Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

― George Bernard Shaw

“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase his memory. Destroy its books, it's culture, it's history. Then have someone write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was.”

– Milan Kundera

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”

– Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

1. How a New Axis Called CRINK Is Working Against America

2. Fighting Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Resistance

3. Trump’s New Ukraine Proposal Looks Like an Offer It Must Refuse

4. The Vance Doctrine

5. How the Reversal of the ‘American Exceptionalism’ Trade Is Rippling Around the Globe

6. What Does MAGA Have Against Europe?

7. Hegseth Brought His Wife to Sensitive Meetings With Foreign Military Officials

8. Trump allies are starting to notice Hegseth’s growing pile of mistakes

9. Is Washington's Indo-Pacific strategy washed up?

10. Hegseth Addresses Indo-Pacom Partnerships During First Trip to Region

11. US is pushing more expansive minerals deal with Ukraine, sources say

12. PacNet #20 – Taiwan is under a triple security threat

13. Beijing would not attack Taiwan if it believed trade would suffer, senators hear

14. Final Cuts Will Eliminate U.S. Aid Agency in All but Name

15. US to give $73 million to aid Rohingya refugees, State Dept. says

16. A DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding a reporter to a group email

17. Congressional Caucus Champions Special Ops Amid Rising Threats

18. US To Send Advanced Military Hardware To Philippines

19. USAGM Rescinds RFE/RL Grant Termination

1. How a New Axis Called CRINK Is Working Against America

Please go to the link to view the extensive charts and graphics. https://www.wsj.com/world/crink-axis-china-russia-iran-alliance-urkaine-war-3dab9921?st=Q2UGNs&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

This complements the recent 2025 Threat Assessment from the ODNI. For the first time (at least that I can find) a national threat assessment recognizes this "adversarial cooperation."

ADVERSARIAL COOPERATION

Cooperation among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea has been growing more rapidly in recent years, reinforcing threats from each of them individually while also posing new challenges to U.S. strength and power globally. These primarily bilateral relationships, largely in security and defense fields, have strengthened their individual and collective capabilities to threaten and harm the United States, as well as improved their resilience against U.S. and Western efforts to constrain or deter their activities. Russia’s war in Ukraine has accelerated these ties, but the trend is likely to continue regardless of the war’s outcome. This alignment increases the chances of U.S. tensions or conflict with any one of these adversaries drawing in another. China is critical to this alignment and its global significance, given the PRC’s particularly ambitious goals, and powerful capabilities and influence in the world.

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2025-Unclassified-Report.pdf

We are going to need to develop a holistic strategy to deal with this fusion of foes.

World

How a New Axis Called CRINK Is Working Against America

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have united to defy Western sanctions and undermine U.S. interests

https://www.wsj.com/world/crink-axis-china-russia-iran-alliance-urkaine-war-3dab9921?st=Q2UGNs&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

By Timothy W. MartinFollow

, Ming LiFollow

and Roque RuizFollow

March 28, 2025 11:00 pm ET

An axis uniting China, Russia, Iran and North Korea—dubbed CRINK by some Western officials—has emerged from the war in Ukraine, a loose alliance united by a mutual disdain for the U.S.-led world order.

That coalition’s cooperation has steadily deepened as the four have exchanged food, oil, arms, diplomatic support and military assistance in a manner designed to remain beyond the reach of Western sanctions.

Now, President Trump’s determination to end the war creates a moment of truth for the entente. If he brokers a cease-fire, the bonds between the four could loosen.

But a failure to do so—along with greater U.S. pressure on Iran and China—could unintentionally deepen this “common market of autocracies,” says John Park, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who focuses on Indo-Pacific security and economic statecraft.

Cooperation between the four nations isn’t new. Russia and Iran allied to support the Assad regime in Syria, while China has long been North Korea’s main patron and Beijing and Moscow’s relationship has been deepening for years.

But the war multiplied those ties and helped knit the quartet together. The four are “promoting alternative systems to compete with the United States, primarily in trade, finance and security,” according to a recent assessment by U.S. spy agencies.

Russia’s need to fuel its war effort has put Moscow at the center of the entente. It has turned to Chinese firms for goods critical for making the arms it needs in Ukraine.

Chinese exported weapon components to Russia

$500 million

Essential weapon components

400

Strategic electronics

300

Sensitive electronics

Weaponry mechanical parts

200

Production and testing equipment

100

Numerical machine tools and components

2021

’22

’23

’24

’25

Source: Atlantic Council’s analysis of data from Chinese Customs

North Korea—itself long under international sanctions—has sent huge quantities of munitions as well as more than 12,000 soldiers to help Russia. Ukraine said last month that half of Russia’s ammunition now comes from North Korea. That support has helped Russia largely expel Ukrainian troops from its Kursk region. Lately, Pyongyang has engaged diplomatically with Moscow more than it has with Beijing.

North Korean military cargo shipments to Russia

1,000 containers

Oct. 2023

Dec.

South Korea estimates that 200 long-range artillery pieces had been sent.

Feb. 2024

June

Aug.

Sep.

Oct.

Delegations sent between North Korea and Russia or China, since 2021*

China

Russia

to North Korea

from North Korea

*as of March 27

Sources: staff reports (shipments); NK News (delegations)

Iran has provided Russia with drone expertise, giving it a critical boost in a conflict dominated by the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. Tehran has sent Shahed drones as well as blueprints and technical assistance for Russia to increase its own drone manufacturing.

Military cooperation has gone hand-in-hand with economic ties. Shut out by the West, Russia has redirected much of its energy exports to China, while Beijing—which doesn’t support the U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow—has in turn stepped up exports of consumer goods that Russia no longer receives from the West.

Share of Russia–China trade in total trade for each country

China

Russia

35%

2021

’22

’23

’24

2021

’22

’23

’24

Sources: Chinese customs via Wind; Russia's Federal Customs Service

As their economies draw closer, China and Russia have increasingly used their own currencies for their trade, shunning the U.S. dollar. Using dollars makes them more vulnerable to sanctions, while both nations also harbor ambitions to boost their currencies’ influence in world trade.

Russian trade by currency

Imports

Exports

100%

Russian ruble

U.S. dollar and euro

Chinese yuan

Other

2022

’23

’24

’25

2022

’23

’24

’25

Sources: Bank of Russia (to February 2024); Bank of Finland's analysis of Bank of Russia's data (after February 2024)

In return for military support, Russia has allowed in thousands of North Korean workers, who earn valuable hard currency that is sent back to the regime. Moscow has sent technicians to support Pyongyang’s spy-satellite program, South Korean officials said. Russia has also boosted illicit oil shipments to North Korea.

Russia’s oil exports by country

100%

China

Europe

India

U.S.

Others

Turkey

2017

’18

’19

’20

’21

’22

’23

’24

’25

North Koreans entering Russia

2023

1,117

13,221

2024

Sources: Kpler (oil exports); Russia’s Federal Security Service (entry)

As the world’s second-largest economy, China provides the economic ballast for the quartet, making it the indispensable partner for the entente. As a net importer of energy, China is a major market for Iranian and Russian energy. About 90% of Iranian oil goes to China.

Gross domestic product*

China’s oil imports by origin

China

100%

$17.79 trillion

Saudi Arabia

Iran

Russia

Iraq

Russia

$2.02 trillion

Others

Iran

$404.6

billion

May

July

Sept.

Nov.

March

North Korea

March 2024

Jan. 2025

$27.4 billion

*as of 2023

Sources: World Bank (GDP for countries other than North Korea); South Korea's Ministry of Economy and Finance (North Korea’s GDP); Kpler (oil exports)

China represents more than 98% of North Korea’s official trade with the outside world, giving it great leverage over Pyongyang. “Without China, the coalition is anemic,” said Christopher S. Chivvis, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for Europe.

An end to the war in Ukraine could drain the partnership of its staying power. Russia could try to mend relations with Europe, which would loosen its reliance on China. China—which is integrated in the global trading system in a way that the other three aren’t—may decide that supporting the axis isn’t worth jeopardizing its relations with the West.

If Moscow backs away from cease-fire talks, Trump has already threatened more sanctions and tariffs on Russia. Washington has also renewed its “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, threatening military action if Iran doesn’t rein in its nuclear program. U.S.-China relations are also tense, with Trump recently raising tariffs on billions of dollars of China imports.

If left unchecked, the nexus between Russia and North Korea, which both already possess nuclear arms, and Iran, which is nearly able to produce an atomic bomb, could prove a serious threat to the West, said Chivvis, the former intelligence officer, who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“What we want to avoid is the deepening scenario, where they do actually build on the cooperation that we have seen over the last couple of years,” he said.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What steps should the U.S. take to address growing cooperation between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea? Join the conversation below.

Write to Timothy W. Martin at Timothy.Martin@wsj.com, Ming Li at ming.li@wsj.com and Roque Ruiz at roque.ruizgonzalez@wsj.com

2. Fighting Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Resistance

We do not need resistance. We need citizen participation in our political process.

It pains me to see "resistance" used in this way and "romanticized" in such a way that could undermine our federal democratic republic as much as the perceived threats they say are "resisting."

My litmus test for all those who align themselves with this essay is a simple question, do you support and defend the Constitution of the United States? If so then the question is what are you doing to make sure our Constitution works? It is not about resistance. It is about making our great American experiment continue to strive to form a more perfect union.

Yes I love the work of the OSS and the OSS Simple Sabotage Manual is referenced below. But I want that applied outside the US in authoritarian regimes to help the oppressed to free themselves. And at least the author acknowledges that there are some activities that are dangerous and should not be employed.

Excerpt:

Finally, there’s what Choose Democracy, in a dead-tree resistance guide published before the election titled What if Trump Wins?, calls “strategic disobedience.” “I’m a disrupt and disobey person,” Hunter told me. For the adventurous, an online Choose Democracy guide provides a link to a Simple Sabotage Field Manual prepared during World War II by the Office of Strategic Services. It steers protesters toward milder recommendations, such as worker slowdowns and stalling during meetings, and away from what in peacetime would constitute criminal activity, such as setting fires or vandalizing equipment. The latter are terrible ideas for more reasons than I have room here to elucidate. As Sgt. Phil Esterhaus used to say on the TV cop show Hill Street Blues: Let’s be careful out there.

Don't resist. Make our Constitution work for the American people.

When I think about what is happening with the fusion of foes, Dark Quad, axis of authoritarians, and "adversarial cooperation" I think that we need to get our house in order and focus on these external threats. And we should recognize and acknowledge that our political division and infighting is actually a boon to the axis of tyranny. And we should acknowledge these foes are using their best capabilities in the cyber and information domains to continue to fan the flames of internal US division. We need to focus on "resistance" efforts on them and not against other Americans.

As an aside I am reminded of an essay and a book that are not directly a parallel to the current situation but do often cautionary tales from a military perspective. Some useful fiction perhaps.

"Origins of the Coup of 2012" by Charles Dunlap

https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol22/iss1/8/

A Soldier's Duty by Thomas Ricks

https://www.amazon.com/Soldiers-Duty-Novel-Thomas-Ricks/dp/0375760202

Let's Go!

Fighting Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Resistance

Ordinary people have more power than they know.

https://newrepublic.com/article/193193/citizen-guide-trump-resistance-fighting-back

Timothy Noah/March 27, 2025

Illustrations by Jovana Mugoša

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

That truism has been repeated by notables from Gen. Jim Mattis to Barack Obama to George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state. But it’s fitting that the person credited with first saying it was a private citizen whom nobody particularly remembers.

Lotte Scharfman (1928–1970) was a Jewish refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria who became president of the Massachusetts chapter of the League of Women Voters. Her cause was an obscure one: She wanted to reduce the size of Massachusetts’s bloated House of Representatives from 240 members to 160. The measure failed on its first vote in the House in 1970, for the obvious reason that no representative wanted to risk losing their own seat. But after several House members were voted out later that year for opposing the reform measure, it cleared the state legislature, and in 1974 it won overwhelming approval from Massachusetts voters.

Corruption was “a way of life” in the Massachusetts state House of the 1960s and 1970s, a state investigating panel later concluded—it was rife with bribery, extortion, and money laundering. Yet even in that civic sewer, a legislative body was persuaded to do something that most political scientists would tell you is a logical impossibility: put one-third of its own members out on the street. That should clue you in to the power of participatory democracy.

“People know deep inside them,” Ralph Nader told me recently, that “if they really blow their top, nothing can stop them.” Is Nader, who at 91 has logged six decades walking the citizen-action beat, feeling optimistic that President Donald Trump’s multifront assault on constitutional government can be stopped? “Not optimistic,” Nader replied. “Just realistic…. As some people stand up to power, it becomes contagious.”

Granted, this country has never witnessed an abuse of presidential authority so extreme as what Trump is right now wreaking in every conceivable direction. But as I write this, an extraordinary national mobilization is underway. Every conceivable method of lawful opposition is being applied to arrest Trump’s bizarre and frequently illegal sabotage of the very government he was elected to lead. Some acts of resistance will work; others will fail. It will be some time before we have a clear sense of what works best.

Surveying this Boschian hellscape, many good people will despair. Yes, Trump is much more dangerous than he was during his first term (which was harrowing enough). He’s more giddily reckless about impounding funds, shutting down agencies, disobeying court orders, and using the government to punish political enemies. But if you allow yourself to tune out this ugliness, you might as well have voted for the man. The president is counting on such demoralization. “If you are overly cynical and think ‘Oh, there’s nothing we can do,’” warned David Cole, former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, “that also has a snowball effect.” Democracy is not a spectator sport.

There’s no messiah who will sweep in and make everything better. That’s up to you and me.

How can ordinary citizens fight back? To scout the best approaches, I canvassed activists, lawyers, scholars, politicians, and union leaders for advice. Some of what they suggest will lie beyond your abilities, expertise, financial resources, or sense of personal safety—in which case, choose something you can do. Just about everyone I spoke to emphasized that there is no silver bullet—no single arena, not even the courtroom, where Trump’s illegal power grab can be stopped. “There’s no messiah” who will “sweep in and make everything better,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. That’s up to you and me. The good news is there are a lot of us.

Indeed, there may be even more than we can know just yet. Because Trump isn’t careful about whose interests he acts against, Resistance 2.0 has potential to evolve into a bipartisan movement. “Successful authoritarian regimes determine what their winning coalition is,” observed Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the resistance nonprofit Indivisible, “and then they work very hard to keep that coalition together.” Trump lacks such discipline, and as a result he frequently screws over natural allies.

Trump alienates the military by installing as defense secretary Pete Hegseth, a boozer and womanizer who called an officer of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps a “jagoff” and, after he was confirmed, fired the top JAG officers in the Air Force, Army, and Navy. Trump alienates Big Pharma by installing as health and human services secretary a recovering heroin addict, womanizer, and (according to his cousin Caroline Kennedy) “predator” who less than two years ago said, “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” As HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recommends treating measles with cod liver oil and letting bird flu spread unchecked through poultry flocks. Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says, “I’m not worried about inflation,” and “access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” Trump, meanwhile, terrorizes Wall Street with market-killing tariffs and stray threats not to honor the national debt.

No matter who joins this fight, it won’t be won next week, or next month. Barring impeachment and removal, Trump will be president for four long years, and not even his allies expect him to become less authoritarian and kleptocratic. So pace yourself. But the sooner you join in, the more effectively we can limit the damage.

Here’s how.

Sue the Bastard.

The most obvious arena in which to stop a lawbreaker is the courts, and that’s where Resistance 2.0 begins. More than 70 lawsuits were filed against the Trump administration just during Trump’s first month in office, challenging everything from his attempt to end birthright citizenship (which is embedded in the Fourteenth Amendment) to Elon Musk’s de facto shutdown of the United States Agency for International Development (which distributes about $40 billion in international aid per year).

The result was a blizzard of federal court rulings that blocked, at least temporarily, various administration actions—46 rulings in Trump’s first eight weeks, according to The New York Times. His previous presidency occasioned 64 court injunctions, or more than half of all such rulings since 1963. That was over a period of four years. This time, Trump could easily exceed 64 injunctions within four months. At this writing, judges have enjoined Trump from, among other things, firing National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox; withholding appropriated federal grants and loans; and allowing Musk’s government-efficiency gumshoes access to Treasury Department payment systems. Four separate judges blocked Trump’s revocation of birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.

“The system is working,” Skye Perryman, president of the public-interest law nonprofit Democracy Forward, told me. “Litigants are using the courts to ensure compliance with orders…. Courts are requiring status updates. That is good.” When we spoke in late February, Perryman told me Democracy Forward had filed more cases against Trump than any other organization.

Granted, injunctions and (more commonly used) temporary restraining orders are an imperfect tool. They aren’t that easy for plaintiffs to get, and Trump administration lawyers are expert at finding bad-faith ways to evade them (most outrageously when it deported around 250 Venezuelans in March). At some point, it’s expected that the Trump administration will stop pretending and, following the advice of Vice President JD Vance (“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power”), openly defy the courts. But the courts can always hold individual agency officials in civil or criminal contempt, leveling fines or throwing offenders in jail.

It might not end there. This president could respond, New York University law professors Trevor W. Morrison and Richard H. Pildes speculated in The New York Times, with pardons, or by ordering U.S. marshals not to enforce rulings from the bench. But such blatant lawlessness, they argued, would create chaos in financial markets, which depend on America’s reputation for political stability. At which point, it seems to me, an instinct for self-preservation might boost support among congressional Republicans to impeach.

What role is there for John Q. Citizen? If you’re a lawyer, consider volunteering for a nonprofit group engaged in Resistance 2.0, or donating money. Both are usually best done at the local level, but don’t neglect national nonprofits taking on Trump, which include Democracy Forward, Public Citizen, and State Democracy Defenders Fund. “The litigation is the fire starter,” Norm Eisen, SDDF’s co-founder, told me. “This week alone, I got two orders stopping government wrongdoing.” The national groups typically work in conjunction with local groups, whose names can be found on court filings readily available online. It’s the local groups that are best positioned to identify specific harms to citizens caused by Trump’s recklessness. They are also most in need of whatever type of assistance you can offer.

Also: “Support your local attorney general and make sure that we have enough budget and resources to fight these fights.” That advice comes from William Tong, Connecticut’s attorney general and president-elect of the National Association of Attorneys General. Attorneys general are in the strongest position to challenge Trump policies in court. “They have the deepest pockets,” Peter Shane of the NYU School of Law explained, and “in blue states they have a political incentive.” They are often well-connected to activists. Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, noted with pride that Letitia James, the New York attorney general who won a more than $450 million civil judgment against Trump for financial fraud, came out of the WFP.

A series of Supreme Court rulings during the past couple of decades, Shane told me, made it easier for states to establish standing to challenge the executive branch; to quote Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), states are “entitled to special solicitude in our standing analysis.” In most instances (Massachusetts v. EPA was an exception), these Supreme Court rulings were anti-regulatory, as were a parallel set of rulings, culminating in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, that invited judges to second-guess federal agencies. Today, with Trump in the White House, 60 percent of all district-level federal judges were appointed by Democrats, and appeals courts divide more or less evenly between Democratic appointees and Republican ones. Our reactionary high court may soon find that what was sauce for the red-state goose has become sauce for the blue-state gander. Not that partisanship has played much of a role thus far in court rulings against Trump. Many have come from Republican-appointed judges.

March.

“The combination of litigation and mobilization is a new one in this moment,” observed Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the Nader-founded Public Citizen. “It’s a very interesting new dynamic.”

Civil society can’t be saved in the courts alone. It’s up to us as a people to stand up and push back.

Gilbert is right. The civil rights movement, for instance, had its litigation phase, which culminated in 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education, and then its mobilization phase, which culminated in the 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery. The anti-Trump movement does Selma and Brown v. Board of Ed simultaneously, with lawsuits and public protests ricocheting off each other. Cole, the former ACLU legal director, noted that the United States has “a much more robust civil society” than, say Hungary, whose strongman Viktor Orbán wrote the playbook Trump seems to be following. But civil society can’t be saved in the courts alone: “It’s up to us as a people to stand up and push back.”

That’s happening. On February 17, for example, thousands of protesters chanting “No kings on President’s Day” marched in Washington and in state capitals to reassert constitutional separation of powers—reinforcing courtroom challenges against Trump’s violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, and so on. Thanks to social media, such protests can be organized at lightning speed. The President’s Day event, and a similar protest held two weeks earlier, were organized by a new group called 50501 that didn’t even exist until late January. In February 2017, there were over 900 protests nationwide, according to the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of Harvard and the University of Connecticut. In February 2025, there were around 2,000.

The purpose of such protests is not to influence the president. “Trump doesn’t really get moved by hundreds of thousands of people marching against him,” noted Daniel Hunter, self-described “activist-educator-trainer” and co-founder of Choose Democracy, a political action committee. The purpose, a Democratic strategist explained to me, is to bring like-minded people together into resistance networks; to attract publicity that will draw new people into the movement; and, through that same publicity, to alert other politicians that failing to oppose Trump will cost them support.

What next? “Tesla Takedown” protests are proliferating, causing Tesla’s stock price to plummet. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, more than 50 people showed up at a Tesla dealership waving signs that said, “No One Elected Elon Musk” and “Hell No! Billionaire Grift.” In Portland, Oregon, demonstrators picketed outside a Tesla showroom with signs that said, “Stop Musk Sell Your Tesla.” The same methods can be applied against any other oligarch who actively pushes forward Trump’s agenda.

Pester Your Elected Officials.

Congressional Democrats are getting a lot of criticism for failing to stop Trump. And it’s true, as Jodi Jacobson, executive director of the nonprofit Healthcare Across Borders, told me, that “you cannot rely on Democrats to do the work for you.” But to presume you ever could rely on them is to treat democracy, pace Lotte Scharfman, like a spectator sport. There are actions that members of Congress can take—even when in the minority—but to the extent they don’t take them, it isn’t just their fault; it’s also yours, for failing to demand them.

Don’t expect your representative to thank you. Axios ran a titillating story reporting that House members were “pissed” that groups like MoveOn and Indivisible were generating thousands of phone calls to congressional Democrats complaining about Trump policies. Even House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was reportedly ticked off. Some of these representatives went on the record. “I reject and resent the implication that congressional Democrats are simply standing by passively,” griped Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York.

The thrust of Axios’s reporting was that these out-of-control progressive groups were at risk of alienating their congressional allies. But that gets it backward. This wasn’t a bad-news story; it was a good-news story. The congressional Democrats’ annoyance demonstrated that they were feeling appropriate pressure from voters to swing into action. The groups that mobilized them had done well.

Indivisible sprang up after the 2016 election to educate voters about how to harness their power as constituents, adopting some tactics (but none of the politics) of the right-wing Tea Party movement. Indivisible ended up playing a significant role in preventing Trump from eliminating Obamacare and in the Democrats’ recapture of the House in 2018. After the 2024 election, Indivisible updated its primer on constituent power; the new Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink is refreshingly blunt. Elected officials care about “advocacy that requires effort” such as phone calls, personal emails, “and especially showing up in person.” They don’t usually care about form letters or a social media post. A constituent acting alone is easy to blow off; a constituent acting with other constituents is not, especially if the others include constituents who are wealthy or otherwise prominent. A list of requests will be ignored; a “concrete” single request for a vote or a public statement will not. Indivisible acknowledges in its new guide that “responsiveness to our advocacy” has “weakened since Trump first won office.” Republicans are more afraid of primary challenges; the mainstream press has less influence; and elected officials have gotten better at limiting their exposure to anybody who might disagree with them. But the mechanisms of accountability “still exist,” and “we choose to use” them.

Congressional Republicans, for instance, can’t altogether avoid holding town meetings in their districts, and when they do, they hear from irate constituents, not all of them Democrats. At a February town hall meeting conducted by telephone, Representative Stephanie Bice, Republican of Oklahoma, fielded an angry question from a man named John Adams about “college whiz kids” at DOGE making cuts to Veterans Affairs. Adams identified himself as a registered Republican and retired Army officer who served five combat tours. “Despite what you want to try to spin it as,” Adams said, “anytime you cut a thousand people from the workforce, that comes with a cost.”

Bice replied, “Thank you for your service, sir,” and justified the cuts by saying, “Did you know that the VA was in charge of payments for illegals for housing?” Which didn’t satisfy Adams and also wasn’t true. The VA has an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to process medical (not housing) payments for undocumented immigrants that ICE holds in detention against their will. This work is performed by “no more than 10 employees,” a VA spokesperson said last year, and the cost is borne by ICE, one of several federal agencies to contract such services out to the VA (which, through processing around two million medical claims annually to veterans, got quite good at it). ICE and other agencies tap VA bureaucrats so they don’t have to create costly and duplicative bureaucracies of their own, the very thing DOGE’s whiz kids supposedly want to root out.

What should constituents pressure Congress to do? Nader pointed out that Democrats “can have unofficial hearings in the House and Senate.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threatened three weeks into the Trump administration to initiate such hearings “if Senate Republicans continue to refuse to uphold their congressional duty to provide oversight on the Executive Branch.” But it was already obvious that Republican oversight would not materialize, and that these unofficial hearings should commence. In March, Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California held one such hearing on local impacts Trump impoundments had on infrastructure. More hearings should follow on the effects of the president’s funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health on the availability of cancer drugs; on Trump withholding money appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act to create manufacturing jobs in red states; on the effect of VA cuts on the processing of VA medical claims; and so on.

Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic representative from New Jersey, told me the House can also take more direct action by proposing resolutions that are “privileged,” i.e., must get a floor vote whether the Republican leadership wants one or not. Under the Impoundment Control Act, for instance, the comptroller general (who heads the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative arm) is authorized to report to Congress on whether the president requested congressional approval for withholding funds, as required by law. Spoiler alert: Trump did not. If the comptroller general said Trump did not, that would trigger a mandatory vote and, Malinowski explained to me, “If both houses don’t vote to approve the impoundment, then it doesn’t stand.”

The comptroller general is appointed by the president, but his independent agency, the GAO, works for Congress. That may explain why Trump hasn’t fired him yet. The current officeholder is Gene L. Dodaro, who’s held the job 17 years. If Dodaro were to report that the president didn’t follow the Impoundment Control Act, then Trump would likely jettison whatever scruples previously kept him from trying to fire the man (who, by statute, can be fired only by Congress). But Congress would still have to vote on impoundment. Even if both houses approved it, Republicans wouldn’t like going on record as ceding power of the purse to Trump.

Another privileged resolution Malinowski would like to see brought up would concern whether Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose indiscriminate tariffs is legal. That would force Republicans “either to go on record against the president or own the economic chaos that results,” Malinowski wrote in The Bulwark.

Keep Up.

None of the foregoing is of much use if you don’t keep up with whatever mischief the Trump administration is into at any given moment. If you’re reading this article, odds are that you know already pretty well how to stay informed. But it isn’t easy, because Trump is doing so many outrageous things in so many parts of the government all at once. Even experienced Washington reporters like me struggle to keep up. (Don’t tell my boss!)

The most important thing is to follow the mainstream press. It’s long been a badge of honor on the right not to subscribe to The New York Times or The Washington Post. Liberals have lately followed suit. That’s just foolish. These national newspapers, along with The Wall Street Journal, are imperfect but indispensable sources of reliable information. So is your local newspaper, if you’re still lucky enough to have one.

But you should also use social media. Yes, most of it is a fetid swamp of half-truths and outright lies, and if it disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn’t be terribly sorry. But some of it conveys useful information. I lack space here to explain how to spot the difference, but universities routinely post guides about this.

The two social media sites mentioned to me most often as I reported this story were Bluesky and (to my mild surprise) TikTok, which Trump saved after Congress exiled it based on its Chinese ownership. “If you aren’t on TikTok,” said Pamela Keith, who represents a group of FBI agents suing to halt Trump’s attempted purge of January 6 investigators, “then you aren’t following the resistance.”

Keith is particularly enthusiastic about TikTok and Substack posts by Aaron Parnas, who, improbably, is the son of Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born Giuliani crony who did prison time for making illegal contributions to Trump’s 2020 campaign. “My father’s stuff is completely irrelevant and has no bearing on what I’ve done,” Aaron snapped at me when I asked him about Lev. A lawyer in his mid-twenties with more than three million TikTok followers, Aaron Parnas follows anti-Trump lawsuits round the clock. “Every time one of these orders comes out,” Keith told me, “we hear it from him first.” When I asked Parnas whether he kept a list of his scoops, he said no: “I wish I had the bandwidth.”

Despite streaming video 24/7 on social media (he TikTok’d his own wedding), Parnas is the opposite of flamboyant. Indeed, I found him as scrupulously deadpan as Edward R. Murrow. “I try to keep my personal views out of it,” he told me. “I have both Democratic and Republican viewers.”

Parnas’s video dispatches often find their way onto MeidasTouch Network, another frequent conveyance for information about Resistance 2.0. MeidasTouch Network is more overtly political, functioning as both a news source and an anti-Trump political action committee. Its podcast recently edged out Joe Rogan’s as the most streamed in the nation.

Ken Harbaugh is a Navy veteran who hosts a popular show on MeidasTouch Network focused on national security. He told me that individuals in the military, the reserves, and the National Guard are more receptive to opposing Trump than most people understand. They pledge to serve their military superiors and commander in chief, yes, but also to serve the Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. What happens when these duties come into conflict? “Even though we’re acculturated to obey orders and in some cases obey them without hesitation,” Harbaugh said, “we’re actually obliged to disobey illegal orders…. The constitutional crisis that looms might not be decided before the Supreme Court. It might be decided by a captain at the border ordered to shoot immigrants.”

Other useful sources of information include the 1440 newsletter (a daily news digest), CivilServiceStrong.org (information for federal workers), the AFL-CIO’s Department of People Who Work for a Living (federal workers), Democracy2025.org (lawsuits), and Protect Democracy (lawsuits).

The woods are burning. What are you waiting for?

All these websites teem with Trump horror stories. Share them online or, better yet, in person, because you can’t resist effectively by acting alone. There are local resistance groups aplenty; join one and get the word out. “Sadly, messaging about democracy and autocracy falls flat,” wrote Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and rule of law expert, in a text message to me. “But people get it when you talk about the threats to vital services, when you talk about billionaires taking everything over to make themselves richer, and when you talk about tyranny and liberty.”

The woods are burning. What are you waiting for?

Get Informed

Join the Trump Accountability War Room, which offers fact sheets on the bad actors in Donald Trump’s Cabinet and primers on their policies, and the AFL-CIO’s Department of People Who Work for a Living, which tracks how funding cuts are affecting federal workers.

Follow MeidasTouch Network, a pro-democracy news organization with a massive social media presence and a suite of podcasts. MeidasTouch personalities such as Leigh McGowan (a.k.a. PoliticsGirl) and Aaron Parnas have reinvigorated the resistance on TikTok, Instagram, and Substack.

Monitor constitutional oversteps and the legal challenges to Trump’s executive orders with Lawfare or Just Security.

Get Strategic

Explore Choose Democracy’s interactive Choose Your Own Adventure activity, which asks you to “guide us towards a better, more humane democracy.” In “What can I do to fight this coup?,” the group offers drop-down menus of resistance techniques arranged by level of difficulty. It also provides training agendas on everything from de-escalation to mutual aid.

Study Indivisible’s Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink, which shares strategies for defending the democratic process against authoritarian creep and a list of tactics constituents can use to pressure their elected officials.

Review the tool kits, how-to manuals, and informational leaflets at Build the Resistance’s comprehensive, crowdsourced resource hub.

Get Outside

Check NoVoiceUnheard, which compiles peaceful protest opportunities, viewable by state or by organization, across the country. For an even more expansive inventory, look at The Big List of Protests.

Brush up on your rights at the ACLU’s protesters’ rights page, which shares information on the kinds of locations where you are protected, when you need a permit, and what to do during a police encounter. Call the Resistance Hotline at 1-844-NVDA-NOW or email gotyerback@resistancehotline.org with your questions, and you’ll get a response within 24 hours.

Enlist with the ACLU’s “grassroots army” of volunteers working to safeguard civil liberties. Visit the program’s website for a wealth of actions, including signing the organization’s petitions, that will take just a few minutes.

Get out Your Wallet

Donate to legal defense and bail funds. The National Bail Fund Network maintains a directory of pretrial bail funds and immigration bond funds.

Get on the Phone

Call Congress using 5 Calls, which provides policy guides, office numbers for your representatives, and call scripts.

Get in the Way

Flood the Office of Personnel Management’s anti-DEI tip line at DEIAtruth@opm.gov to protect federal employees targeted by the Trump administration’s crackdown. —Kate Mabus

Timothy Noah

Timothy Noah is a New Republic staff writer and author of The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It.

3. Trump’s New Ukraine Proposal Looks Like an Offer It Must Refuse

I have thought that the economic deal is the foundation of the security guarantee, or perhaps the real security guarantee. We will not agree to secure Ukraine because it is the right thing to do but we will secure our economic interests in Ukraine, This is the way to provide a security guarantee without providing a traditional security guarantee. And the economic component probably makes it a stronger security guarantee - probably a lot stronger than the Budapest Memorandum because the minerals deal provides the rationale to protect US interests in Ukraine.

This is "deals over doctrine." It is President Trump's unconventional diplomacy. The rest of us are playing catch up.

Excerpts:

The White House has presented the proposed deal as mutually beneficial and a way to strengthen ties.

“The mineral deal offers Ukraine the opportunity to form an enduring economic relationship with the United States that is the basis for long-term security and peace,” said National Security Council Spokesman James Hewitt. “The deal will help make Ukraine prosperous and reflects America’s past and current commitment to Ukraine.”

Ukraine has responded cautiously and is still working on an official response. The draft lacks security guarantees that Ukraine has been seeking and reopens the question of whether Ukraine should repay the U.S. for the military aid it has been providing since 2022—a question that wasn’t in a previous proposal.

Trump’s New Ukraine Proposal Looks Like an Offer It Must Refuse

Draft accord sent by Washington to Kyiv gives U.S. first pick of Ukrainian natural resources and infrastructure projects

https://www.wsj.com/world/trumps-new-ukraine-proposal-looks-like-an-offer-it-must-refuse-df63193c?mod=hp_lead_pos6

Ukraine has large deposits of minerals including titanium. Photo: Roman Pilipey/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

By Jane Lytvynenko and Alexander Ward

March 28, 2025 11:00 pm ET

KYIV, Ukraine—The Trump administration expects Ukraine to quickly sign a new agreement that gives Washington broad power over its ally’s economy. The problem is that Ukraine almost certainly can’t accept the terms.

The mismatch in expectations threatens to set up the U.S. and Ukraine for a new round of conflict over what President Trump can get in return for supporting Kyiv in its fight against Russia’s invasion. A previous, less-expansive economic agreement underpinned a blowup in the White House between Trump and Vice President JD Vance on one side, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the other.

“Ukrainians feel that they cannot give up their entire economic sovereignty for nothing,” said Daniel Bilak, a lawyer and a partner in the Kyiv office of Kinstellar, a law firm.

What started out with Trump saying in early February that he would like to get his hands on Ukraine’s “rare earths,” a set of minerals used in modern technologies from cellphones to electric cars, has grown into a plan for the U.S. to draw profits from Ukrainian economic projects across metals, oil, gas, and other natural resources, as well as infrastructure projects including ports and pipelines.

A Ukrainian open pit mine in Kirovohrad. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press

Ilmenite, a mineral used to produce titanium Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press

The 55-page draft, a copy of which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, is aimed at fulfilling Trump’s demand to claw back billions in military and financial aid from Ukraine that has sustained its resistance to Russia’s invasion since 2022. Trump has put the U.S. contribution at $350 billion, well above estimates by Ukraine of around $100 billion.

The draft, sent to Kyiv by the U.S. Treasury Department earlier this week, proposes a limited partnership registered in Delaware and called the “United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund.”

The draft is unusual for a deal between states as it resembles a commercial agreement, said Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and a former Ukrainian economy minister.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hopes to sign a deal quickly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Photo: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

“I don’t know how you can write an intergovernmental commercial agreement,” Mylovanov said.

Investment from the European Union, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, among other entities, would be incompatible with this agreement, he said, adding that the Ukrainian Parliament would never pass it.

The White House has presented the proposed deal as mutually beneficial and a way to strengthen ties.

“The mineral deal offers Ukraine the opportunity to form an enduring economic relationship with the United States that is the basis for long-term security and peace,” said National Security Council Spokesman James Hewitt. “The deal will help make Ukraine prosperous and reflects America’s past and current commitment to Ukraine.”

Ukraine has responded cautiously and is still working on an official response. The draft lacks security guarantees that Ukraine has been seeking and reopens the question of whether Ukraine should repay the U.S. for the military aid it has been providing since 2022—a question that wasn’t in a previous proposal.

“Any public discussions about the text of this agreement at this stage only harm the negotiations and hinder constructive dialogue with our American partners,” Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s economy minister, told Ukraine’s Parliament on Friday.

Ukrainian soldiers training this month to defend against Russia’s invasion. Photo: Serhii Korovayny for WSJ

War damage in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Photo: Serhii Korovayny for WSJ

Analysts said many of the emerging details would be hard for Ukraine to swallow.

The fund would have the right of first refusal on all natural resource and infrastructure projects in Ukraine that the country is seeking investors for, both new and existing.

Those projects would pay profits into a fund managed by a board of directors consisting of three U.S. and two Ukrainian representatives, essentially giving Washington control of the fund’s management. The fund’s projects would have to avoid exporting critical minerals to strategic competitors of the U.S.

The document states that the money from the fund would go toward repaying assistance the U.S. has provided to Kyiv since Russia’s invasion. The document doesn’t say what money would go toward much-needed rebuilding—even as Ukraine struggles to maintain its essential services amid Russian bombings.

If the document is signed, Ukraine would have 45 days to come up with a list of resource projects already licensed by Ukrainian authorities.

Even if Kyiv wanted to find other investors for its vast mineral and natural resources, it would first have to present the project to the fund’s board. In the event that the fund declined to take it on, Ukraine couldn’t offer other potential investors better economic terms in the following year.

Ukraine’s caution is spurred by how Zelensky’s questioning of the original proposal set off a downward spiral in relations that culminated in the heated exchange at the White House. The U.S. halted military supplies and some intelligence sharing after the meeting.

Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, said no one should assume Trump has a plan for what follows if Ukraine doesn’t sign the deal.

“Seems like the administration is sort of winging it, at this point, when it comes to supporting Ukraine. I would assume, though, that there is a plan to put heavy pressure on the Ukrainians to get them to bend to whatever the Trump team wants them to do,” she said. “Supporting Ukraine is not on this administration’s agenda the way it was for Biden.”

Other analysts said that the Signal chat debacle has put pressure on the Trump team to get a foreign policy win—or at least not a clear loss.

If Ukraine rejects this version of the deal, Washington would have to negotiate a new one with Kyiv. And after Trump acknowledged Russia was dragging its feet in negotiations, senior Trump administration officials are aiming not to look too pro-Moscow.

“Both sides still want this,” said Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “But I certainly don’t rule out another period of tension over agreement terms and negotiations.”

Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com

4. The Vance Doctrine

Enlightening.

This is really a key point:

There is now a whole generation of Millennial Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on both sides of the aisle in American politics. Most of them came away deeply disillusioned by the wars, but for many on the Republican side, it made them take a hard right turn. “The basic feeling is: We were all sold a bill of lies,” a former senior Senate Republican aide explained. “They feel that the U.S. government wasted billions of dollars, the lives of all our friends, and our mental health—and what did we get out of it? Imagine what we could’ve had if we minded our own business and invested that money at home.”

These are the Waltzes, the Hegseths, the Dan Crenshaws, and the J.D. Vances. To these veterans, the Cold War—with its emphasis on transatlantic alliances and hostility to Russia—is an anachronism. The Global War on Terror, or GWOT, offered a more pertinent lesson about the dangers of American overreach. “That’s why they want to reform the Republican Party,” said the G.O.P. aide. “That’s why they hate neocons. That’s why they want to burn it down, why they hate the deep state, why they distrust the government. I think they did once trust when they were 19 and they signed up.” I asked this source why Vance seems to hate supporting Ukraine so much. “In its essence, it’s a reaction to Afghanistan and Iraq,” the aide explained. “And they can only think of Ukraine through that lens.”

The Vance Doctrine

Depending on whom you talk to, J.D. Vance is either a foreign policy naif or an embittered War on Terror vet driven by fear that the West’s foundational civilization is being washed away. The truth may be somewhere in between.

https://puck.news/what-jd-vance-really-thinks-about-europe/?1743188863

Julia Ioffe

March 27, 2025

Even in private conversations, or what he assumes are private conversations, Vice President J.D. Vance can’t resist sticking it to the Europeans. Buried in the now-public treasure trove of Signal messages on the “Houthi PC small group” chat, Vance offered a strange criticism of Donald Trump’s decision to bomb the group in Yemen. The strike would be a “mistake,” he said—not because he was an isolationist who didn’t want the U.S. to get bogged down in yet another conflict, but rather because reopening the Red Sea trade route would benefit Europe more than America. “3 percent of U.S. trade runs through suez [sic]. 40 percent of European trade does,” he wrote. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.”

Vance has become the most acerbic messenger of Trump’s view that Europe has taken advantage of American taxpayers by not investing enough in its own defense. But if the president loathes what he perceives as the Europeans’ almost effeminate weakness—especially compared to Putin’s machismo—Vance’s contempt for the continent’s leadership seems deeper, and more ideological. In February, the vice president shocked Europeans at the Munich Security Conference when he scolded them for not spending money on their own defense, and for preaching about democracy while, in Vance’s view, censoring far-right speech and dismissing voters’ concerns about unchecked migration.

It wasn’t just public posturing. It was, as the group chat seems to confirm, the real Vance. Even when national security advisor and group chat administrator Mike Waltz gently corrected the vice president—“the trade figures we have are 15% of global and 30% of container,” he wrote, arguing that it’s “difficult to break that down to U.S.” trade—Vance wouldn’t let it go. “@Pete Hegseth if you think we should do it let’s go,” he said. “I just hate bailing out Europe again.” (“I fully share your loathing of European free-loading,” Hegseth conceded. “It’s PATHETIC.”)

People familiar with Vance’s foreign policy preferences agreed that those private messages are an accurate reflection of his worldview. It’s clear enough that Vance’s team, as one source familiar with their thinking said, believe that “the Europeans are freeloaders.” But these sources also pointed to deeper roots for this hostility, a mix of post–War on Terror disillusionment and a reverence for “traditional” Western culture that has fueled Vance’s disdain toward America’s oldest allies.

Generation GWOT

There are two schools of thought about Vance’s isolationist foreign policy views. To some who witnessed his quick ascent into the Senate and then onto the ticket, Vance is a cynical climber with few core convictions. “He doesn’t believe in anything,” one Republican Senate source told me. “He will do whatever it takes to climb the greasy pole”—or, as this person put it, to “prove to Trump that he is his number one son.”

But others instead see a picture of an ambitious and very online young man—he is, after all, only 40—who groped his way to a set of views that have recently deepened into something darker and more dogmatic than the transactional, non-ideological vision that guided Trump I. “He’s shape-shifted a lot of times, but has attracted a lot of types who are more ideological, more deliberative in wanting to blow things up,” said one Republican foreign policy insider. “He knows very little about foreign policy, and he’s very easily influenced,” one Senate Democrat who worked with Vance told me.

Among the people who have shaped Vance’s views are Patrick Deneen, a philosopher of the new, post-liberal right; Elbridge Colby, an isolationist currently nominated for undersecretary of defense for policy; Orthodox Christian conservative writer Rod Dreher; and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. The Hungarian autocrat, according to several sources I spoke to for this story, has become a frequent Vance interlocutor and a profound influence on the vice president’s thinking.

Taylor Van Kirk, the press secretary for the vice president, issued a statement in response to questions about Vance’s politics. “Anybody can learn about the vice president’s longstanding, consistent foreign policy views with a quick Google search,” she told me. “Thankfully, very few people will become misinformed about them by reading this stupid article because almost no one subscribes to this garbage outlet.”

The seminal foreign policy event for members of Vance’s generation, myself included, was 9/11 and George W. Bush’s response: two messy and morally ambiguous wars that cost a fortune and didn’t crown the United States in glory. In 2003, during the first few months of the Iraq War, Vance enlisted in the Marines right out of high school. He was a public affairs officer and—ironically, given his current hostility toward the media—served as a combat journalist on one deployment to Iraq. In the universe of the Marine Corps, he also faced some important distinctions that likely left him with a chip on his shoulder. The first was an issue of class: He was an enlisted officer, unlike the commissioned officers who are college graduates and generally from higher socioeconomic strata. The second was a matter of duty: He was not in the infantry, the more prestigious and valorized cadre.

There is now a whole generation of Millennial Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on both sides of the aisle in American politics. Most of them came away deeply disillusioned by the wars, but for many on the Republican side, it made them take a hard right turn. “The basic feeling is: We were all sold a bill of lies,” a former senior Senate Republican aide explained. “They feel that the U.S. government wasted billions of dollars, the lives of all our friends, and our mental health—and what did we get out of it? Imagine what we could’ve had if we minded our own business and invested that money at home.”

These are the Waltzes, the Hegseths, the Dan Crenshaws, and the J.D. Vances. To these veterans, the Cold War—with its emphasis on transatlantic alliances and hostility to Russia—is an anachronism. The Global War on Terror, or GWOT, offered a more pertinent lesson about the dangers of American overreach. “That’s why they want to reform the Republican Party,” said the G.O.P. aide. “That’s why they hate neocons. That’s why they want to burn it down, why they hate the deep state, why they distrust the government. I think they did once trust when they were 19 and they signed up.” I asked this source why Vance seems to hate supporting Ukraine so much. “In its essence, it’s a reaction to Afghanistan and Iraq,” the aide explained. “And they can only think of Ukraine through that lens.”

“Civilizational Suicide”

Ukraine, for this cohort, is a distraction from the larger issue: the future of Western civilization, the heart of which is old Europe. “Yes, they annoy me sometimes,” Vance told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham earlier this month of the Europeans. “But you have to remember that this is the cradle of Western civilization. The entire idea of Christian civilization that led to the foundation of the United States was formed in Europe.”

Europe, in Vance’s view, is not just a place but a civilization—one based on a “culture” that needs protection from the hordes of barbarians at the gates. When European countries accept millions of immigrants “from countries that are totally culturally incompatible,” as Vance said in that Fox interview, the continent is at risk of “civilizational suicide.”

In this view, Europe is a civilizational archive of a proto-American culture rather than a mix of real and dynamic societies—a museum rather than a home. For Vance and his foreign policy team—led by his longtime aide Andy Baker, a Berkeley and Oxford grad who spent 15 years in the U.S. foreign service—Europe is the land of the great books and the Western canon, of the Greco-Roman ruins and the Catholic church (to which Vance is a recent convert), of monuments, battlefields, and cultural artifacts. (The White House declined to make Vance or Baker available for an interview.)

Some scholars have noted that this kind of idealized view of Europe is one that’s held most fervently at the continent’s periphery, and rarely reflects Europe’s reality. One could argue it’s why Ukrainians are fighting so hard to join Europe—or what they think of as Europe—at a time when Europeans themselves seem unwilling to die for it. Or why American right-wingers, who see themselves as the westernmost edge of that European-centric Western world, are so hung up on a totally different ideal of Europe, as well as on their sense of betrayal by the elites at the heart of the cultural empire.

Hence their sympathy for the far-right figures—in Germany and Italy in the core of Europe, in Hungary and Russia on its eastern flank—they see as defending that culture. “They see common cause with the AfD, with Orban, with [Italian Prime Minister Giorgia] Meloni, and with Russia,” said the source familiar with the thinking of Vance’s foreign policy team. “They’re not put off by the authoritarianism.” To them, Russia is not only the land of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and other pillars of our shared Western civilization. It is also part of that constellation of revanchist, revisionist European powers—one that is loudly propagating a militant, non-reformed Christianity, traditional gender norms, and the most toxic kind of masculinity. “This is the Western civilization they want to be part of,” the source said.

It is also why they feel that Russia should rejoin the European community—and why they don’t see how its invasion of Ukraine should be an impediment. In February 2023, a mere month after being sworn into the Senate, Vance made a startling comment about Ukraine at a private Republican lunch, according to one attendee: It’s mostly ethnic Russians anyway. Why, he asked, are we so focused on Eastern Ukraine? Vance went on to spend his brief tenure in the chamber voting “no” on every Ukraine aid bill he could. “He shits all over Ukraine,” the Senate Democrat told me. Several sources told me that he apparently believes in and peddles conspiracy theories about Ukraine, ones that seem like Russian propaganda. In private, he has told people he believes there are real Nazis in Ukraine, a Putin talking point for over a decade. In public, Vance has repeated the Russian-made falsehood that Ukrainian ministers spent American aid dollars on a luxury yacht.

Ukraine is where the various strands of Vance’s worldview come together—his sympathy for Russia, his irritation with European elites who let in migrants and support Ukraine, and his instinctive distaste for American projects overseas. Days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vance, then a candidate for Senate, was clear. “I gotta be honest with you,” he said. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” The source familiar with his foreign policy team’s thinking updated this perspective. “They want to compartmentalize Ukraine and bring Russia back into the Western community,” this person said, “because that’s where they feel they belong.”

5. How the Reversal of the ‘American Exceptionalism’ Trade Is Rippling Around the Globe

Excerpts:

“I think the U.S. economy will remain, for at least this century, the main economy in the world,” he said.

The dollar has weakened this year. A further selloff is a threat to overseas investors, who owned more than $14 trillion in U.S. bonds at the end of 2024, according to Federal Reserve data. Many only partially shield themselves against currency swings, a practice known as hedging.

Taiwanese life insurers are among the most exposed, said Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations. They own more than $700 billion in foreign bonds, he said, mainly U.S. dollar debt. Most of their liabilities are in Taiwan dollars. About 40% of this currency mismatch isn’t hedged.

Many foreign investors say the U.S. still has more to offer than much of the rest of the world. Australia’s largest pension fund, AustralianSuper, has about a third of its $230 billion in assets in the U.S. and is expanding its New York office. John Normand, head of investment strategy, expects the U.S. market turbulence will be temporary.

“The U.S. is first in the league table for interesting investment opportunities that meet all of our criteria: scale, scope, cyclical strength, structural strength,” Normand said. “The U.S. is going to have certain advantages for a while.”

How the Reversal of the ‘American Exceptionalism’ Trade Is Rippling Around the Globe

Outsize U.S. bets delivered foreign investors years of windfall profits but leave them exposed to this year’s selloff

https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/us-stocks-financial-market-global-impact-6ed646b9?mod=hp_lead_pos11

By Chelsey Dulaney

March 29, 2025 5:00 am ET

Illustration: WSJ, iStock (4)

What do priests in New Zealand, Taiwanese life insurers and the oil-rich nation of Norway have in common? They have all been riding high on booming U.S. markets—and are now vulnerable to a reversal in fortunes.

The superior performance of U.S. investments over the past decade-plus has been a giant magnet for the world’s money. Foreign investors own almost 20% of all U.S. equities compared with 7% at the start of this century, Goldman Sachs data shows. The bets generated years of windfall profits, making up for dreary returns on offer in many overseas markets.

Now, foreigners are racking up losses as the so-called American exceptionalism trade sputters. The Trump administration’s tariff whiplash, doubts about the U.S. artificial-intelligence trade, and recession fears have rattled U.S. markets this year, even as European ones have rallied.

The selloff could prove temporary. But it is stoking concern that if U.S. markets really were to crater, the collateral damage would be profound.

“You’ve got an enormous global concentration in U.S. financial markets,” said Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. Treasury Department official. “Investors are taking an increasingly big risk.”

Overseas investors are more vulnerable to U.S. market turbulence because of their exposure to the dollar. The S&P 500 is down about 9% from its February peak, but eurozone investors have lost about 13% due to the dollar’s slide, according to FactSet data.

“Looking back in history at episodes when concentration was so high, it always ends,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. “The finance textbook is clear: You should simply not allow your U.S. share to grow so big.”

The large presence of the U.S. in global portfolios is a byproduct of years of measly returns abroad—and huge success in America, thanks to fast economic growth, thick profit margins, and innovative tech companies such as Apple and Nvidia. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 index is up less than 30% over the past decade. The S&P 500, even after this year’s selloff, is up more than 170%.

The rise of passive investing, in which funds track a broad market index, also plays a role. As U.S. markets have grown so has their share in indexes, creating built-in demand for American assets.

U.S. stocks make up 72% of MSCI’s index of international stocks, a benchmark for many global portfolios. That is up from about 47% in 2008. American debt’s share in global bond benchmarks also has shot higher.

In one of London’s poshest areas, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the local government’s pension fund has enough money to pay out all its obligations two times over thanks largely to U.S. stocks.

In one wealthy area of London, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the local government’s pension fund is flush thanks to U.S. stock investments. Photo: Bloomberg News

In New Zealand, the pension fund for Anglican Church clergy notched a 27% increase on its international stock portfolio in its last fiscal year. Norway’s $1.8 trillion oil-wealth fund posted its largest-ever profit thanks to “massive gains” on its tech portfolio, according to Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of Norges Bank Investment Management, which operates the fund.

“We are very happy shareholders in great American companies. For the last 10 years, the U.S. has compounded at twice the rate of Europe,” Tangen said.

He and others have concerns, however, especially about the market’s reliance on U.S. tech. Previous U.S. financial-market downturns were global events. The 2008-09 subprime mortgage crisis ricocheted across the global financial system, and the dot-com crash in the early 2000s fueled recessions in economies such as Taiwan’s that had built up large tech sectors.

Norway’s fund has trimmed U.S. tech holdings, but its overall exposure to the U.S. has been rising because of a government decision to put more money in America. U.S. assets made up 53% of the fund’s investments last year, up from 32% a decade earlier. It can deviate only slightly from its benchmarks, which are largely dominated by U.S. assets.

The fund’s latest stress-test scenario showed it could lose 18% of its value if the AI boom turns to bust. The wealth fund contributes about 20% of Norway’s government budget and helps pay for its generous social-welfare programs.

Individual investors have piled in, too. Trading apps have opened up U.S. markets to investors in Europe, where people traditionally stashed savings in cash, bank accounts and insurance policies. The most popular stocks on European trading app Trade Republic last year were Nvidia, Apple and Amazon.

Omer Martinet, 29 years old, of Bordeaux, France, started investing in 2020 and now holds 70% of his stock portfolio in U.S. companies.

“I compared the performance of French companies to U.S. companies, and the difference was astonishing,” he said.

Martinet, who is up overall on his investments, said he had lost “tens of thousands of euros” this year because of the U.S. market selloff. If they don’t recover, he might have to delay his plan to buy an apartment. But he isn’t giving up on his U.S. investments.

“I think the U.S. economy will remain, for at least this century, the main economy in the world,” he said.

The dollar has weakened this year. A further selloff is a threat to overseas investors, who owned more than $14 trillion in U.S. bonds at the end of 2024, according to Federal Reserve data. Many only partially shield themselves against currency swings, a practice known as hedging.

Taiwanese life insurers are among the most exposed, said Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations. They own more than $700 billion in foreign bonds, he said, mainly U.S. dollar debt. Most of their liabilities are in Taiwan dollars. About 40% of this currency mismatch isn’t hedged.

Many foreign investors say the U.S. still has more to offer than much of the rest of the world. Australia’s largest pension fund, AustralianSuper, has about a third of its $230 billion in assets in the U.S. and is expanding its New York office. John Normand, head of investment strategy, expects the U.S. market turbulence will be temporary.

“The U.S. is first in the league table for interesting investment opportunities that meet all of our criteria: scale, scope, cyclical strength, structural strength,” Normand said. “The U.S. is going to have certain advantages for a while.”

Write to Chelsey Dulaney at chelsey.dulaney@wsj.com

6. What Does MAGA Have Against Europe?

Excerpts:

Europeans, even those who thought they were prepared for a second Trump presidency, have been stunned by the speed of events. In its first two months, the administration has targeted the EU with tariffs as part of a global trade war, adopted Russia’s talking points about its invasion of Ukraine, bypassed Europe while negotiating with Moscow about how to end the war and watered down commitments to defend European allies against attack. “If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in early March. “Think of it—we’re paying 100% of their military, and they’re screwing us on trade,” he added.

Just in case Europe isn’t getting the memo, Trump also wants Denmark to hand over Greenland to the U.S.

Perhaps even more than the tectonic policy shifts, it’s the tone of open contempt that has shocked Europeans, as well as many Americans who support the longstanding trans-Atlantic alliance. The verbal barrage began in February, when Vance spoke at a security conference in Munich that was meant to focus on the threat of Russian expansionism. Instead, the vice president delivered a culture-war broadside against European governments, accusing them of suppressing free speech, particularly by conservative opponents of immigration and abortion.

Soon afterward, when Britain and France discussed sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, Vance dismissed the idea of “20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.” After a furious reaction in those two countries—which deployed tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan over two decades to back up the U.S., hundreds of whom were killed in action—Vance denied he had been referring to them.

Trump and Vance’s dressing-down of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House was the most high-profile humiliation of a visiting European leader, but not the only one. Polish President Andrzej Duda got only 10 minutes with Trump after crossing the Atlantic to see him, while the European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who grew up in Soviet-occupied Estonia, was stood up by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after flying to Washington, D.C., for talks. (Rubio’s office blamed “scheduling difficulties.”)

What Does MAGA Have Against Europe?

You’ve heard about anti-Americanism. Welcome to anti-Europeanism.

By David LuhnowFollow

and Marcus WalkerFollow

March 28, 2025 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/what-does-maga-have-against-europe-96416042?mod=hp_lead_pos7

It was a text message the public was never supposed to see. Vice President JD Vance and other top Trump administration officials were using the messaging app Signal to discuss a planned military strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have been disrupting shipping through the Red Sea—a vital commercial route, especially for Europe.

“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance wrote. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quickly agreed: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

Because a journalist—Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic—was accidentally included in the Signal chat, the texts went public, offering evidence of a theme that is fast emerging as one of the hallmarks of Trump 2.0: a visceral dislike of Europe. Call it anti-Europeanism, a kind of mirror image of European anti-Americanism. The latter is strongest on the left; the former is rooted in the right. Both rely on stereotypes and caricatures that often contain a kernel of truth.

President Trump and other NATO leaders at a summit in Brussels in July 2018. ‘If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them,’ Trump said of America’s European allies this month. Photo: brendan smialowski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Europeans, even those who thought they were prepared for a second Trump presidency, have been stunned by the speed of events. In its first two months, the administration has targeted the EU with tariffs as part of a global trade war, adopted Russia’s talking points about its invasion of Ukraine, bypassed Europe while negotiating with Moscow about how to end the war and watered down commitments to defend European allies against attack. “If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in early March. “Think of it—we’re paying 100% of their military, and they’re screwing us on trade,” he added.

Just in case Europe isn’t getting the memo, Trump also wants Denmark to hand over Greenland to the U.S.

Perhaps even more than the tectonic policy shifts, it’s the tone of open contempt that has shocked Europeans, as well as many Americans who support the longstanding trans-Atlantic alliance. The verbal barrage began in February, when Vance spoke at a security conference in Munich that was meant to focus on the threat of Russian expansionism. Instead, the vice president delivered a culture-war broadside against European governments, accusing them of suppressing free speech, particularly by conservative opponents of immigration and abortion.

Soon afterward, when Britain and France discussed sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, Vance dismissed the idea of “20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.” After a furious reaction in those two countries—which deployed tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan over two decades to back up the U.S., hundreds of whom were killed in action—Vance denied he had been referring to them.

Trump and Vance’s dressing-down of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House was the most high-profile humiliation of a visiting European leader, but not the only one. Polish President Andrzej Duda got only 10 minutes with Trump after crossing the Atlantic to see him, while the European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who grew up in Soviet-occupied Estonia, was stood up by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after flying to Washington, D.C., for talks. (Rubio’s office blamed “scheduling difficulties.”)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, was berated by President Trump and Vice President Vance during an Oval Office meeting on Feb. 28. Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/POOL/Shutterstock

The EU is the result of a long process of European integration that the U.S. encouraged from the 1950s onward, but Trump has said that “It was formed in order to screw the United States.” Little wonder that Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU’s executive arm, has been unable to get face time with senior Trump officials.

Other figures close to Trump, including his billionaire benefactor Elon Musk and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, attack Europe on social and cultural grounds. MAGA leaders believe the continent is geopolitically irrelevant, economically moribund, morally decadent and demographically doomed by falling birthrates. They also accuse Europe of turning its back on its Christian heritage, while allowing itself to be overrun by Muslim migrants. “Europe is at risk of engaging in civilizational suicide,” Vance told Fox News earlier this month.

The leaked text messages offered clear evidence that the Euro-bashing isn’t just political posturing. “There’s a big difference between standing up in Munich and finger-wagging, which is obviously performative, and sending a text to one of your mates on Signal where you don’t think anyone is listening,” said Andrew Roberts, a British historian. “That is where you let your hair down and say what you really think. And they apparently feel hatred and resentment and fury against an entire continent which is actually democratic.”

Mars Against Venus

Cultural friction between Europe and America is as old as the United States. In the 18th century, America defined itself as free, forward-looking and optimistic, in contrast to the repressive and hidebound Old World. American suspicion of European snootiness was matched by Europeans’ contempt for Americans’ vulgarity and materialism.

The trans-Atlantic relationship warmed up after World War II, as the U.S. promoted reconstruction and democracy in Western Europe. The European left remained critical of American capitalism, but the threat of Soviet Communism brought American and European governments together to form NATO, one of the most successful alliances in history.

A U.S. Air Force plane carrying aid lands in Berlin during the Soviet blockade, June 1948. The U.S. and Western European countries were drawn together during the Cold War by having a common enemy in the U.S.S.R. Photo: Henry Burroughs/Associated Press

American soldiers in the mountains above Tirana, Albania, May 1999. The U.S. deployed troops to the Balkans after European powers were unable to stop wars in the region. Photo: John Gaps III/Associated Press

Inevitably, the disappearance of the common enemy at the end of the Cold War brought tensions between Europe and the U.S. to the surface. In the 1990s, European leaders’ failure to stop the wars in the former Yugoslavia bred frustration in Washington. As America’s high-tech sector boomed, Europe’s slow adoption of digital technologies deepened perceptions of a sclerotic continent.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, opposition from France, Germany and other countries led to the sharpest tensions for decades. The aggressive policy and verbal stumbles of President George W. Bush played into European stereotypes about unsophisticated American cowboys. Meanwhile, Americans accused Europeans of being appeasers or even “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” a jokey insult for the French borrowed from TV’s “The Simpsons.”

Demonstrators in Berlin protest the planned U.S. invasion of Iraq, February 2003. European opposition to the Iraq War led to the sharpest tension with America in decades. Photo: Markus Schreiber/Associated Press

Historian Robert Kagan captured the divergence in a memorable phrase: “Americans are from Mars, and Europeans are from Venus.” He meant that Europe believed in a world governed by rules and multilateral institutions, while the U.S. recognized the anarchic nature of international affairs, where raw power mattered.

Back then, most Americans didn’t hate Europe, Kagan says: “The animosity was mostly coming from Europe.” That is changing now that MAGA Republicans see Europe as an extension of blue-state America, full of latte-sipping progressives who love high taxes and open borders.

“When they say ‘Europe,’ they mean liberal Europe,” says Kagan. “This is being driven primarily by domestic ideological and political battles.” He notes that Trump and his top aides have no problem with European nativists such as Hungarian leader Viktor Orban or the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD). As for Trump’s pivot toward Russia, “The warmth for Putin is partly because he’s an anti-liberal world leader,” Kagan says. “Trump and Co. have decided this is the thing. And his supporters will follow.”

The Trump administration favors European nationalists like Alice Weidel, co-chair of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, seen here together in Budapest on Feb. 12, 2025. Photo: szilard koszticsak/EPA/Shutterstock

Europe’s democracies aren’t the only targets of Trump’s claim of unfair treatment, as Canada and Mexico can attest. And Trump’s anti-Europeanism is partly an expression of longstanding U.S. frustrations, especially over the unequal burden of defense spending within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. American conservatives have long argued that Europe can afford generous welfare benefits only because the U.S. is paying for its security. But such critics, including Republicans like former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, tended to be strongly pro-NATO; they just wanted Europe to step up.

Scorning the Liberal Elite

Trump’s scorn is deeper. Long before he ran for president, he believed that the U.S.’s role as the guardian of world trade and security was bad for Americans. As early as 1990, he said the U.S. was being ripped off by “our so-called allies,” singling out Germany and Japan for selling too many cars in the U.S. This week, that long-term grievance inspired Trump’s announcement of a 25% tariff on all car imports, starting April 3. “Frankly, friend has been oftentimes much worse than foe,” he told reporters this week.

Meanwhile, since returning to the White House Trump has continued to express admiration for autocrats whom Republicans used to view as America’s enemies, such as Russia’s Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un.

For Trump and his inner circle, the EU is the beating heart of the globalist elite they blame for rigging the rules of world trade to hurt American workers and espousing multiculturalism and wokeness. Much of MAGA would be thrilled to see other European countries follow in the footsteps of Britain, which left the EU in 2020, says Mujtaba Rahman of Eurasia Group, a political-risk consulting firm. “They believe in strong nation states, with power drained away from Brussels,” he said. “They would much rather have equivalent MAGA-type allies in power.”

Vance and other critics of Europe say they’re unhappy with Europe’s governing establishment, not its people. “I think JD seriously loves Europe,” says Rod Dreher, a conservative writer who is a longtime friend of the vice president. Dreher says he showed Vance around Paris on a trip in 2018 and that he raved about it. But, Dreher adds, “it’s hard for any American to feel sanguine about where Europe is, watching their inability to get a grasp on migration.”

MAGA commentators argue that out-of-touch technocratic elites are mismanaging the continent while running scared from their own voters, who are increasingly turning to far-right parties like AfD. After a little-known far-right candidate came first in Romania’s presidential election last November, the country’s constitutional court annulled the vote, citing intelligence about Russian interference. For many right-wing populists, it was another example of European elites ignoring the people’s will.

Culture War and Real War

Yet the truth is that many of Europe’s problems—including chronically low economic growth, burdensome welfare states and military weakness—are a result of popular policies. Voters in many European countries have long been skeptical of market-oriented economic overhauls and higher defense spending.

The real sore point in European politics is immigration. Large numbers of refugees and economic migrants have entered Europe from the poor and war-torn regions around it, and growing frustration among voters is driving support for anti-immigration parties across the continent. Elon Musk regularly predicts violent conflict in Europe between the indigenous population and radicalized Muslim migrants: “Civil war is inevitable,” he posted on his social-media platform X last August during anti-immigrant riots in the U.K. Most Europeans view this prospect as an absurd exaggeration, despite the continent’s real problems of poor integration.

What scares America’s European allies the most is Trump’s about-face on Ukraine. The U.S. has been cutting back its military commitments since before Trump’s first term, but now it is actively pursuing a rapprochement with Moscow. Europe fears that this will embolden Putin’s imperial ambitions, at the expense of Ukraine’s sovereignty and European security.

European leaders believe the Trump administration is changing U.S. policy on a real war to reflect its preferences in the culture wars. But for MAGA, which has refrained from criticizing authoritarian Russia, it would appear liberal Europe poses as serious a threat to freedom as Putin’s repressive regime.

“There’s something fundamentally deeper here that shows a huge difference and divergence between the values that President Trump and Vice President Vance are fighting for, versus those of many of the European countries who are coming to Zelensky’s side,” Gabbard told Fox News after the Ukrainian leader was castigated in the Oval Office. “They claim to champion freedom, but their actions tell a different story.”

Appeared in the March 29, 2025, print edition as 'What Does MAGA Have Against Europe? How the GOP Learned to Despise Europe'.

7. Hegseth Brought His Wife to Sensitive Meetings With Foreign Military Officials

I read the Wall Street Journal first nearly every day. I am noticing a lot more WSJ articles that are critical of the administration.

Some might classify this as a hit job.

Hegseth Brought His Wife to Sensitive Meetings With Foreign Military Officials

Defense secretary’s handling of sensitive information is under fire after he shared details about a strike on Houthi militants in a group chat on a widely used app

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/hegseth-brought-his-wife-to-sensitive-meetings-with-foreign-military-officials-c16db0ea?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Katherine LongFollow

, Max ColchesterFollow

, Daniel MichaelsFollow

and Lindsay WiseFollow

March 28, 2025 9:00 pm ET

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is facing scrutiny over his handling of details of a military strike, brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed, according to multiple people who were present or had knowledge of the discussions.

One of the meetings, a high-level discussion at the Pentagon on March 6 between Hegseth and U.K. Secretary of Defense John Healey, took place at a sensitive moment for the trans-Atlantic alliance, one day after the U.S. said it had cut off military intelligence sharing with Ukraine. The group that met at the Pentagon, which included Adm. Tony Radakin, the head of the U.K.’s armed forces, discussed the U.S. rationale behind that decision, as well as future military collaboration between the two allies, according to people familiar with the meeting.

A secretary can invite anyone to meetings with visiting counterparts, but attendee lists are usually carefully limited to those who need to be there and attendees are typically expected to possess security clearances given the delicate nature of the discussions, according to defense officials and people familiar with the meeting. There is often security near the meeting space to keep away uninvited attendees.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, addressing British Defense Secretary John Healey, left, at the Pentagon. Photo: Rod Lamkey/AP

Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer Hegseth, isn’t a Defense Department employee, defense officials said. It isn’t uncommon for spouses of senior officials to possess low-level security clearances, but a Pentagon spokesperson declined to say whether Jennifer has one. Jennifer didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Jennifer Hegseth also attended a meeting last month at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels where allied defense officials discussed their support for Ukraine, according to two people who attended the meeting. Hegseth’s brother Philip Hegseth has also been traveling with him on official visits, the Pentagon said.

The Brussels meeting, which took place on the sidelines of a February conference of NATO defense ministers, was a gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a U.S.-led forum of some 50 nations that periodically meets to coordinate on production and delivery of weapons and other support for Ukraine. At the closed-door discussions, national representatives routinely present confidential information, such as donations to Ukraine that they don’t want to be made public, according to officials.

Jennifer Hegseth is seen sitting behind her husband at his meeting with the U.K. secretary of defense. Photo: Defense Department

Some foreign attendees at the meetings didn’t know who Jennifer Hegseth was, according to people familiar with both gatherings. Others were surprised by her presence, but proceeded without raising objections, the people said. It isn’t clear whether her presence affected what was discussed at either session.

Members of Congress from both parties have raised concerns about Hegseth’s handling of sensitive military information following revelations that he and other administration officials used a group chat on the Signal messaging platform that included a journalist to discuss and execute a strike on Houthi militants in Yemen.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (D., R.I.), the ranking Democrat on the panel, sent a letter Wednesday asking the Defense Department’s inspector general to launch an inquiry into the chat.

High-ranking Defense Department officials occasionally bring their spouses on official travel and to ceremonial functions. At a news conference during the NATO conference in Brussels, Hegseth told reporters that Jennifer Hegseth had joined him and had “been meeting with families of U.S. troops” in Belgium and Germany.

But it is rare for spouses, who are private citizens, to sit in on national security meetings, according to current and former defense officials.

“When you have meetings with ministers or high-level NATO officials, those meetings almost always include sensitive security conversations,” said Chuck Hagel, a Republican former secretary of defense who served under President Barack Obama. “If you are going to discuss top secret, national security issues, you have to be very selective. What’s the relevancy of the person you are inviting?”

For a secretary’s wife to be present in such conversations, Hagel said: “It sends a message to the department: Why is the secretary doing that? It puts staff on guard over what to say and to whom. It introduces an issue you don’t need to introduce.”

Hegseth, second from left, during a NATO meeting with defense ministers from around the world. Photo: Omar Havana/AP

Hegseth kissing his wife before a NATO news conference. Photo: Virginia Mayo/AP

A high-ranking former official in the Obama administration said Bill Clinton never attended any meeting with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though he did go to North Korea to secure the release of a reporter. The person knew of no instance in which a spouse attended any official meeting.

“That would be strange,” the former official said, “and would not make any sense.”

Sean Parnell, a spokesman for the Defense Department, said in an email response to a detailed request for comment that it is “pretty clear to me that your story is going to be filled with inaccuracies and will not be written in good faith.” Parnell didn’t clarify what the inaccuracies were.

Spokespeople for NATO and the U.K. Ministry of Defense declined to comment.

In the previous Trump administration, Mike Pompeo drew scrutiny over the role of his wife, Susan Pompeo, while he was the head of the Central Intelligence Agency and later the State Department. Susan Pompeo was involved in CIA social events, held an honorary role on a board supporting agency family members and often worked near her husband on the CIA’s seventh floor, a spokesman for the agency acknowledged in 2018 in response to reporting by media outlets. She also delegated work to State Department employees on behalf of her husband, including some work of a personal nature that a 2021 Inspector General report found to be inappropriate.

For Hegseth, a second family member is also getting involved. His younger brother Philip Hegseth, a podcast producer for the conservative think tank the Hudson Institute and the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, recently joined the Department of Homeland Security as a liaison to the Defense Department, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson.

Philip and Pete Hegseth traveled to Guantanamo Bay together last month and met with the Irish martial artist Conor McGregor at the Pentagon in March, according to photographs published on the Defense Department website. Philip is currently traveling with Hegseth on a tour to visit American allies and bases in Asia, Wilson said. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment. Philip Hegseth didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Jennifer Hegseth, who has spent her career in television news, met Pete Hegseth when she was a producer on “Fox & Friends,” which Hegseth hosted on weekends. The two married in 2019. She later became a vice president at Fox Nation, the network’s streaming service, but is no longer an employee at the company, according to Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti.

Hegseth, right, aboard the USS Thomas Hudner with sailors in the Combat Information Center at the naval station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His brother Philip Hegseth is seen at far left. Photo: Defense Department

Fox News parent Fox Corp. and The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, News Corp, share common ownership.

Both Jennifer Hegseth and Philip Hegseth were near-constant fixtures at Hegseth’s side during his contentious confirmation process for defense secretary. Photographs show them flanking him through the hallways as he courted senators during one-on-one meetings on Capitol Hill.

Some senators were surprised that Hegseth invited Jennifer to sit next to him in their private meetings, making it awkward to ask questions about allegations related to infidelity and sexual misconduct, said people familiar with the senators’ thinking.

Left, Pete Hegseth flanked by his wife, Jennifer, and brother Philip; right, Hegseth with his wife at a Capitol Hill meeting.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Photos and videos from a brief news conference that directly preceded the March meeting with the U.K.’s Healey show Jennifer Hegseth filing into the conference room and taking a seat behind her husband. Other attendees, who numbered in the teens, included high-ranking military and diplomatic officials.

Healey hoped to discuss America’s changing involvement in the war in Ukraine, he said in response to a reporter’s question before the meeting.

“It’s the detail of those discussions, which are rightly behind the scenes, that the defense secretary and I will now pursue this afternoon,” Healey said.

The media departed. Jennifer Hegseth stayed.

Hegseth, with his wife seated behind him, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Armed Services. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Zuma Press

Write to Katherine Long at katherine.long@wsj.com, Max Colchester at Max.Colchester@wsj.com, Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com and Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com

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Appeared in the March 29, 2025, print edition as 'Hegseth’s Wife Joined Sensitive Meetings With Foreign Officials'.

8. Trump allies are starting to notice Hegseth’s growing pile of mistakes

Let's look forward now.

Excerpt:

“Hegseth has done everything the White House has asked when it comes to culture wars, DEI and Project 2025,” said a defense official. “But they’re nearing the end of those projects. Now comes the hard stuff: budgets, workforce, overseas basing and dealing with allies.”

Trump allies are starting to notice Hegseth’s growing pile of mistakes

Some White House and Pentagon officials now believe Hegseth is the one who messed up in the Signal chat scandal by sending sensitive details on his phone.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/27/hegseth-mistakes-some-trump-allies-00254817?utm

Some administration insiders are starting to express doubts about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's judgment after he texted sensitive military information in a Signal chat. | Rod Lamkey, Jr./AP

By Jack Detsch, Paul McLeary and Eli Stokols

03/27/2025 06:59 PM EDT

The White House is publicly defending Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he texted sensitive military information in a Signal chat. But behind the scenes, administration insiders are starting to express doubts about the Pentagon chief’s judgment.

Officials agree national security adviser Mike Waltz, who accidentally invited a journalist to a group chat with senior leaders, could more easily take the fall for a scandal that has embarrassed the administration — which may end up sparing Hegseth his job.

But Republican hawks, Pentagon officials and even some inside the White House now believe Hegseth also messed up by sending likely classified details from his phone. And that has the potential to undermine his credibility in the administration.

Because Trump clearly likes and has publicly exonerated Hegseth, “you’re not going to hear a huge public outcry,” said a senior GOP official on Capitol Hill who is close to the White House. “But, privately, there is a lot of concern about his judgment, more than with Waltz.”

Even for a Pentagon chief who has copied Trump’s pugilistic style — down to his Sharpie signature and campaign-style videos — Hegseth’s growing pile of mistakes are getting noticed, according to four officials and two people in touch with the administration.

“The problem is this is another example of inexperience,” said a person close to the White House, who like others, was granted anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive issue. “What happens when Hegseth needs to manage a real crisis?”

The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment. But Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell has reiterated the White House’s attack against the journalist who was added to the chat, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.

“These additional Signal chat messages confirm there were no classified materials or war plans shared,” he said, in reference to The Atlantic’s Wednesday release of text excerpts. “The secretary was merely updating the group on a plan that was underway and had already been briefed through official channels.”

Hegseth addressed the issue briefly Wednesday during a weeklong Asia trip. The information in the messages, “doesn’t look like war plans,” he said. “You know who sees war plans? I see them. Every single day.”

But the episode threatens to overshadow his first big trip to the Indo-Pacific. And it follows other prominent stumbles, including a walk back of his February remarks about Ukraine war negotiations in Brussels and an ill-fated effort to send thousands of detained migrants to Guantanamo Bay.

Now dozens of Democratic lawmakers are calling for Hegseth’s resignation. Grassroots campaigns have sprouted up on progressive websites to investigate the Pentagon boss. And Senate Armed Services Committee leaders have launched a bipartisan probe into the episode.

“Intentionally putting classified info on an unclassified application is the real crime,” Rep. Dan Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and retired Air Force brigadier general, wrote in an X post.

But most top GOP lawmakers continue to publicly defend the Pentagon chief.

“No one needs to lose their job over this, but we do need to get to the bottom of it and just be assured it’s not going to happen anymore,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a Trump ally.

Hegseth’s tough confirmation cost the administration significant political capital. Trump allies worry about another long battle in the Senate to replace him. And the Pentagon leader has largely followed the president’s own playbook, issuing angry attacks on the journalist to a pool of reporters that mostly included friendly conservative media and foreign outlets.

He has also shared video montages of his meetings with military leaders in Asia and appearances with troops set to a soaring soundtrack. It’s a sharp departure from previous Pentagon chiefs who didn’t focus on a personal brand.

And it contrasts Waltz’s own clean-up strategy, which has left the president unsatisfied — particularly, his fumbling Tuesday night Fox interview, said a person familiar with Trump’s thinking on Waltz’s handling of the interview.

“He went on TV, and when you feel the heat sometimes you don’t make the clearest of arguments,” the person said. “This is way too early for you to go on TV and talk about this. You’re still clearly rattled.”

But the president is reluctant to put someone on the chopping block, the person said.

Trump appreciates shows of strength when attacked. He relished Hegseth’s pushback to accusations of sexual misconduct during his confirmation process. And the Pentagon chief has proven a loyal appointee. But the latest incident has some officials worried about Hegseth’s handling of the tougher aspects of the job.

“Hegseth has done everything the White House has asked when it comes to culture wars, DEI and Project 2025,” said a defense official. “But they’re nearing the end of those projects. Now comes the hard stuff: budgets, workforce, overseas basing and dealing with allies.”

Democrats are skeptical that Trump will punish anyone.

“It’s part of the Trump administration ethos,” said Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. “There are no rules, there are no standards, there is no truth, there is no accountability. What Trump says is the truth.”

Connor O’Brien and Jake Traylor contributed reporting.

9. Is Washington's Indo-Pacific strategy washed up?

My knee jerk reaction is that China could never be successful in pulling Japan and South Korea into its orbit. Then I look at the active Chinese subversion of South Korea's political system and I get worried.

And of course alliance management is something that must be worked on everyday and cannot be neglected. And given the 2025 Threat Assessment and "adversarial cooperation" we cannot afford to allow China to pull Japan and South Korea into its orbit.

Excerpts:

The recent diplomatic overtures among regional powers signal a quiet yet consequential shift in the geopolitics of East Asia. While the US Indo-Pacific strategy may not be obsolete, it is undeniably under strain and facing a critical test of its relevance. In contrast, China’s diplomatic strategy – grounded in economic pragmatism, multilateral engagement, and non-interference rhetoric – is gradually reshaping the strategic choices of America’s closest allies.

Whether this shift results in a permanent realignment remains to be seen. However, one thing is increasingly clear: the era of unipolar US dominance in Asia is fast fading. In its place, a more complex, multipolar order is emerging – one where diplomacy, economic interdependence, and regional cooperation may carry more weight than traditional military alliances.

Navigating this new equation will require vision, flexibility, and a deep understanding of regional sensitivities. The strategic future of Asia will not be written by force alone, but by those who can build inclusive institutions, foster trust, and respond wisely to the changing tides of global power.

Is Washington's Indo-Pacific strategy washed up? - Asia Times

Is China succeeding in pulling South Korea and Japan into its orbit?

asiatimes.com · by Lakhvinder Singh · March 28, 2025

In the unfolding drama of 21st-century geopolitics, Northeast Asia is emerging as an increasingly pivotal arena. The US-led Indo-Pacific strategy – once hailed as the cornerstone of regional security and economic architecture – is now facing fresh turbulence amid shifting global dynamics.

As new alignments begin to take shape, critical questions arise: Is the United States losing its grip on the region? And, more provocatively, is China succeeding in drawing traditional US allies such as South Korea and Japan into its orbit?

Recent developments, including the Korea-China-Japan Trilateral Foreign Ministers’ Meeting held in Tokyo and the Expert Dialogue held at South Korea’s National Assembly, suggest that tectonic shifts are shifting – albeit slowly and cautiously. The language of these diplomatic engagements reveals a subtle but significant recalibration of strategic postures in the region, raising both opportunities and alarms for global stakeholders.

Winds of change: the trilateral meeting in Tokyo

On the 22nd of this month, in Tokyo, the foreign ministers of South Korea, China, and Japan convened for their first trilateral meeting in over 16 months. The meeting was significant not merely because it happened after a long hiatus but because of the changing geopolitical environment that necessitated it.

With South Korea and Japan both reacting to what many interpret as a deprioritization of the region by the United States under the Trump administration, the door is now ajar for a more multipolar diplomatic setting.

The meeting emphasized cooperation in sectors directly impacting citizens’ daily lives – such as healthcare, disaster relief, aging populations, trade and science and technology. Notably, the joint commitment to organizing a Korea-China-Japan summit soon speaks volumes about the momentum behind this trilateral initiative.

Yet, this was not merely a bureaucratic gathering. Beneath the technocratic tone lay a quiet but notable recalibration. South Korea and Japan, although still formally aligned with Washington, appear increasingly open to engaging Beijing in areas traditionally reserved for strategic partners. While this may not constitute a pivot, it certainly reflects a hedging strategy – acknowledging the rise of China, while subtly compensating for uncertainties in Washington’s commitment.

A subtle shift in strategic thinking

What is particularly revealing is the softening of political rhetoric around China by both Seoul and Tokyo. Although tensions remain – especially concerning historical grievances, territorial disputes, and North Korea’s behavior – the tone and content of the Tokyo meeting displayed a clear inclination toward stability and multilateralism, rather than confrontation.

Indeed, Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul of South Korea explicitly stated, “We agreed to deepen substantive cooperation in areas closely linked to people’s daily lives.” This is no mere diplomatic platitude – it reflects a growing consensus that the region must build institutional frameworks independent of external powers.

The acknowledgement that peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula is a “shared responsibility” among the three countries further cements the notion of a Northeast Asian community taking charge of its destiny.

The US Indo-Pacific strategy: losing traction?

The US-led Indo-Pacific strategy, introduced during the Trump administration and continued with modifications under Biden, sought to counterbalance China’s rising influence through strategic partnerships and military alliances. The core philosophy was to maintain a “free and open Indo-Pacific” by reinforcing ties with regional powers, most notably Japan, South Korea, India and Australia.

However, this framework has encountered several headwinds. First, the Trump administration’s transactional foreign policy undermined longstanding alliances by questioning defense commitments and demanding increased cost-sharing. This eroded trust in the reliability of US security guarantees, prompting allies to reconsider their strategic autonomy.

Second, the Biden administration, while rhetorically recommitting to the region, has been preoccupied with crises elsewhere – especially Ukraine and the Middle East – leading to concerns about strategic bandwidth. Simultaneously, America’s domestic polarization and economic challenges have made its foreign policy appear erratic and reactive, rather than coherent and enduring.

Against this backdrop, China’s patient and consistent diplomacy – emphasizing economic integration, people-to-people ties and regional institutions – offers an alternative and atractive vision for Asia. This vision, while not without its risks, appears increasingly appealing to countries tired of being caught in the crossfire of great power rivalry.

China’s quiet diplomacy: pulling without pushing

China’s strategy in Northeast Asia has been notably nuanced. Rather than aggressively confronting US allies, Beijing has focused on building bridges in areas of mutual interest – such as climate change, pandemic recovery and trade. The recently held Trilateral Expert Dialogue at South Korea’s National Assembly is a case in point.

Organized jointly by the Bipartisan Forum for Advanced Diplomacy and the Institute for Global Strategic Cooperation, the forum was attended by ambassadors from both Japan and China – underscoring a symbolic shift toward dialogue, even amidst differences. Sessions focused on regional resilience, economic frameworks, climate change and cooperative diplomacy. While security issues were not sidelined, the emphasis was clearly on pragmatic cooperation rather than ideological alignment.

Notably, policymakers and scholars called for institutionalizing trilateral mechanisms that could weather political transitions and global shocks. If such frameworks are developed and sustained, they may gradually evolve into an East Asian community with its own norms, priorities, and rules of engagement – potentially diminishing US leverage in the long run.

North Korea: a persistent divergence

Despite the convergence on many issues, North Korea remains a key area of divergence. Both South Korea and Japan voiced strong concerns about Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations and its growing military cooperation with Russia. Minister Cho stressed the need to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions and prevent any strategic reward to North Korea, especially in the context of the Ukraine war.

Japan’s Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya also echoed concerns about cryptocurrency theft, nuclear threats and illicit arms deals. However, China’s position remained more measured, emphasizing dialogue and denuclearization without assigning explicit blame to North Korea or addressing its ties with Russia.

This divergence underscores a critical limit to trilateral cooperation. While South Korea and Japan still align with Washington on core security issues, their willingness to tolerate differing views on North Korea in a trilateral context reveals a growing diplomatic flexibility.

Strategic autonomy or subtle realignment?

The big question remains: is this trilateral engagement a step toward strategic autonomy or a sign of subtle realignment toward China?

For now, the answer lies somewhere in between. South Korea and Japan are not abandoning their alliances with the United States. Their military and intelligence cooperation with Washington remains robust. However, their growing engagement with China in economic, technological, and social domains suggests a recalibration toward greater autonomy.

This pragmatic balancing act reflects both geopolitical necessity and domestic pressure. With China as their largest trading partner and the US as their primary security ally, neither South Korea nor Japan can afford a zero-sum choice. Instead, they appear to be crafting a middle path – one that allows engagement with both superpowers while preserving national interests.

The road ahead: a multipolar Northeast Asia?

The proposed trilateral summit – pending resolution of South Korea’s domestic political instability – may serve as a litmus test for this evolving regional alignment. If successfully held, it could mark the beginning of a new era in which East Asian powers increasingly manage their own affairs, moving beyond the binary strategic choices imposed during the Cold War era.

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From the perspective of US strategic planners, this shift represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Washington must understand that its allies in Asia may not necessarily be defecting from the US-led order, but are instead seeking greater flexibility and agency in navigating an increasingly complex global landscape. A more consultative, less transactional US approach – one that acknowledges and respects regional aspirations – could help revitalize America’s presence in the region rather than render it obsolete. The ball is now in Washington’s court.

The emergence of a multipolar Northeast Asia appears increasingly likely. If trilateral cooperation between Korea, China, and Japan continues to institutionalize, it could lay the foundation for a new regional architecture – one that may operate independently of, yet not necessarily in opposition to, existing security alliances. This could foster a more resilient and balanced regional order.

It is crucial for other regional players – particularly India – to take careful note of these undercurrents. The geopolitical environment in East Asia is shifting rapidly, and clinging to outdated narratives or rigid alliance structures could prove counterproductive. India must be agile, updating its strategic thinking and foreign policy posture to reflect the emerging dynamics of a multipolar Asia. Doing so will not only protect its interests but also position it as a more effective player in the evolving regional equation.

The recent diplomatic overtures among regional powers signal a quiet yet consequential shift in the geopolitics of East Asia. While the US Indo-Pacific strategy may not be obsolete, it is undeniably under strain and facing a critical test of its relevance. In contrast, China’s diplomatic strategy – grounded in economic pragmatism, multilateral engagement, and non-interference rhetoric – is gradually reshaping the strategic choices of America’s closest allies.

Whether this shift results in a permanent realignment remains to be seen. However, one thing is increasingly clear: the era of unipolar US dominance in Asia is fast fading. In its place, a more complex, multipolar order is emerging – one where diplomacy, economic interdependence, and regional cooperation may carry more weight than traditional military alliances.

Navigating this new equation will require vision, flexibility, and a deep understanding of regional sensitivities. The strategic future of Asia will not be written by force alone, but by those who can build inclusive institutions, foster trust, and respond wisely to the changing tides of global power.

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asiatimes.com · by Lakhvinder Singh · March 28, 2025

10. Hegseth Addresses Indo-Pacom Partnerships During First Trip to Region

Good support for APCSS and the important work it is doing with strategic education with our friends, parrters, and allies.

Good statements on relationships.

He is in effect saying "America First, Allies Always."

Excerpts:

“Many of you graduated from our premier forum for studying the Indo-Pacific, and for building ties among national security leaders who are engaged in this region,” Hegseth told the audience.

“Our relationships — and our teamwork — form the foundation of achieving peace through strength,” he added.

...

“No one should question the resolve of the United States of America to defend our interests in the Indo-Pacific and beyond,” Hegseth said.

“We will do this through the deterrent power of the strongest, most effective, most lethal fighting force in the world … supported by — and in partnership with — capable, like-minded allies and partners,” he added.

Hegseth Addresses Indo-Pacom Partnerships During First Trip to Region

https://dkiapcss.edu/hegseth-addresses-indo-pacom-partnerships-during-first-trip-to-region/

March 26, 2025 | By Matthew Olay | Originally published by DOD News

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed his strategic vision for the Defense Department, as it relates to the Indo-Pacific region, while delivering remarks to alumni of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu yesterday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers remarks at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, March 25, 2025. Credit: Air Force Senior Airman Madelyn Keech, DOD

Founded in 1995, the DKI APCSS is a DOD institute that offers a forum for military and civilian leaders from the region to come together and discuss local and global security matters.

Noting this was the first time he was able to address military and civilian leaders in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility since being sworn in, Hegseth told the virtual and in-person audience that it was important for him to address that group first.

“Many of you graduated from our premier forum for studying the Indo-Pacific, and for building ties among national security leaders who are engaged in this region,” Hegseth told the audience.

“Our relationships — and our teamwork — form the foundation of achieving peace through strength,” he added.

To that end, Hegseth said achieving peace through strength will be attained by adhering to the three core tenets he listed in his Jan. 25, 2025, message to the force: restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence.

“By restoring the warrior ethos, U.S. forces assigned to the Indo-Pacific will be the best trained and best equipped forces in the world,” Hegseth said, adding recruiting numbers are up throughout the armed services, and “our opponents are taking notice.”

Regarding rebuilding the military, Hegseth said DOD will work with the defense industrial base to “rapidly and responsively deliver the right tools to our warfighters in real time.”

He also noted that DKI APCSS has been focused on supply chain security for U.S. weapons systems, as well as studying the potential for coproduction and sustainment of U.S. military platforms and munitions with international partners.

“Please keep up the great work; we need it, [and] it is more important than ever,” Hegseth said.

Regarding reestablishing deterrence in the region, Hegseth said the U.S. will stand with its allies and partners to deter China’s aggression, and that he believes each ally, partner and friend in the region contributes their own unique manner of deterrence.

Hegseth finished his remarks by encouraging allies in the region to recommit to the partnership and to doing their part to reestablishing deterrence and, ultimately, peace through strength.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers remarks at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, March 25, 2025. Credit: Air Force Senior Airman Madelyn Keech, DOD

“No one should question the resolve of the United States of America to defend our interests in the Indo-Pacific and beyond,” Hegseth said.

“We will do this through the deterrent power of the strongest, most effective, most lethal fighting force in the world … supported by — and in partnership with — capable, like-minded allies and partners,” he added.

As part of his first official visit to the Indo-Pacom AOR, Hegseth is spending his time in Hawaii primarily meeting with civilian and military leaders.

Following his stay in Hawaii, Hegseth is scheduled to travel to Guam, the Philippines and Japan to meet with senior U.S. military and civilian leadership.

He also intends to participate in a series of international bilateral meetings, with a goal aimed at strengthening U.S. alliances and partnerships toward a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific.

11. US is pushing more expansive minerals deal with Ukraine, sources say

Protection of US mineral interests equals security for Ukraine.

US is pushing more expansive minerals deal with Ukraine, sources say

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-is-pushing-more-expansive-minerals-deal-with-ukraine-sources-say-2025-03-27/?utm

By Erin Banco, Andrea Shalal and Gram Slattery

March 28, 20255:12 AM EDTUpdated a day ago

Item 1 of 2 U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 28, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

[1/2]U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 28, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

Under proposal Kyiv would contribute to joint fund all income from use of natural resourcesDeal would apply to Ukrainian state and private enterprisesProposal includes no security guarantees

March 27 (Reuters) - The Trump administration has proposed a new, more expansive minerals deal with Ukraine, according to three people familiar with the ongoing negotiations and a summary of a draft proposal obtained by Reuters.

The U.S. has revised its original proposal, said the sources, and it gives Ukraine no future security guarantees but requires it to contribute to a joint investment fund all income from the use of natural resources managed by state and private enterprises across Ukrainian territory.

The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. Sign up here.The terms put forward by Washington go well beyond the deal discussed in the days leading up to the contentious Oval Office meeting last month between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been leading negotiations for the United States, said one of the sources.

Bessent did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The proposal makes no mention of the U.S. taking ownership of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, according to the summary - something Trump had talked about.

Trump has said a minerals deal will help secure a peace agreement by giving the United States a financial stake in Ukraine's future. He also sees it as America's way of earning back some of the tens of billions of dollars it has given to Ukraine in financial and military aid since Russia invaded three years ago.

National Security Council spokesperson James Hewitt declined to confirm the terms of the latest proposal, but said the deal would strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine.

“The mineral deal offers Ukraine the opportunity to form an enduring economic relationship with the United States that is the basis for long term security and peace," said Hewitt.

Ukraine's ministry of foreign affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An earlier version of the deal proposed a joint investment fund where Ukraine would contribute 50% of proceeds from the future profits of the extraction of the state-owned natural resources. It also set out terms that the U.S. and Ukraine would jointly develop Ukraine’s mineral resources.

Zelenskiy told reporters on Tuesday that the U.S. had proposed a “major” new deal and that Ukrainian officials were still reviewing its terms.

Zelenskiy said on Thursday the U.S. is "constantly" changing the terms of the proposed minerals deal, but added that he did not want Washington to think Kyiv was against the deal.

In an interview with Fox News earlier this week, Bessent said the U.S. had “passed along a completed document for the economic partnership” and that Washington hopes to “go to full discussions and perhaps even get signatures next week.”

The new proposal stipulates that the U.S. is given first rights to purchase resources extracted under the agreement and that it recoup all the money it has given Ukraine since 2022, in addition to a 4% annual interest rate, before Ukraine begins to gain access to the fund's profits, according to the summary. The updated proposal was first reported by the Financial Times.

If agreed, the joint investment fund would have a board of five people, three appointed by the U.S. and two by Ukraine, and the funds generated would be converted into foreign currency and transferred abroad, according to the summary. The fund would be managed by the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).

A separate source with knowledge of the negotiations said there had been discussions about having the DFC administer the fund.

Reporting by Erin Banco, Andrea Shalal and Gram Slattery; Additional reporting by Tom Balmforth in London; Editing by Don Durfee and Daniel Wallis

12. PacNet #20 – Taiwan is under a triple security threat

At the most fundamental level the conflict is about human freedom.

Excerpts:

Finally, the willingness of the US to intervene is in question. Trump is markedly less enthusiastic about defending Taiwan than his predecessor. He appears to hold a grudge against Taiwan for allegedly “stealing” America’s semiconductor business. He accuses Taiwan of free-riding on US protection, similar to his criticism of Japan and South Korea. He emphasizes that Taiwan is difficult to defend. He said publicly he would respond to a Chinese military attack with economic sanctions.

Beijing offers Taiwan a way out: a soft surrender in the form of voluntarily accepting annexation to the PRC. This would remove the threat of attack from China, would do away with the need for US protection, and would halt the conflict between Chinese and Taiwanese nationalisms among Taiwan’s people.

In practice, however, this would gain national security at the expense of human security.

China’s rapid and vindictive crackdown on civil liberties on Hong Kong since 2019, even with the knowledge that Taiwan was watching, was illustrative. Previous assurances about how Beijing would treat Taiwan after unification—such as Taiwan retaining retain control of its own military, government, and economic affairs and the PRC not stationing troops or administrative personnel in Taiwan—are excised from the Chinese government’s 2022 white paper on Taiwan.

It was the Chinese mainland government’s rough treatment of Taiwan after liberation from Japan in 1945 that led to the Feb. 28, 1947 uprising. KMT bureaucrats and soldiers looted the island and treated its people contemptuously, considering them brainwashed by 50 years of Japanese colonial rule. A chilling echo of this attitude is a sentiment common on today’s Chinese social media: “keep the island, don’t keep the people.”

PacNet #20 – Taiwan is under a triple security threat

Written By

Denny Roy

Senior Fellow at the East-West Center

https://pacforum.org/publications/pacnet-20-taiwan-is-under-a-triple-security-threat/

March 27, 2025

Taiwan’s national security is increasingly jeopardized—externally, from two different directions, and also from within.

The largest and most direct threat, of course, is the People’s Republic of China. Beijing’s long-standing position is that Taiwan must not formally politically separate itself from China. The red line for military action by the PRC has never been crystal clear. Taiwan presidents from Chen Shiu-bian (2000—2008) to current president Lai Ching-te have publicly said “Taiwan is an independent, sovereign country.” Until recently it was reasonable to believe Beijing might be content to kick the can down the road indefinitely as long as the governments in Taipei did not attempt a gesture that would seem to codify juridical separation from China, such as altering the Republic of China constitution.

That has become doubtful, however, under paramount leader Xi Jinping. Xi has expressed impatience with the lack of progress toward unification, saying Taiwan’s de facto independence “should not be passed down generation after generation.” Beijing implicitly announced in early 2024 the Chinese military would hold a large military exercise later in the year after President Lai’s inauguration speech expected in May. The comments in Lai’s speech about China were rather mild, but the People’s Liberation Army went ahead with its war games anyway. The situation is much more dangerous if cautious behavior by Taipei no longer restrains potential aggression by China.

The PRC armed forces continue not only their rapid buildup and modernization, but also specific preparations for possible military action against Taiwan. The commander of US forces in the Indo-Pacific region, Adm. Samuel Paparo, says Chinese military drills near Taiwan are “not exercises, they are rehearsals” for war. China has reportedly built barges that can transport and assemble a bridge to land military vehicles from ships directly onto coastal roads, theoretically making an amphibious invasion over treacherous beaches more feasible. A Chinese company recently disclosed it is building a million kamikaze drones for the PRC government, with delivery planned for 2026.

On top of this, of course, China carries out gray zone and subversive activities and lawfare to weaken Taiwan’s ability to stand up for itself against Beijing’s agenda.

Observers such as Global Taiwan Institute Director Russell Hsiao see “a comprehensive shift in Beijing’s overall approach from deterring Taiwan’s independence to compelling its unification” with China.

Internally, Taiwan’s two major political parties have fundamentally different views about how to deal with China. For the Kuomintang (KMT), China is eternally Taiwan’s mother country, even if a rival government currently rules the mainland. If Taiwan does not intend to separate from China, China should have no reason to use military force against Taiwan. Many KMT politicians are therefore lukewarm about increasing the defense budget and about deepening security cooperation with the US. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), on the other hand, reflects Taiwanese nationalism. It grew out of opposition to the dictatorship imposed on Taiwan by the exiled KMT government from 1945 until the political liberalization of the late 1980s. For the DPP, China is an enemy country, Taiwan must prepare to defend its democratic way of life from annihilation, and the US is a crucial bulwark against Chinese aggression.

The schism between the politically Blue supporters (including the KMT) and Green supporters (DPP) is an obstacle to Taiwan deploying a coherent defense policy.

KMT politicians and other conservative commentators increasingly repeat CCP talking points. The Taiwan media outlet China Times, for example, “has morphed from a mainstream publication into what critics call a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist party,” Financial Times observes. The owner of China Times is snack food billionaire Tsai Eng-meng, who owes his wealth to business in China and has a history of making pro-China statements.

One of these shared talking points is yimeilun, or skepticism toward America—the idea that Washington’s master plan is to cause a war between Taiwan and China, and then abandon Taiwan, as a means of weakening China. During Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election campaign, Foxconn founder Terry Gou, originally a KMT candidate who later opted to run as an independent, said he opposed “buying weapons from the United States” because “If you don’t have a knife or a gun, [China] may not specifically attack you.” KMT candidate Hou You-yi and Blue-affiliated Taiwan People’s Party candidate Ke Wen-je both complained about the US using Taiwan as a “chess piece,” a common theme in PRC propaganda. Alleged US unreliability supports the notion that a successful military defense of Taiwan against a PLA attack is impossible, so Taiwan should instead open negotiations with Beijing about Taiwan’s political status.

Taiwan’s 2020 Anti-Infiltration Act was controversial. The DPP said the law was necessary to prevent PRC influence over Taiwan’s elections, but both the PRC government and the KMT opposed it. A Taiwan journalist alleged that the PRC’s Taiwan Affairs Office was in daily communication with China Times and CtiTV, also owned by Tsai, to coordinate opposition to the law.

Lai’s government is trying to increase defense spending, but a divided legislature is resisting. Although the DPP controls Taiwan’s executive branch, a Blue coalition led by the KMT holds a slight majority in the legislature. In January, the legislature passed a budget that held back half of the funds allocated to Taiwan’s submarine building program and cut funding for other military equipment including drones. It also trimmed 60% from the military’s publicity budget, which pays for recruitment campaigns. KMT legislators argued they were targeting wasteful spending.

Many analysts have long argued that a robust civil defense program would help dissuade China from attempting to conquer Taiwan. KMT politicians, however, have joined the PRC government in specifically attacking Taiwan’s Kuma Academy, a private company that teaches civil defense skills.

A third set of challenges to Taiwan’s security comes from its long-time security partner.

The Trump administration wants Taiwan to spend more to build up its armed forces, which would imply buying more weapons from the US, Taiwan’s only major foreign arms supplier. Both Trump and his nominee for Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby have said Taiwan should be spending 10% of its GDP on defense. Taiwan’s government has said meeting that goal would be impossible. Developed countries typically have government budgets equivalent to 40 or 50% of GDP. Taiwan’s national budget, however, is relatively small at only 14 percent of GDP. Even an increase of the defense budget to 5% of GDP would eat into other kinds of investment, such as education and infrastructure, that are also vital to national security.

The US has allowed its defense industrial base to wither to the point where it’s uncertain America could prevail in a war against China. Even if many US weapons systems are qualitatively superior, China might win on the strength of its ability to out-produce the US in munitions and platforms. This means Taiwan might not be able to hold off a PLA assault even with US military intervention.

Finally, the willingness of the US to intervene is in question. Trump is markedly less enthusiastic about defending Taiwan than his predecessor. He appears to hold a grudge against Taiwan for allegedly “stealing” America’s semiconductor business. He accuses Taiwan of free-riding on US protection, similar to his criticism of Japan and South Korea. He emphasizes that Taiwan is difficult to defend. He said publicly he would respond to a Chinese military attack with economic sanctions.

Beijing offers Taiwan a way out: a soft surrender in the form of voluntarily accepting annexation to the PRC. This would remove the threat of attack from China, would do away with the need for US protection, and would halt the conflict between Chinese and Taiwanese nationalisms among Taiwan’s people.

In practice, however, this would gain national security at the expense of human security.

China’s rapid and vindictive crackdown on civil liberties on Hong Kong since 2019, even with the knowledge that Taiwan was watching, was illustrative. Previous assurances about how Beijing would treat Taiwan after unification—such as Taiwan retaining retain control of its own military, government, and economic affairs and the PRC not stationing troops or administrative personnel in Taiwan—are excised from the Chinese government’s 2022 white paper on Taiwan.

It was the Chinese mainland government’s rough treatment of Taiwan after liberation from Japan in 1945 that led to the Feb. 28, 1947 uprising. KMT bureaucrats and soldiers looted the island and treated its people contemptuously, considering them brainwashed by 50 years of Japanese colonial rule. A chilling echo of this attitude is a sentiment common on today’s Chinese social media: “keep the island, don’t keep the people.”

PacNet commentaries and responses represent the views of the respective authors. Alternative viewpoints are always welcomed and encouraged.

Denny Roy (royd@eastwestcenter.org) is a senior fellow at the East-West Center who specializes in Asia-Pacific international security issues.

Photo: Taiwanese troops at Songshan Air Base in Taipei on March 21, 2025|| Credit: Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense

13. Beijing would not attack Taiwan if it believed trade would suffer, senators hear

I am reminded of Sun Tzu: "never assume your enemy will not attack. Make yourself invincible."

I am not sure if the Golden Arches (McDonald's) theory of conflict avoidance will work.

And I am also reminded of Norman Angell and his 1910 book The Great Illusion.

All of the above snark aside, I am very happy to see the arguments recognizing the importance of the contributions of our allies.

Beijing would not attack Taiwan if it believed trade would suffer, senators hear

Analysts tell Senate Foreign Relations Committee that strategic contributions by US allies and partners go well beyond military spending

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3304031/beijing-would-not-attack-taiwan-if-it-believed-trade-would-suffer-senators-hear?utm

Bochen Hanin Washington

Published: 5:41am, 27 Mar 2025

Beijing would not invade Taiwan if it believed that US allies and partners would respond by severing trade ties, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard on Wednesday, as expert witnesses urged lawmakers to acknowledge that allies’ strategic contributions go beyond defence spending.

Noting that China is “an export-driven economy”, Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said that “if they believed trade with US allies and partners would stop if they attacked Taiwan, they would never do it”.

Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province, to be eventually united with the mainland, by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island militarily.

Mastro and other witnesses at the committee hearing stressed that US allies and partners could provide Washington much more than just financial aid to help deter China militarily.

“Too often burden-sharing is scoped down to a single figure, which is, ‘how much is a country spending [as a] percentage of GDP on defence?’” said Randall Shriver, board chairman of the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

“That doesn’t always tell the whole story,” he said, noting that the Philippines has been making more military sites available to the US despite only spending 1.5 per cent of its GDP on defence.

Since his return to the White House in January, US President Donald Trump and his advisers have emphasised requiring allies and partners to spend specific percentages of their GDPs on defence, at times threatening to withdraw US military support if they fail to do so.

Donald Trump declines to say if US would defend Taiwan against mainland China attack

Speaking at his nomination hearing this month, Elbridge Colby, Trump’s nominee for under secretary of defence for policy, said that Taiwan should be spending about 10 per cent on its defence instead of current levels of “well below” 3 per cent of GDP.

Witnesses on Wednesday said that US allies could offer everything from airspace clearance for US military aircraft to investments in US shipbuilding or other specific capabilities to deter Chinese aggression – as well as steadfast loyalty.

“I think it counts that Australia has fought alongside us in every war since World War I,” Shriver said.

Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, said that Washington needs its Indo-Pacific allies to “build a collective economic deterrence framework” to fight the potential of “opportunistic aggression” from Beijing.

In return, witnesses said, the US needed to provide its Asian allies and partners humanitarian, development, technological and political support.

“The best way to encourage any sort of burden-sharing is not to publicly criticise allies and demand it, but instead, the United States needs to offer more than security protections,” Mastro said.

Examples of that support, though, include programmes that the Donald Trump administration has dramatically scaled back, witnesses said, including the US Agency for International Development – which provided humanitarian and development assistance abroad – as well as news outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

Shriver pushed for a speedy review and resumption of aid programmes as well as educational and cultural programmes, including Fulbright scholarships, which provided grants for US citizens to study, teach, and conduct research abroad.

The need, according to Mastro, is urgent.

“When I speak to the Chinese military directly, and I ask them about their military activities in [Asia], they tell me that they are specifically designed to demonstrate to [US] allies and partners that the United States cannot help them,” she said.

Bochen Han

Bochen joined the Post as a Washington-based correspondent in 2022 after several years working in the US, China, Myanmar and Thailand. She holds degrees from Duke University and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

14. Final Cuts Will Eliminate U.S. Aid Agency in All but Name

I have no words.

Final Cuts Will Eliminate U.S. Aid Agency in All but Name

The staff of U.S.A.I.D. will be reduced to some 15 legally required positions. The agency employed about 10,000 people before the Trump administration entered office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/us/politics/usaid-trump-doge-cuts.html

The cuts are in keeping with the administration’s plan to use foreign aid as a tool to further its diplomatic priorities.Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times

By Karoun Demirjian Stephanie Nolen Michael Crowley and Elizabeth Dias

March 28, 2025

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.”

The cuts are in keeping with the administration’s plan to use foreign aid as a tool to further its diplomatic priorities. This month, recipients of U.S.A.I.D. funds were asked to justify their value to the administration through questionnaires that asked, among other things, whether their programs helped to limit illegal immigration or secure rare earth minerals.

In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the forthcoming cuts.

“We are reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens,” he said, calling U.S.A.I.D. in its previous form “misguided and fiscally irresponsible.”

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He pledged that “essential lifesaving programs” would be among those preserved under the State Department. In plans shared with Congress, however, the administration signaled that the U.S.A.I.D. programs it was ending included one that funded vaccines for children in poor countries, as well as some funding for combating malaria.

The email to employees, which was written by Jeremy Lewin, who is part of the Department of Government Efficiency and was recently named as one of two acting deputy administrators for U.S.A.I.D., said that all nonstatutory employees of the agency would receive separation notices with a final date of July 1 or Sept. 2. But some employees reported receiving different dates on Friday, including one Foreign Service officer who was told they would have to depart their post at the end of May.

Title 5 of the U.S. Code names only 15 specific employees of U.S.A.I.D.: one administrator, one deputy administrator, six assistant administrators, four regional assistant administrators, one chief information officer, one general counsel and one inspector general. At its peak, the agency counted about 10,000 employees on its payroll, including contractors, in the United States and abroad.

Terminated employees will be able to apply to be rehired by the State Department, the email said, through a process that has not yet been established. Overseas personnel, it said, would be offered “safe and fully compensated” return packages to the United States. Employees posted overseas were told they had 72 hours to request their preferred departure date.

The email was sent to all U.S.A.I.D. employees — including those who are actively responding to the powerful earthquake that struck Myanmar on Friday. The email landed around midnight local time on the phones of dozens of U.S.A.I.D. employees sheltering in the street in Bangkok, the capital of neighboring Thailand, as tremors continued to shake the city.

Stephanie Nolen

Global health reporter covering access to medicines and health care

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Shortly after the email went out, employees began receiving formal reduction in force notices. One shared with The New York Times read: “The agency is abolishing your competitive area. You will be released from your competitive level and will not have an assignment right to another position in the competitive area.”

They then received an email encouraging them “to step away and recharge,” given the impact of the day’s announcement, according to a copy shared with The Times.

The layoffs are a far more drastic reduction than the Trump administration had initially envisioned for U.S.A.I.D. In February, senior officials at the agency were told that its work force would be cut to a few hundred employees. But on Friday, even some of the workers who had been deemed essential were given their walking papers.

While the administration notified lawmakers of their intent to pursue the cuts, Congress has not approved the reorganization plan, which Democratic lawmakers have called an illegal closure of the agency.

Members of the House and Senate committees that oversee foreign affairs and associated budgets were informed about the reorganization on Friday by the Trump administration, which said it would be completed by July 1.

In the meantime, several employees are taking issue with the way the termination notices were handed out. Some began circulating a list of “irregularities” on Friday, pointing out clerical errors and objecting that the notices had not been disseminated in accordance with the formal reduction in force process.

To put someone “with zero meaningful government, foreign policy or development experience in charge of this process is insulting to the career staff around the world with decades of experience,” Julianne Weis, who was a senior adviser in the U.S.A.I.D. global health bureau and also received a termination letter on Friday, said of Mr. Lewin. “It’s also dangerous for America’s global standing, national security and foreign policy.”

A request for comment sent to U.S.A.I.D. received an automatic reply directing all inquiries to the State Department’s press office.

Amy Schoenfeld Walker contributed reporting.

Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for the The Times. More about Karoun Demirjian

Stephanie Nolen is a global health reporter for The Times. More about Stephanie Nolen

Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state. More about Michael Crowley

Elizabeth Dias is The Times’s national religion correspondent, covering faith, politics and values. More about Elizabeth Dias

A version of this article appears in print on March 29, 2025, Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: New Round of Layoffs Will Virtually Eliminate U.S. Foreign Aid Agency. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: Agency for International Development, State Department, U.S. Politics, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump

15. US to give $73 million to aid Rohingya refugees, State Dept. says

It seems we are still providing some humanitarian aid. I wonder how this decision was made.

US to give $73 million to aid Rohingya refugees, State Dept. says

By Reuters

March 27, 202511:07 AM

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-give-73-million-aid-rohingya-refugees-state-dept-says-2025-03-27/

17.

he wants to make us strangers.

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WASHINGTON, March 27 (Reuters) - The Trump administration said on Thursday it will provide $73 million in new financial aid to Rohingya refugees through the U.N. World Food Programme, amid concerns that aid cuts could deepen the crisis for the world's largest stateless population.

"This food and nutrition support through @WFP will provide critically needed food and nutrition assistance for more than one million people," U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a post on X. "It is important that our international partners engage with sharing the burden with life-saving assistance such as this."

The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. Sign up here.The infusion comes as U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have made sweeping cuts to foreign assistance as part of his "America First" agenda and wider efforts to drastically cut federal spending and dismantle parts of the U.S. government.

Two United Nations agencies had warned that a funding deficit would curb rations for the Rohingya in Bangladesh who have fled violence in neighboring Myanmar for the past eight years. Refugees have worried that cuts would worsen hunger, curtail critical healthcare and fuel crime.

Item 1 of 7 Rohingya refugees gather at roadside kitchen market, at the refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, March 15, 2025. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

[1/7]Rohingya refugees gather at roadside kitchen market, at the refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, March 15, 2025. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Washington had been the largest provider of aid to the Rohingya refugees, contributing nearly $2.4 billion since 2017, according to the State Department. But the recent freeze on funds after Trump took office in January has forced at least five hospitals to reduce services.

Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk have moved to shutter USAID, the main U.S. foreign aid agency, and merge its remnants into the State Department, fired hundreds of staff and contractors and terminated billions of dollars in services on which tens of millions of people around the world depend.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February granted a waiver for all life-saving assistance and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such aid.

The Trump administration official overseeing the dismantling of USAID had proposed phasing out help for the Rohingya, Reuters reported earlier this month.

Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Sharon Singleton

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

16. A DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding a reporter to a group email

Sigh... As the troops say: different spanks for different ranks.

A DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding a reporter to a group email

The episode, which hasn't been previously reported, raises questions about unequal punishment for inadvertent leakers in the Trump administration.

NBC News · by Julia Ainsley · March 27, 2025

A federal worker accidentally includes a journalist on a detailed message in advance of a government operation.

While that sounds like the case of The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief being added to a group Signal chat by Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed military attack plans in Yemen, it’s not.

It’s what happened to a longtime Department of Homeland Security employee who told colleagues she inadvertently sent unclassified details of an upcoming Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation to a journalist in late January, according to former ICE chief of staff Jason Houser, one former DHS official and one current DHS official. (The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they do not want to endanger their current or future career opportunities.)

But unlike Waltz and Hegseth, who both remain in their jobs, the career DHS employee was put on administrative leave and told late last week that the agency intends to revoke her security clearance, the officials said.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has largely rallied around Waltz and Hegseth, with Trump on Wednesday calling it “all a witch hunt.”

The episode involving the career DHS employee has not been previously reported. Experts say it raises questions about unequal punishment for inadvertent leakers in the Trump administration.

Mary McCord, a former top official in the Justice Department’s national security division, which investigates the mishandling or leaking of classified information, said the two cases should be treated the same way.

"Both of these are examples of carelessness in the handling of highly sensitive information, the disclosure of which could put U.S. government employees or military members in danger," added McCord, who is now a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center. "We should expect the Signal chat breach to be taken at least as seriously" as the DHS employee's breach.

The DHS employee who was put on leave did not speak to NBC News. The officials who did speak didn't want to identify her out of fear she would face retaliation from members of the public who are pro-immigration enforcement.

The DHS employee told colleagues she accidentally added a reporter from a conservative Washington-based print publication to an email that included information about upcoming ICE operations in the Denver area. The officials said the information was not classified but considered law enforcement sensitive because it included the time of day for the operation and possible home locations where targets could be identified.

Realizing her mistake immediately, the employee called the reporter who agreed not to disclose the information, the officials said.

The ICE operation took place without incident, the officials said.

But another person on the email group flagged the blunder to higher-ups at DHS at a time when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and border czar Tom Homan were blaming leaks to the media for lower-than-expected arrest numbers during ICE roundups, the officials said.

Days later, the employee was placed on leave pending an investigation, the officials said. She was asked to take a polygraph test and surrender her personal cellphone, which she declined. She was then notified that the agency intends to revoke her security clearance, the officials said, which could keep her from working in the homeland security space again.

The employee has 30 days to appeal the revocation, one official said.

The employee has served in various agencies across DHS since President George W. Bush’s administration, including during the entirety of Trump’s first term, the officials said.

A DHS spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The White House also did not respond to a request for comment.

In the Signal incident, Hegseth shared details of upcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen, according to text messages shared by The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who was included in the chat.

Even though Hegseth provided the precise timing of planned fighter jet and drone launches and when bombs would hit their intended targets, the Trump administration has said no classified material was shared in the chat.

Houser, the former ICE chief of staff, said the employee had a reputation for being "mission-focused" and "apolitical."

"Targeting a career official who dedicated her service to protecting public safety and enforcing the law — while excusing political appointees who leaked sensitive war plans — shows this administration punishes integrity and protects recklessness. That doesn’t just betray her, it weakens every public servant who risks their career to do the right thing," Houser said.

"It's staggering hypocrisy," he added. Houser noted that the career official was put on leave for sharing information that was not classified, "while political appointees leak classified war plans and face zero consequences. This isn’t just a double standard — it’s reckless and dangerous."

One former DHS official told NBC News that the Trump administration should review its handling of the case of the DHS career employee who accidentally emailed ICE plans in light of the news of the Signal chat involving Waltz, Hegseth and Goldberg.

"Career civilians and military suffer severe penalties for inadvertent mistakes significantly less serious," the former DHS official said. "The inconsistency is appalling."

NBC News · by Julia Ainsley · March 27, 2025

17. Congressional Caucus Champions Special Ops Amid Rising Threats

Congressional Caucus Champions Special Ops Amid Rising Threats

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4138795/congressional-caucus-champions-special-ops-amid-rising-threats/

March 28, 2025 | By Army Maj. Wes Shinego, DOD News |

U.S. Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, joined congressional leaders March 26, 2025, to underscore the indispensable role of special operations forces and rally bipartisan support for their growing mission at the Congressional SOF Caucus event on Capitol Hill.

Fenton highlighted the unprecedented demand on SOF, driven by escalating threats from state and non-state actors alike, during his remarks to the caucus co-chaired by Representatives Richard Hudson, Kathy Castor and Scott Peters.

"The demand from your SOF is higher than it's ever been," Fenton said. "Crisis response missions are up 170% in three years, and deterrence taskings have risen 35% in two."

Hudson, representing North Carolina's 9th Congressional District, home to Fort Bragg, opened the event by detailing SOF's vital footprint nationwide — from his state to Naval Base Coronado in California. He emphasized the strain on operators and their families amid the relentless operational tempo.

"We give you a broom handle and some bailing wire, and you go do it, and you're excellent," he said.

Hudson's focus on resources echoed a recurring theme of the evening. Castor, a co-chair from Tampa, Florida — home to Socom headquarters — pointed to the disparity between SOF's outsized contributions and its modest share of the Defense Department's resources.

"You carry the load on the most sophisticated missions out there with just 2% of the defense budget," she said.

Castor pressed for modernizing the command's aging facilities at MacDill Air Force Base, contrasting those with U.S. Central Command's state-of-the-art headquarters nearby.

"It's time for that headquarters to live up to what we ask of the men and women who serve," she urged, calling for bipartisan backing to ensure SOF's infrastructure matches its mission.

The critical value of SOF emerged as a cornerstone of the discussion. Peters, representing San Diego's Naval Special Warfare community, cited a recent bipartisan win — securing $310 million to address sewage flows impacting SEAL training waters — as proof of the caucus' impact. He stressed SOF's role in deterrence and crisis response amid threats from China, Russia, Iran and terrorist groups.

Fenton elaborated on SOF's unique adaptability, describing the current era as "a SOF renaissance" tailor-made for converging challenges like unmanned systems and artificial intelligence. He cited recent successes, including eliminating hundreds of terrorists and rescuing Americans abroad.

"We've been called out 14 times in three years on short notice to be somewhere in the world," he said.

He urged sustained investment in scalable capabilities to keep pace with adversaries exploiting new technologies.

Colby Jenkins, a former Geen Beret and combat veteran, who is currently performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, emphasized SOF’s relational edge. He praised the caucus for supporting families and empowering Socom as a service-like entity.

"That's where we bring value — with relationships of trust that span decades," Jenkins said.

Fenton also called for deeper ties between Socom and Congress to address installation needs and family support. He lauded the caucus' role in bridging gaps for members without SOF bases in their districts, ensuring broad awareness of the community's challenges.

"You watch over our families — we couldn't do what we do without them," he noted.

Fenton expressed confidence in SOF's readiness, bolstered by the caucus' commitment, highlighting the need for bipartisan resolve to equip operators for an uncertain future.

"SOF readiness is important now more than ever. "[Our] job [is] to … make sure that you're getting the resources you need, the training you need and support you need," Hudson said.

18. US To Send Advanced Military Hardware To Philippines

US To Send Advanced Military Hardware To Philippines

eurasiareview.com · by BenarNews · March 29, 2025

By Jason Gutierrez

The United States plans to deploy advanced military equipment to the Philippines to strengthen its deterrence against threats, officials from both countries said, as U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made his first official visit to Manila.

Hegseth met with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Philippine counterpart Gilberto Teodoro Jr. on Friday, reiterating that Washington’s defense commitment to its longtime ally in Southeast Asia would remain strong under the second Trump administration.

“Deterrence is necessary around the world, but specifically in this region, in your country, considering the threats from the communist Chinese, and that friends need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder to deter conflict,” the U.S. defense chief told Marcos, according to a transcript.

The Philippines is embroiled in tensions with China over contending territorial claims in the South China Sea. Standoffs have occurred lately in waters where Chinese coast guard ships often encroach into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

“Your visit to the region, especially the fact that you have come to the Philippines as your first stop is a very strong indication (and) sends a very strong message of the commitment of both our countries to continue to work together to maintain the peace in the Indo-Pacific region within the South China Sea,” Marcos told Hegseth during their meeting at the presidential Malacañang Palace.

The United States would implement some new initiatives including “deploying more advanced U.S. capabilities in the Philippines” – among them, a mobile and land-based anti-ship missile launcher and unmanned surface vessels, according to a joint statement issued after Teodoro and Hegseth met.

Hegseth’s visit to Manila was the first by a top official from the new Trump administration.

U.S. President Donald Trump was “very committed” to the “ironclad” defense alliance between Manila and Washington, Hegseth said.

“What we’re dealing with right now is many years of deferred maintenance, of weakness that we have to reestablish strength and deterrence in multiple places around the globe. But pertinently today, for this region,” Hegseth said.

“We don’t seek intervention. President Trump has made it clear we don’t seek war …. We don’t seek to use chess pieces and move them around the board. All we seek is peace. All we seek is freedom and cooperation, and mutual benefit,” he added, according to a transcript from the Pentagon.

Hegseth arrived in Manila on Thursday night under a shadow cast by fallout from revelations that he and other senior U.S. national security officials had discussed plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen on the messaging app Signal with a journalist present.

Critics are calling it a flagrant violation of information security protocols and have called on Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to resign.

After the American and Filipino defense chiefs met, China’s foreign ministry warned that the Philippines should not start a conflict in the South China Sea with the support of the U.S.

“Any cooperation between the United States and the Philippines should not be directed against a third party or harm the interests of a third party, and it should not exaggerate the so-called threats, provoke confrontation and aggravate tensions in the region,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a press briefing.

“The U.S. side should abandon its Cold War mentality, stop instigating ideological confrontation, stop provoking trouble in the South China Sea and sowing discord in the region, and refrain from being an instigator in the South China Sea,” he said.

New bilateral security initiatives

Among the initiatives that Manila and Washington agreed to, the U.S. would deploy the land-based anti-ship missile launcher – the so-called Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) as part of the joint large-scale Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises happening next month in the Philippines.

American Special Operations Forces would also train together with Filipino marines in the Batanes chain, the Philippines’ northernmost islands that directly face Taiwan, the joint statement said.

“These efforts will accelerate the defense partnership and ensure that the alliance is postured to address the most consequential challenges in the Indo-Pacific region,” Hegseth and Teodoro said.

Analysts react

Geopolitical analyst Don McLain Gill underscored the importance of Hegseth’s trip amid the heightened tensions between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea.

“The visit is significant because, as we can see, the bilateral security relations between the U.S. and the Philippines continue to deepen and broaden,” Gill, a lecturer at Manila’s De La Salle University, told BenarNews.

He said the trip “reaffirms the overarching trajectory, the positive trajectory of the Philippine-U.S. security relations.”

“The Philippines is one of the first countries the Pentagon chief is visiting,” Gill said. “So, it complements whatever is taking place on the ground, especially as Philippine and U.S. troops are gearing towards a more expanded defense activities.”

The trip is “a significant illustration of that commitment,” Gill said.

However, Hegseth’s visit signals a more robust U.S. military presence in the Philippines, which could invariably bring more instability to the Asia-Pacific, according to Liza Maza, a senatorial candidate and president of Makabayan, a nationalist party.

“While the Marcos regime hypes Hegseth’s visit this early in the Trump presidency as a supposed affirmation of solid U.S. commitment to defend the Philippines against China, the reality is that it merely fuels the heightening tension and instability in the region,” Maza, a former Congresswoman, said.

“Marcos allows the U.S. to use the Philippines as a dispensable pawn in its increasingly dangerous geopolitical chess game with rival China,” she said.

eurasiareview.com · by BenarNews · March 29, 2025

19. USAGM Rescinds RFE/RL Grant Termination

Some good news perhaps.

USAGM Rescinds RFE/RL Grant Termination

RFE/RL awaits official confirmation from USAGM that grant funding will resume

https://about.rferl.org/article/usagm-rescinds-rfe-rl-grant-termination/

March 27, 2025

(WASHINGTON) — On March 26, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) was informed by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) that the Agency is rescinding its letter terminating RFE/RL’s grant agreement for fiscal year 2025, and that the agreement is therefore back in effect.

The notification from USAGM follows a Tuesday ruling by Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granting RFE/RL’s request for a temporary restraining order against USAGM over its unlawful termination of RFE/RL’s congressionally appropriated funding. RFE/RL’s lawsuit seeks to ensure that the nonprofit media company receives the approximately $77 million that Congress appropriated to it.

RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said:

“This is an encouraging sign that RFE/RL’s operations will be able to continue, as Congress intended. We await official confirmation from USAGM that grant funding will promptly resume based on the intention expressed in last night’s letter. We are eager to speak directly with USAGM leadership about the extraordinary and cost-effective work that RFE/RL performs for the American people.

This is not the time for RFE/RL to go silent. Millions of people rely on us for factual information in places where censorship is widespread. We must not cede ground to our adversaries at a time when threats to America are on the rise.”

###

About RFE/RL

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a private, independent international news organization whose programs — radio, Internet, television, and mobile — reach a weekly audience of nearly 50 million people in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. It is funded by the U.S. Congress through USAGM.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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