President Donald Trump welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron to the White House for talks on Monday at a moment of deep uncertainty about the future of transatlantic relations, with Trump transforming American foreign policy and effectively tuning out European leadership as he looks to quickly end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The two leaders started their day by participating in a more than two-hour virtual meeting with fellow leaders of the Group of Seven economies to discuss the war.

Trump also has made demands for territory — Greenland, Canada, Gaza and the Panama Canal — as well as precious rare earth minerals from Ukraine. Just over a month into his second term, the “America First” President has cast an enormous shadow over what veteran U.S. diplomats and former government officials had regarded as America’s calming presence of global stability and continuity.

Despite some notable hiccups, the military, economic and moral power of the United States has dominated the post-World War II era, most notably after the Cold War came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. All of that, some fear, may be lost if Trump gets his way and the U.S. abandons the principles under which the United Nations and numerous other international bodies were founded.

“The only conclusion you can draw is that 80 years of policy in standing up against aggressors has just been blown up without any sort of discussion or reflection,” said Ian Kelly, a U.S. Ambassador to Georgia during the Obama and first Trump administration and now a professor at Northwestern University.

“I’m discouraged for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is that I had taken some encouragement at the beginning from the repeated references to ‘peace through strength,’” Kelly added. “This is not peace through strength — this is peace through surrender.”

Visits start on anniversary of war in Ukraine

Trump, a Republican, is hosting Macron on Monday, the three-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine. Trump is set to hold a meeting Thursday with another key European leader, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Their visits come after Trump shook Europe with repeated criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for failing to negotiate an end to the war and rebuffing a push to sign off on a deal giving the U.S. access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which could be used in the American aerospace, medical and tech industries.

European leaders also were dismayed by Trump’s decision to dispatch top aides for preliminary talks with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia without Ukrainian or European officials at the table.

Another clash is set to play out at the U.N. on Monday after the U.S. proposed a competing resolution that lacks the same demands as one from Ukraine and the European Union for Moscow’s forces to immediately withdraw from the country.

On the minerals deal, Zelenskyy initially bristled, saying it was short on security guarantees for Ukraine. He said Sunday on X that “we are making great progress“ but noted that “we want a good economic deal that will be part of a true security guarantee system for Ukraine.”

Trump administration officials say they expect to reach a deal this week that would tie the U.S. and Ukrainian economies closer together — the last thing that Russia wants.

It follows a public spat, with Trump calling Zelenskyy a “dictator” and falsely charging Kyiv with starting the war. Russia, in fact, invaded its smaller and lesser-equipped neighbor in February 2022.

Zelenskyy, who said Sunday in response to a question that he would trade his office for peace or to join NATO, then angered Trump by saying the U.S. President was living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.” Confronting Trump might not be the best approach, analysts say.

“The response to President Trump doing something to you is not to do something back right away. You tend to get this kind of reaction,” said retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

He added, “This is part of a broader issue where I know the administration’s characterizing themselves as disruptors. I think a better term might be destabilizers. And, unfortunately, the destabilizing is sometimes us and our allies.”

That complicated dynamic makes this week’s task all the more difficult for Macron and Starmer, leaders of two of America’s closest allies, as they try to navigate talks with Trump.

High-stakes talks between European and U.S. leaders

Macron said he intended to tell Trump it’s in the joint interest of Americans and Europeans not to show weakness to Vladimir Putin during U.S.-led negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. He also suggested he’ll make the case that how Trump handles Putin could have enormous ramifications for U.S. dealings with China, the United States’ most significant economic and military competitor.

“You can’t be weak in the face of President Putin. It’s not you, it’s not your trademark, it’s not in your interest,” Macron said on social media. “How can you then be credible in the face of China if you’re weak in the face of Putin?’”

Yet, Trump has shown a considerable measure of respect for the Russian leader. Trump said this month he’d like to see Russia rejoin what is now the Group of Seven major economies. Russia was suspended from the G8 after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

Trump dismissed Zelenskyy’s complaints about Ukraine and Europe not being included in the opening of U.S.-Russia talks, suggesting he’s been negotiating “with no cards, and you get sick of it.”

Putin, on the other hand, wants to make a deal, Trump argued Friday. “He doesn’t have to make a deal. Because if he wanted, he would get the whole country,” Trump added.

The deference to Putin has left some longtime diplomats worried.

“The administration should consider going in a different direction because this isn’t going to work,” said Robert Wood, a retired career diplomat who served in multiple Republican and Democratic administrations. “Let’s not kid ourselves: Russia started this war, and trying to rewrite the narrative isn’t going to serve the best interests of the U.S. or our allies.”

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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The University of Florida (UF) will be a significant resource for historians of Marco Rubio’s Senate career.

Now that Rubio is handling international affairs for the U.S. as Secretary of State, he is leaving his political papers drafted as he was U.S. Senator to libraries at UF.

Rubio served in the Senate between 2011 to 2025, when he departed to become Secretary of State. In those 14 years in the Senate, Rubio generated quite an archive of official papers and memos.

UF officials announced Monday that Rubio, a Republican, agreed to deposit his papers from his senatorial service, along with other materials of historical nature, to the school’s George A. Smathers Libraries political papers collection.

Many of those documents will come from Rubio’s time as a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Vice Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He also served on the Senate Appropriations Committee, as well as the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

“We are honored that Secretary of State Rubio is entrusting us with his Senatorial papers,” said Judy Russell, Dean of University Libraries. “Preserving these historical documents is so important, and we are pleased future scholars will have the opportunity to engage with his materials and others in our collection.”

Rubio is an alumnus of UF, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1993.

The Florida Political Papers collection at UF houses many manuscripts from several of Florida’s highest-profile political leaders. The late Democrat Bob Graham, a former Governor and U.S. Senator, bestowed many of his political papers to the UF library system. Graham passed away in April.

Former U.S. Sen. and U.S. Rep. Bill Nelson also contributed many of his documents to the UF collection, along with many of his documents from NASA from when he served as the space agency’s Administrator from 2021 to 2025.

There are also documents in the UF archives from David Levy Yulee, who was a U.S. Senator for Florida before the American Civil War.

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Gov. Ron DeSantis is promoting a state version of the Elon Musk-led spending slash in Washington that will reach into all areas of state administration and local governments.

“We were DOGE before DOGE was cool,” DeSantis said in Tampa. He praised the Department of Governmental Efficiency in Washington while noting that Florida has already been on a similar track in terms of reining in government to make sure state administration is as “lean and efficient as possible.”

But there’s still a long way to go, DeSantis noted.

To that end, he’s creating a state “DOGE Task Force” that will sunset in a year to look at more efficiencies. Though Florida has the “lowest number of state government workers per capita of any state in these United States,” DeSantis wants that number to get lower.

He wants to cut 740 net positions in the next budget, despite adding law enforcement and corrections staff. DeSantis is also proposing the sunset of 70 Boards and Commissions with 900 associated positions “to get them off the books,” pending legislative ratification.

“There’s hundreds of these things. A lot of people have never heard of them, but they’re there,” DeSantis said.

He noted that many of them haven’t met in years. And he wants to “utilize” artificial intelligence for contract review.

Additionally, DeSantis wants to ensure colleges and universities are “good stewards” of tax dollars, asking for an independent audit of their finances in what he calls the “DOGE-ing” of the State University System.

Course offerings will also be “pruned,” with an eye to getting “some of the ideological stuff out.” And administrative “excess or bloat of personnel” will also be targeted.

Florida Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. is on board with this, promising an audit to ensure administrators are “laser-focused” on doing things the right way.

State agencies will also be audited with artificial intelligence, with “people with strong IT” skills going in to take a second look and “put the kibosh on” contracts that backdoor diversity, equity and inclusion and the like.

Local budgets will also be eyed, given they’ve “ballooned” in recent years, and DeSantis isn’t sure “taxpayers have been at the table” amid bigger spending and tax increases.

The task force will “DOGE at the local level,” taking a look at “publicly available” budget records to make sense of local spending. DeSantis hopes to get legislative authorization to compel local governments to comply with his DOGE task force over the next few years.

“DOGE teams can show up at the county and they can audit, and they can use AI,” DeSantis said. “I think that would be really healthy.”

DeSantis also said he wants to return “close to a billion dollars” in federal funds given to the Department of Children and Families and the Department of Transportation that were unused from Joe Biden administration initiatives tied to “noxious concepts and policies” with an eye towards helping the federal DOGE initiatives and defraying debt.

The Governor’s comments here represent an evolution of thought over the years. When U.S. Sen. Rick Scott pressed states to return unused federal monies years ago, DeSantis said the feds would just send the money to “blue states.”

State Board of Administration Director Chris Spencer supplemented DeSantis’ comments, hailing the drive toward “efficiencies,” and spotlighting Florida’s strong credit rating and “accelerated debt repayment program” as “Washington’s largesse has been driving debt to historic highs.”

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