Mask-off outbursts by Maga insiders and most strikingly, the destruction and reconstruction of the presidential seat, with a huge new $300m ballroom, means Trump isn’t planning to leave the White House when his term ends, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
DONALD TRUMP is adding new dimensions to the culture wars that so animate his critics and supporters alike. The more-or-less abolition of USAid has thrown the US’s erstwhile allies in Europe into a tizz.
Over 12,000 USAid staff are due on gardening leave but the uncounted number of locally engaged staff — employed wherever US foreign policy interests are endangered — is possibly larger.
Trump says he wants to purge USAid of the “radical lunatics” running it and his media mouthpiece trotted out a whole series of exotic programmes which offend his sense of what is proper and permissible.
US tariffs have had Von der Leyen bowing in submission, while comments from the former European Central Bank leader call for more European political integration and less individual state sovereignty. All this adds up to more pain and austerity ahead, argues NICK WRIGHT
In the first half of a two-part article, PETER MERTENS looks at how Nato’s €800 billion ‘Readiness 2030’ plan serves Washington’s pivot to the Pacific, forcing Europeans to dismantle social security and slash pensions to fund it



