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The incoming German chancellor, more convinced than ever that the defense and trade relationship with Washington is crumbling, has made plans to execute on his goal of “independence from the U.S.A.”

He’s not the only one.

The new Canadian prime minister said last week that “the old relationship we had with the United States” — the tightest of military and economic partnerships — is now “over.” Poland’s president is musing publicly about getting nuclear weapons. And the new leader of Greenland, host to American air bases since World War II, reacted to the uninvited visit of a high-level American delegation with indignation.

. . .

These are the results so far of President Trump’s threats to abandon NATO allies whose contributions he judges insufficient, his declaration that the European Union was designed “to screw” the United States and his efforts to expand the United States’ land mass. The main reaction is resistance all around. Now, into this maelstrom of threats, alienation and recriminations, President Trump is expected to announce his “Liberation Day” tariffs on Wednesday.

. . .

Mr. Trump is already showing signs of concern that his targets may team up against him.

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On a spring morning two months after Vladimir Putin’s invading armies marched into Ukraine, a convoy of unmarked cars slid up to a Kyiv street corner and collected two middle-aged men in civilian clothes.

Leaving the city, the convoy — manned by British commandos, out of uniform but heavily armed — traveled 400 miles west to the Polish border. The crossing was seamless, on diplomatic passports. Farther on, they came to the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, where an idling C-130 cargo plane waited.

The passengers were top Ukrainian generals. Their destination was Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany. Their mission was to help forge what would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine.

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Keir Starmer should fight back strongly against Donald Trump if he imposes punitive tariffs on British exports, senior UK and EU diplomats said on Saturday night, amid heightened fears that the US president could trigger a global trade war with devastating effects on the UK economy.

British government officials in London and Washington are working frantically this weekend to try to persuade Trump not to slap duties on more key UK industries on what he is calling “liberation day” on Wednesday. The US president has already announced plans for 25% levies on imports of cars, steel and aluminium to the US.

. . .

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned last week that a 20% increase in tariffs between the US and the rest of the world would cut UK growth by 1% and “entirely eliminate” the £9.9bn of fiscal headroom that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, restored in the public finances by a painful programme of welfare and other cuts in her spring statement last week.

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A federal judge late Friday froze parts of President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the law firm Jenner & Block, one of two firms linked to the Robert Mueller investigation Trump has sought to punish.

The temporary restraining order, announced by Judge John Bates at the end of a hastily scheduled Friday hearing, pauses parts of the order instructing agencies to terminate contracts with the firm and its clients, as well as the order’s directives seeking to limit the firm’s access to federal officials and buildings.

The Jenner & Block hearing unfolded minutes after a different judge in the same courthouse heard a similar request from the law firm WilmerHale, which was also targeted by Trump in an executive order issued this week.

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In the annals of ill will between California and the Trump administration, Thursday may have been a record-breaker.

The U.S. Education Department announced early in the West Coast morning that it would challenge a major state law protecting transgender students. Two hours later came the revocation of federal waivers that had let California colleges include undocumented students in certain programs that receive federal aid.

The afternoon brought a flurry of investigations into suspected affirmative action in California higher education: The Justice Department said it would investigate whether Stanford University and three schools in the University of California system were violating a Supreme Court decision that banned the consideration of race in admissions. Then the Health and Human Services Department said it was looking into accusations of similar discrimination at “a major medical school in California.”

By sundown, the Agriculture Department had sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a letter saying it would review its education-related funding in California in connection with transgender protections. And the Justice Department announced that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was under investigation for allegedly taking too long to approve applications for concealed-carry permits.

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The Trump administration on Friday detailed its plans to put the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government’s main agency for distributing foreign aid, fully under the State Department and reduce its staff to some 15 positions.

An email to U.S.A.I.D. employees informing them of the impending layoffs, titled “U.S.A.I.D.’s Final Mission” and sent just after noon, detailed an elimination in all but name that the administration had long signaled was coming. It arrived over protests from lawmakers who argued that efforts to downsize the agency were illegal, and from staff members and unions who sued to stop them.

The agency employed about 10,000 people before the Trump administration began reviewing and canceling foreign aid contracts within days of President Trump’s return to the White House. By Sept. 2, the email said, “the agency’s operations will have been substantially transferred to State or otherwise wound down.”

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Elon Musk produced a unified symbol for class war, corruption and techno-fascism. His car is hell on wheels.

Anti-Tesla protesters keep directing eggs, dog poop, Molotov cocktails and invectives against “the Swastikar” and its maker Elon Musk.

Yes, some people have set Teslas ablaze. But the “Tesla Takedown” movement is proof the anger burns in more than the violent fringes. Urging folks to sell their Tesla cars and stock and join picket lines, organizers have named Saturday a “global day of action.”

The protests rail against Musk’s huge conflicts of interest in his appointed role as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency. As well they should. The true goal of DOGE, a blitzkrieg effort to trim government ranks, is to bring on a Trump-led Second American Revolution. And that means less democracy and more oligarchs like Musk.

. . .

But the implications extend far beyond Washington D.C. or even U.S. borders. Which is why people around the world have made a hairpin turn. The electric vehicle that once seemed to herald a green-tinged, better future has become a symbol of the forces ruining their lives.

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Hundreds of protests at Tesla showrooms are planned across the US and internationally on Saturday. Organizers have dubbed it Tesla Takedown’s Global Day of Action, the latest and largest in a series of demonstrations that began shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated. Organizers say the rallies will take place in front of more than 200 Tesla locations worldwide, including nearly 50 in California alone.

The protesters’ goal is to send a message to the Trump administration that they’re against what the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, is doing with the US federal government – laying off thousands of workers, cutting department budgets, giving fascist salutes and getting rid of entire agencies.

. . .

Tesla Takedown describes itself as a decentralized grassroots movement that will “protest Tesla for as long as Elon Musk continues to shred public services”. The group says on its organizing page that Musk is “destroying our democracy using the fortune he built at Tesla” and so, in turn, they are “taking action at Tesla”. Local organizers are planning their own demonstrations rather than coordinating with one national group.

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US stocks were sharply lower Friday as investors digested souring consumer sentiment and inflation data that showed an uptick in one of the Federal Reserve’s key gauges, underscoring the delicate state of the economy as businesses brace for President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The Dow tumbled 750 points, or 1.77%, on Friday. The broader S&P 500 fell 2.1% and the Nasdaq Composite slid 2.8%.

. . .

Wall Street was also grappling with Trump’s announcement on Wednesday of 25% tariffs on all cars shipped into the US, set to go into effect April 3. Trump also announced tariffs on car parts like engines and transmissions, set to take effect “no later than May 3,” according to the proclamation he signed.

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A top Senate Republican on Thursday accused President Trump of illegally refusing to spend $2.9 billion approved by Congress, teaming with Democrats in an early salvo in the simmering struggle between Congress and the White House over which has the ultimate power over federal spending.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, initiated a letter to the White House that was signed by Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the panel’s senior Democrat. The letter asserted that the administration had violated the six-month spending law approved by Congress earlier this month.

They pointed to a memo Mr. Trump had sent to Congress on Monday that declared that only a portion of the $12.4 billion designated as emergency funding in the legislation would actually be spent, “because I do not concur that the added spending is truly for emergency needs.”

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A Yale professor who studies fascism is leaving the US to work at a Canadian university because of the current US political climate, which he worries is putting the US at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship”.

Jason Stanley, who wrote the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Stanley told the Daily Nous, a philosophy profession website, that he made the decision “to raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship”.

He said in an interview that Columbia University’s recent actions moved him to accept the offer. Last Friday, Columbia gave in to the Trump administration by agreeing to a series of demands in order to restore $400m in federal funding. These changes include crackdowns on protests, increased security power and “internal reviews” of some academic programs, like the Middle Eastern studies department.

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Israel’s parliament has passed a law expanding elected officials’ power to appoint judges, in defiance of a years-long protest against Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to drive through judicial changes.

The approval of the bill, which opposition parties say will make judges subject to the will of politicians, comes as Netanyahu’s government is locked in a standoff with the supreme court over its attempts to dismiss the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara and Ronen Bar, the head of the internal security agency.

Opposition parties, which have filed a petition with the supreme court challenging the vote, said in a joint statement: “This government is undermining the foundations of democracy, and the entire opposition will stand as a strong barrier against it until every attempt to turn Israel into a dictatorship is stopped.”

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