BRUSSELS — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Friday that as many as 20 million Ukrainians could be forced to flee to Europe if his country falls to Russia. “Russia is killing us,” Zelenskyy told reporters at a press conference on Friday during a summit of European Union leaders, adding Ukrainians were being “pushed” out of their country. “They [Russia] don’t want to stop.” In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, millions of Ukrainians fled their homes in Europe’s fastest and largest refugee crisis since World War II. Today, over 4 million Ukrainians live in EU countries under temporary protection status, with the largest populations in Germany, Poland and Czechia, according to Eurostat.  Zelenskyy’s stark warning comes as Ukraine heads into a brutal fifth wartime winter under Russian bombardment. Kyiv faces a budget shortfall of $30 to $35 million next year, according to projections from the International Monetary Fund — even accounting for a €90 billion loan Brussels agreed to provide last year.  The Ukrainian president traveled to Brussels to meet with European leaders and shore up financial support for his embattled country. While the EU is Ukraine’s staunchest backer, the bloc’s list of priorities is stacked with rising energy costs, looming elections, geopolitical crises and an impasse over its €2 trillion budget. 

ATHENS — Greece’s parliament is expected to pass double-edged legislation on Wednesday that will help recruit tens of thousands more South Asian workers, while simultaneously penalizing migrants that the government says have entered the country illegally. Greece’s right-wing administration seeks to style itself as tough on migration but needs to pass Wednesday’s bill thanks to a crippling labor shortfall in vital sectors such as tourism, construction and agriculture. The central idea of the new legislation is to simplify bringing in workers through recruitment schemes agreed with countries such as India, Bangladesh and Egypt. There will be a special “fast track” for big public-works projects. The New Democracy government knows, however, that these measures to recruit more foreign workers will play badly with some core supporters. For that reason the bill includes strong measures against immigrants who have already entered Greece illegally, and also pledges to clamp down on the non-government organizations helping migrants. “We need workers, but we are tough on illegal immigration,” Greece’s Migration Minister Thanos Plevris told ERT television. The migration tensions in Greece reflect the extent to which it remains a hot button issue across Europe, even though numbers have dropped significantly since the massive flows of 2015, when the Greek Aegean islands were one of the main points of arrival. More than 80,000 positions for immigrants have been approved by the Greek state annually over the past two years. There are no official figures on labor shortages, but studies from industry associations indicate the country’s needs are more than double the state-approved number of spots, and that only half of those positions are filled. The migration bill is expected to pass because the government holds a majority in parliament. Opposition parties have condemned it, saying it ignores the need to integrate the migrants already in Greece and adopts the rhetoric of the far right. Under the new legislation, migrants who entered the country illegally will have no opportunity to acquire legal status. The bill also abolishes a provision granting residence permits to unaccompanied minors once they turn 18, provided they attend school in Greece. “Whoever is illegal right now will remain illegal, and when they are located they will be arrested, imprisoned for two to five years and repatriated,” Plevris told lawmakers. Human-rights groups also oppose the legislation, which they say criminalizes humanitarian NGOs by explicitly linking their migration-related activities to serious crimes.  The bill envisages severe penalties such as mandatory prison terms of at least 10 years and heavy fines for assisting irregular entry, providing transport for illegal migration, or helping those migrants stay. “Whoever is illegal right now will remain illegal,” Thanos Plevris told lawmakers. | Orestis Panagiotou/EPA Wednesday’s legislation also grants the migration minister broad powers to deregister NGOs based solely on criminal charges against one member, and will allow residence permits to be revoked on the basis of suspicion alone — undermining the presumption of innocence. Greece’s national ombudsman has expressed serious concerns about the bill, arguing that punishing people for entering the country illegally contravenes international conventions on the treatment of refugees. Lefteris Papagiannakis, director of the Greek Council for Refugees, was equally damning. “This binary political approach follows the global hostile and racist policy around migration,” he said.

The Senate passed a compromise spending package Friday, clearing a path for Congress to avert a lengthy government shutdown. The 71-29 vote came a day after Senate Democrats and President Donald Trump struck a deal to attach two weeks of Homeland Security funding to five spending bills that will fund the Pentagon, State Department and many other agencies until Sept. 30. Only five of 53 Republicans voted against it after Trump publicly urged lawmakers Thursday to approve the legislation. Democrats were split, with 24 of 47 caucus members opposing the package. The Senate’s vote won’t avert a partial shutdown that will start early Saturday morning since House lawmakers are out of town and not scheduled to return until Monday. During a private call with House Republicans Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson said the likeliest route to House passage would be bringing the package up under a fast-track process Monday evening. That would require a two-thirds majority — and a significant number of Democratic votes. The $1.2 trillion package could face challenges in the House, especially from conservative hard-liners who have said they would vote against any Senate changes to what the House already passed. Many House Democrats are also wary of stopgap funding for DHS, which would keep ICE and Border Patrol funded at current levels without immediate new restrictions. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he had been in constant contact with Johnson “for better or worse” about getting the funding deal through the House, predicting that the Louisiana Republican is “prepared to do everything he can as quickly as possible.” “Hopefully things go well over there,” he added. If the Trump-blessed deal ultimately gets signed into law, Congress will have approved more than 95 percent of federal funding — leaving only a full-year DHS bill on its to-do list. Congress has already funded several agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Justice. “These are fiscally responsible bills that reflect months of hard work and deliberation from members on both parties and both sides of the Capitol,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said before the final vote. The Office of Management and Budget has issued shutdown guidance for agencies not already funded, which include furloughs of some personnel. Republicans agreeing to strip out the full-year DHS bill and replace it with a two-week patch is a major win for Democrats. They quickly unified behind a demand to split off and renegotiate immigration enforcement funding after federal agents deployed to Minnesota fatally shot 37-year-old U.S. citizen Alex Pretti last week. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who helped negotiate the final deal, took a victory lap after the vote, saying “the agreement we reached today did exactly what Democrats wanted.” But Democrats will still need to negotiate with the White House and congressional Republicans about what, if any, policy changes they are willing to codify into law as part of a long-term bill. Republicans are open to some changes, including requiring independent investigations. But they’ve already dismissed some of Democrats’ main demands, including requiring judicial warrants for immigration arrests. “I want my Republican colleagues to listen closely: Senate Democrats will not support a DHS bill unless it reins in ICE and ends the violence,” Schumer said. “We will know soon enough if your colleagues understand the stakes.” Republicans have demands of their own, and many believe the most likely outcome is that another DHS patch will be needed. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), for instance, wants a future vote on legislation barring federal funding for cities that don’t comply with federal immigration laws. Other Republicans and the White House have pointed to it as a key issue in the upcoming negotiations. “I am demanding that my solution to fixing sanctuary cities at least have a vote. You’re going to put ideas on the floor to make ICE better? I want to put an idea on the floor to get to the root cause of the problem,” Graham said. The Senate vote caps off a days-long sprint to avoid a second lengthy shutdown in the span of four months. Senate Democrats and Trump said Thursday they had a deal, only for it to run into a snag when Graham delayed a quick vote as he fumed over a provision in the bill, first reported by POLITICO, related to former special counsel Jack Smith’s now-defunct investigation targeting Trump. Senate leaders ultimately got the agreement back on track Friday afternoon by offering votes on seven changes to the bill, all of which failed. The Senate defeated proposals to cut refugee assistance, strip out all earmarks from the package and redirect funding for ICE to Medicaid, among others. Graham raged against the House’s move to overturn a law passed last year allowing senators to sue for up to $500,000 per incident if their data had been used in former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the 2020 election. But he backed off his threats to hold up the bill after announcing that leaders had agreed to support a future vote on the matter. “You jammed me,” Graham said on the floor Friday. “Speaker Johnson, I won’t forget this.” Meredith Lee Hill and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — When it comes to support for Ukraine, a split has emerged between the European Union and its English-speaking allies. In France and Germany, the EU’s two biggest democracies, new polling shows that more respondents want their governments to scale back financial aid to Kyiv than to increase it or keep it the same. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, respondents tilt the other way and favor maintaining material support, according to The POLITICO Poll, which surveyed more than 10,000 people across the five countries earlier this month. The findings land as European leaders prepare to meet in Brussels on Thursday for a high-stakes summit where providing financial support to Ukraine is expected to dominate the agenda. They also come as Washington seeks to mediate a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv — with German leader Friedrich Merz taking the lead among European nations on negotiating in Kyiv’s favor. Across all five countries, the most frequently cited reason for supporting continued aid to Ukraine was the belief that nations should not be allowed to seize territory by force. The most frequently cited argument against additional assistance was concerns about the cost and the pressure on the national economy.  “Much of our research has shown that the public in Europe feels the current era demands policy trade-offs, and financial support for Ukraine is no exception,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London that carried out the survey for POLITICO.  “In a time where public finances are seen as finite resources, people’s interests are increasingly domestic,” he added.  WESTERN DIVIDE Germans were the most reluctant to ramp up financial assistance, with nearly half of respondents (45 percent) in favor of cutting financial aid to Kyiv while only 20 percent wanted to increase it. In France 37 percent wanted to give less and 24 percent preferred giving more. In contrast to the growing opposition to Ukrainian aid from Europe, support remains strikingly firm in North America. In the U.S., President Donald Trump has expressed skepticism toward Kyiv’s chances of defeating Moscow and has sent interlocutors to bargain with the Russians for peace. And yet the U.S. had the largest share of respondents (37 percent) in favor of increasing financial support, with Canada just behind at 35 percent. Support for Ukraine was driven primarily by those who backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election in the U.S. Some 29 percent of Harris voters said one of the top three reasons the U.S. should support Ukraine was to protect democracy, compared with 17 percent of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump. “The partisan split in the U.S. is now quite extreme,” Wride said. In Germany and France, opposition to assistance was especially pronounced among supporters of far-right parties — such as the Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally — while centrists were less skeptical. “How Ukraine financing plays out in Germany in particular, as a number of European governments face populist challenges, should be a particular warning sign to other leaders,” Wride said. REFUGEE FATIGUE Support for military assistance tracked a similar divide. Nearly 40 percent of respondents in the U.S., U.K. and Canada backed higher levels of military aid, with about 20 percent opposed. In Germany 26 percent supported increased military aid to Ukraine while 39 percent opposed it. In France opinions were evenly split, with 31 percent favoring an increase and 30 percent favoring cuts. Germany was also the only country where a majority of respondents said their government should accept fewer Ukrainians displaced by the war.  In a country that has taken in more than a million Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, 50 percent of Germans said Berlin should admit fewer.  Half of respondents also said Germany should reduce support for Ukrainians already settled in the country — a sign that public fatigue is extending beyond weapons and budgets to the broader social and political pressures of the conflict. The softer support for Ukraine in France and Germany does not appear to reflect warmer feelings toward Moscow, however. Voters in all five countries backed sanctions against Russia, suggesting that even where publics want to pare back aid they remain broadly aligned around punishing the aggressor and limiting Russia’s ability to finance the war. This edition of The POLITICO Poll was conducted from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9 and surveyed 10,510 adults online, with at least 2,000 respondents each from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France and Germany. The results for each country were weighted to be representative in terms of age, gender and geography, and have an overall margin of sampling error of ±2 percentage points for each country. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error. The survey is an ongoing project from POLITICO and Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas. You can find new surveys and analysis each month at politico.com/poll. Have questions or comments? Ideas for future surveys? Email us at poll@politico.com.

LONDON — The Council of Europe’s most senior human rights official warned European leaders not to create a “hierarchy of people” as they pursue reforms to migration policy. Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, said “middle-of-the-road politicians” are playing into the hands of the populist right. His comments, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, come after 27 countries in the Council of Europe issued a statement Wednesday setting out how they want the European Convention on Human Rights to be applied by courts, including on familial ties and the risk of degrading treatment. The nations hope to reach a political declaration in spring 2026. O’Flaherty warned against any approach that would downgrade human rights, echoing calls he made in a speech to European ministers Wednesday morning. “The idea that we would create or foster the impression of a hierarchy of people, some more deserving than others, is a very, very worrying one indeed,” he said. He added: “For every inch yielded, there’s going to be another inch demanded,” telling the paper: “Where does it stop? For example, the focus right now is on migrants, in large part. But who is it going to be about next time around?” He also hit out at the “lazy correlation” of migration and crime which he said “doesn’t correspond with reality.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer and fellow center-left Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen wrote in the Guardian Tuesday the best way of “fighting against the forces of hate and division” was showing “mainstream, progressive politics” could deal with the challenge. Britain’s chief interior minister Shabana Mahmood has proposed tougher policies for irregular migrants including a 20 year wait for permanent settlement and assessing refugee status every 30 months.

Wies De Graeve is the executive director of Amnesty International Belgium’s Flemish branch. Tomorrow, Seán Binder will stand trial before the Mytilene Court of Appeals in Lesvos, Greece for his work as a volunteer rescuer, helping those in distress and at risk of drowning at sea. Alongside 23 other defendants, he faces criminal charges including membership in a criminal organization, money laundering and smuggling, with the risk of up to 20 years in prison if convicted. I first met Seán in 2019. A bright, articulate Irish activist in his twenties, he was our guest at the Belgian launch of Amnesty International’s annual end-of-year campaign. And there, he shared his equally inspiring yet shocking story of blatant injustice, as he and others were being prosecuted for saving lives. Two years earlier, Seán had traveled to Lesvos as a volunteer, joining a local search-and-rescue NGO to patrol the coastline for small boats in distress and provide first aid to those crossing from Turkey to Greece. Since 2015, the war in Syria has forced countless individuals to flee their homes and seek safety in Europe via dangerous routes — including the perilous journey across the Aegean Sea. In 2017 alone, more than 3,000 people were reported dead or missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean, and when authorities failed to step in, many volunteers from across Europe did so instead. Seán was one of them. He did what any of us would hope to do in his position: save lives and help people. Yet, in 2018, he was arrested by Greek authorities and held in pretrial detention for over 100 days before being charged with a range of crimes alongside other humanitarian workers. These charges aim to portray those who help people on the move as criminals. And it’s part of a trend sweeping across Europe that’s criminalizing solidarity. In Malta, three teenagers from West Africa stand accused of helping to bring more than 100 people rescued at sea to safety, and are facing charges that carry a lifelong sentence. In Italy, ships operated by search-and-rescue organizations are being impounded. And in France, mountain guides have faced prosecution for assisting people at the border with Italy. European governments are not only failing people seeking protection, they’re also punishing those who try to fill that dangerous gap. I met Seán again in 2021 and 2023, both times outside the courthouse in Mytilene on Lesvos. In 2023, the lesser misdemeanor charges against him and the other foreign defendants — forgery, espionage and the unlawful use of radio frequencies — were dropped. Then, in 2024, the rest of the defendants were acquitted of those same charges. While leaving the courthouse that day, still facing the more serious felony charges along with the other 23 aid workers, Seán said: “We want justice. Today, there has been less injustice, but no justice.” As Amnesty International, we’ve been consistently calling for these charges to be dropped. The U.N. and many human rights organizations have also expressed serious concerns about the case, while thousands across Europe and around the world have stood by Seán’s side in defense of solidarity with migrants and refugees, signing petitions and writing letters. This trial should set off alarms not only for Europe’s civil society but for any person’s ability to act according to their conscience. It isn’t just Seán who is on trial here, it’s solidarity itself. The criminalization of people showing compassion for those compelled to leave their homes because of war, violence or other hardships must stop. This trial should set off alarms not only for Europe’s civil society but for any person’s ability to act according to their conscience. | Manolis Lagoutaris/AFP via Getty Images Meanwhile, a full decade after Syrians fleeing war began arriving on Europe’s shores in search of safety and protection, Europe’s leaders need to reflect. They need to learn from people like Seán instead of prosecuting them. And instead of focusing on deterrence, they need to ensure the word “asylum,” from the Greek “asylon,” still means a place of refuge or sanctuary for those seeking safety in our region. People who save lives should be supported, not criminalized. This week, six years after our first encounter, Seán and I will once again meet in front of the Mytilene courthouse as his trial resumes. I will be there in solidarity, representing the thousands who have been demanding that these charges be dropped. I hope, with all my heart, to see him finally receive the justice he is entitled to. Humanity must win.

DUBLIN — Ukraine cannot accept any U.S.-Russian ceasefire formula that would allow Russia to “come back with a third invasion,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday. During his first visit to Ireland as president, Zelenskyy received fulsome backing from Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin, who stood shoulder to shoulder with him and condemned Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “Putin has shown a complete indifference to the value of human life and to international laws and norms,” Martin told their joint press conference. “He must never be allowed to succeed.” Zelenskyy’s whirlwind visit to Dublin — where he also received a standing ovation from the joint houses of parliament and met Ireland’s newly elected and NATO-critical President Catherine Connolly — coincided with resumed Moscow talks between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. Zelenskyy said he spoke Monday with Witkoff and expected a post-talks update call Tuesday night — but downplayed hopes of reaching a speedy accord that would permanently end Russia’s attacks on his nation. He dismissed as unrealistic any proposed agreement that fails to include clear-cut security guarantees from both the U.S. and European allies, a commitment that Trump appears loath to give. “We have to stop the war in such a manner that in one year Russia would not come back with a third invasion,” he said, referring to Russia’s initial 2014 seizure of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine as well as its full-scale assault on Ukraine launched in 2022. Martin said making any ceasefire permanent would require, in part, that Russia pays a punitive price for the costs of Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction. That would mean, he said, approving the European Commission’s plan to tap frozen Russian funds largely banked in Belgium. Martin expressed hopes that Belgium would drop its objections at the next European Council this month. “When the U.N. charter is violated in such a brutal manner,” Martin said, referring to Russia’s ongoing invasion, “there has to be a deterrence of such behavior. There has to be some responsibility on the aggressor who has wreaked such devastation.” “There’s a very practical issue of the enormity of the reconstruction of Ukraine and the cost of that, and who’s going to pay for that,” Martin said. “It cannot only be the European taxpayer. Europe did not start this war.” But Ireland — a militarily neutral nation that will hold the EU’s rotating presidency in the second half of 2026 — did use Zelenskyy’s visit to boost its own financial support to Ukraine. Martin signed an agreement with Ukraine pledging a further €100 million in nonlethal military equipment, including for minefield clearance, and €25 million to help rebuild Ukraine’s besieged energy utilities. Ireland, a non-NATO member with virtually no defense industries of its own, has declined to provide any finance for acquiring weapons. Ireland, a country of 5.4 million people, also hosts more than 80,000 Ukrainian refugees — but, against a wider tide of anti-immigrant sentiment, is trimming the housing and welfare supports it has provided since 2022 to the Ukrainians. Zelenskyy said he couldn’t concern himself with the level of Irish support, and was grateful it keeps being provided at all. “The question is not about the size of assistance. It’s about the choice,” he said.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has a simple message for many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who found sanctuary in Germany during their country’s long and brutal civil war: It’s time to go back to Syria. In reality, it will be hard for Merz to compel a large share of the roughly one million Syrians living in Germany to leave. But under pressure from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose leaders vow to forcibly return Syrian refugees en masse, the chancellor is taking a harder line on Germany’s Syrian population, and says he’ll work with Syria’s president, former rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, to do so. “The civil war in Syria is over,” Merz said earlier this week. “There are now no longer any grounds for asylum in Germany, which means we can begin repatriating people.” Merz’s comments reflect his latest push to move his conservatives sharply to the right on the AfD’s signature issue of migration. Until now, the broad strategy doesn’t appear to have worked, with the AfD only rising in popularity and coming in slightly ahead of Merz’s conservatives in many recent polls. Merz is seeking to undo the legacy of one of his conservative predecessors as chancellor, Angela Merkel, whose generous asylum policies — particularly during the refugee crisis of 2015 — made Germany the prime European destination for Syrians and other migrant groups fleeing war and poverty. During Merkel’s tenure and beyond, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fled to Germany. Aside from Ukrainians, Syrians constitute the largest group of refugees now living in the country. Merz blames Merkel’s migration policies for enabling the rise of the AfD, now the largest opposition party in the German parliament. Over the summer, Merz said his conservatives were “trying to correct” Merkel’s past policies. His pledge to repatriate Syrians is one of his most direct efforts yet to do so. It also echoes similar recent efforts of his government to establish contact with Taliban officials to arrange deportations of Afghans living in Germany, beginning with those convicted of crimes. Human rights groups have sharply criticized those plans, saying returnees may be subject to harsh punishment and persecution in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Merz on Monday said he had invited al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaida member, to Berlin in order to discuss deportations of Syrians convicted of crimes. Merz also suggested that Syrians in Germany have a duty to return home to rebuild their war-torn country. “Without these people, reconstruction will not be possible,” Merz said. “Those in Germany who then refuse to return to the country can, of course, be deported in the near future.” ‘THEY MUST BE DEPORTED, WITH FORCE’ Merz’s deportation threat belies a far more complex reality on the ground. In the several years that many Syrians have lived in Germany, a large number have found jobs and become citizens. Some 287,000 Syrian citizens were working in Germany last year, and about 83,000 became German citizens. Despite the tough rhetoric, Merz has not said he will forcibly repatriate Syrians outside of those who have committed crimes — at least not yet. His government’s strategy for now appears to be to incentivize others to depart of their own accord. Yet experts say conditions in Syria are not stable and secure enough to allow for many of the millions of Syrians who have fled the country to return anytime soon. | Louai Beshara/Getty Images But his government may also choose to model steps taken in the 1990s, when some 320,000 Bosnians came to Germany, fleeing the Bosnian War. By the next decade, Germany had repatriated most of them. Yet experts say conditions in Syria are not stable and secure enough to allow for many of the millions of Syrians who have fled the country to return anytime soon. This is a point Merz’s own foreign minister and fellow conservative, Johann Wadephul, seemed to make during a visit to the ruins of a destroyed city near Damascus last week, where he said it would be hard for many Syrians to promptly return. “I have never personally seen such extensive destruction,” Wadephul said. “I could not have imagined it either. It is truly difficult for people to live with dignity here.” Those comments sparked pushback from within Merz’s conservative ranks as well as among far-right politicians. Germans had rebuilt their country after World War II, some argued — and now Syrians should do the same. “Germans also lent a hand, especially a large number of women, to rebuild the cities destroyed after World War II, so that cannot now be used as a fundamental argument to say that it is impossible to return to this country and rebuild it,” Stephan Mayer, a conservative parliamentarian from Bavaria told German newspaper Welt. The right-wing debate around Wadephul’s comments seems to have forced Merz to contradict his foreign minister and take a harder stance on Syrian repatriations — though it remains to be seen how far his government will really go, particularly as Merz is governing in coalition with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), whose members advocate a softer approach. SPD leaders, in fact, praised Wadephul for what they saw as his realism on the matter. That’s one reason it will be hard for Merz to outcompete the AfD on his new tough-on-migration turn. AfD leaders, from a comfortable perch in the opposition, are taking a maximalist position, depicting Syrians in Germany — hundreds of thousands of whom continue to receive basic income support — as a unnecessary drain on German taxpayers for which only Merz’s conservatives can be held responsible. “We say quite clearly: Syrians must now have their protected status revoked because the reason for their fleeing no longer applies,” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said on Tuesday. “These people must return to their homeland,” she went on. “If they do not leave voluntarily, they must be deported, with force.”

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Außenminister Johann Wadephul sorgt mit seiner Syrien-Aussage für Aufruhr in der Union. Gemeinsam mit Nikolaus Doll von WELT analysiert Gordon Repinski, wie Wadephuls Worte die Partei spalten, warum der Kanzler eingreifen muss und welches Kommunikationsproblem sich in der Regierung zeigt. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview spricht Manuela Schwesig, Ministerpräsidentin von Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, über ihre Erwartungen an den Kanzler, über Wirtschaft und Arbeitsplätze im Norden und über den wachsenden Druck durch die AfD in ihrem Bundesland. Außerdem geht es nach New York, wo der Demokrat Zoran Mamdani bei den Bürgermeisterwahlen den Wahlsieg holen könnte.  Jonathan Martin von POLITICO in den USA erklärt, warum der 34-Jährige trotz radikaler Positionen Chancen hat, Bürgermeister der Hauptstadt des Kapitalismus zu werden und was das für die US-Demokraten bedeutet. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column. U.S. President Donald Trump loves the 19th century. His heroes are former presidents William McKinley who “made our country very rich through tariffs,” Teddy Roosevelt who “did many great things” like the Panama Canal, and James Monroe who established the policy rejecting “the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs.” These aren’t just some throw-away lines from Trump’s speeches. They signify a much deeper and broader break from established modern national security thinking. Trump is now the first U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to believe the principal threats to the U.S. aren’t in far-away regions or stem from far-away powers — rather, they’re right here at home. For him, the biggest threats to America today are the immigrants flooding across the country’s borders and the drugs killing tens of thousands from overdoses. And to that end, his real goal is to dominate the entire Western hemisphere — from the North Pole to the South Pole — using America’s superior military and economic power to defeat all “enemies,” both foreign and domestic. Of course, at the top of Trump’s list of threats to the U.S. is immigration. He campaigned incessantly on the idea that his predecessors had failed to seal the southern border, and promised to deport every immigrant without legal status — some 11 million in all — from the U.S. Those efforts started on the first day, with the Trump administration deploying troops to the southern border to interdict anyone seeking to cross illegally. It also instituted a dragnet to sweep people off the streets — whether in churches, near schools, on farmlands, inside factories, at court houses or in hospitals. Even U.S. citizens have been caught up in this massive deportation effort. No one is safe. The resulting shift is also expectedly dramatic: Refugee admissions have halted, with those promised passage stuck in third countries. In the coming year, the only allotment for refugees will be white South Africans, who Trump has depicted as genocide victims. Illegal crossings are down to a trickle, while large numbers of immigrants — legal as well as illegal — are returning home. And 2025 will likely be the first time in nearly a century where net migration into the U.S. will be negative. For Trump, immigrants aren’t the only threat to the homeland, though. Drugs are too. That’s why on Feb. 1, the U.S. leader imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China because of fentanyl shipments — though Canada is hardly a significant source of the deadly narcotic. Still, all these tariffs remain in place. Then, in August, he called in the military, signing a directive that authorizes it to take on drug cartels, which he designated as foreign terrorist organizations. “Latin America’s got a lot of cartels and they’ve got a lot of drugs flowing,” he later explained. “So, you know, we want to protect our country. We have to protect our country.” And that was just the beginning. Over the past two months, the Pentagon has deployed a massive array of naval and air power, and some 10,000 troops for drug interdiction. Over the past five weeks, the U.S. military has also been directed to attack small vessels crossing the Caribbean and the Pacific that were suspected to be running drugs. To date, 16 vessels have been attacked, killing over 60 people. For Donal Trump, immigrants aren’t the only threat to the homeland, though. Drugs are too. | oe Raedle/Getty Images When asked for the legal justification of targeting vessels in international waters that posed no imminent threat to the U.S., Trump dismissed the need: “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We’re going to kill them. You know, they’re going to be, like, dead.” But now the U.S. leader has set his sights on bigger fish. Late last month, the Pentagon ordered a carrier battle group, Gerald R. Ford, into the Caribbean. Once that carrier and its accompanying ships arrive at their destination later this week, the U.S. will have deployed one-seventh of its Navy — the largest such deployment in the region since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. If the target is just drug-runners in open waters, clearly this is overkill — but they aren’t. The real reason for deploying such overwhelming firepower is for Trump to intimidate the leaders and regimes he doesn’t like, if not actually force them from office. Drugs are just the excuse to enable such action. The most obvious target is Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, who blatantly stole an election to retain power last year. The White House has declared Maduro “an illegitimate leader heading an illegitimate regime,” and Trump has made clear that “there will be land action in Venezuela soon.” However, Maduro isn’t the only one Trump has his eye on. After Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of killing innocent fishermen, Trump cut off all aid to the country and accused Petro of being “an illegal drug leader,” which potentially sets the stage for the U.S. to go after another regime. All this firepower and rhetoric is meant to underscore one point: To Trump, the entire Western hemisphere is America’s. Leaders he doesn’t like, he will remove from power. Countries that take action he doesn’t approve of — whether jailing those convicted of trying to overthrow a government like in Brazil, or running ads against his tariffs as in Canada — will be punished economically. Greenland will be part of the U.S., as will the Panama Canal, and Canada will become the 51st state. Overall, Trump’s focus on dominating the Western hemisphere represents a profound shift from nearly a century’s-long focus on warding off overseas threats to protect Americans at home. And like it or not, for Trump, security in the second quarter of the 21st century lies in concepts and ideas first developed in the last quarter of the 19th century.