President Donald Trump currently sees no reason to deploy the military in the state of Minnesota after clashes between demonstrators and federal officials. Only on Thursday did Trump threaten to do so on the basis of the more than 200-year-old Insurrection Act.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump reiterated that he would resort to the law if necessary. “I don’t think there’s any reason to use it at the moment,” he said at the same time.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz is becoming increasingly disillusioned with US President Donald Trump’s policies and is calling for Europeans to act more confidently. “We are experiencing that our most important ally in the world – and that is still the United States of America – is turning away from a rules-based order,” said Merz on Friday at a CDU election rally in Heddesheim, Baden-Württemberg. Instead of being guided by international law, the development of US policy is “moving towards a purely power- and interest-driven policy”.
Merz also apparently no longer wants to make changes to Trump. This can be criticized. “But what use is criticism if the person it is aimed at doesn’t respond to it, but instead considers what he is doing to be right,” said the Chancellor. If Trump simply continues his policy, we shouldn’t “bury our heads in the sand and say we’ll submit to it all.” One should not accept becoming a pawn of the great powers and trying to survive in a small niche somewhere. “The calculation doesn’t add up. We don’t live in a niche,” warned the CDU chairman. “We live in one of the largest and most successful industrial nations in the world.”
The European Parliament is apparently considering tying approval of a trade agreement with the USA to dealings with Greenland. According to the Bloomberg news agency, we would only agree if US President Donald Trump backed down from his demand to annex Greenland. Read more about it here.
Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg doubts whether the USA will be a permanent NATO member. “I can’t promise that the USA will stay in NATO. Nobody can,” he told Spiegel magazine in an interview. But he is convinced “that we should do what we can to reduce the risk that the USA will leave.”
