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Jordan Bardella, president of Rassemblement National or National Rally, gives a speech and flies French flags at a rally in support of Marine le Pen after her conviction on April 6, 2025.
Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old president of France’s far-right National Rally, aka RN, has announced his readiness to run for the country’s presidency in 2027 if current party leader Marine Le Pen remains barred from contesting the race.
Le Pen was convicted in March of embezzling European Parliament funds and received a five-year ban from public office, a €100,000 fine, and a four-year sentence, partially under house arrest. She is appealing the verdict, with a decision expected in summer 2026. Supporters of Le Pen decried the decision as political and an attempt to bar her from running.
Is age an issue? French law only requires that a candidate for president be over the age of 18. Current President Emmanuel Macron holds the title of youngest head of state, having defeated Le Pen in 2017’s presidential contest when he was 39. He is now 47.
What are Bardella’s chances? The 2027 contest is widely seen as giving France’s far right its best shot at power. Macron is required to step down after two terms in office, and polling published on April 5 places RN in first place, under either Le Pen or Bardella. Should Bardella be the presidential candidate, he would, according to today’s polls, win between 31% and 35.5% of the first-round vote.Polls tighten as Canadians head to the polls. Will Liberals pull off the ultimate comeback?
Canadians head to the polls for federal election.
The Liberals were skating deep in their own zone just a few months ago — down a whopping 25 points in the polls as recently as January — but Trudeau’s resignation and Donald Trump’s trade war and aggressive rhetoric sparked a surge in Canadian nationalism and flipped the momentum. Since the end of February, Carney’s Liberals have been on a power play, polling ahead of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party — at one point stretching the lead to 15 points.
Over the long Easter weekend, Canadians broke advance voting records as 7.3 million turned up at the polls — a 25% jump from the 2021 election — and that early vote, according to David Coletto of Abacus Data, likely gave the Liberals a critical first-period lead.
While the Liberals hope to score a majority — a clear mandate to effect change and wrangle Donald Trump — the match isn’t over yet. The gap between the two teams, er, parties, has narrowed in recent weeks, with the Liberals polling slightly ahead at 42.9%, and the Conservatives at 39.3%. The ground game will be key: With the Liberals enjoying a more efficient distribution of support in key cities and regions – particularly Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Atlantic Canada - the Conservatives need all their players on the ice if they hope to clinch a win.
Smoke rises following an explosion at the Shahid Rajaee port in Bandar Abbas, Iran, on April 26, 2025.
9: A celebration of Filipino heritage in South Vancouver, Canada, turned tragic late Saturday when a man drove an SUV into a crowd at the Lapu Lapu Day festival, killing nine people and injuring more than 20 others. A 30-year-old man was arrested at the scene, and while an investigation is underway, authorities have said they are “confident that this incident was not an act of terrorism.” PM Mark Carney offered his condolences and delayed final-day campaigning ahead of Monday’s federal election in the wake of the tragedy — and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. expressed his sympathy and support for the victims.
170: Late last week, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s leadership created a vice presidency, with 170 of its 172 Central Council members voting in favor of a post that would open the path to a successor for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. On Saturday, Abbas, 89, nominated his close confidante, 64-year-old Hussein al-Sheikh, as VP, and the PLO’s executive committee approved it.
52: Australia’s ruling Labor Party looks set to claim victory in the May 3 election, with recent polling showing it ahead of the Liberal-National Coalition opposition, 52% to 48%, according to a Newspoll survey. The latest figures were revealed after PM Anthony Albanese shone in the final leaders’ debate on Sunday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump meet while they attend the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican on April 26, 2025.
Trump also threw the ball into Russia’s court – but it landed more like a grenade. After meeting Zelensky, the US President posted to Truth Social that he feared Russian President Vladimir Putin might have been “tapping” – aka, deceiving – him about his willingness to end the war. The evidence? Russia’s continued bombardment of Ukraine, including an attack Thursday that killed 12 people and injured 90. Trump suggested that now Putin must be “dealt with differently,” possibly through banking or secondary sanctions.
The response? Hours later, Russia launched a large-scale drone and airstrike assault across Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring several others. Mediators are now urging the two sides to the table in what US Secretary of State Marco Rubiodescribed as a “critical week” for resolving the conflict.
President Donald Trump raises a fist during a ceremony where he signs two executive orders that will lead to reciprocal tariffs against other countries that charge tariffs on US goods.
What’s the old line about there being decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen?
Quoting Vladimir Lenin may not be the wisest move in today’s America, but it’s an apt description of the (second) first 100 days of Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
In barely three months, he’s bashed America’s closest European allies and spooked NATO into worrying about its survival, taken a chainsaw to US foreign aid programs, pulled the rug out from under Ukraine, threatened to expand US territory for the first time since the 19th century, and started a global trade war that’s pushed protectionism to its highest levels since the Great Depression.
Not bad for 100 days! But is there a method to what seems – to horrified defenders of the “US-led world order” – like so much madness? “Method” is a risky word to use with a figure as famously capricious as Trump, but there are a few basic aspects of his worldview and commitment to “America First” that are consistent and worth understanding.
No new friends (also no old friends)
First, Trump believes that the world is a place where all countries are just trying to “screw” each other. This is true not only of adversaries but, especially, of allies. (Tell me you’re a New York real estate developer without telling me you’re a New York real estate developer.)
The mutual screwing occurs in an endless chain of zero-sum transactions between countries in which hard power and cold cash are all that matters. Deficits or defense umbrellas are ripoffs. Alliances based on “values” are silly. Soft power is a useless conceit, a virtue signal, a kind of “Geopolitical wokism.”
It’s a (multipolar) jungle out there
Second, there are various great powers in this world, and each has its own sphere of influence. The largest of these are the US and its chief rival China, but Russia is up there as well. You do not, in Trump’s view, mess with another power’s sphere of influence, and you do not waste time trying to win over countries of marginal economic or strategic value beyond your neighborhood. You put your country, to repeat a phrase Trump uses a lot, “first.”
Once you grasp that, for Trump, the world is a transactional and increasingly multipolar jungle, it actually explains a lot about his foreign policy.
It tells you why he doesn’t seem to care that much about Ukraine (he sees it as Russia’s sphere) or Taiwan (ditto for China) or why he’s OK slashing foreign aid (soft power is silly). It explains why he wants a piece of Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal (all have immense strategic and economic value within Washington’s own sphere of influence, especially if conflict is coming with other powers.) And of course, it tells you why he loves to love tariffs – a crude but effective tool for unleashing America’s immense economic power
Hard power dreams, soft power missteps
All of this is a big rupture with the longstanding idea that the US, as a hegemon, gets more than it gives by providing security, market access, or development assistance to vast parts of the world.
But taken on its own terms, is Trump’s foreign policy ... working? The evidence is mixed. Many of his objectives – restore America’s lost manufacturing capacity, confront China, and force Europe to carry its share of the defense burden – can make sense on their own. But, taken together, the overall policy is still a mess of conflicting impulses.
Trump wants to isolate and pressure China, but he’s simultaneously wrecking relations with Europe, Washington’s most natural ally against Beijing. He wants to maintain technological supremacy over China, but his immigration and education policies are scaring the world’s best minds away from America.
He wants to use tariffs to restore manufacturing – which, by definition, almost requires leaving them in place for a long time. But he also wants to use them to extract tactical concessions on trade and defense – which means not leaving them in place for a long time. Which is it?
And while he is right to force the West to confront the problems of Biden’s well-intentioned but poorly defined Ukraine policy, his pledge to end the war “within 24 hours” is already 2,376 hours overdue. Browbeating Ukraine while pleading with Vladimir Putin on social media is not exactly a foreign policy to be reckoned with.
It’s still early days to be sure. But whether the decades that have happened in these 100 days are a real revolution against the long-established order of US foreign policy, or a a tangle of disruptive but ultimately confused impulses remains to be seen.
All presidents rely on executive orders, but in his second first 100 days in office, Donald Trump has taken it to a whole new level. He has issued 137 executive orders so far — more than triple the 41 Joe Biden signed during the same period, and far surpassing the pace of Trump’s own first term in 2017.
Executive orders are an efficient tool to deliver on “first 100 days” campaign promises (check out this article on where five of Trump’s biggest campaign promises stand). While they offer an immediate way to shape policy, they’re also notoriously fragile — easily reversed by future administrations, as seen on Trump’s first day in office, when he issued 26 executive orders and overturned 78 of Biden’s.
Critics warn that Trump’s flood of orders isn’t just about speed; it’s also raising serious concerns about presidential overreach. Many fear he is using executive actions to bypass Congress altogether and, in some cases, is ignoring Supreme Court rulings instructing him to stop.The body of Pope Francis in the coffin exposed in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City on April 24, 2025. The funeral will be celebrated on Saturday in St. Peter's Square.
While the Catholic world prepares for the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday – the service begins at 10 a.m. local time, 4 a.m. ET – certain high-profile attendees may also have other things on their mind. Several world leaders will be on hand to pay their respects to the pontiff, but they could also find themselves involved in bilateral talks.
Who’s on the list? Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will effectively be the host at the Vatican, which lies just next to Rome. Many of her fellow Western leaders will attend, including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and US President Donald Trump. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who leads the most Catholic country in Asia, will also attend.
South American representation. Argentine President Javier Milei – a former adversary of Francis, his fellow countryman – and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva plan to cross the Atlantic for the funeral, too.
Glaring omission. Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t attend the funeral, the Kremlin confirmed.
Side hustle. Trump appears to be the principal object of interest for other world leaders. Zelensky has already said that he’d like to speak to the US president at the Vatican, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen could meet the American president for the first time since he returned to office, if Meloni gets her way. They won’t have much time, though: Trump plans to spend less than 24 hours in Rome.