages alive. It undermines relations with Qatar and complicates U.S. policy in a region where Washington’s military presence and diplomatic leverage are already under strain. In this sense, the strike represents less a tactical blow against Hamas than a strategic declaration that Israel will continue to expand the battlefield—even if doing so forecloses any hope of a cease-fire and binds its closest partners to the consequences.

Israel’s previous assassination attempts on Hamas figures residing in relatively friendly Arab states have backfired, which in the past had made Israeli planners cautious about strikes like the one conducted on Tuesday. In 1997, Israel botched the assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman, Jordan, and two Mossad operatives were captured in the process. The Jordanian government—one of only two Arab states that had signed peace deals with Israel at the time and a close intelligence partner—threatened to cut cooperation with Israel. To placate Jordan, a humiliated Israel released several leading Hamas prisoners, including its head, Ahmed Yassin. In 2010, Israel killed Hamas military leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, leading to international criticism of Israel, including from the United Arab Emirates, which was a relatively friendly Arab state.

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Last week, the Trump administration proudly posted footage of the U.S. military carrying out the apparent extrajudicial execution of 11 unidentified men on a boat in the Caribbean. At the same time, masked government agents are stalking, beating, and abducting people on the streets of the nation’s capital with impunity. The president has deployed armed National Guard troops with armored combat vehicles to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., in a show of force, and he has promised to send more troops to Democrat-led cities that show insufficient deference.

This looks an awful lot like the arrival of the authoritarianism that many Democrats have been warning us about for the better part of the past decade. Now that even President Donald Trump himself is toying with title of “dictator,” why are so few Democratic leaders sounding the alarm?

Let’s consider what’s happening in the national capital. After declaring a “crime emergency” in D.C. on Aug. 11, Trump has deployed about 2,000 National Guard troops and 2,500 federal law enforcement officers to the city and asserted federal control over the city’s police department.

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s chaotic agenda is taking a growing toll on American farmers, many of whom backed his return to office but are increasingly feeling the pressures of his unpredictable trade and deportation policies. 

It’s not just the shock waves of Trump’s trade war against much of the world that are hitting U.S. farmers hard, particularly in sectors that are highly dependent on trade with Chinese markets. Trump’s immigration crackdown, too, has injected new uncertainty into the broader farm labor force, around 40 percent of which has been made up of undocumented immigrants over the past three decades. 

U.S. farmers are facing a “very difficult” landscape, said Chris Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University. “They’re getting pinched on multiple sides.” 

For farmers in the United States, working in agriculture has long been a difficult business, no matter who is in office. In normal years, most farmers lose money on farming and must cross-subsidize those losses with other, nonfarm earnings, Barrett said. 

But the addition of Trump’s trade war and deportation crackdown is making business even harder for a group that was one of his key voter bases in the recent U.S. presidential election and helped ensure his return to office. The number of small-business bankruptcies filed by farmers and fishers recently surged to a five-year high, Bloomberg reported, and the Department of Agriculture expects farm debt to reach a record high this year. 

“This year is going to be tougher than most,” Barrett said. 

That’s in large part because the Trump administration’s policies are now squeezing both farmers’ production costs and overseas markets. On the production side, Trump’s aggressive deportation drive has intensified uncertainty in the sector and driven away some workers, compounding labor challenges on farms.

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At a cabinet meeting last week, U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated a key milestone: The United States, according to him, was no longer funding Ukraine in its defense against Russia.

“We’re no longer involved with funding Ukraine, but we are involved with trying to stop the war and the killing in Ukraine. So we’re selling missiles and military equipment, millions and millions and ultimately billions of dollars to the NATO people,” Trump said. “So, they’re funding the entire war. We’re not funding anything. I think it’s an important point to make.”

Trump’s not entirely wrong—but he’s not exactly right, either, according to government reports and think tank analysts. On the military side, the United States is still set to spend billions of dollars on weapons for Ukraine, while on the civilian side, aid continues to flow, albeit with significant reductions.

The bulk of U.S. aid to Kyiv has come through five mammoth congressional appropriations bills totaling $175 billion in support, of which $128 billion goes to programs that directly support Ukraine’s military and civil society, according to the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. The rest goes to secondary goals related to Russia’s assault on Ukraine, such as supporting nearby countries and boosting the U.S. military presence in Europe.

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Although there are striking similarities between the geopolitics of the Indian subcontinent and the Korean Peninsula, the international relations community rarely pays attention to their parallel trajectories. Recent events provide a useful starting point for a comparison: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s troubled dealings with U.S. President Donald Trump contrast sharply with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s smoother handling of the White House’s real and imagined peace diplomacy during his visit to Washington last month. Modi’s difficulties and Lee’s successes also offer insights into the prospects for Trump’s peace initiatives in Asia.

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Much has been made of U.S. President Donald Trump’s rapid embrace of the tools of state capitalism. Yet while Trump has made clear his desire to emulate President Xi Jinping’s iron grip on China’s economy and citizens, Trump’s economy looks less like a centrally planned industrial strategy than a third-rate emerging market.

Whether embracing tariffs, demanding equity in private companies, conditioning market access on foreign investment and kickbacks, or attacking independent institutions such as the Federal Reserve, Trump is following a well-worn playbook. And it’s not a good one. These same measures have been deployed across Latin America, Africa, and Asia with remarkably consistent results: lower investment, less wealth, higher volatility, and higher prices.

Consider the elements of Trump’s emerging market program in turn. Most notable are tariffs. Trump has famously called tariffs “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” For decades, he has supported using them to close the goods trade deficit, completely disregarding the services trade, in which the United States is dominant.

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This has been the case with conversations about how Donald Trump misuses and abuses presidential power. Often, the president’s supporters, as well as some conservative commentators who want to offer analysis without falling into “Trump derangement syndrome,” use historical comparisons as a way to show that what is happening today is not that different from before. In other words, that the republic will survive.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, an icon of 20th-century Democratic politics, has been the focus of this kind of discussion. During a recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Left, Right, and Center, the former White House communications director for Trump in 2017, Mike Dubke, told his colleagues during a discussion of Trump’s efforts to exert federal control over elections: “I go back in history and I look at the court packing that Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to do when the Supreme Court ruled against his New Deal. And he said, my solution is we’re just going to create new justices. We’re going to expand the court, and I’m going to nominate new justices that are going to vote.” The point being, the United States has had this happen before and been fine.

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Listen to the full podcast

By attempting to fire Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook this week, President Donald Trump has broken with decades of precedent in American central banking. Governors are appointed for 14 years, specifically to insulate them from political pressure. Trump’s actions are now raising fundamental questions not only about the direction of Fed policy, but about the basic constitutional foundations of its work.

What practical effects does the Federal Reserve’s independence have on its monetary work? What effect does political pressure have on interest rates? And what would an explicitly politicized Fed look like?

Those are just a few of the questions that came up in my recent conversation with FP economics columnist Adam Tooze on the podcast we co-host, Ones and Tooze. What follows is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. For the full conversation, look for Ones and Tooze wherever you get your podcasts. And check out Adam’s Substack newsletter.

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U.S. President Donald Trump ramped up his efforts against the U.S. clean energy sector this week by taking aim at a giant wind farm, a move that experts warn will only widen the already glaring gap between Washington and Beijing in the race for the key energy industries of the future.

Trump’s decision to abruptly stop construction at Revolution Wind—a nearly completed giant wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island—is the latest in an avalanche of moves meant to gut the U.S. wind and solar industry and dismantle renewable energy projects championed by his predecessor. The United States is the world’s biggest oil producer and exporter of natural gas, and the Trump administration has wholly embraced those fossil fuels in its bid to achieve what it has called “American energy dominance.”

“The Biden administration put climate at the center of its energy policy and took a very transition-forward stance,” said Kevin Book, the managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a consultancy. “The Trump administration is largely running the playbook in reverse.”

Trump’s energy playbook also stands in sharp contrast to that of China, which is the world’s biggest consumer of coal as well as its biggest carbon emitter. Yet Beijing has also poured immense resources into manufacturing renewable and clean energy technologies over the course of decades, allowing it to now command the global market for these cutting-edge systems. 

While Washington turns its back on renewable energy, Beijing has only been racing full-speed ahead—driving a widening technological gap that threatens to leave the United States on the back foot in key energy sectors in the years to come, energy and industrial policy experts said.

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From the outset, one inescapable reality of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term has been its frenetic busyness. For those who support it, the sheer pace of Trump’s agenda has been a hallmark of its success.

For others, though, Trump’s rapid-fire proclamations, orders, and initiatives in pursuit of an increasingly radical economic and political agenda present a fundamental and unfamiliar challenge: No sooner than Trump dominates the news with one topic, he launches into another, routinely leaving his critics breathless.

To wit, think of Trump’s utterly improvised and fruitless summitry with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, his attack on the Smithsonian Institution for its alleged focus on slavery, the rolling federal takeover of policing in Washington, and the Pentagon’s recent firing of the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency after it raised doubts about the impact of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear sites in June.

Think of Trump’s push for Texas and other Republican-led states to gerrymander their electoral maps, his weaponization of the attorney general’s office (as seen in the release of the transcripts of the interview between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former personal attorney, and Ghislaine Maxwell about the Jeffrey Epstein case), and the FBI search of the home and office of Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton.

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The United States is now the biggest shareholder in one of its biggest semiconductor companies.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Aug. 22 that the U.S. government has taken a direct stake in Intel worth around $11 billion, representing a roughly 10 percent stake in the chip-manufacturing giant. Intel will issue the requisite shares to the Commerce Department, according to a regulatory filing by the company announcing the deal.

The agreement with Intel is the latest instance of Trump cutting a deal with private companies in exchange for government action or regulatory relief. But it does so in a way that experts say is unprecedented and potentially troubling. 

Here’s what you need to know.

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday followed through on so-called secondary tariffs of 25 percent on India to punish the country for buying large volumes of Russian crude oil. This is despite the fact that the United States previously encouraged New Delhi to buy Russian crude to stabilize global markets and meet India’s energy and economic objectives.

Global oil markets were nonplussed at the prospect of secondary tariffs on India, and greeted their actual arrival with a yawn. Brent crude, the global benchmark, rose by less than 50 cents a barrel. That indicates that traders do not expect Trump’s tariffs to change India’s oil-consumption habits in a big way, or take serious volumes of Russian oil off the market.

In theory, if the United States were serious about putting pressure on Russia’s main source of financing for its war in Ukraine, going after the big buyers of Russian crude could be a smart move. India is the second-biggest buyer of Russian oil, after only China, with a (legal) trade relationship with Russia that is worth billions of dollars a year to Moscow. The United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United States under the Biden administration went directly after Russian oil exports by sanctioning the vessels that carry the crude, so dissuading customers from buying it seems a reasonable step.

Except that Trump’s latest pressure move is against India, not Russia, and will not be likely to dent Russia’s energy revenues or materially weaken its ability to continue its war on Ukraine. And it has not sat well in India.

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s threatened penal tariffs on Indian goods have now become a reality. As of Wednesday, Aug. 27, an additional 25 percent tariff—on top of the existing 25 percent levy—has gone into effect because, the White House says, India is purchasing Russian crude oil.

The reverberations from Trump’s tariffs are already shaking what was long celebrated as one of the world’s most consequential partnerships, as I have previously written in Foreign Policy. For many Indians, this is not simply a matter of trade arithmetic. It is a sharp signal that the very foundation of the trust painstakingly built with Washington over two decades is at stake.

Commerce and strategy are often linked, but mistaking temporary sectoral frictions for enduring intent is poor statecraft. The effect of the tariffs is sweeping. They undermine investor confidence and unsettle exporters. Both economies stand to lose commercially—India perhaps more. Yet the larger casualty will be confidence in the partnership itself. At risk is not only the flow of goods but also the strategic convergence that drives India and the United States as pivotal partners in a rapidly shifting global order.

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Let’s consider some relatively recent history. In 1999, NATO waged a 78-day war against Yugoslavia, aiming to halt a bloody ethnic cleansing campaign by Serbian troops in the restive province of Kosovo. The Serbs ultimately withdrew, and the Western alliance filled the resulting vacuum by dispatching peacekeeping troops. The number of forces deployed was 50,000—even though Kosovo is a tiny piece of territory, a bit smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut or about one-third the size of Belgium. Today, 26 years later, there are still approximately 4,500 peacekeepers stationed there.

So now we turn to Ukraine—a country, it should be noted, that is 55 times the size of Kosovo. Since the recent flurry of diplomatic activity in Alaska and Washington, the discussion about ending the Russia-Ukraine war has turned to the notion of “security guarantees”—a strikingly fuzzy concept that means very different things to different people. The pundits in Europe and the United States are busily jawboning over what form it might take. But the entire discussion is permeated with a palpable sense of unreality.

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest assault on the independence of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and by extension the stability of the U.S. and global financial systems, came in his attempted firing on Monday of Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor.

The move is his latest attempt to force the U.S. central bank to do his bidding—namely, to lower interest rates in a bid to turbocharge economic growth on his watch. And it comes after a yearslong campaign against Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump himself named to the post. 

The move against Cook, the first Black woman to be appointed as a Federal Reserve governor, is unprecedented and legally dubious, since the president can only remove a Fed governor for cause. Trump and his administration officials say Cook had irregularities on a mortgage application before she joined the Fed—the same accusations that Bill Pulte, Trump’s appointee to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency, made against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who previously investigated Trump, and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, who led the House of Representatives’ investigation into Trump’s Russia ties while serving as a representative from California.

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“I’ve ended six wars,” Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several reporters in the White House on Monday. That became “I’ve solved seven wars” by the time that he dialed into Fox & Friends for an interview the next day. The White House did not respond to a request for clarification on which conflicts Trump was referring to.

But at least some of those deals—and Trump’s role in them—aren’t as clear-cut as the U.S. president makes them out to be as he unabashedly lobbies for the Nobel Peace Prize. And contrary to Trump’s claim that he “did not do any cease-fires” in his second term thus far, the president’s own posts about several of the peace deals that he claims to have negotiated have explicitly mentioned a cease-fire.

India and Pakistan

Trump’s claims of ending this year’s armed conflict between India and Pakistan began on May 10, when he posted on Truth Social that both countries had agreed to a “FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE” following “a long night of talks mediated by the United States.” Trump has continued to take credit for ending that conflict.

Pakistan enthusiastically co-signed that statement, even nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for what it called his “decisive diplomatic intervention and pivotal leadership” during the conflict.

But India has consistently downplayed and disputed Trump’s role in securing the cease-fire, repeatedly saying that an end to the conflict was negotiated directly with Pakistani officials.

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As U.S. President Donald Trump conducts his chaotic Ukraine diplomacy, characterized by a seeming unwillingness to stand up to an aggressor or to defend the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, Europeans are not the only ones who are getting nervous. Indeed, if any one population should be worried about its place in a world of growing disorder, where U.S. security guarantees no longer seem as solid as they once were, it is the 23 million people of Taiwan.

Taiwan, of course, is not even recognized as a country by most others, and any steps it takes toward that end could result in an invasion by its Chinese neighbor. Even short of that worst-case scenario, China has been relentlessly increasing political, diplomatic, and military pressure on Taiwan with the aim of eventual unification. Beijing is conducting an active propaganda and infiltration campaign and is undergoing what many consider to be the biggest military buildup in history, in part to develop the capability to seize Taiwan.

Over the past several years, Beijing has normalized once-controversial military tactics in the Taiwan Strait, with air and naval crossings of the median line more frequent than ever, naval exercises of encirclement operations, additional live-fire drills, and unprecedented ballistic missile tests directly over the island. Few expect Chinese President Xi Jinping to launch an unprovoked invasion of the island anytime soon. But few doubt he would do so if he felt Taiwan slipping away or if he saw an opportunity to do so without excessive costs, which could become the case if he came to doubt the U.S. commitment to support Taiwan’s defense.

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At a summit in Alaska last Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly told U.S. President Donald Trump that Ukraine must cede control of the country’s eastern Donbas region as a condition for ending the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said that he will not make territorial concessions in exchange for a peace agreement, while underscoring that it’s not within his constitutional authority to do so.

Zelensky earlier this month warned that Russia would use the Donbas as a “springboard for a future new offensive” if Ukraine fully handed it over. “If we leave Donbas of our own accord or under pressure, we will start a third war,” Zelensky said. Recent polling also shows that a strong majority of Ukrainians (75 percent) oppose formally ceding land to Russia.

The Donbas, which is short for “Donets Basin,” is an industrial and mining region that borders Russia. It’s made up of two oblasts, or provinces—Donetsk and Luhansk—that are home to roughly 4 million people.

Here’s what you need to know about the Donbas—why it has been a flash point in the Ukraine war from the start, and why it is poised to remain at the center of tensions between Kyiv and Moscow for the foreseeable future.

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In recent days, senior members of the Trump administration have made a strange accusation against India. Writing in the Financial Times on Aug. 18, Peter Navarro, the White House counselor for trade and manufacturing, claimed that India’s “Big Oil Lobby” was profiteering on discounted Russian crude, selling it to Europe, and “shielding India from sanctions scrutiny.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent echoed that view in an interview with CNBC on Aug. 19, saying that “India is just profiteering … which is unacceptable.”

Yes, refined Russian crude is reaching Europe. It comes through multiple routes, including Turkey and India. But Europe’s imports from India come mainly from just two private companies, not public sector ones. These are business decisions, not acts of state. Calling them the conduct of India confuses private commerce with national policy.

Even if the profits of these firms anger Western capitals, the response matters. An additional 25 percent tariff on Indian goods, which is set to go into effect on Aug. 27, would be a blunt hammer. It would punish thousands of unrelated Indian exporters with no link to Russian oil, damage goodwill in a partner country, and make cooperation harder when it is most needed.

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s fixation with securing access to rare earth minerals is creating the conditions for a poor strategic decision in Myanmar. According to a recent report, the Trump administration is considering a range of options to access rare earths in Myanmar—the world’s third-largest producer of such—despite the ongoing civil war, including supporting the rebel Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and engaging in direct peace talks with the military junta led by Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

Neither of those options are intrinsically bad, and both may even be necessary to end the conflict that has been raging in Myanmar for more than four years. But the Trump administration has shown, by its early actions, that it’s willing to soften its stance on the regime, which the Biden administration accused of genocide and crimes against humanity. Although this could be the opening salvo of peace negotiations, Washington’s repeated emphasis on accessing critical minerals suggests a singular purpose for these talks. What’s more, recent shifts by the U.S. State Department to downplay democracy and human rights concerns going forward make it difficult to give Washington the benefit of the doubt.

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The U.S. State Department’s recent designation of five Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) may well be a prelude to U.S. military action against them, something that President Donald Trump first threatened in November 2019. A few months after that, he proposed missiles strikes against drug labs in Mexico, according to then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Now, with the FTO designations in place, Trump has secretly directed the Defense Department to develop plans to attack the drug trafficking organizations, according to reporting in the New York Times.

While the terrorist designation may provide statutory authority for U.S. military action in Mexico, it does nothing to lessen the Mexican government’s adamant opposition to any such unilateral intervention. Mexico lost 55 percent of its land mass to the United States in the 1846-1848 Mexican-American War, so the idea of U.S. military operations on Mexican soil provokes strong nationalist antipathy. Anything of the sort would gravely damage overall counternarcotics cooperation and bilateral relations in general.

There is a way, however, in which designating the cartels as terrorist organizations could harmonize rather the fracture U.S.-Mexican cooperation in the war on drugs and make a real dent in the level of violence in Mexico. The U.S. gun dealers, straw buyers, and smugglers who have flooded Mexico with made-in-the-USA weapons of war can now be prosecuted for providing material support for terrorism.

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When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, then-Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that the war and its outcome would be a harbinger of Asia’s future. His message was clear: Just as Europe faced Russian territorial expansionism, Asia was confronting the challenge of China’s growing assertiveness—each with potentially profound consequences for the respective continent.

Three years later, Kishida’s warning has acquired a more ominous meaning. U.S. President Donald Trump is pressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cede territory in exchange for peace of an uncertain duration, while demanding that European allies fall in line. For Asia, Trump’s high-handed diplomacy raises troubling questions about whether America will remain a reliable security guarantor in the Indo-Pacific.

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The initial meetings are over. Now the meetings about the meetings have begun. 

Nearly three dozen leaders met virtually on Tuesday, hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a delegation of European leaders met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., to discuss the outcome of the meetings in Washington and coordinate next steps. Those next steps could involve a bilateral meeting between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin—and/or a trilateral meeting that would see Trump also attend.

The call was convened by what has been dubbed the “coalition of the willing,” a group of 31 countries that are committed to defending Ukraine against Russia. The group is led by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, both of whom were among the seven European leaders backing Zelensky up in Washington on Monday.

According to a statement from Starmer’s office, the virtual meeting focused heavily on plans to provide “robust” U.S. and European security guarantees for Ukraine as part of any future peace deal with Russia, which could include “the deployment of a reassurance force if the hostilities ended.” They also “discussed how further pressure – including through sanctions – could be placed on Putin until he showed he was ready to take serious action to end his illegal invasion.”

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After a strange, made-for-television summit in Washington on Monday meant to bring Russia’s escalating war on Ukraine closer to the conclusion that U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to achieve even before taking office, nearly all the big questions remain unanswered. Here are just a few of the major issues that the United States, Ukraine, its European backers, and Russia will be grappling with in days and weeks to come.

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Remember when U.S. President Donald Trump declared that Russia would face “severe consequences” if it didn’t agree to a cease-fire in Ukraine? When he threatened to impose draconian sanctions if Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t agree to peace? When he told Fox News that he wouldn’t “be happy” if Putin didn’t stop the fighting?

All these things happened just before the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska on Aug. 15. Then, the U.S. media was full of feverish reports on Trump’s supposed vexation with Putin and alleged shift toward Ukraine. Since the U.S.-Russia mutual admiration event last week, all that has vanished down the memory hole, melted away like the snows of yesteryear. As many of the same reporters once again gush about the positive vibes emerging from Trump’s meetings with Zelensky and other European leaders at the White House yesterday, let’s keep their previous mistakes in mind.

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If nothing else, Donald Trump doesn’t shy away from high stakes meetings. Always supremely confident in his own abilities to bend others to his will, the U.S. president spent the past few days engaging with leaders on both sides of the war between Russia and Ukraine to try to end the most destructive war in Europe since 1945.

For all his efforts, however, the prospect of finding a resolution to the conflict remains as distant today as it was before Trump threw the diplomatic effort into full gear a couple of weeks ago. The fundamental reality confronting Trump is that Russia and Ukraine are pursuing irreconcilable objectives. Ukraine wants to be secure, sovereign, and independent. Russia wants to subjugate Ukraine and control its destiny.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—backed by an extraordinary delegation of seven European leaders—traveled to the White House on Monday to discuss possible terms for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal with U.S. President Donald Trump, following Trump’s meeting in Alaska last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Several notable conditions for ending the yearslong war were discussed. Among those, all nine leaders in attendance stressed the importance of holding a trilateral summit with Zelensky, Trump, and Putin, though French President Emmanuel Macron added that a quadrilateral meeting that also included the Europeans would likely be necessary as a follow-up.

Trump also expressed an openness to potentially providing Ukraine with U.S. security guarantees as part of a final peace deal, which Trump said Putin had agreed to during their summit in Alaska last week. It is unclear what these guarantees may look like; however, several European leaders referred to them as “Article 5” in style (in reference to NATO’s mutual defense clause). When asked if he would be willing to send U.S. troops to help provide security for Ukraine, Trump did not rule it out.

But in a statement on Monday, Moscow vehemently condemned the idea of NATO troops in Ukraine.

Such a concession is just one of many points of contention between Trump and team Europe. Zelensky and his European allies remain adamant that a cease-fire must first be secured before peace talks can be held. However, Putin has insisted that negotiations can occur without a truce deal—and Trump appears convinced. “I don’t think you need a cease-fire,” Trump said on Monday. “I’d like them to stop [fighting], but strategically, that could be a disadvantage for one side or the other.”

Read more in today’s World Brief: Trump, Zelensky Strike Optimistic Tone at White House Talks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday alongside a large cohort of European leaders. This comes after Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday as part of an ongoing push for a deal to end the war in Ukraine.

After the Alaska summit, Trump has been accused of aligning with Putin by abandoning previous calls for a cease-fire. Trump over the weekend said that instead of pursuing a “mere ceasefire,” the warring parties should “go directly” to a peace agreement.

In Alaska, Putin also reportedly demanded that Ukraine cede Donetsk and Luhansk, the two territories that constitute the industrial eastern Donbas region, as a condition to end the war—and offered to freeze the conflict along the rest of the front line.

Trump is apparently supportive of this proposal and is raising pressure on Zelensky. In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said Zelensky could end the war “almost immediately, if he wants to” and suggested that doing so will require Zelensky to accept that Ukraine will never regain Crimea (which Russia illegally seized in 2014) or join NATO. Zelensky has repeatedly stated that he will not give up territory as part of a peace agreement. But as Ukrainian forces continue to face myriad challenges along the roughly 600-mile front line, Zelensky is in a tough position.

To get a clearer picture of what’s being asked of Kyiv, here’s a quick breakdown of where things currently stand on the battlefield in Ukraine.

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The scene was familiar—U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sitting in the Oval Office, with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the couch to Trump’s left. But unlike the last time this particular scene unfolded, there was no shouting match and even a few moments of levity.

Here’s what you need to know.

Less fireworks

Zelensky headed off one particular flashpoint from February’s meeting even before a word was said, by wearing a suit this time. He even had a good-natured exchange with Brian Glenn, a correspondent with right-wing news outlet Real America’s Voice whose question about the Ukrainian leader’s more casual attire back in February further stoked an already contentious argument. “You look fabulous in that suit,” Glenn quipped on Monday, before apologizing to Zelensky for his previous attack. “You are in the same suit,” Zelensky shot back, to laughter from Trump and others in the room.

Zelensky also thanked Trump for his continued support on multiple instances, blunting the other infamous attack by Vance that kick-started their disagreement during the last meeting.

Trump also appeared to be in a more gracious mood this time around. “We’re going to have a meeting. I think if everything works out well today, we’re going to have a trilat,” he said, referring to a proposed trilateral meeting with Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “And I think there will be a reasonable chance of ending the war when we do that.”

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Did the highly anticipated meeting in Alaska alter the trajectory of the war in Ukraine? Or was it just pageantry? As the dust settles on the summit, and as Kyiv, Brussels, and other interested parties react, FP’s Ravi Agrawal assesses the meeting with Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former CIA analyst focused on Russia.

U.S. President Donald Trump, fresh off his Alaska meeting last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, seems to have cooled on the idea of pressuring Moscow to end the war it started in Ukraine, despite Trump’s recent threats of “severe consequences” if Putin didn’t agree to a cease-fire.

Late Sunday, Trump appeared to revert to his default position of blaming Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for getting invaded by its larger avaricious neighbor. “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump said on his social media network. 

But Europe has plenty of cards to play in this conflict even if the Trump administration has opted for appeasement. The supporting cast joining Zelensky in the White House Monday includes the heads of NATO and the European Union, the Finnish Trump-whisperer-in-chief, and four of the most prominent national leaders in Europe. That raises the prospect that Ukraine and its biggest backers could inject some backbone into the United States’ approach, if not show some spine itself.

“I think the United States and Europe have all the cards. They are just not willing to play them, and that is nowhere more evident than in the realm of economic warfare,” said Tom Keatinge, the director for finance and security at the Royal United Services Institute in the United Kingdom.

“From the start, the G-7 allies have talked a tough game but have never gone all in on sanctions. We have, at every step of the way, fallen short of what we would need” to inflict sufficient economic pain on Russia to force Putin to recalibrate, he said.

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When U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 15, Putin was greeted by a flyover of an American B-2 strategic bomber. Such flyovers can be a show of respect for a visiting statesperson, but Putin’s reptilian brain likely also registered fear as the stealthy aircraft roared overhead. He knows better than anyone that the world’s most advanced nuclear bomber could end his life within seconds.

This show of nuclear force followed closely on the heels of Trump’s order to reposition nuclear submarines to the “appropriate regions” in response to threats against the United States made by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Some analysts have criticized Trump’s nuclear saber-rattling as dangerous. But in fact, Trump can and should ramp up nuclear threats as part of a successful negotiation strategy to bring Russia’s war in Ukraine to an end.

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When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in Washington on Aug. 18 for pivotal talks over the future of Russia’s war in Ukraine, he will be backed by several of his European allies. 

That may be because when Zelensky was last in town for talks in February, a highly watched diplomatic meeting—which was supposed to draw Kyiv and Washington closer together—rapidly devolved into an explosive shouting match with U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. 

It’s a reflection of the two leaders’ tumultuous and shifting relationship as the Russia-Ukraine war stretches past its third year and Trump vacillates between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Their stormy history goes all the way back to Trump’s first term in office, when the U.S. leader withheld nearly $400 million in military aid from Ukraine and then urged Zelensky to investigate Trump’s then-political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter—ultimately leading to his first impeachment. 

But since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and since Trump made quickly ending the war a central goal of his second presidency, his relationship with Zelensky has become even more important.  

Here is a brief timeline of some of the two leaders’ most turbulent moments since Trump returned to office. 

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is coming back to the White House, and this time, he has a phalanx of European leaders backing him up. 

Finnish President Alexander Stubb, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz all announced that they would accompany Zelensky when he meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday. 

The first three names on that list will be particularly important when it comes to making a case for Ukraine’s best interests to Trump, whose emphasis on interpersonal relationships drives much of his decision-making.

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s stated goal in meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska was to secure a Russia-Ukraine cease-fire. Putin stiffed him on a cease-fire and got him to instead accept an “understanding” that strikingly advantages Russia. It would require Kyiv to pay with land just to start negotiations of an overall settlement and leave Russian forces far better positioned if talks broke down.

The more we learn about this meeting, the more disastrous it sounds.

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U.S. President Donald Trump drew a lot of flak for inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin onto U.S. soil for the first time in a decade, complete with a red carpet, a bright “Alaska 2025” sign, and a joint news conference. That was despite getting little from the Russian leader beforehand, save a pledge to continue killing Ukrainians and seizing their territory if the summit didn’t go precisely his way.

And as quickly became clear at the news conference the two leaders held Friday, Trump came away with less than the minimum he had hoped for, which was a temporary cease-fire. Despite Putin’s gracious words to Trump—and Trump’s description of him as a “fantastic” partner—the Russian appeared to give no ground whatsoever on his fundamental position that Ukraine is Russian territory and that he will not compromise.

Trump put his best spin on it all nonetheless. “We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there,” Trump said, declaring that the talks were “extremely productive” and that “many points were agreed to.” But he acknowledged there was no progress on one that was “probably the most significant,” which may have been a cease-fire in Ukraine. The two walked out of the news conference without taking questions.

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All eyes were on Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday as U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for pivotal talks over the future of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine—without their Ukrainian counterpart at the table.

In the days leading up to the summit, Trump appeared to downplay expectations for the talks and any potential diplomatic breakthroughs. But he struck a tougher tone hours ahead of the talks, telling reporters aboard Air Force One: “I want to see a cease-fire rapidly. I don’t know if it’s going to be today, but I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today.” 

Once in Anchorage, the two leaders appeared cozy, with Trump literally rolling out a red carpet for the Russian leader and even allowing him to ride in Trump’s presidential limousine, known as the “Beast.” The warm reception stood in sharp contrast to the fiery and hostile exchange that occurred when Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House in February. 

While Trump and Putin were initially expected to meet for one-on-one talks, the two leaders were ultimately accompanied by several top advisors in a last-minute change of plans. Trump was joined by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House envoy Steve Witkoff, while Putin brought Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Kremlin advisor Yuri Ushakov. The group met for 2 hours and 45 minutes, according to the Kremlin. 

But even after a press conference with both leaders afterward, it’s not entirely clear what the two leaders agreed to, if anything. “There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said, later adding: “We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

Below is the full rush transcript of Trump and Putin’s press conference.

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U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet (literally) for Russian President Vladimir Putin when the two men arrived in Alaska on Friday for their closely watched summit on the Ukraine war. Between Trump’s warm welcome to his Russian counterpart and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s notable absence from the talks, it is unclear just how much progress will be made toward securing a peace deal.

Trump and his lineup of top U.S. officials hosted Putin and his own senior delegation at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Upon landing in Anchorage, Trump gave Putin a first-class greeting: ordering a military flyover, applauding Putin as he approached, and even sharing the presidential limousine (known as the “Beast”) to ride through the U.S. military base. This was starkly different treatment from the open hostility that Trump expressed toward Zelensky during their White House summit in February.

Ahead of the meeting, the White House also announced an eleventh-hour change of plans. Trump and Putin were initially supposed to speak one-on-one without additional advisors present beyond their respective translators. But ahead of their arrival, the Trump administration notified reporters that the meeting format had been changed to a three-on-three, with Trump being joined by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin being accompanied by Lavrov and Kremlin advisor Yuri Ushakov. No explanation for the format change was given.

This is the first in-person Trump-Putin summit since the former began his second term in January, and it is the first time in a decade that the Russian leader has stepped onto U.S. soil. At the time of writing, the two world leaders—along with their last-minute additions—had entered hour three of talks.

Read more in today’s World Brief: Trump Rolls Out the Red Carpet for Putin in Alaska.

The Russian government is many things, but subtle is not one of them. Ahead of a highly anticipated summit on the Russia-Ukraine war in Alaska on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov engaged in some blatant trolling.

Lavrov arrived in Alaska wearing a CCCP sweatshirt. Those are the Russian initials for “USSR,” which stands for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (aka the Soviet Union). Experts say that Lavrov, who has been Russia’s top diplomat for roughly two decades, knew exactly what he was doing by wearing that sweatshirt. “He wouldn’t do this just by chance,” former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt said of Lavrov’s sweatshirt via X.

The war in Ukraine—a former Soviet republic—is widely viewed as a product of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet Union and imperialistic ambitions.

A post on X by the Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov includes a video that shows Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov walking from a car into a building wearing a CCCP shirt.X screengrab

Putin once referred to the collapse of the USSR as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” And, after ordering the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he compared himself to Peter the Great—effectively portraying himself as a righteous conqueror who’s fighting to restore control over what he views as Russian lands (much of Ukraine was also previously part of the Russian Empire).

The Russian president, a former KGB officer, has also repeatedly suggested that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people” and said in June that “the whole of Ukraine is ours.” Putin has falsely claimed that Ukraine, which gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, isn’t a real country and was created by Russia.

Along these lines, Lavrov’s choice of attire garnered a fair amount of attention in terms of the message it appeared to send about Russia’s mentality heading into the Alaska summit between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.

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