If the economy has failed to respond to White House methods, the administration’s forays into international affairs have yet to bear fruit. Russia
continues its murderous assault on Ukraine despite U.S.-brokered peace attempts and Ukraine’s agreement to a ceasefire.
Greenland on Thursday overwhelmingly
rejected U.S. annexation ambitions in a national vote that ended with all three main parties supporting independence instead.
Europe has responded to Trump’s attacks on NATO by
uniting behind Ukraine, pledging to match U.S. tariffs dollar-for-dollar and restating its firm support for the NATO alliance.
Trump’s curious fixation on Canada has mainly succeeded in uniting Canadians against him, ruining decades of friendship between the two countries and setting off a trade war certain to prove harmful to both parties. Chances have increased voters will replace one Liberal regime with another, rather than the Conservative opposition that seemed destined for power before Trump got involved.
Middle Eastern countries that tolerated U.S. power, if never loving it much, have been driven into rare
unity against Trump’s suggestion Gaza be rebuilt as a sort of gated Florida community next door to Israel, minus the Palestinians. In a move that couldn’t help but enrage Arab sentiment, the U.S. and Israel are
reported to be seeking to ship ousted Palestinians to Sudan or Somalia, two of the poorest, most violence-wracked countries in Africa.
That’s in less than his first two months back in the Oval Office. On the home front, U.S. courts have impeded Trump’s hopes of remaking a judiciary he feels has treated him ill. Judges have blocked efforts to fire public employees en masse,
ordering thousands of them be
rehired;
rejected an executive order aiming to withhold funding for transgender care; stalled
efforts to use wartime measures to deport migrants, and
enforced a previous policy enjoining immigration officers from targeting mosques, temples, synagogues and other religious sites.
A federal judge rejected Trump’s
attempt to bar a law firm linked to Hillary Clinton from entering government buildings. Even the Supreme Court, with three Trump-appointed members and a conservative majority,
ruled against efforts to withhold US$2 billion in foreign aid payments, and rejected Trump’s
request to intervene in his sentencing for a case involving hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Over the weekend, the U.S.
deported more than 200 Venezuelans despite a court order blocking the flight, claiming the order “had no lawful basis” because the flight was already in the air.
For all the attention focused on the daily outpouring of headlines from Washington, it’s noteworthy how little of substance has yet to be accomplished
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There’s a camp that argues chaos agents like Trump and Musk are beneficial because they bring about change, by force if necessary.
By that token, the carnage in Ukraine represents good tidings, the levelling of Gaza was strategic brilliance and the fires in Los Angeles were a desirable achievement. The truth is, destruction is destruction. Leadership is in minimizing the damage it brings. That’s where we are now, but don’t expect beneficial change to come from Washington.